Vera leaned against the high hedge for a minute or two, trying to overcome the panic into which Howard’s last words had plunged her. He had been careful not to put the thing to her nakedly; but she saw what lay behind his directions. The murderer was still in the Maze, and on his way out he might come upon her. If he did, she would be too dangerous a witness to leave alive. She need expect no mercy. And what hope of escape would she have? There, shut in among these towering walls, isolated from all help in the intricacies of the Maze, it would be an easy business to silence her finally. She listened intently once more; but no sound came to her ears. The murderer seemed to have made his way into some remoter part of the Maze. Suddenly a clatter at her feet startled her into an agony of terror. It was the horn which she had allowed to slip from her hand in the intensity of her concentration upon the sounds about her. She stooped to pick it up again; then, thinking that it would merely hamper her, she let it lie where it had fallen. But at once came the realisation that the sound of its clash upon the path must have betrayed her position, if the murderer were lurking at hand. She tried to listen again; but her heart was hammering and the pulsing of the blood in her ears drowned all external sounds. A lump seemed to gather in her throat and she felt as though she would choke. With a physical effort she fought down her difficulties. “Hysteria!” she told herself. “If I give way to it, I’ll be putting myself straight into the brute’s hands.” At last the rustle in her ears subsided and she was able to listen again. For a few instants she heard nothing. Then, quite close at hand, a dry twig cracked as though someone had set his foot on it. The murderer had not left the Maze. She felt almost unable to stir; but at last she forced herself into motion. Anything was better than staying in the place where the assassin might have heard her drop the horn. Softly she stole down the corridor. Once she had begun to move, all her impulse was to break into a run; but she fought hard against it. “If I begin to run, I’m done for,” she thought. “I’d go on running. I wouldn’t be able to run to a corner; and it’s at the corners I must be careful, or I may run full tilt into him.” And then her mind, despite herself, conjured up vivid pictures of that meeting. She could see a vague figure rising to block her passage. With an almost physical shrinking she thought of it with a knife in its hand, the blade dripping with the blood of the earlier victim. It came over her how safe and peaceful the normal world was—and now, in pursuit of an aimless piece of amusement, she had come into the slaughterhouse. The Minotaur was afoot in the labyrinth.