They paid no attention to protests or entreaties. In a very short time, under the dark sky and with the crowd milling towards shelter against possible rain, they saw the maze ahead. H.M., at a curious pigeon-toed run which made children stare, was able to keep up with Masters.
The circular structure, dull silver with its red letters, loomed up. Out from a fringe of the crowd hastened a lean youngish man, in a grey-and-Mack checked suit and with a beret on his brilliantined black hair. To a man in overalls he handed a bundle of big numbered placards. The young man had a shrewd, shiny, razorish kind of face, now one focus of eager interest in the eyes.
"'Owzit, cock?" he asked H.M. affectionately. "Did I do it right?"
H.M. began to rave.
"But you was in there," protested Mr. MacDougall "even if you only looked round. And I wasn't to signal when you come out, was I?" he broke off. "Oi! Charley.'"
A well-dressed young man, in the ticket seller's cage, rose up over the top of the booth.
"I was to drive them out" Charley answered in dubiously refined tones, "at twelve-thirty. I was to come back at a quarter to one. If anybody wanted tickets, I was to tell 'em the maze was full and would they come back later. Except the right one. I was to give the right one a ticket, or tickets—"
''Your friend's inside," said Mr. MacDougaU. "In we go!" Though they writhed through the thick felt curtain in a cursing wedge, nevertheless H.M., Masters, and their companion stood still and said nothing on the other side. They were all listening.
The great black box, like a camera with a faintly illuminated door of looking-glasses, stood silent inside its circular wooden shell Softly the eager MacDougall led the way into the maze. Its soft-gleaming corridors led them on at first one angle, then another.
"Looky here, son," muttered H.M. "We can talk now, can't we?"