Chapter 09 of Lay Me Odds - Book #2 of the Lady from L.U.S.T.

Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Lady Spies / Sexpionage

ASSIGNMENT: LOVE THE ENEMY TO DEATH

LAY ME ODDS — if you have the guts. My name is Eve Drum. I'm THE LADY FROM L.U.S.T. — the wildest, nuttiest secret agent who ever drove the Kremlin out of its vodka-guzzling skull. They aren't kidding when they call me the sexiest spy in the world. As Agent Double Oh Sex I take on the kind of assignments Jimmy Bond can't handle. All hell breaks loose when I go into action against the sinister forces of H.A.T.E. Don't tangle with me because I'll love you to death. I have a license to kill and I don't care whether I use my body — or a bullet. Sex is my deadliest weapon, but I'm just as good with a knife. Don't tell me about Judo or fast cars or brainwashing because I know it all. I'm good and you know it. Watch me use exotic Eastern sex techniques to turn H.A.T.E.'s villainous spy-masters into helpless blobs of desire. Swing along with me as I bump and grind through London strip clubs in pursuit of missing microfilm. Join the fun as I mix business with pleasure, martinis with molotov cocktails. With a Beretta in my bra I'm an updated Fanny Hill, a tastier brand of Candy, a lethal Lolita. My crazy life is just filled with bloodshed, bedrooms and belly laughs.

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CHAPTER NINE

The lobby of the plush Maria Theresa Hotel in Innsbruck was crawling with people as I made my way across one of its thick carpets. I was more than halfway across the lobby before I felt the sensation of hard eyes focusing on me.

I told myself they were H.A.T.E. eyes. I also told myself not to panic. Just a moment before, I had been slightly misfed that I had not attracted even a sideways glance. I was worth a lot more than that, to male eyes. I wore a turtleneck sweater of heavy white wool under which my breasts bounced freely, I had on a palomino calfskin mini-skirt which displayed my legs in white nylon tights. I had honestly expected a few whistles.

But this reaction was too hot for comfort. Well, I really shouldn't have expected anything less. H.A.T.E. knew that Wolfgang von Horstmann came to meet his contact in Innsbruck. H.A.T.E. also knew that I was determined to meet that contact and get the microfilm. Ergo, H.A.T.E. had men here and there in various hotels to pick up my trail.

I let my buttocks joggle a little more loosely under the nylon tights. Helmut was close behind me, staring at my behind when he was supposed to have been looking around him, as I was, for enemy agents. He got the message from my semaphoring cheeks. He lifted his eyeballs off my buttocks and put them where they could do us both the most good.

As we paused at the glass doors that led out onto the street patio, I breathed, "Recognize anybody? Any of the H.A.T.E. agents who came to the Pleasure Dome? You've seen a number of them setting up their playback in Hamburg. You said so yourself.”

"Nobody I know, he announced miserably. I patted his forearm. "Well, no matter. Let them follow us, if they want. We'll find a way to shake 'em."

We were bound for the ski slopes, Helmut very neat in maroon and white sweater and white ski pants. Helmut had assured me he was an excellent skier. I was no Gretchen Fraser but I could do a Christiana without falling on my face.

Besides, I was wearing my dice earrings and my gun-bracelet. My earrings were actually tiny hand grenades, and I had reloaded the gun-bracelet to maximum capacity. I expected trouble. I had the feeling I wasn't going to be disappointed.

Helmut had made all the arrangements. We were to pick up our skis, properly waxed and ready, at the sports shop beyond the esplanade. We would take the bus to the ski slopes and be swept upward over the Birgitzkopf to the little cabin at its crown, via the cable lift. There we might pause for a brandy or plunge directly into the action.

I was glad I was wearing my Irish fisherman sweater as the wind nipped at us, walking toward the tow buckets. The wind blew puffs of snow from the surrounding slopes so that we saw them as through a white fog. This same fohn stung my nose and lips, I tugged down my woolen mask so that all my face was covered except for the eyes. I slipped my goggles down over them.

