Run, Spy, Run

Nick Carter held his breath.

Not in the normal manner. Not with the sudden, sharp intake of sound that would have told the unknown intruder exactly where he stood.

Yoga has its multiple benefits. One of them is the art of breath control. Nick closed his mouth and stopped breathing. The hush of the room was unbroken.

Quickly, he adjusted his eyes to the darkness and waited. But his brain was flying, arranging every article of furniture, everything that took up space and held the geometrical pattern it had formed before the lights went out.

A chair fell over in the room next door. A man's voice raised in a curse.

Nick's mind raced in the darkness.

He was between the bed and the bureau. The door was approximately ten feet to his left. Chair and end table to either side of the door. Bathroom to his right, another few feet from the bed. Two windows facing Madison Avenue. The heavy drapes had been closed while he was taking his exercises and were still closed by the time he had finished dressing. No entrance there. The front door had been locked on the inside. The bathroom. The intruder had to be in the bathroom. There was a small window there. Too small for the ordinary man.

All other possible entrances were accounted for. Where else could the danger be but in the bathroom?

Nick didn't move. He could hold his breath for four and a half minutes, if he had to. But what would the intruder be doing? Nick cocked his ears, anxious for the slightest sound.

Now he was aware of the sound of Manhattan. The din of traffic rose from twenty floors below. Twenty floors… Fire escape? Not directly outside the bathroom window but near enough for an agile man. A car horn squalled.

Still, the silence in Room 2010 was a tangible, living thing.

His visitor couldn't afford to wait much longer. If other lights were out the guests would be raising hell. The lights would be going on again before anything happened. Fine. That suited Nick.

A slight, leathery splat of sound ignited him. Tt was too close. He moved from where he stood, still holding his breath, and glided to the wall near the front door. As he did so, he flexed his forearm and Hugo slipped quietly from the leathery breakaway holster and settled coolly in his right palm without so much as a hiss of noise. The ice-pick blade sprang into place. Nick reached out his left arm to feel for a chair. It would offer some protection if he could get it between himself and the hidden menace. His movement was soundless, but the darkness betrayed him. It was as if the someone in the room with him had seen the gesture with X-ray eyes.

There was a flick of sibilant noise and a tiny, swiftrushing current of air past Carter's left cheek. A slight thuck of contact sounded as a cold piece of flying steel found a target. Nick's split-second reaction was pure reflex, spurred on by sense memory of a thousand combats. His left hand found the hilt of knife jutting from the plaster wall. He shoved his right shoulder just below the hard handle, aimed, and answered back in kind.

Hugo shot from the balance of his throwing palm with the ease and thrust of a bullet, following the line from which the killer's knife had come. Nick's body tensed, his eyes trying to break the solid blackness into something that could be seen.

But there was no need for eyes now.

A strangled cry of surprise broke the silence. Before the sound could blend into a scream it fell to a bubbling gurgle. Something fell, heavily.

Nick let the air out of his lungs. The killer had paid the price for confidence.

Somewhere, nearby, a door slammed. An angry voice filtered into the darkness from the hall.

"What the hell goes on here? Somebody must have been messing with the fuse box or the circuit breaker or whatever the hell you call it. Are they going to let us grope around in the dark all night?"

Nick found his way to the window and pulled the drapes.

The dim light of the city's night sky showed a man spread-eagled on the floor, halfway across the threshold of the bathroom, his torso sprawled the rest of the way into the living room. Hugo was poking bloodily into his throat, in grim testimony to the accuracy of Nick's judgment and aim. Nick approached the corpse warily. The man was dead, all right. He turned the body over. There was no mistaking the rigid mold of the face.

Nick stepped over the body and went into the bathroom. A brief inspection confirmed his suspicions. The single window was open. He peered through. As he'd remembered, there was nothing but a yawning space below, but a fire escape to either side of the frame was within easy reaching distance. All it took was nerve. He went back to the corpse.

The lights blazed on.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the new brightness. A blank face stared up at him. A voice on the landing said, apologetically: "A kid playing around, maybe. Somebody's idea of a joke. Sorry, folks. Sorry about the inconvenience." The voice and the babble faded.

Inconvenience was right. He'd have to get out of here.