guered fortress. "The Count of Monte Cristo," it was called; ever
heard about it? Pretty soon now we'll be stopped for examination before
we enter the secret passage underground. Romantic isn't it?"

"Very much so," Lee dryly remarked. He continued to watch the behavior
of the car with some misgivings. The controls appeared to be functioning
smoothly enough and after a minute or so the brake pedal came down all
by itself. Lee, with a breath of relief, saw the speedometer recede to
zero.

But the doors would not open from the inside and as he tried them he
found that they were locked. "What's the idea," he asked, "I thought you
said we would be examined at this spot?"

"Bet they're at it right now," the chauffeur grinned. "I wouldn't know
how they do it, but they get us photographed inside and outside, what we
have in our pockets, what we had for breakfast this morning and the very
bones of our skeletons. I pass through here maybe half a dozen times a
day, still they will do it every time: take my likeness. Makes me feel
like I was some darned movie star."

To Lee it felt uncanny to sit trapped and blindfolded in this "Black
Maria" of a car while unseen rays and cameras went over him. He could
hear a faint noise of steps, and muffled voices.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"Oh, that's only some boys from Intelligence or whatnot; that's nothing,
that isn't The Brain. It will be all over in a moment--see--there we go
again. Now we're entering the Labyrinth."

"The Labyrinth?"

Reticent as he had been in the beginning, the chauffeur now seemed to
like Lee; he was proud to explain. "Queer, isn't it? They've got the
damnedest names for things down here. Take them from anatomy, I
understand. The Labyrinth is supposed to be inside the ear; it leads
inside in a roundabout way; it's the same here, it's a tunnel--see--down
we go."

The soft swoosh of the gas-turbine turned into a muffled roar. The car
accelerated at a terrific rate and from the way it swayed and dived it
was clear that the tunnel spiralled downwards in steep serpentines. Lee
gripped the holding straps; his every nerve was on edge and those edges
were sharpened by the ominous fact that all the instruments on the
dashboard had stopped functioning so that he couldn't even read the
speed.

As if to make things still worse, the chauffeur had abandoned his post
altogether. Stretching his legs across the front seat he reclined as if
enjoying his easy chair at ho