Alec studied Lee thoughtfully. ‘So what’s my challenge to be?’ he asked.
Lee glanced at him. ‘Mr Wolfe will explain,’ he said.
He led the way along the corridor and Alec followed, trying to deal with the rising tide of fear within him. He knew it would involve entering a labyrinth and he remembered that Wolfe had spoken about a minotaur. Alec told himself that surely such a thing could not be possible. He had witnessed some incredible things over the past couple of years, but they had been supernatural creatures conjured by magic. In Egypt, he had seen three thousand-year-old mummies rise from the grave, and in Mexico he had witnessed the rebirth of the children of Mictlan, supernatural warriors that came from the heart of a volcano. But he was pretty sure that whatever Wolfe was, he was no magician.
‘Do you like your work?’ Alec asked Lee. The manservant glanced at him in surprise, then looked quickly away, as though feeling awkward.
‘Is not for me to like,’ said Lee. ‘Mr Wolfe own me. I do as he says.’
‘Lee, you keep saying the same thing,’ insisted Alec. ‘Isn’t it time you stood up for your rights?’
‘Stop talking now,’ said Lee, a note of warning in his voice.
Alec ignored this. ‘You cannot tell me that you agree with what Wolfe is doing. He is killing and torturing innocent people for his own pleasure.’
Lee didn’t say anything, but he kept his gaze fixed to the ground.
‘How far does he have to go before you decide enough is enough?’ persisted Alec. ‘Are you going to let him kill me?’
‘I said no more talk!’ snapped Lee and they walked on in silence.
Once again they made the trip along the seemingly endless corridors of the palace, turning this way and that, but this time, instead of climbing staircases, they were descending them. Lee ducked in through an open doorway and they went down a long flight of stone steps that led deep beneath the ground, the only light coming from a series of flaming brands affixed to the wall. Alec licked his lips nervously and looked around. There was something about this part of the building that spoke of ancient times. Unlike the ground and upper floors, which had been completely reconstructed, this appeared to be all original. Alec could see in the glow of the torches that the passages had been shaped by chisels, hacked out of the solid rock.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and walked across an expanse of stone-flagged floor, until they came to a wooden doorway. The door was ajar and Lee ushered Alec inside, before following him in. Alec found himself in a square room with a hard earth floor and a large set of metal doors at the far end of it. Wolfe was waiting in there, dressed in his usual robes, a cruel smile on his face.
‘Ah, Master Devlin, there you are,’ he said in those cultured Scottish tones. ‘How are you feeling this morning? Ready to undertake your little adventure?’
Alec shrugged. ‘Do I have any choice?’ he asked.
Wolfe laughed unpleasantly. ‘No, I’m afraid you don’t,’ he said. ‘But you should feel honoured. After all, I invited you here to see the archaeological wonders of this island, and you are about to experience the oldest, most incredible part of them.’ He gestured to Lee, who reached obligingly under his tunic. A moment later, the metal doors at the far end of the room began to rumble apart, revealing a dark stone corridor beyond them. ‘I give you the labyrinth of King Minos,’ said Wolfe.
Alec stared into the gloom, noting that a hurricane lamp was standing on a wooden table just beyond the doorway.
‘You . . . built this?’ he murmured.
‘No, of course not! How could I have? It must have taken years to cut this out of the rock. I merely discovered it and . . . brought it back into use. I added the steel doors of course, but everything else you see is the real McCoy.’ Wolfe walked closer to the open doors and stared through into the gloom beyond. ‘Think of it, Alec! This is no reconstruction. It’s the actual labyrinth of King Minos, proof that his story is not just a legend, but based on fact.’
‘The legend says the labyrinth was at Knossos,’ insisted Alec.
Wolfe laughed and gestured around him. ‘Believe the evidence of your own eyes!’ he said. ‘This is where the sons and daughters of Greece were sent to pay homage to the king. This is where they had to face their darkest fears.’ He turned back to look at Alec, his eyes blazing with triumph. ‘Now do you understand why I speak of Knossos as insignificant? Does it have anything to equal this?’
