The woman handed the Golden Paw to Cedric, who carefully took it from her and placed it in his pocket.
“You’ll need it to gain access to him. Although we have his most formidable members, he’s sure to be protected by others.”
Wait a minute! Andy thought, putting two and two together. She’s…she’s talking about Grandfather!
Suddenly, it all made sense. Cedric was going to find Ned Lostmore and extract all the Jungle Explorers’ Society’s secrets from him. Worse still, Andy realized that when Cedric was done, he was going to kill him!
I’ve got to get out of here! Grandfather needs my help!
His blood boiling, Andy rushed toward Cedric, intending to tackle him to the ground. He was angrier than he’d ever been before and needed to get the Golden Paw away from him. With it, Cedric could impersonate anyone at all—even Andy himself! His poor grandfather would be caught unawares by the sneak attack!
But before he got to Cedric, the Potentate snapped her fingers, and several tough-looking men rushed into the chamber and grabbed Andy by the arms. He struggled as hard as he could.
“Let me go! You’ll never get away with this!”
“Tie the two of them up with this,” said the Potentate, indicating Andy and Abigail with a jerk of her head. She handed Andy’s rope to the closest man, a hulking brute with a scar over one eye. “Put them with their friends. They’re in for quite a reunion.”
It was more than an ordinary prison. It wasn’t on any map and had been cleverly crafted to prevent escape. In fact, the ingenuity that had been employed by the dungeon’s designer, a renowned torturer, had seen to it that the prison was filled with traps so nefarious any prisoner who tried to escape would encounter obstacles that would terrify the other captives into not even trying.
Long ago, the worst pirates that the Royal Navy had ever encountered had been placed there. Now Andy awoke in one of its cells. The Potentate’s henchman had shoved a rough cloth soaked with some kind of chemical over his nose and mouth. Beyond that, he couldn’t remember much. His head hurt. Everything hurt. He felt as if someone had hit him over and over with a sledgehammer.
Worse than the pain he felt was the knowledge that Ned was in danger, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Andy gazed at his surroundings with mounting despair. The dungeon walls were made of thick, impenetrable stone, except for the entrance to his cell, which was made of heavy iron bars. Abigail wasn’t anywhere in sight. Neither were the rest of his friends.
Andy felt dizzy as he rose from the chilly flagstone floor. He stumbled over to the bars and, gripping them with both hands, called out, “Hello? Is anybody there?”
“Andy? Is that you?” came a familiar voice from somewhere down the outside corridor.
“Rusty! You’re alive!” Andy said.
“Barely, boy. Barely,” Rusty said. Andy noticed that his normally booming voice sounded tired and weak.
“Are the others okay? What about Betty and Dotty?”
“We’re here,” said two voices in unison.
“Okay, but not great,” Dotty added.
“I’m here, too,” Abigail called. “I feel like I was thrown in here like a rag doll after they drugged me.”
The Collective will pay for that, Andy thought. And for what they’ve done to the others, too. When I find a way out of here, I’m going to get my Zoomwriter back and get us all free.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Andy called. “Ned is in danger!”
He related to the others what he’d heard with Abigail. They all agreed he’d come to the correct conclusion based on the cryptic conversation the Potentate had had with Cedric.
“Why, that double-crossing little quack!” Rusty growled. “When I get my hands on that tribal-masked fiend, he’s going to wish he’d never been born.”
Betty, Dotty, and Abigail voiced similar convictions. To have one of their own betray the Society like this was the worst thing anyone could imagine. Each of them owed Ned Lostmore a great debt, and all considered him a dear friend. But to Andy, it went deeper than that. Ned was family! He couldn’t allow anything to happen to him.
Andy tugged on the bars with all his might. Truthfully, he hadn’t expected much to happen. To his surprise, the door to his cell swung open easily.
“Hey!” Andy shouted. “They forgot to lock my door!”
“Don’t move!” Rusty shouted back. “It’s a trap!”
Andy poked his head out of the cell door. All he could see was a long hallway with a trench of murky water flowing down the center of it. There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous.
“But there’s nothing there,” Andy said.
“This place is known in the criminal underworld. If we are where I think we are, most of them call it Prisoner’s Folly. Nobody knows the original name. It might never have even had one….I heard about it when my plane was grounded with engine trouble in the Caribbean. Had to spend the night in a very sketchy inn, a place I wouldn’t recommend to anyone,” Rusty said in a pained voice.
“It looks like an ordinary dungeon to me,” Andy replied.
“Trust me, it’s not,” said Rusty. “Every prisoner is given the opportunity to escape. I think it’s mostly for the entertainment of the people who put us here. This place is designed to drive a person insane. If you think the traps that the Collective put in front of us in that phony Death Maze were bad, you have no idea what this place can do.”
Andy stared down the hallway at the place where he thought Rusty was imprisoned. He couldn’t see him, but he could hear his voice. Aside from the muddied trench, the corridor looked clean and well cared for. How in the world
