THE COMBINED MAZE
BY MAY SINCLAIR
AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE"
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXIII
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1913
SHE CLOSED HER EYES, AND HIS HOLD TIGHTENED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
THE COMBINED MAZE
CHAPTER I
You may say that there was something wrong somewhere, some mistake, fromthe very beginning, in his parentage, in the time and place and mannerof his birth. It was in the early eighties, over a shabby chemist's shopin Wandsworth High Street, and it came of the union of FulleymoreRansome, a little, middle-aged chemist, weedy, parched, furtivelyinebriate, and his wife Emma, the daughter of John Randall, a draper.
They called him John Randall Fulleymore Ransome, and Ranny for short.
Ranny should have been born in lands of adventure, under the green lightof a virgin forest, or on some illimitable prairie; he should havesailed with the vikings or fought with Cromwell's Ironsides; or, betterstill, he should have run, half-naked, splendidly pagan, bearing thetorch of Marathon.
And yet he bore his torch.
From the very first his mother said that Ranny was that venturesome. He