Free Assassin of Gor by John Norman Page A

asked.
     
    "Excellent," I said, taking a pair from her.
     
    She knelt and watched me as I took one of the thongs and sat cross-legged by the door, and split it carefully over the edge of my sword. I now had, in effect, a piece of boskhide cord. I then looped the cord over the latch bar and then put both ends of the cord through the small hole, so they dangled on the outside of the door. I then swung the door inward.
     
    "Suppose," I said, "I now tied a relatively fair-sized knot with these two ends of the cord."
     
    Elizabeth looked at the cords for a moment. "Then," she said, "you would have tied the latch bar down, so it could not be lifted with the latch string."
     
    I smiled, Elizabeth was quick, always quick. In tying such a knot, with the cord looped on the inside about the latch bar, and the knot too large to slip through the hole, I would have fastened the bar down.
     
    "But someone could untie the knot," she pointed out, "and enter."
     
    "Of course," I said, looking at her.
     
    She looked at me for a moment, puzzled. Then suddenly her face broke into a smile and she clapped her hands. "Yes," she laughed. "Marvelous!" Elizabeth was one of the quickest girls I had ever known. She, of Earth, had never heard of this trick, and yet, from the barest of hints, she had understood what could be done.
     
    "Observe," I said. I then took the two dangling cords and began to tie what must have seemed to her an incredible knot. "Actually," I informed her, as I continued to weave the cords together in an ever larger and more complex fashion, "this is only a fifty-seven turn knot. It is, however, my own invention, though I never thought I'd need it. This trick was taught to me by Andreas of Tor, years ago, of the Caste of Singers, for doors in the city of Tor are commonly of this variety. His own knot was a sixty-two turn knot, his father's was seventy-one; one of his brothers used a hundred-and-four turn knot, which, as I recall, Andreas thought a bit pretentious."
     
    "It is always the same knot though," said Elizabeth.
     
    "Yes," I said, "each man has his own knot, as distinctive as a signature, and each knot is his own secret. Only he can tie it, and, more importantly, only he knows the reverse turns by which that knot, provided it has been untouched, is untied."
     
    "Anyone then," said Elizabeth, "could untie the knot."
     
    "Surely," I said. "The problem is to reconstruct the knot after it has been untied."
     
    "The owner of the compartment," said Elizabeth, "returning to the compartment and untying the knot can tell immediately whether or not it is his own knot."
     
    "Correct," I said.
     
    "And thus he knows," said Elizabeth, "whether or not the compartment has been entered in his absence."
     
    "Yes," I said. "Sometimes," I added, "someone enters the compartment and has a confederate on the outside attempt to duplicate the knot, that the man inside may surprise the occupant on his return, but commonly this stratagem is unsuccessful, because of the difficulties of duplicating the knot."
     
    Elizabeth then watched in silence while I, trying to recall the intricacies of my signature knot, worked the boskhide cords.
     
    At last, with a sigh, I leaned back, finished.
     
    "It is a regular Gordian Knot," she said.
     
    "The Gordian Knot," I said, "was quite possibly just such a knot."
     
    "Alexander," she remarked, smiling, "cut it with his sword."
     
    "And in so doing," I laughed, "informed the entire world that the room, or whatever it was, had been entered."
     
    I then untied the knot, slipped the cords through the hole below the latch bar, swung the door shut and set the two beams in place, securing it.
     
    I turned to Elizabeth. "I will teach you the knot," I said.
     
    "Good," said Elizabeth, undaunted by the complex prospect. Then she looked up at me. "I should have my own knot, too," she said.
     
    "Surely," I said, apprehensively, "we can use the same knot." It is, after all, not much fun to learn a