“Come along, then. I’ll take the left-hand path here, and you can go to the right. Whoever gets first to the centre can shout ‘I win!’ and then start for the exit door. If it’s a tie at the centre, then the first one out is the winner. Keep a tight hold on your honesty and don’t shout unless you get to the centre! These are all the directions necessary, I think. Now, go!”
Vera hurried along a straight corridor for some twenty yards and then turned sharply to the right as the path altered its direction. On again, until a promontory of hedge forced her to diverge into a recess in the greenery, from which she emerged again into the main track. Another corner to the right was turned and now she seemed to have come into a cul-de-sac.
“Rather a sell if I’ve chosen a blind alley at the very start,” she thought to herself. “Howard would jubilate over that when he found out about it.”
However, on reaching the wall of hedge which seemed to bar her way, she came upon a concealed turning to the right.
“After walking all that distance, I’m still on the very outer rim of this Maze! However, this turn’s going to take me in towards the centre.”
Up to that point her progress had been simplicity itself; but now alternative paths began to open up every few yards. The tall hedges cut off everything but the sky; and soon she found that she had completely lost her bearings and was wandering at random. For a time she hurried forward, choosing always those turnings which seemed likely to bring her nearer to where she supposed the centre to lie; but at last the continual windings confused her so much that she could not even tell in which direction to walk in order to reach the inner reaches of the labyrinth. Long zig-zag corridors ended, time after time, in blank walls; and in traversing them forwards and back again she grew more and more doubtful of her bearings. When she thought of taking the sun as a reference-point, it was too late; for by that time she had lost all notion of her whereabouts.
“I’m sure I’ve seen that patch of withered leaves in the hedge more than once before,” she said to herself, halting to examine it more carefully. “Yes, I’m certain I passed it a few minutes ago. I must be coming back in my tracks and just going over the same ground again and again.”
With the dying out of her own footfalls, the silence of the Maze impressed itself on her; and she strained her ears to catch the sound of Howard as he moved somewhere beyond these impenetrable green living walls.
“If I really get stuck in here,” she reflected, “I can always blow the horn and bring someone who knows the place to lead me out.”
She listened again, more intently. Then, suddenly there was no need to strain her ears.