Helmut muttered, "The wind is good thing, leibchen. It will perhaps hide us from any pursuit if it keeps on blowing this way.”

"It will freeze my ass off as well.” He laughed, "I will kiss heat into it, my darling.” Actually, I wasn't all that cold. The calfskin skirt was warm, and my velour—surfaced nylon tights held in my body warmth. I could feel good health surging through my veins. It was good to be alive and with an important date to keep.

Even with H.A.T.E. tailing me. A male attendant handed me a pair of Stein Eriksen skis and twin poles. Helmut selected the longer, man-size runners.

Then I was on a platform, stepping into a bucket seat hung from a steel arm fastened to a taut metal cable by a steel pulley. Helmut dropped into the other seat and the lift-buckets kept on sliding.

As our buckets mounted at a steeper angle, my blonde Teuton turned casually to watch the next few couples mount behind us. After a time he felt reassured, and turned to me. “Now I can speak freely, with no one to hear." Our bucket seats were roughly a hundred yards apart, I noticed. Nobody in the seats before or behind us could hear our voices at such a distance.

"Herr von Horstmann always kept his appointments with his contact, the ski instructor, at a small anticline—a rock jut of Grey granite—somewhat off the beaten path. Only the most excellent skiers ever roam so far from the beaten trails.

"Normally, it would be very safe to meet there. You can understand. Two prime skiers chancing to run their tracks close by, pausing for a cigarette and an exchange of pleasantries. If something more than words should pass between them—such as a microfilm, for instance—there would be nobody to see.”

"But now?" I prompted. He shrugged. “Now, I do not know. H.A.T.E. will have agents watching us with field glasses and passing the word on to other H.A.T.E. agents who will seek to intercept us.”

“But not until we get the microfilm from Otto Karpf?”

“Not until then, no. They will want to get us all. You, because you are a L.U.S.T. agent, Otto because he is the contact man and may betray other agents under torture. Me, because they will expect me to name people in von Horstmann's organization they do not know.”

His voice was very gloomy. "It will be a fine bag for H.A.T.E. They will get not only us but the microfilm, as well."

My elbow plunked him in the ribs. “Hey, come on. Cheer up. You sound like chief mourner at a funeral.” He tried to brighten, but his face was sombre, I stared around me at the distant spruce trees and the gently rounded slopes which were white with snow. The wind was scented by pine and made a sweetness in the nostrils that was as heady as wine. It was good to be alive on such a day, with the sun warm on the body.

It was not a good day to die. I told myself to be very careful, very alert. Up this high, the other skiers looked like ants on the slopes. Any number of those skiers could be H.A.T.E. agents waiting to kill me.

There was a broad white leather belt about my slim middle to keep my skirt up. I had a hidden compartment or two or three on its reverse side. In those compartments I carried various and sundry items like a hypodermic syringe, ampules of pentothal sodium, the truth drug, and extra ammunition for my gun-bracelet.

The lift was almost at the top.

I shifted position, getting ready to step out onto the landing platform. As I did so, I caught the flash of sunlight on metal far away and at the edge of a stand of tall, dark evergreens. My female intuition rose up and pawed the air.

The sunlight might be shining off a pair of snow-goggles, or off the tip of a ski pole. I did not think so, however. I hooked Helmut about the neck and yanked his head down. I made as if I were kissing him for good luck.

A shrillness whined in the air, very close. It was a bullet. I have heard too many of them fired at me—and missing—to be mistaken about it.

A moment later we heard the flat report of the rifle, since sound does not travel as fast as a speeding bullet. I felt Helmut stiffen under my arm.

"Sharpshooter in the woods,” I breathed. "I heard. You have good reflexes.”

