Free 032 High Marks for Malice by Carolyn Keene

neck.
    Marty’s front door opened. “Nancy? Need help?” Ned called. He started up the stairs from the basement, then spotted her struggling to free herself.
    “Hey!” Ned yelled and leaped up the remaining steps. “Let her go!” Grabbing a handful of the man’s dark turtleneck, Ned yanked him upright and delivered an uppercut that lifted him off his feet.
    Nancy’s attacker shook his head, as if to clear it, then lunged at Ned, butting him in the midsection. Ned grabbed him and they both tumbled into the bushes.
    “Hey, you guys all right?” Cass called from the doorway.
    The man in black slithered out of Ned’s grasp and ran off, limping.
    Ned scrambled to his feet. “Nan, are you all right?” She nodded. “We’re fine, Cass.”
    Nancy stood up carefully, testing her ankle. “What about our attacker, Ned?”
    “He’s long gone,” Ned said. He pulled Nancy close and buried his face in her hair. “I should have gone with you. I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking.”
    Nancy hugged him back. “Forget it. You couldn’t have known. I’m almost glad it happened this way, because it showed us something: those papers of Line’s are as important to someone else as they are to us. And that someone is watching us.”
    “Yes, but who?” Ned asked.
    “And why?” Nancy added. She looked at the printouts, which now resembled long, fat streamers, draped over bushes and winter-dead plants. “Come on. Let’s get this together before someone else comes along and tries to take it.”
    It was a good half hour before Marty settled down to see what he could make of their find. It was only then that they discovered it consisted of several stacks, not just one.
    When he finally flipped through the sheets, Marty admitted to being as puzzled as Ned had been. “It’s no programming language I’ve ever seen,” he told them.
    “Do you think Doc might have written it?” Nancy asked.
    “I doubt it. I think I would recognize his work.It looks to me as if he was trying to figure out the purpose of the program, too.”
    Nancy leaned forward, intrigued. “You mean they’re all Doc’s printouts, not Line’s?”
    “No. Only a third of them are Doc’s. His password is at the beginning of this stack. Whenever you enter the network the students use, you have to type in your personal password or it won’t let you on.”
    “Why?” Nancy asked.
    “Look at it this way. The student network is like a room full of file cabinets. Each cabinet belongs to a particular student. He locks it using a secret password, which prevents other kids from opening it.”
    Suddenly his eyes lost focus in thought. “Wait a minute.” He flipped through the printouts again. “Hey,” he said softly.
    “Marty,” Nancy said, wondering if he was thinking the same thing she was. “If the others don’t have Doc’s password, then he broke into someone else’s file cabinet, right?”
    Marty gazed at her with new respect. “Exactly. Once he got there, he must have found this weird programming and was trying to work out what it was designed to do.”
    “The question is, did he succeed?” Nancy said. “And did Line?”
    Running a finger down a page, Marty was silent for a long moment. “I think Doc did. See, each command is numbered—five, ten, fifteen,anyone ever teach you not to step out from and so on. Commands twenty-five and thirty are blank. I figure they’re the ones that give the program the final okay to do whatever it’s supposed to do.”
    “Then why are they blank?” Cass asked.
    “Maybe the person wanted to hide a command, especially if he doesn’t want anyone to know how the program works or what it’s designed to do. These two commands are hidden. Even when you type in the right words on lines seven, twenty-five, and thirty, the words won’t show up on the screen.”
    “Sure,” Nancy said. “Anybody could be watching and see them.”
    Marty smiled at her. “Exactly. So these commands remain invisible, even if you