Teri lay curled in a ball, her head resting on a huge humped armrest, her black hair falling in piles, nearly touching the floor. She wore a long red negligee that fluffed about her arms and covered her body from neck to toe, teasingly displaying the dark triangle below her belly and the two pink discs of her breasts through its diaphanous material. Pitt whipped out his handkerchief and had it firmly stuffed in her mouth before she fully woke. Then snatching the hem of her negligee he yanked it above her head and knotted it around the arms, making her completely helpless. Teri began to struggle back to full consciousness—it was too late. Before she could fully grasp what was happening, she was roughly thrown over Giordino's shoulder and carted off into the sunlight.

"You've got to be crazy," Giordino mumbled irritably when they reached the stairway. "All this hassle to gawk at a toy and steal a broad."

"Shut up and run," Pitt said without turning. He kicked the passage door aside and let Giordino enter first with his kicking burden. Then Pitt pushed the door back into place, aligning the hinge shafts before inserting the pins.

"Why bother replacing the door?" Giordino asked impatiently.

"We got this far without detection," Pitt replied, grabbing the flight bag. "I want to keep von Till in the dark as long as possible. I'm betting he saw the obvious evidence of my wounds after the dog's attack, and thinks I wandered off into this honeycombed maze and bled to death."

Quickly, Pitt turned and ran through the corridor, holding the light low so Giordino, grunting under his struggling burden, could see where he was stepping. The thick coat of blackness, pierced by the small island of incandescence, opened briefly at their approach and then closed, returning the labyrinth back to its eternal night. One foot before the other, the endless routine repeated over and over. Their feet pounded across the hard floor, echoing through the darkness with a peculiar hollow sound.

The Dive Brite and flight bag clutched tightly in his hands, only dimly aware of the curious tingling in the pit of his stomach, Pitt rushed forward. Rapidly, with no attempt at stealthy caution, no expectancy of trouble, but with that strange inner sensation, half-belief of a man who has accomplished something he had thought was impossible. I'm on the path of von Till's secret and I've got his niece, Pitt said to himself again and again. But somehow a lingering fear prodded his mind.