It was why I am still alive today. Maybe I am just nosy, maybe I like to see everything that goes on around me, but my eyes are never still. I credit my innate nosiness with having saved my skin a score of times. It had also just saved Helmut Fleischel—too, I think.

"I was wrong,” he said in a hollow voice. "H.A.T.E. does not want to capture me. They want me dead.”

I nodded. "To prevent you from taking me to find von Horstmann's contact. They would have liked to take you alive, Helmut—with the idea of discovering where and when the rendezvous was to have been made. But since they could not do that...."

I let my voice trail off. He muttered, "Perhaps the raid on the Pleasure Dome was to accomplish that, as well as an attack by the H.A.T.E. rebels against its regulars."

"It's very possible,” I admitted. He was sweating and his eyes went again to the stand of evergreens from which the rifle had been fired.

But there were no more shots. Helmut helped me onto the landing platform that looked out across the white vista of the Birgitzkopf. I had no eyes for its beauty at the moment. I was telling myself this was It, this was the Big One coming up.

My job was to meet Otto Karpf and get the microfilm. Then I had to keep myself alive until I could put that film into David Anderjanian's big hands.

Helmut led me to a long wooden bench. While I sat, he busied himself with my Haderer ski boots, fitting them into the aluminum bindings of my Stein Eriksen skis. These bindings are very important to a skier With bindings properly fitted, you may save yourself a broken leg or worse.

His palm patted my ankle, indicating he was done. As he bent to his own bindings, I stood guard over him, to all intents and purposes admiring the beauty of the countryside. This is a wild, barren world, here in the Austrian Alps. Except for the skiers, it would be a winter wasteland. It was breathtakingly lovely, all white snow and dark trees with here and there a rock outcropping. At any other time I would have stood here, entranced.

Helmut said as he straightened, “We will play a game of follow the leader. I will start it off.”

He was worried, and I could scarcely blame him. If I should prove to be a tyro on skis—a 'snow bunny' as they name them, stateside—he would have his work cut for him. I had the feeling he might even back out on the project, right now.

There is no one more helpless against attack than a beginner strapped onto skis Especially a girl beginner. Helmut was probably wondering how he would be able to protect me and get me safely out of H.A.T.E.'s clutches if I were unable to ski.

I giggled. Helmut was in for a surprise. My elbow sent him back a step so that I could go off the platform ahead of him. I heard him gasp in surprise, then chuckle.

My skis sank onto new powder snow that made for excellent skiing. In went my Eriksens, in went my poles. I began my duck walk toward the slope. I heard the whisper of skis as my blonde Teuton followed in my tracks.

I guess he figured he was in for fun time. A crazy Amerikaner girl—pah! What could she do on skis that he could not? Helmut still looked on me as his super-woman, of course. But I was an American, and Americans are not numbered among the world's greatest skiers, except for a very few.

Europeans live much of their lives on skis In some countries they start at four years of age. The kids take their skis to school with them. I knew Helmut Fleischel was an expert.

I had no hope of putting him to shame. All I wanted to do was convince him that he did not have to worry about me, on these slopes.

I started casually enough on a downhill run. I had been taught the Allais method, in which the body-turn activates the skis I eased into an open Christiana and angled my tracks toward a long, smooth incline. The wind on my face, the slither of the skis on the hard-packed snow, the aliveness of my body, made me yelp in delight.

"Gut, gut," I heard him muttering behind me. My skis were excellent. They performed exactly as I wanted. I schussed a hill ahead, dug my poles in, then slid over the crown in a simulated slalom, using a couple of trees as markers.

I straightened out for a long downhill run. After a while, Helmut came up beside me. His eyes were admiring behind his goggles where the sun caught them. Behind his woolen mask I was sure his lips were smiling.

"You are good, he admitted. “I will not have to worry about taking care of you. Now let me take the lead.”

