The Code by Nick Carter Page A

wearing was the bandage on my chest.
    Finally I glimpsed a crouched figure scuttling away from me. Before I could fire a shot at him, he had leaped behind the far corner of the building.
    Quickly I descended the steps, ran past a row of coin-operated drink machines and out the door into a parking lot. My man was in retreat. He had scaled a wire fence and was springing into a car parked on the shoulder of the road beyond the motel property. He started the motor and sped away.
    I could have snapped off a shot, but it probably wouldn't have stopped him and I didn't want to attract a crowd. I padded back to my room, asking myself the obvious question. How had the would-be killer known where to find me?
    I checked out of the motel after breakfast and drove across town to the house where I'd met Trudy.
    A burly Chinese greeted me at the door. I hadn't seen him on my first visit and I didn't regret it. He was built like a tractor and he didn't look friendly.
    "What do you want this time of day?" he asked, glowering.
    "Too early for business?"
    "Unless you've got an appointment. Which you haven't."
    I leaned my shoulder against the door as he tried to close it in my face. I smiled at him. "Tell Trudy a friend is here to see her."
    "Trudy isn't seeing anybody today."
    "You're wrong about that," I told him. "She's seeing me."
    "Mister, don't try the tough act with me. I could throw you into the next block."
    "Maybe you could. But when I got back there would be hell to pay."
    He threw back his head and burst into laughter that sounded like the roar of an outboard motor. "I used to be a professional wrestler. The Mighty Shang, Terror of the Orient, even though I was born right here in L.A. You ever watch wrestling on television?"
    "I try not to."
    "Look, tough guy, I only work here. But I'll deliver your message, if you want to wait."
    "Thanks."
    "It's all right. You amuse me."
    He let me inside and moved away, still chuckling. He went into a back room on the ground floor, closing the door behind him. I heard voices, one a woman's. As I waited, I wondered why a girl who had been so available yesterday was so hard to see today.
    A blonde appeared at the head of the stairway Trudy had led me up the day before. She looked a great deal like Trudy except that she was younger and heavier in the hips. She was wearing a negligee that concealed hardly enough to matter.
    Yawning and stretching, she called down to me, "What do you need, sugar?" Her tone of voice indicated that whatever it was, she knew where I could get it.
    The Terror of the Orient came back and interrupted. "Get lost," he snarled at the girL Apparently he was no longer amused. He jerked a thumb at me. "Come on, tough guy."
    I entered a room in which the blinds were drawn tight against the sun. Cheap incense fouled the air and the furniture was a mixture of teak and Hollywood grotesque. The big Chinese closed the door behind me and I heard the lock click.
    The woman waiting for me looked nothing like Trudy. She was in her thirties and must have had an Oriental somewhere in her ancestry. Her eyes were slightly slanted and her skin had a sallow hue. Her black hair had been cut close to her head. A glittering mandarin robe clung to her slender body and her long fingernails were painted silver. In the shadowy room her eyes shone like those of the Siamese cat curled in her lap.
    "Is this him, Alida?" asked Shang.
    "Of course it's him."
    "You're no friend of Trudy's, mister." He seized my sleeve, gathering a handful of it in his thick fingers. "I may break your neck."
    The cat in the woman's lap raised his head as though he'd heard the threat. His tiny tongue flicked around his chops.
    "Just wait a minute," I said. "What's the reason for the hostility?"
    The woman stroked the cat and studied me with malevolent eyes. "I run this house. You came here yesterday under false pretenses. You brought us trouble."
    "What kind of trouble?"
    "The worst kind. Trudy made a mistake when she didn't