Scott shrugged and started walking again, this time with more purpose. “I’ll leave it off with Colonel Waddell and be on my way.”

Grant stopped at the corner of Market, and Scott stopped, too. “Go on your way?” Grant said. “Son, you’re making some powerful assumptions.”

“I don’t see it.”

“You know why I didn’t volunteer?”

A pair of white men crossed the street up ahead. Grant waited to see if they would come his way, but the men seemed preoccupied with other business and disappeared up Market in a hurry. “I figured, I show my black face in that pretty neighborhood, I’ll wind up like my granddaddy.”

“I heard you at the church meeting. Doesn’t change what I have to do.”

Grant ignored him. “Figure I might as well paint a bull’s-eye on my back. They’re apt to have rifles in every window by now. I mean, do you realize where Colonel Waddell lives?”

“I’ve never gone visiting, if that’s what you mean.”

Grant pulled Scott into the doorway of a hardware store closed for the night. “Just off of Market, on Fifth,” he said. He pointed up Market Street, away from the river. “Half a block east of him, right up this street, you got John D. Bellamy’s mansion. Just past that, you’ve got Hugh MacRae’s castle. Across the street from that, you’ve got Colonel Walker Taylor’s house.”

“So?”

“On the west corner of Market and Fifth, there’s First Baptist Church, which at this very minute is full of vigilantes. Practically next door to that is the Light Infantry Armory.” Grant lowered his voice to a whisper. “All connected by secret underground passages.”

“Go on—secret passages.”

“Tunnels right under the street. Go in here, come out there, like magic.” He snapped his fingers. “White man can be wherever he wants to be, just like that. Might as well be invisible.”

“Never heard of such a thing.” Scott chuckled nervously. Actually, he had heard tales of the old smugglers’ tunnels, but he had always assumed they were just stories.

“We’re talking about the heart of the heart of White Town, brother. Three blocks that way. You think they’re going to let you wander around loose in that neighborhood?”

“I’m just the delivery boy.”

“You’ll be running the gauntlet. You think they’re going to wait long enough to find out what you’re delivering?”

The streets were weirdly deserted. Scott turned the corner and started walking resolutely east on Market in the direction of Waddell’s house. He hurried across Second Street, then Third. Approaching Fourth, with the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory coming up on his left, he slowed.