Tunnels

"Hello, Dad. You got him to come, then." She turned on Dr. Burrows with a self-conscious smile. "Do come down to the kitchen. Bit of a mess, but I'll put the kettle on," she said, closing the door behind them.

Dr. Burrows followed Pineapple Joe as he stomped over the tarpaulins in the unlit corridor, where the wallpaper had been half stripped from the walls.

Once in the kitchen, Pineapple Joe's daughter turned to Dr. Burrows. "Sorry, how rude, I didn't introduce myself. My name's Pe

"We thought it was a good idea to take out the chimney, to give us the space for a breakfast bar over there," Pe

To the rear of the fireplace a heap of soot-stained bricks indicted where the hearth wall had been. With this wall removed, a sizable space had been revealed behind it, like a hidey-hole.

"That's unusual. A second chimney flue?" he said to himself, almost immediately uttering a series of no's as he shook his head. He moved closer and looked down. In the floor was a vent about three feet by a foot and a half in size.

Stepping between the loose bricks, he crouched down at the edge of the opening, peering into it.

"Uh… have you got a flashlight handy?" he asked. Pe

"What with?" she replied simply.

"Can I have this?" Dr. Burrows picked up a jagged half-brick from the pile of rubble by the collapsed hearth. She nodded, and he turned back to the hole and stood poised to drop it in.

"Now listen," he said to them as he released it over the vent. They heard it knocking against the sides as it fell, the sounds growing quieter until only faint echoes reached Dr. Burrows, who was now kneeling over the opening.

"Is it-?" Pe

"Shhh!" Dr. Burrows hissed impolitely, giving her a start as he held up his hand. After a moment he raised his head and frowned at Pineapple Joe and Pe

"Can't be!"

"What's that, Burrows?" Pineapple Joe asked. "Anything to report?"

"I might be mistaken, but I could swear there's a bit of an updraft," Dr. Burrows said, pulling his head out of the gap. "Why that should be, I just don't know — unless the whole block was built with some form of ventilation system between each house. But I can't for the life of me imagine why it would have been. The most curious thing is that the duct" — he rolled over onto his back and shone his flashlight upward, above the hole — "appears to carry on up, just behind the normal chimney. I presume it also vents as part of the chimney stack, on the roof?"

What Dr. Burrows did not tell them — did not dare tell them, because it would have appeared too outlandish — is that he had smelled that peculiar mustiness again: the same smell he had noticed on his collision with the man-in-a-hat the day before on Main Street.

Back in the tu

"Drat! Don't tell me the rock carries on down here, too!" he yelled, exasperated. Chester immediately dropped his wheelbarrow and came ru

"What's the matter, Will?" he asked, surprised at the outburst.

"Blast! Blast! And blast!" Will shouted. He was shocked. He had never seen Will lose his cool this way before; he was like a boy possessed.

Will increased his attack with the pickax, working at fever pitch as he struck wildly at the rock face. Chester was forced to take a step back to avoid his swings and the torrents of sil and stone he was throwing out behind him.

Suddenly Will stopped and fell silent for a moment. Then, slinging aside his pickax, he sank to his knees to scrape frantically at something in front of him.

"Well, look at that!"

"Look at what?"

"See for yourself," Will said breathlessly.

Chester crawled in and saw what had excited his friend so much. Where Will had cleared away the soil there were several courses of a brick wall visible under the sandstone layer, and he'd already loosened some of the first bricks.

"But what if it's a sewer or railway tu

"Calm down, Chester, there's nothing on the maps around here. We're on the edge of the old town, right?"

"Right," Chester said hesitantly, unsure of what his friend was getting at.

"Well, this won't have been anything built in the last hundred to hundred and fifty years — so it's unlikely to be a train tu

Chester took a couple of steps backward and said nothing, so Will resumed his efforts for a few minutes and then stopped, aware that his friend was still hovering nervously behind him. Will turned and let out a resigned sigh.

"Look, Chester, if it makes you happy, we'll stop work for today, and I'll check with my dad tonight. See what he thinks."

"Yeah, I'd rather you did, Will. You know… in case."

Dr. Burrows said good-bye to Pineapple Joe and his daughter, promising to find out what he could about the house and its architecture from the local archives. He glanced at his watch and grimaced. He knew it wasn't right to leave the museum closed for so long, but he wanted to look at something before he went back.

He walked around the square several times, examining the terraced houses on all four sides. The whole square had been built at the same time, and each house was identical. But what interested him was the idea that they might all have the mysterious ducts ru