Alec frowned. ‘You were wrong to keep a discovery like this to yourself,’ he said. ‘It should have been shared with the world.’
Wolfe made a dismissive gesture. ‘Built for a king,’ he said. ‘Or rather, for a whole succession of kings bearing the same name. I’m just the most recent in that long lineage. Why would I share it with anyone other than those whom I choose to send in here?’ He studied Alec for a moment before continuing. ‘Your mission is fairly straightforward. When you enter the labyrinth, the metal doors will close behind you. At the very heart of the maze there is an altar – and on that altar I have placed a small metal statue of Theseus. There is something special about the statue. Built into its chest is a switch that will open these doors. It is a short-range device – you’ll need to be within a few yards of the doors for it to work. Your task is simply to find your way to the altar, return here with the statue and let yourself out.’
Alec shrugged. It didn’t sound so fearsome an ordeal. ‘Is that all?’ he said.
Wolfe chuckled. ‘I’ll admit that, on the face of it, it doesn’t sound so difficult. But nobody has managed to do it yet. And don’t forget, you won’t be in there alone. There’s the minotaur to consider. Why do you think I added the doors in the first place? To keep him locked up in there.’
Alec stared at him. ‘You really expect me to believe that you have some kind of . . . monster in there?’ he asked.
Wolfe looked pained. ‘Alec, you disappoint me. Do you honestly think that I would overlook a detail like that? Of course there’s a minotaur! He lives in the labyrinth and his only thought is to defend it against any intruder – to kill and devour anyone who wanders in there.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Alec. ‘Such a thing isn’t possible.’
‘To the rich man, all things are possible,’ Wolfe assured him. ‘When I first discovered this place I knew that my labyrinth must have its minotaur. So I searched the world. Money was no object.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Anyway, enough of this talk. You have a mission to accomplish. Get to the centre of the maze, evade the minotaur and bring the statue of Theseus back to these gates. Do all that and you have passed the test. I only hope you do better than the last young man I sent in there. A Mr Travis, I believe his name was.’
‘Travis?’ Alec remembered the photograph that Lieutenant Sideras had shown him back at the taverna. ‘What . . . what happened to him?’
‘He went into the labyrinth, but never came out,’ said Wolfe, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Oh, it was pure luck that brought him to me. I happened to be in a Cretan taverna one night, one of my rare trips over there. He wandered in like a lamb to the slaughter – a young Englishman, alone and out of his depth. How could I not take him? Such a simple matter to slip a drug into his drink. Lee carried him down to the launch and we brought him back to the island unconscious. I must confess I didn’t give him any explanation about why he was here or what he was meant to do. I just let him wander into the labyrinth. I thought my minotaur needed the exercise.’ He smiled a horrible smile. ‘So, good luck, Master Devlin. I do hope you manage to find your way around in there. Oh, and don’t even think about coming back without the statue. Without it you’ll be trapped behind those doors until you rot . . . or until the minotaur finds you.’ With that, he turned and went out, closing the door behind him.
Alec stood for a moment, staring thoughtfully at the entrance of the labyrinth. Then he walked forward and Lee went with him. As Alec stepped through the open metal doors Lee held out a hand to shake. ‘Good luck,’ he sai
d.
Alec was surprised by this show of friendship, but he accepted the gesture and reacted with astonishment when the manservant pressed something small and metallic into the palm of his hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said, not knowing what to think.
Lee’s face remained impassive. He reached under his cloak and the metal doors began to slide shut. Alec waited until they were fully closed before opening his hand. He stepped closer to the table, and in the glow of the hurricane lamp he examined what lay in his palm. He gave a gasp of surprise. It was a small metal box with a button mounted on it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Labyrinth
THE PONY AND cart pulled to a halt outside the gendarmerie in Heraklion. It had taken nearly two hours to get here and Stephen felt as though every bone in his body had been rattled loose after the bumpy journey. He grabbed the metal collar, leaped out of the cart and ran around to shake hands with Nikos. He wished he had some money with which to reward the goatherd, but he had nothing to give him and could only shake the man’s huge hand and thank him repeatedly. He gave him a last grateful wave and ran up the short flight of steps to the entrance. He burst into a small, dusty reception area and saw a moustachioed man, dressed in a gendarme’s uniform. He was lounging behind a wooden counter, smoking a foul-smelling cigarette.