Our game of follow the leader was over. From now on, it was serious work. Helmut ran on before me, body bent a little forward, pushing at the snow with a pole now and then. I noted that his traverse was carrying him farther and farther from the regular ski areas, away from the line of trees and toward a vast expanse of snow and ice which might have been seen on frozen Jupiter.

We slid on and on. An unbroken silence pressed against us with an almost tangible force. We ran alone in the world, just the two of us.

Once Helmut assayed a gelandesprung, in which the skier digs in his poles and leaps through the air. In the middle of his leap, Helmut looked back over his shoulder, seeing my somewhat awkward imitation of his birdlike grace. I completed my leap and kept my balance, drawing a muffled shout of approval.

Then I saw a big Grey rock up ahead. I knew instinctively this was the rendezvous point with Otto Karpf. My heart started thudding wildly. Would the ski-meister show? Would he be here where he had come patiently, day after day, waiting for Herr von Horstmann to appear? I would know very soon—

Helmut ran at full speed for the rock. At the last moment he checked, scattering snow. I came up beside him in a modified zevedelm.

"Is he here?" I asked, staring up at the rock. "Not yet, we wait.” We waited, not speaking, just letting our breath puff out in white whisps. It was silent here, it was white nature. I felt like an interloper standing in a snowy garden of the gods. Five minutes, ten minutes.

Then we caught the whisper of skis on snow. A man swung into view from around the huge Grey rock. He was a young man, a German-Austrian. He wore comfortable clothes, a worn beige sweater and brown pants above his boots. A woolen ski-hood covered his face.

I searched my memory as he stepped closer, nodding.

“There was a young girl named Marie, who shussed along on one ski," I said softly. His expression of surprise was ludicrous. I know he expected to meet Herr von Horstmann, not Helmut Fleischel and an Amerikaner female. “She sought to slalom but fell on her bum—and what a cold heinie has she,”

Otto Karpf drew a deep breath. “Herr von Horstmann?" he asked softly. “He is dead.” Helmut told him, and explained how and why the old man had been killed. The ski-master listened impassively, his face showing absolutely so expression.

When Helmut was done, I added quickly, “I am here to get the microfilm, the real film. Certain H.A.T.E. agents gave Eric Downes' contact a false one but—hoping to discredit the H.A.T.E. high command, other H.A.T.E. agents prevented him from delivering it by killing him. Fortunately or unfortunately—I can't decide which—they failed to get their hands on the false film."

The ski teacher nodded. “It is a game of power politics they play, those H.A.T.E. men. There are good pickings at the top of the echelon, in an organization like H.A.T.E. Men will risk much to get their hands on such money.”

He reached into his ski trousers, brought out a metal cylinder that was about an inch long, less than one-thirty-second of an inch in diameter. Otto Karpf smiled grimly at my expression.

"It is not a long formula. It can be contained on very little microfilm. Your friend Eric Downes could have hidden something as tiny as this almost anywhere.”

He dropped it into my palm. I sucked in my belly and slipped the tube into a compartment on the inside of my white leather belt.

“What is it, this formula?” I asked Otto. “What is it supposed to do?”

He frowned slightly. “You know of E.S.P...? Extra-sensory perception? The Russians take such matters very seriously, you know. They have been experimenting a long time with telepathy and other assorted talents.”

I had read Charles Fort and knew about the Duke experiments of Dr. Joseph B. Rhine. Just as modern nations used every weapon they could get their hands on in the undeclared cold war which had raged since the end of World War II, so they now turned to the wild talents of their citizens. No scientist can explain the abilities of an Edgar Cayce or a Geraldine Cummins or a Dr. W.H.C. Tenhaeff. Yet they exist.

To channel these eerie abilities, to divert them into a recognized arm of the secret service, was a goal which might pay undreamed—of dividends. Telepathy tests have been conducted in the United States for more than a quarter of a century. Distance has no effect on this mind communication. Imagine then, a master telepathist seated in the Kremlin, mentally tuned in to thousands of Red spies, also master telepathists. Knowledge is flashed instantaneously from Washington or London or Paris to Moscow, without any known method of code-breaking or interference.

