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am,” Les said. “There’s a cellar door under the corridor to the Unknown Spy’s room. I’ve already picked the lock. We’re ready to go.”
    They set off down the stairs of the Roosts, moving silently in single file. Danny looked round his small team with approval. They were all dressed in dark clothes, high collars or hats pulled down over their eyes so that they could not be easily seen or identified. They carried a variety of equipment—there were flashlights and lockpicks hanging from belts. During the previous term they would never have been so well prepared. Danny hadn’t realized they had absorbed so much of what they had been told in class.
    They kept close to walls or other shelter, moving warily and stopping to check their surroundings. When they got to the cellar door, Les quickly whipped off the padlock, the others forming a watchful semicircle around him. When he had finished, they all moved swiftly to enter, as if a part of the night had detached itself and flowed darkly through the small door.
    Inside the cellar Danny lit a small flashlight and hooded it with his hand. Les indicated the direction they should go with a nod, and the others followed.
    The cellar opened onto a dank little corridor dripping with water, little ferns growing from the walls.
    “You sure you’ve been here before?” Vandra whispered.
    “Yes,” Les said, “but you know what this place is like.”
    It was always hard to find your way reliably in Wilsons. The corridors and staircases had a way of seeming to change direction, of not leading to the same place from one day to the next. You had to look out for clues as to what direction you were going in—but in this damp passage there were none. They walked on for five minutes, an uneasy feeling growing that they weren’t getting any nearer to the room of the Unknown Spy.
    “It was dead easy today,” Les said. “I saw the cellar door under the Spy’s window, I popped the lock, and a manhole just inside led to the corridor outside his room.”
    Danny shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, Les. We’ll follow this for a while and see where we end up. Sometimes I think the building itself is like an old spy, full of secrets and tricks and dead ends. Maybe we’re being led toward something else.”
    “Yuck,” Dixie said, trying to brush a spiderweb from her hair, “maybe it’s leading us toward the biggest spider’s nest in the world. Feels like it, anyway.”
    On they trudged, the tunnel walls getting older and older. Here and there were carvings, figures in relief oretched into the stone. Though it was impossible to make out the faces depicted, to Danny there appeared to be a cruel turn to some of the features, making him secretly glad that they weren’t visible.
    The cadets were just about to turn back when it happened. A sudden burst of air struck them, growing from a cold gust to a howling arctic gale. Danny felt ice sting his flesh like needles and frost form on his lips. Vandra cried out in pain and Les cursed in the distance. The cold was so intense that Danny’s flashlight dimmed and went out, then fell from his hand. In the howling of the wind they heard whisperings, dread voices speaking words that they did not understand but that were full of fear and loathing.
    Danny was aware of shapes around him, haggard white faces with empty sockets where eyes should have been. At first they appeared without bodies, but then the bodies formed, frost bodies, hideously mutilated, with gaping spaces where hearts should have been, bellies rent open. They surrounded him, and he could feel hands clutching at his old raincoat, plucking at the fabric. With sudden terrifying force the hands were inside his coat. He gasped as sheer naked fear gripped him. The hands were strong and sinewy and freezing, and they would grab his heart from his chest and leave him lifeless and mutilated while they gorged on his warmth and life. He fell back onto the ground, consciousness fading. In the