The Skeleton in the Clock

Scottish airs. But in the drive, where Martin ran like hell, it was'different.

'Get a fish, now! A wood-en fish, with a re-al hook, out of re-al running water. Each third fish contains a number a number, which—'

'See how easy it is? Just throw the wooden ring, like this, over the peg!'

'Come-on-Redjacket! Bill, turn that crank faster! Come-on-Redjacket for 'alf a crown!

This was the place.

Near the race-track, where the crowd bounced him round its edges like a roulette-ball, a wide space had been left between both lines of booths and stalls to form a sort of cross-avenue.

Beyond the open space on his right set some hundred feet back, was the Mirror Maze. It stood alone; nothing anywhere near it except the Whip and the Dodgem.

' 'Ave your try at the coconut-shy!' a voice was intoning, that of a little man who hopped from foot to foot under the spell of his own rhyming. ''Ave your try at the coconut-shy!’ An arm snapped forward; the wooden ball clacked against the coconut; the coconut toppled and fell. 'That’s the stuff, sir. One — cigarette! 'Ave your try at the coconut-shy!'

It jigged through Martin's head, like the little man jigging back and forth, as he turned off the drive and ran towards the Mirror Maze. The loud-speaker had been right in calling the Mirror Maze its biggest attraction.

The structure was very large, circular in shape (odd, wasn’t that for a mirror maze?), and 'practical' in the sense that it had been built of very light wood painted dull silver. The words MIRROR MAZE stared at Martin in red letters.

But there was nobody at the ticket-seller's place. Nobody to speak into the microphone of the loud-speaker. No visitors. Nobody at all. Over the door hung a curtain of black felt, a good deal heavier and thicker than the under-felt for carpets.

The sky was growing darker, over a buzz and paper-crackle from an army at sandwich-eating. Some female singer, whose voice reminded Martin of Lady Brayle, had joined the brass-band and urged it to softness. Martin heard one line above the heavy lion-purr of the band:

'Ma-o-a-x-wel-l-l-ton's braes are bo-o-n-n-ie—'

Then he ducked past the mattressy black felt, became entangled in another black curtain, and twisted himself free from that.

'H.M.?’ he shouted.

Inside the circular structure was another structure: almost as large, but square and painted black. It had only one door, opening into a broad corridor, dimly lighted and lined with polished looking-glass.

To Martin, as he crossed the threshold of the Mirror Maze, it seemed he was walking into a gigantic box- camera.

'Oil H.M.! Where are your he called. But the shout seemed lifeless, flat, stifled, as he strode along the corridor.

(I know it's an optical trick, but this corridor looks as long as something at Versailles. It isn't actually broad, either; I can touch each, side by stretching out my hands. Also, I can see the joinings down the mirrors. Of course the corridor's not long! Two turnings here.)

Martin took one turning. He walked a dozen feet farther, and took another.

'HM., don't try to play the fool! This is only a little place; you can't help hearing me. They know you're here!'

Exasperated, Martin paused. He looked round with curiosity, and then with some feeling other than exasperation.

He was the only living soul in this maze. Yet he was not alone. Everywhere he was pursued, surrounded, and furtively glanced at round corners, by images of himself.

The dim yellow light, from some concealed source along the tops of the mirrors, turned the place into a shiny, shadowy labyrinth, all straight lines and right-angles, short passages and long, with one looking-glass occupant.

Martin Drake, turning to one side, confronted himself: he looked, with the discoloured forehead, exactly like a pirate. He turned to the other, with the same result. He walked forward again, his footsteps clumping, to what seemed to be the junction of four passages. As he circled round, a whole band of pirates multiplied and circled with him.

(All right If H.M. is up to some crafty game, let it be taken as done. I'm going to get out of here.)

That would be easy, of course. He had only to remember where he came in, which must be comparatively close. But the fact was that he couldn't remember where he came in.

Well, what of it?

All that would be required of him, as Stannard had said, was a little logical reasoning. A sense of direction, too. Here— observe, now! — was the junction of what appeared to be four corridors. One of them looked like a dead-end. Martin edged in, leaching out his fingers to touch his own reflected fingers, and met the glass. Good! He'd established that.

Now the other corridor, opposite, must be fully twenty feet long. It had a mirror there facing him; but a long corridor must have a turn at the side which (now he remembered!) was the direction he had come.

Martin, heated with elation, took five strides forward. And..

'God!”

Out of nowhere, leaping, a foil-length mirror rushed at him and banged him full body and face.

Only the sudden vision of his own eyes — appearing hideously magnified by their closeness — made an instinctive recoil and lessened the shock as he smacked full-tilt into his own reflection. What angered him was the real shock to the nerves it had given him in a childish place meant for amusement

'Now let's consider this!' Martin said, unaware he was speaking aloud.

'Looking-glasses can't suddenly move across in front of you. Any more than a lot of beach-chairs can rush at you and push you off a roof.'

That was a grisly thought. What brought such an idea into his head?

'Therefore,' he argued, and still aloud to all his ghost-selves, 'there's an explanation. This mirror I ran into: it's the end of the passage I was trying to reach.

'Got it! A mirror at the end of the passage gives a double length of reflection. You judge it by the floor. If it looks twenty feet away, it's actually only ten. I went tearing forward, like Grandmother Brayle, and as a result—!' He stopped.

That was a sound, not from his imagination, clearly if very faintly heard, which registered with him. It was, 'Brayle,' or 'Lady Brayle.'

Despite its layers of looking-glasses and its double roof, the Mammoth Mirror Maze was not exactly soundproof. Nobody could mistake the slowly gathering roar from a little distance away, to Martin's heighted senses carrying a note of anger; the shouts; the heavy drumming of crowd-feet across open grass.

The old girl had returned.

She must have returned, he reflected, almost as soon as he himself had dived into this place. She had started raising hell at the main gates, and must have got some way up the drive with her riding-crop before…

Well, he'd got to get out of this place. Martin tried again.

What drives a man frantic, even under the most ordinary circumstances, is that he cannot make speed even when he refrains from making haste. The more he says it to himself— slowly, slowly, no haste or you'll fumble — the more matters become snarled. The clock-hand crawls; the chance is lost

'If you are unable to get out of the Mirror Maze,' Martin's memory brought back the words from the loud-speaker, 'directions will be given by—'

Given by whom? Given how? He had heard no more.

Martin, trying to keep from a run and holding out his hands against obstacles, hurried always into a dead-end. His watch kept, ticking steadily, tiny digs of urgency. If only he hadn't come in here alone..

But he was not alone in the maze.

He discovered this as he whipped round the angle of a corridor, and stopped dead.

This corridor (his eye, used to it now, could judge accurately) was twenty feet long. Ahead of him, back to Martin, walked a man in a brown coat and blue trousers.