The idea was frightening. Brain waves are a form of electricity, as any electrogram will prove. Like radio or television waves, they can travel almost everywhere. If one brain can send out these waves, certainly other brains can be receptive to them. It is that simple.

Consider a case in point. The rocket discoveries of Robert H. Goddard were ignored in the United States, yet were taken up by German scientists. The world knows the story of how rocket buzz-bombs were used against London, and how rockets are now fired into orbit or out into space to Mars, Venus and the Moon. The discoveries in the parapsychologic field remain untapped in my own country, yet the Russians are proceeding by leaps and bounds to study, analyze and employ these forms of extra-sensory perception. One of these E.S.P. abilities is precognition, the talent to foresee events before they happen. In a Kremlin room beside the master telepathist may sit a precognitive genius, who can put a hand on a world globe and tell what events will soon take place there. A man in Holland can do such a thing, today. Why not in Russia? Or Red China?

It is not something out of a science-fiction novel, nor yet a fantasy, Scientists believe this may be a sixth or seventh or eighth sense which some chosen people possess. Universities and institutes are making such people the basis of full-time study.

Otto Karpf said, "There is a drug which can enlarge these paranormal powers. The microfilm contains the formula for that drug. In a time of emergency, a master telepathist or a paragnost might take such a drug, enabling him to do even greater wonders by freeing his mind almost completely.”

He shrugged. “It is something the hard-headed realist will deny, eh? But the police of many countries turn today to these psychic detectives—with results that will astound your realist. Their predictions come true. Their accusations prove out."

“Another psychedelic drug," I muttered half scornfully. “L.S.D.—or D-lysergic acid diethylamide. Mescaline. Psilocybin. There are a dozen of them."

"Not one like this," the ski master muttered. “This is a new one, tested, approved by scientist-parapsychologists. It works."

“I’ll pass it on," I told him. The whine was a scream in the air as a bullet chipped the Grey rock inches from my ear. Otto Karpf growled, "They have found us!" He was away on his skis like a Grey phantom, dipping, whipping through the hard snow, crouched low.

Helmut and I were likewise bent above our Eriksens. I threw a glance after Otto Karpf. He was a ghost gliding into a breath-taking langlaufing, racing faster and faster. Nobody but an Olympic champion stood a chance at overtaking him on these snowy slopes.

"He is safe.” Helmut growled, as if catching my thought. "His woolen mask hid his identity. He will burn his clothes against later recognition. He will be out of sight in a few moments."

But we would not be out of sight. I could see four men coming for us like the wind. Each of them held rifles—high-powered .30-30 jobs, with which each man was a crack shot, no doubt-as they slid after us on their aluminum skis

Helmut was moving ahead of me. He said, "They will not follow me, they know me already. They will come for you.” There was agony on his face. I said, “Go on, then. Get away while you can. I have means of protecting myself." He shook his head stubbornly. I snapped, "Don't be a fool! I tell you I'm not in any danger. They will want me alive, don't you understand?"

My blonde Teuton looked hopeful. "You believe this? No, I did not believe it. The H.A.T.E. killers would shoot me down without mercy and take the psychedelic drug formula away from me. But I did not tell Helmut Fleischel that. He had been afraid I would hamper him. Actually, he was hampering me.

Up ahead of us was a great, towering conifer. On one side the slope fell away at a steep angle, but one which an expert skier like the German would have no difficulty traversing. On the right hand side of the big silver fir the ground ran flat for a hundred yards before it began to curve downward where a huge block of rock thrust upward from the snow.

"Take the left side at the fir tree," I ordered. "Will you be all right?"

"Do as I say! Instantly!" The masochistic element in Helmut Fleischel would not let him disobey. He flashed away from me as I entered the shadow of the tree, disappeared down the steep incline, almost flying on his skis I drove in my poles and raced toward the big rock.