‘Lieutenant Sideras?’ he asked hopefully.
The man surveyed him doubtfully for a moment, then shook his head. ‘You wait,’ he said, and disappeared through a door behind him.
Stephen was left to pace anxiously up and down, all too aware that time was ticking away. Who knew what terrors his friends back at Wolfe’s island might be facing? Who could say if they were even still alive?
After what seemed an age, a door at the end of the room opened and a tall uniformed man emerged. He had a waxed moustache and dark brown eyes. He studied Stephen for a moment, taking in his sunburned face and his obviously borrowed clothing.
‘Lieutenant,’ said Stephen urgently. ‘You must help me. I—’
‘English?’ interrupted Lieutenant Sideras, in a deep growl of a voice. ‘I can speak English.’
‘Excellent,’ said Stephen. ‘My name is Stephen Isherwood. I was told about you by another Englishman, a Mr Coates? He said you were investigating missing persons.’
Lieutenant Sideras nodded. He looked intrigued. ‘You have information for me?’ he asked.
‘Yes. But there isn’t any time to waste. Mr Coates . . . and his companions, Mr Wade and young Alec Devlin . . . they are in grave danger. They could be dead by now. A man called Tobias Wolfe has taken them prisoner on an island to the north of here.’ He lifted the broken metal collar. ‘He uses these devices to make people do his bidding. People have died. An American lady, Miss McBride . . . and . . . my father, Professor Isherwood. He was—’
Lieutenant Sideras held up a hand to stop him. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You speak much too fast. I cannot follow. Come into my office and we can talk properly.’
Stephen followed the gendarme into his office, a small square room with a scrupulously neat desk and a couple of plain wooden chairs. The lieutenant sat down and motioned Stephen into the other seat. Stephen did as he was instructed and set down the metal collar on the table.
‘We’re wasting time,’ Stephen insisted. ‘That madman Wolfe has my friends held captive. If we don’t get to them soon—’
Again Lieutenant Sideras held up a hand. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ he suggested. ‘Tell me everything.’
In the dull glow of the hurricane lamp, Alec examined the device in his hand and wondered what it could possibly be for. He looked around the entrance to the labyrinth, but he could see nothing here that seemed to belong to it. He studied the metal doors through which he had just entered the labyrinth and felt a stirring of hope within him. Could it be that Lee had left him a means of escape? If so, there would be no need to try and find his way to the centre of the maze. He pointed the gadget towards the doors, and flicked the switch to the ‘on’ position.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then there was a loud metallic click and suddenly, magically, the collar around his neck sprang open. After so many days of wearing it, it was a wonderful release. He stood there, wondering why Lee had done this for him. Perhaps he had been right when he thought he sensed a change in the manservant. Perhaps Lee too had finally come to the end of his patience with Wolfe – or maybe he had just wanted to do a favour for the boy who had been kind to him.
Alec set the collar down on the floor and slipped the gadget into his pocket. If he could hang onto it, perhaps he would be able to use it to release Ethan and Coates when he got back to them. If he got back to them. And if the same device could be used on their collars too. Then he reminded himself that nothing would happen until he had returned to these doors with the statue of Theseus. He reached into his tunic and pulled out the large ball of twine that Ariadne had given him. It had seemed only natural when he had found it concealed in the bandages because it was just like the legend – although not part of the story that Wolfe wanted him to play out, he was certain of that. But it would give him a useful advantage. He tied one end of it securely to a metal hook he found protruding from the wall beside the door. He tested it a couple of times, wanting to be sure that it wasn’t going to work itself free. Then, picking up the hurricane lamp, he set off into the labyrinth, letting the twine play out behind him – marking his route so he could follow it back to the doors.
