En Garde (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 17) by Carolyn Keene Read Free Book Online Page A

archives on a small monitor. “It’s so much easier with the modern digital tapes.” Derrick sighed, hitting the fast-forward button. “You can jump straight to whatever section you need. Rolling through all this is a drag. Why, we must have ninety hours of footage here, just from the ’76 Summer Games!”
    I sighed too. Ninety hours of tape takes a long time to review, even with a fast-forward button. Andwe had no guarantee that Bela’s bout against Paul Mourbiers had even been included.
    “Wait—here’s fencing!” Derrick hit the play button.
    An announcer’s voice came over tiny speakers. “This quarterfinal match should be a crucial one for the Hungarian team. They’ve been a major fencing power for years, but recently France has been striving to unseat them. Today’s match pits Hungary’s brightest hope in the épée, Bela Kovacs, against the up-and-coming Frenchman Paul Mourbiers . . .”
    “Derrick, this is it!” I said, excited. All our tedious work had paid off!
    It was strange to see Kovacs and Mourbiers as skinny young college-age athletes. Bela’s curly hair was cut in a short, almost military style, while Paul Mourbiers had a long ponytail. Dressed in white, with their masks down, they were otherwise indistinguishable from each other.
    Derrick and I watched the tiny, blurry figures jab and lunge up and down the mat. First Kovacs scored a touch, then Mourbiers. They seemed evenly matched.
    The score was tied at fourteen points each. “How many points do you need to win?” Derrick asked.
    “Fifteen in a direct elimination bout,” I said, pleased that I remembered so much of what Evaline had told me.
    And just then I thought I spotted something fishy. “Derrick, stop the tape! Rewind it a few seconds . . . there! Now play.” Derrick’s finger hovered over the buttons. “Now pause!”
    The blurry white figures on the screen froze. “See that?” I said, pointing to the monitor. “When Mourbiers lowers his sword? The tip touched the floor, didn’t it?”
    Derrick ran the tape back and forth in slow motion, studying it. “It sure looks like it,” he agreed. “Is that bad?”
    “You can be disqualified,” I said, remembering again what Evaline had told me. “But the referee doesn’t seem to have seen it.”
    “Kovacs did,” Derrick said. “Look at his reaction. And the way he’s staring at the referee, like he expects to hear him call foul on Mourbiers.”
    “But they’re not stopping the bout,” I said as the tape rolled on.
    “Not only that—they’re awarding the point to Mourbiers,” Derrick gasped. “That means he wins, right?”
    “Just look at that expression on Kovacs’s face,” I murmured, pausing the tape. “Like his world just fell out from under him.”
    “Why doesn’t he say anything to the referee?” Derrick wondered. “Why doesn’t his coach protest? They can’t just abide by that bad ruling.”
    I shook my head. “Different times, maybe. And a different sport. Fencers take pride in being respectful and courteous.”
    Derrick picked up the printed-out list of Olympic results that had been taped to the videotape case. “It says here that Mourbiers went on to win the semifinal bout, too. He ended up with the silver medal in épée that year.”
    “That must have made Kovacs furious,” I mused.
    “But there’s an asterisk after his name.” Derrick frowned. “That means there was a dispute. Maybe Kovacs did protest after all. Let’s fast-forward some more.”
    Almost at the end of the tape, we found the news report, dated six weeks after the games. “The ruling has come from the Olympic fencing committee: There will be no revision of the medal awards in this summer’s Olympic games in Montreal,” a news anchor announced. “Hungarian fencer Bela Kovacs lodged a formal protest after his quarterfinal bout against France’s Paul Mourbiers, claiming that Mourbiers should have been disqualified for illegally touching his sword tip to the floor.