Episode 23 - The House That Jack Built

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"The House That Jack Built"
by Brian Clemens
directed by Don Leaver

An escaping prisoner evades his guards, making off with the shotgun of one of them. climbing over a wall, he finds a deserted country house and enters, only to be confronted by a charging lion...
Mrs Peel drops round to Steed's flat as he's developing some holiday snaps, but she won't stay to see them, she's off to look at a legacy recently bequeathed her. Steed discovers the impression of the key on the photos and suspects a trap, a quick 'phone call confirms that her solicitor knows nothing of any Uncle Jack. He calls a friend for help...

Mrs Peel is joined by a suspicious Scout Master called Withers, who leaves her at the house. Entering, she finds evidence of the forgery of her solicitor's signature, and then discovers the house has turned into a maze of twisting passages, all alike.(1)

Being a seasoned adventurer, she marks a strange machine with lipstick, only to discover that it is to the passages as Rome is to all roads. Getting desperate, she tries running through the passages but to no avail. Eventually she finds herself back in the room she started in, or another copy of it, and discovers the mechanism for moving the rooms. That achieved, she descends a stairway to the control room, only to find an exhibition of her life, dedicated to the late Emma Peel.

Years ago she had sacked an automation expert, sure his plans would result in society's collapse - this house is his revenge, a huge machine designed to ensnare her, then drive her mad to the point of suicide.

She encounters the escaped prisoner, now a gibbering wreck, and a wayward shotgun blast from him reveals the location of the control room. Making a makeshift bomb with the key to the house and gunpowder from a shotgun shell, packed down with a hairpin, she destroys the machine and is released, Steed having arrived just after the nick of time.
The Avengers leave on a tandem bicycle.