An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [71]
"What have you got planned?" Stephanie Wilson asked.
"You must swear, all of you, that even if you're afraid to be part of it, you won't tell anyone."
The girls exchanged glances and giggled and promised.
"That goes for you, too, Emily," Myra said. "Because it involves a story my father is pursuing. You know what story I mean. Now, if you can't promise to keep it secret, you must leave the room before I say what it is."
"I thought you were finished with all that, Myra. I showed you everything you wanted to see. I thought I'd satisfied you."
"Something else has come up. My father has a new lead."
"There are no new leads. You'll be dragging everyone on a fool's errand."
"Then that should make you happy."
We locked eyes across the room for a minute.
"What is all this?" Melanie Hawkes asked. "Let the rest of us in on it."
I shrugged. What did I have to lose? Robert had convinced me my uncle had nothing to hide. I had put the matter to rest. Let Myra make a fool of herself.
"Just one thing before you speak," I said. "You're not going to bring everyone into my uncle's yard and poke around that shed again. I can't allow that. It's trespassing." I knew nobody would be home. Uncle Valentine had taken the train to Baltimore this morning to give a speech at the University of Maryland. Maude was off to one of her funerals. But I still couldn't allow it.
"Who cares about the old shed?" she retorted. "We're going somewhere more interesting." Then to the other girls. "What do you say? Want to see some dead bodies?"
***
I'd never been on the grounds of the National Medical College, where Uncle Valentine taught, and I was surprised to find out how easily anyone could just walk around there. Once in the front gates, no one bothered you. "Most of the guards are away helping the police because of all the soldiers in town for the review," Myra told us.
A block from school her older cousin Jason had been waiting for us. He was down from Baltimore with his mother, visiting. He was seventeen, had bright red hair and freckles. His father had served on the North's ironclad Monitor, and Jason was soon headed for the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Myra was so puffed up with herself I thought she would burst. She clung to Jason's arm as we walked across the campus. It was near the end of the semester. Windows of the buildings were open and we could hear the droning voices of professors inside. With Jason leading us, it looked as if we were a passel of girls on a tour. No one paid us mind.
Myra had promised everyone dead bodies. Where they expected to find them, I did not know. But I could not have refused to come along, or it would have looked as if I had something to hide.
If some other professor had "subjects" in his lab, I didn't know. I would have liked, somehow, to get in touch with Robert. But as luck would have it, this morning he had succeeded, after persistent tries, in getting aboard the ironclad Montauk, which was anchored in the Potomac alongside the Saugus. Both housed the male prisoners in the conspiracy. Robert was to see to the conditions of the ships and the health of the prisoners.
I followed the others reluctantly along the quiet paths of the college. Up ahead, Jason and Myra seemed to know where they were going. We went through a grove of trees, down some stone steps, through a sort of dingy tunnel, and then came to a courtyard below the street level.
On the ground lay a ladder. Immediately Jason set it up against the old brick building. The girls gathered around, oohing and aahing and asking silly questions.
"Where are the bodies? Inside?"
"Who told you they were here?"
"You mean, if we climb up that ladder we'll be able to see them?"
"Will they be cut up?"
"Will they be men or women?"
"Will they be naked?"
That, of course, started a whole other set of conjectures. Who had seen a naked man? Who wanted to? Giggles and whisperings. Then silence as