I heard shouts of delight from my four pursuers. They figured I was in the bag. They did not even bother shooting. They assumed I would fall easy prey to four strong men, because my calfskin skirt and Irish wool sweater showed them I was only a woman, after all. Instead of killing me, H.A.T.E. would take me prisoner to torture all my knowledge out of me.

I whipped past the rock—and braked. The four men could not see me. I was below the hill crown as I slid into the snowplow. At the same instant I yanked at my gun-bracelet. With the bracelet in a hand I moved upward toward the rock.

I peeped past an edge of the Grey granite. The four H.A.T.E. men were between the big fir tree and me. I aimed the gun-bracelet. I fired.

A .25 bullet hit one man in the throat. A mate took a second in his left eye. The two bodies were flopping, skis waving crazily as they somersaulted through snow and air to a sudden stop. I spared them no attention, I was too busy concentrating on the remaining two men.

They had seen what had happened. Their rifles drove for their shoulders, they sighted at me. I ducked down behind Grey granite as bullets slammed into the rock. In a moment they would be flashing past the edge of the rock and turning those big Mauser rifles at my shrinking flesh.

I yanked at a dice earring. I pressed one of the dots. It clicked. My hand finding it through the air. The tiny die hit the first man as he swept into a snowplow stop. The die exploded.

Chunks of bloody flesh flew everywhere. I gagged, leaning my spine against the Grey granite boulder as the snow was streaked red. I heard a voice scream in agony. And my flesh crawled. There had not been enough left of the H.A.T.E. agent to utter so much as a whimper. Death had been instantaneous.

Then I remembered the fourth man, his companion. I bellied down on the snow, kicking off my ski bindings. I held a second earring in my left hand and my gun-bracelet in my right. I snaked forward on the cold snow.

The last man was lying on his back, staring upward at the sky. I saw his sweater move. Good. He was not yet dead. I crawled forward on my elbows and knees.

When I was beside him, I saw that my die-bomb had not expended all its fury against the first skier This man's legs had been blown away. There was nothing of him left below the middle of his thighs.

I fumbled in my belt compartment. I brought out the hypodermic needle and inserted an ampule of pentothal sodium. I caught his arm. I slipped in the needle. His eyelids quivered.

"Vas iss?" he breathed. “A friend. I want to know why you want the Amerikaner woman. If it is worth my while I will try to capture her for you.”

He was too far gone to know truth from lie. He whimpered so faintly I had to put my ear directly above his lips. Near the Aldstadt. Number forty-one. The house with the oriel windows with leaded panes. Say Ludwig sent you. They may take care of my wife. They will pay good money for the Amerikaner. She knows much. She has something we would like to have.

"Are you sure? Are there many men there?" He was silent a moment. I think what was left of him knew suspicion at that moment but the truth drug was working in his veins.

“Nein. Not many. Three–four, including Herr Vogel. It is Herr Vogel who will pay you the money—ten thousand dollars—three thousand pounds—for her and what she carries."

He did not know me. Perhaps he was already in his death throes and he truly believed me a fellow H.A.T.E. agent. Or perhaps it was the drug. I will never know. But he talked freely.

“Tell Herr Vogel the Amerikaner bitch killed Carl, Willhelm, Frederick and me. He will make her die a long time. Carl and Wilhelm and Frederick and I will sleep better, knowing that." I shivered. "Is there any password?”

“Nein—no password.”

"Where is the false film?"

"We do not know. We could not find it." Good enough. So far, Willi Vogel and I were even, with me out a little ahead in the stretch. All I had to do now was collect Helmut and shake the snows of Innsbruck from our shoes.

I waited until the man died. I didn't want anybody finding him alive, that was for sure. I had killed four men on these ski slopes and I wanted no police investigation. L.U.S.T. had no in with the Austrian authorities.