As he walked, he recalled something his father had told him years ago – something about mazes. Alec had been around twelve years old when he and his father had paid a visit to the hedge maze at Hampton Court. As they entered it together, his father had explained a famous theory to him.
‘We must choose a wall and keep following it, no matter what,’ he’d said, reaching out to trace the fingers of his left hand against the shrubbery. ‘And we must make only right turns or left turns – never a mixture of the two. If we observe those two rules, eventually we’ll find our way through the maze.’
It had taken a couple of hours, but in the end, Father’s theory had been proved right. The two of them had found the centre then emerged from an opening on the far side of the maze. Now, all those years later, Alec determined to apply the same rules to the labyrinth. He chose the wall to his left and stayed with it, following its many twists and turns, letting out the twine as he went.
It was a horribly claustrophobic setting – the rough chiselled walls pressing close on either side of him, the roof no more than a foot above his head. The hurricane lamp provided only a bobbing pool of light and flung grotesque shadows in all directions. Alec tried not to think about what Wolfe had said about his minotaur and told himself that he must remain calm, no matter what happened. To panic down here would be the end of him, and he knew that if he dropped the hurricane lamp, he would be plunged into total darkness.
The labyrinth unwound in front of him like a seemingly endless puzzle, the narrow corridors switching to left and right, but he only allowed himself to turn in the same direction each time. He knew that if he did go back on himself he would encounter the length of twine, but thankfully, that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, he found something much worse. The light of the lamp picked out a shape lying against a wall a short distance ahead of him. He approached warily and was horrified to see that it was the remains of a body, little more than a skeleton to which a few shreds of torn clothing and the odd scrap of wizened flesh still clung. As he walked gingerly past, the empty eye sockets of the skull seemed to be staring up at him, the bared teeth clenched in a mirthless grin, as though relishing his horror.
He moved quickly onwards, hoping that he wouldn’t encounter any more human remains, but as he ventured deeper into the heart of the labyrinth, he found more corpses in all stages of decomposition, many of them looking as though they had been torn limb from limb by some prodigious force.
Fear began to squirm like a snake in the pit of his stomach and he thought very
seriously about turning round and following the length of twine back to his starting point – but he told himself, no, that was no use. If he couldn’t find the statue and the device that unlocked the door, then he would be trapped down here. So he kept on going, aware now of a thick layer of sweat on his face and body.
And then he heard a sound that stopped him in his tracks – a deep bellowing sound in the distance that seemed to echo eerily along the stone corridors. A noise that was neither man nor beast, but a hideous mixture of the two. Dread rose up within him, and once again his instinct was to turn and run. He made himself stick to his original plan, moving steadily forward, always keeping to his left, but as he walked on, the noises grew louder. Whatever was making the sounds was getting closer and it occurred to him now that if the beast was used to wandering in this dark place, it must surely have learned how to find its way around.
But Alec knew he couldn’t give up. He had to keep going until he found the very heart of the labyrinth. He could only hope that he got there before the minotaur, or whatever it was, homed in on him.
Lieutenant Sideras stared across the top of his desk at Stephen, his expression unfathomable. He was holding the metal collar in his hands, his fingers exploring its mechanism, tightening and loosening the linked sections. For the first time it occurred to Stephen how utterly fantastic his story sounded, like the ravings of a lunatic.
‘So you are saying that this . . . Tobias Wolfe . . . he is the man responsible for all those disappearances?’
‘It would seem so.’
‘But you don’t have any proof?’
‘Right now, I’m more concerned about my friends back at his island. They are prisoners, kept in place by those things.’ Stephen pointed at the metal collar. ‘They are operated by some kind of remote mechanism, strangling the life out of the people who wear them. Three of my companions were still alive when I escaped, but there’s no telling what might have happened to them by now.’
Maze of Death Page 14