Once more Junior was close behind Harleigh as he reached the dead tree that blocked the entrance to the maze. Too close. If he’d been there only a few seconds sooner, he could have been safely hidden behind the branches of the dead tree by the time Junior burst out of the underbrush. But no such luck. Junior had arrived just in time to see Harleigh lift the branch that blocked the entrance, duck under it, and disappear. As he began to run down the path that he and Allegra had carved out of the surrounding hedge of yew, he heard Junior’s triumphant roar. “Okay, you little rat. I got you now.”
But he hadn’t. Not yet. It was the yew itself that, for a time, gave Harleigh an advantage. The yew, and the fact that neither Allegra nor Harleigh had been able to reach high enough to trim back the higher branches. Although the original passageway had been open to the sky, it was now only a narrow tunnel with a low overhang. So while Harleigh moved freely, Junior had to run bent almost double to keep the stiff branches from whacking his head and scratching his face. And then, as he began to get the hang of running in a crouching position, he apparently made another mistake. The kind of mistake that maze explorers had been making for centuries. With Harleigh momentarily out of his sight, Junior took the wrong turn.
When he realized that Junior was no longer right behind him, Harleigh stopped and looked back, trying to quickly figure out which wrong turn Junior had made. Was it one of the turnoffs that led to a dead end? Or perhaps one that curved around and circled back to rejoin the original passageway? There were several of both. It was important that he get it right, because the only way for him to escape was to get back to the entrance while Junior was wandering off toward a dead end. Harleigh could then leave the maze the way he’d come in. The only way he knew, since the only other exit was the one he and Allegra had almost, but not quite, found.
Harleigh had decided that Junior was out there somewhere headed for a dead end, and he had begun to retrace his steps, when a huge figure burst back onto the main corridor only a few yards away. Harleigh spun around and went on running.
Once again Junior was close behind him. Close enough so Harleigh could hear not only his thudding footsteps, but also his wheezing breath. Thud, thud, pant, pant, and then an angry yelp. Glancing back over his shoulder, Harleigh caught a glimpse of a frantic scene, a wildly flailing Junior trying to free his hair from a dangling branch of yew and in the process dropping the heavy crowbar on his feet. And then, with his hair finally free, he grabbed up the crowbar only to find that he’d managed to hook its curved end around the trunk of the nearest yew. He was still trying to jerk it free when Harleigh reached the place where he and Allegra had quit working only two days before. Where their progress had stopped, leaving the original exit still unlocated. And leaving Harleigh in a dead-end trap.
But just as he began to panic, Harleigh suddenly remembered what Allegra had said about being almost there. Almost to the exit. And she had said it while she was lying on the ground, reaching into a tiny tunnel that her shears had started.
And then Harleigh was on his knees, and a moment later flat on his stomach wriggling into the tunnel, and continuing to wriggle until first his hands and then his head, and finally the rest of his body, were clear of the yew hedge, and he was able to jump to his feet.
He was free. Standing up, Harleigh looked around, recognizing a familiar spot. A path he had been on many times before, that led around the curving exterior wall of the maze. He turned to go but then went down on his knees to peer back into the rabbit-hole-size tunnel. And there, only a few feet away, Junior’s squinty eyes peered back at him. Junior had somehow managed to force his big head and shoulders into the tunnel and was now imprisoned, it seemed, in a snug cocoon of yew branches. As Harleigh watched in stunned amazement, Junior thrashed and roared without making the least bit of forward progress.
And quite possibly, unable to go back either. But you never knew with someone as strong and fierce as Junior. Tired as he was, Harleigh didn’t dawdle on his way back to Weatherby House and his very belated appointment with Uncle Edgar.