I put my die bomb back inside my belt, slipped my gun-bracelet on my wrist, and fitted my Haderer boots back into my skis. Then I picked up my trail where it had left off and slipped swiftly down the slopes toward the bottom. It took me an hour and a half to get back to my room at the hotel. I expected to find Helmut waiting for me. He was not there. I phoned the desk, but the clerk could tell me nothing.

Three hours later, Helmut still had not shown. I got worried. I could have taken a plane back to London from the Munich airport, but I could not abandon my blond Teuton to his fate. I had the sneaky feeling that somehow, H.A.T.E. had crossed his ski tracks.

It was close to seven o'clock when I took the staircase down to the main lobby and slipped through that to the dark street. I was wearing a corduroy jump suit and white leather knee-boots, with a white trench coat over it. A floppy hat hid my face in its shadow.

A Colt .25 automatic weighed down a trench coat pocket. The night was crisp, cold. Overhead the sky was flecked with pinpoints of light and the moon was at the quarter. I walked swiftly through the little streets, hunting the Aldstadt. After that, it was a matter of finding the house with the oriel window.

Innsbruck swings, in a genteel sort of way. The Aldstadt, with its narrow streets and ancient houses, retains a medieval flavor even amid the hustle of skiers on their way to dates at the Landler. The alleyways are clean, they are pathways into romance or intrigue. I listened to my footfalls that seemed to synchronize their beat with those of my heart.

I had promised Wolfgang von Horstmann I would keep his Helmut safe from harm. I was on my way to keep that promise, my hand deep in the pocket of my trench coat, my fingers wrapped about the butt of my Colt automatic.

I would shoot first, ask questions later. The oriel window with its leaded panes caught my eye a block away. It jutted out from the stone walls like a blister on a thumb. Anyone within that alcove would have a good view of the street, both ways. I tried to make myself inconspicuous in the street shadows.

I walked past the house, studying it. There was a street-level entrance; it would be difficult indeed to get in there, without detection. The house itself, which had been built in all probability by a rich merchant in the days when the Hanseatic League was in its greatest glory during the fourteenth century, was big, wide and roomy. It was fronted by a very narrow sidewalk, and a stone path ran up along its north side.

I swung back on the other side of the street. The path looked like my only hope. As I came level with it, I darted onto its flagstones, running silently on my toes. No one had seen me, at least I hoped no one had. It was the dinner hour, there were not many people on the street.

There was a back door. I tried its latch. The latch lifted but the door held tight. It was dark here, the shadows were very black. I used my fingers along the edge of the door—ahhh. A lock of the Yale and Towne variety. I wondered if H.A.T.E. had put that lock where it was.

My fingers fumbled in a pocket of my jumpsuit. I brought out my fountain pen, unscrewed top and bottom to reveal the thin length of blue steel. I slipped it into the lock and worked it.

The lock held tight.

I put my fountain pen back in my pocket and chose a length of plastic. There was a space between door and lintel. This was an ancient house; in settling and warping here and there, gaps had formed. My hope was that the bolt would not be wedged too tightly in the plate fitted into the lintel.

It was not a tight fit. I used the plastic gently. Just one-sixteenth of the bolt held the door. That fraction of an inch gave easily. The door swung inward.

An electric light burned in the kitchen. A brighter light showed to one side of the narrow hallway that ran toward the front of the building, from a doorway inset into the hallway wall. I tiptoed toward it.

I heard a voice speaking.

“It is useless to be a hero, mein Herr. My men are expert with knife and rope, whip or wedge. Hein? You will please to tell me where this Fraulein is staying, in what hotel and what room. You understand? The man who might have told me is dead."

“Go—to—hell."

Brave Helmut! Maybe my session with him in the cellar of Wolfgang von Horstmann's house had paid me extra dividends. Helmut Fleischel might betray the lady from L.U.S.T. He would never rat on his—mother. In Helmut's inner mind, I was his blonde mother.

