Code Duello

corner?”

“No.”

“Well, come on.”

They found the corner in question and stationed themselves beneath the shelter of a tree.

Zorro looked up and shook his head in negation. “I couldn’t get through there, even if we could get up.”

“Nobody asked you to,” Helen said tartly. “Can yon latch onto something up there, with that whip of yours?”

He looked down at her. “I can try. What do you have in mind?” He looked around, unbuttoned his jerkin and unwound his whip from about his waist.

“Going in, of course.”

He flicked the whip and the end reached up, sought, fell back again. She stood there, hands on hips, impatiently—for all the world, a precocious eight-year-old.

“Alone?” he said, unbelievingly. The thong reached up again, fell back.

She snorted; not bothering to answer.

He tried for a full five minutes. “No go,” he said finally, an element of relief in his voice. “There’s nothing to hook onto.”

“All right,” she said. “Can you toss me up?”

He stared at her. “What?”

She said impatiently, “You’ve seen me work out with Dorn in the gym. I said, can you toss me up?”

He turned his stare to the small window in question. “I could try, but suppose I missed and you fell?”

Then catch me, you zany!”

He reached down doubtfully, to take her by the waist.

“Not that way, stupid. Here.” She showed him how to grasp her.

A moment later, she was hanging onto the window ledge. Without looking back, she gracefully pulled herself up and disappeared within. Zorro stared for a moment, muttered something, then sank back further into ;the shadow of the tree.

He agonized there for a full fifteen minutes. By that time, he was nervously shooting glances up and down the park walk. It was becoming obvious to him that something had happened to her. What? What could he do? He swore impotently under his breath. And if a guard came along, what could he do? It was one thing, strolling along through the park with a child by the hand. It was another, sulking beneath this tree.

He heard a hiss and looked up.

“Catch me!” she called, and, without further ado, launched herself into space.

He got his arms up, just in time. She landed in them lightly; more lightly than even the cubic content of her tiny body seemed to call for.

“What happened?” he growled. “Where in the hell were you so long? I thought you were simply getting the layout, trying to figure out some way of getting in.”

“I was in,” she said, disengaging herself from him and straightening her short skirt, in a prissy, childlike gesture. “I had to locate the Section G offices.”

“How did you possibly do that, in a building that size?”

“Oh, I found a nightguard.”

He stared down at her, even as he grabbed one of her hands and began hustling her toward the nearest walk. Just as he was about to blurt another query, two figures loomed before them. One of the newcomers had his hand on his holstered handweapon.

“What were you doing back in those shadows!” one demanded.

Helen looked up demurely. “I had to do wee wee,” she said. She continued on, not looking back, hauling Zorro by the hand. He thanked whatever gods might be around that he had rewrapped the whip about his waist.

They could hear the Florentines continuing on their way. Zorro breathed deeply.

He said, finally, “What’d you mean, you found a guard? What’d he do to you? How’d you get away?”

“Oh, I didn’t get away. But he tried to,” she said with an air of deprecation. She cleared her throat slightly. “I had to, uh, coax him a little, but he told me where the Section G office was.”

Zorro Juarez rolled his eyes upward in agony. They’ll be on us like a ton of beef! Verona’s security cops will…”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You think that bully-boy, when he regains consciousness…”

“Consciousness,” he repeated weakly.

“… is going to repeat a story like that to his superior officer? That a child came up and tortured him into giving some answers?”

“I give up,” he said. “Don’t tell me any more. No wait. What did you find in Bulchand’s files, in the Section G office?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing at all. The files had been ransacked.”

Chapter Six

“Ransacked?” Dorn Horsten said. “You mean, Maggiore Verona’s anti-subversive men had already been there?”

They were back in the penthouse suite of the Albergo Palazzo, the three men standing around Helen, an enormous highball glass in her right hand.

“Ransacked,” she repeated. “And by the looks of the place, not necessarily by the authorities. It had a look of too much confusion. Whoever went through that office was in a hurry.”

“You found nothing at all?” Jerry Rhodes said. “Golly, that’s awful luck.”

“Yeah,” she snarled. “It’s too bad you weren’t there.”

“Um,” he said absently.

“You would have found the minutes of the last meeting of the executive committee of the Engelists, or something.”

“Possibly not that,” he admitted, the sarcasm passing him by.

“I oughta slug you,” she snarled.

“Easy, easy,” Horsten muttered. “That leaves us absolutely nowhere, and with nowhere to go. Obviously…”

“Obviously, somebody else got to the Section G files first, and now we’re completely on our own,” Zorro growled. “Well, I’m off to bed. Can any of you imagine what’s involved in climbing up this hotel wall? All the way to the penthouse, floor by floor, half the time hooking onto something above with my whip, half the time heaving this little brat up ahead to attach the whip. I’ll tell you…”

“Knock it,” Helen said. “It was fun.”

He rolled his eyes upward and left for his room.

“That reminds me,” Horsten said. He went over to the window the two had used for exit and reentry and bent the heavy iron bars back into their original position.

Jerry shook his head. “I wish I could do that,” he marveled.

Helen said, “Why don’t you just bet somebody a stick of gum that you could? Then this fabulous luck of yours would come to the rescue, and you’d do it.”

He looked at her. “You’re beginning to get the idea.”

Helen snorted.

Zorro stuck his head back through the door of his bedroom and called to Horsten, “By the way, how did you manage to squash that duel thing?”

“We didn’t.”

“What!”