I decided not to give him a chance to make the decision,

I kicked off my boots. In my bare feet I moved toward the lighted doorway.

I was staring into a big cellar, from which the musty smell of molding earth and damp walls swept over me like the miasma from a graveyard. My fingers tightened on the Colt's butt. Graveyards should contain dead bodies. I lifted the gun, I lay down on the hallway floor, I slid headfirst down the steps.

Had I gone down those stairs in the conventional manner, I would have been a dead girl. By the time I could have seen what was in the cellar, a bullet would have finished me off. Because as I slid downward head first, my eyes stared into the face of a H.A.T.E. man, mouth open in dumb surprise.

He could have yelled the alarm if he had seen my ankles first. As it was, my gun hand was level with his baby blues. My trigger finger squeezed.

My head damn near blew off with the sound of the shot. An automatic will not take a silencer. My ears began ringing like Big Ben on the dot of twelve. I didn't bother to shake my head to clear it. Three men were standing around a table where Helmut Fleischel lay strapped down, stark naked. One of the men had a thin knife in his hand. I wondered where H.A.T.E. had laid hands on that knife. It was of Matabele workmanship. It had been used, I learned later, by skinners for the king of that African empire, Lo Bengula, about eighty years ago.

Those skinners had flayed living men of their outer coverings, when men—or women too, for that matter—offended the great Lo Ben in some manner. Flaying had gone out of style as a means of torture, I guess, now that Lo Bengula had been dead these many years.

But the H.A.T.E. boys were ready to revive it as an indoor sport until I stuck my nose into their business. Where my nose led me, I sent a few bullets.

The man with the knife I dropped first with a .25 slug neatly placed at the base of his neck. He fell straight down, dead before his knees began to buckle. I slid the Colt a fraction of an inch. The trigger sent another bullet on its way. A red blotch erupted in the middle of a forehead.

There was one man left.

He had slipped back into the shadows at my first shot. Now when I looked for him, I could not see him. I heard a door slam, somewhere in the cellar. Maybe there was another way in or out of the cellar besides this staircase I was laying on, head down. My head was bonging away so that I had to wait until it cleared before I could hear anything.

“Helmut," I said after a moment, “is there a doorway to to the cellar? Beside this hall door?”

"Ja, I think so. I heard a man come in another way, a little while before you got here.”

I swung around and ran down the stairs. I freed Helmut of the leather straps, I helped him off the table. “Who was the man who got away, Helmut?”

“Willi Vogel. He had seven men with him in Innsbruck. Did you kill them all?”

“All, Helmut. But never mind that now. I've got to get you out of here. Come on, walk a little. That's it. One foot after the other. Now where are your clothes?”

"Upstairs.”

"Then we'll go and get you dressed.” My automatic led the way, held out in front of me. I am glad nobody came barging into this house just then. I would have fired at the sight of a black cat. My nerves were a little jumpy.

It took Helmut less than three minutes to get his clothes on. I know. I timed him. We ran down the stairs to the ground floor with the Colt still showing us the way.

Leaving by the front door was a little too risky. Willi Vogel might be out there in the street shadows, waiting his chance to strike back. I didn't feel a bit like getting shot at so we chose the rear door. I lay flat on my pretty belly and nudged the door open with the Colt barrel.

The backyard was empty. My elbows inched me forward onto the tiny porch. There was no one on the flag-stoned path, either. We got to our feet and moved down the path toward the street. We waited ten minutes before we moved onto the sidewalk. During that time we scanned every inch of street. Willi Vogel would have to be invisible to escape our detection, Willi Vogel was not invisible. He was not there.

He did not know where we were staying, here in Innsbruck. Otherwise he would not have sought to gain that information from Helmut when he was strapped down on the flaying table.

All we had to do was make sure we were not followed. I do believe that night not even a mouse could have trailed us, unseen.

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