Angel's Ransom Read online

  DAVID DODGE

  ANGEL’S RANSOM

  Copyright © 1956 by David Dodge

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  About David Dodge

  Bibliography

  Angel ’s Ransom

  ONE

  The girl came running out of the dark, almost on the stroke of midnight. Blake was on the Angel’s foredeck, making a conscientious last round of the yacht before turning in, when he heard the hurried sharp rap of feminine heels on the stone steps that led down from the winding Chemin des Pêcheurs to the landward end of the jetty where the Angel was moored. He could not see her from where he stood, but he knew by the change of sound when she reached the bottom of the steps that her flight was bringing her out on the cobbles of the jetty. From the desperate hurry of the clicking heels he guessed that she was frightened, too frightened to realize that she was running toward a dead end.

  The Angel was the last of the boats moored along the jetty. Beyond was nothing, only the end of the sea wall and its slowly winking red light that marked the mouth of the port of Monaco. Blake’s distaste for involvement in the affairs of others was not strong enough to let him wholly ignore a frightened woman alone and in flight toward open water at that hour. He went quickly aft, and reached the stern rail in time to call to her as she ran past the end of the Angel’s gangplank.

  She shied at the sound of his voice, missed her footing, and said, ‘Oh!’ startled, then, ‘Oh!’ again, sharply, painfully, as she fell. The lights on the sea wall behind her were too poorly placed to show him more than her sprawled figure dark against the light cobbles. He touched the switch of the reflector over the gangplank, and in its bright glare saw her sitting, white-faced, clutching her ankle with both hands. A handbag had spilled open beside her.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was breathless and slightly hysterical when he went to her help. ‘I mean, Je vous demande pardon. Ma - ma jambe - oh, couldn’t you please, justthisonce, speak English?’

  ‘I’m American. Relax.’ He gathered up the contents of her handbag, and lifted her to her feet. ‘It’s my place to apologize, for startling you. Can you walk?’

  ‘I -I don’t know. I’d rather not try, right away. If I could sit down for a few minutes –’

  She broke off to look uneasily over her shoulder, balancing precariously on one foot.

  There was nothing to be seen but the jetty lights and the shadows they failed to dispel, no sound but a thin thread of music coming from the casino on the bluff across the harbor, the wash of waves between the jetty and the small fleet of quiet boats tied up in its shelter. The jetty and the landward quay from which it sprang were deserted. Whatever she fled from, it did not seem to be an imminent menace.

  But he could not leave her standing there, helpless. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and picked her up without further formality.

  She was light in his arms, passive, but he was acutely aware of her femininity. He had not held a woman that way for years, and the intimacy of the physical contact was increased by her need to pull her body against his by an arm around his neck in swinging her feet out of the way of stanchions at the head of the gangplank. He eased her into one of the canvas chairs on the afterdeck, then turned on another light.

  She was slim and dark-haired, rather more fair-skinned than most girls who passed the summer months on the Mediterranean coast, young, and pretty in a fresh, undramatic way. Most European women, given her features, would have made themselves eye-catching. Her nose was straight, her teeth were even, her figure was good, she was dressed in a manner designed to display the good figure without flaunting it, and even before hearing her speak he would have identified her as a fellow American as far as he could see her. He was expert at guessing the nationalities of the girls who came aboard the Angel, and often their motives.

  She had still not wholly recovered her breath. He said, ‘Take off your shoe and stocking while I hunt up a bandage,’ refusing to listen to her protests that she did not want to trouble him further. ‘If you sprained it, it should be taped before it begins to swell. What were you running from?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’ She flushed at his look. ‘I know it sounds silly. But he kept following me, and no one else was in sight. When we came to the steps and I saw the lights, I came down here to get away from him, but he followed me and I got scared and ran. That’s all, until you spoke to me and I fell.’

  ‘He came after you down the steps?’

  ‘I thought so. He doesn’t seem to have come very far, does he?’

  The Angel mounted an extra searchlight aft. It was a whim of the yacht’s owner, who liked to see as much as he enjoyed being seen. Blake took the canvas hood from the stern mount, pushed the switch and swung the bright lance of light to sweep the steps down which the girl had run. He had heard no pound of pursuing feet behind the tap of her running heels, and he was as unprepared for it as the other man when the searchlight’s powerful beam silhouetted a figure at the top of the steps, until then hidden in darkness above the line of illumination cast by the hooded lights of the jetty.

  In itself, a loiterer’s presence on the Chemin des Pêcheurs meant nothing, even at that hour. But there was something buglike in the way the man fled the light, an acknowledgement of evil intent in his haste to dart back and away into the shadows. He was visible for only an instant, small and scuttling, before he vanished.

  The girl said shakily, ‘I wish you hadn’t done that. I’d rather not have seen him quite so clearly. I have to go back that way.’

  ‘I’ll go with you when you’re ready to leave,’ Blake promised. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

  He taped her ankle with a tight bandage of gauze, and was irritated with himself because his sharp consciousness of her as a woman persisted. The smooth trimness of her bare leg in his hands did not help. The ankle had not yet begun to swell, but she winced when he pulled the first turn of gauze tight. He was laying a second tight turn over the first when she said abruptly, ‘You work for Freddy Farr, don’t you?’

  ‘Are you a detective?’

  She pointed to the name of the yacht on a ring buoy hanging at the after rail. ‘It’s been in the papers. Everybody knows about the Angel.'

  ‘I could be Freddy Farr himself, of course.’

  ‘I’ve seen his pictures. He’s fat and homely and bald. What do you do for him?’

  ‘I’m his skipper. Tell me if I’m hurting you.’

  ‘Would he mind that you brought me aboard his yacht?’

  ‘He’ll mind that he wasn’t here. He likes pretty girls.’

  ‘I’ve heard that about him.’ She watched the gauze sheath grow on her ankle for moments before she said, ‘I’ve heard that he gives them things. Like fur coats and diamond necklaces, if they’re pretty enough.’

  Blake tucked the end of the bandage in place and straightened up. ‘You can put on your shoe and stocking now.’

  ‘Thank you. Am I being tactless?’

  He had to smile at her directness. He said, ‘Let’s say I’d talk with more freedom about some other subject than the personal habits of the man who pays my salary. My name is Sam Blake and I’m pleased to meet you. What are you doing wandering around the waterfront of Monaco at midnight?’

  She was as direct and unembarrassed in answering que
stions as in asking them. Her name, she said, was Marian Ellis. She had come down from Paris on holiday a week earlier, she was staying at a pension in Monaco-Ville, and she earned her own living. As a dancer.

  ‘I used to be a Rockette, in New York,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a Rockette is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Most people over here think it’s some kind of an automobile. Then I decided I wanted to see France before I got too old, and I stopped being a Rockette.’

  ‘How old is too old for France?’

  She caught the hint of amusement in his voice, and shook her head. ‘I’m not that dewy. The dim light flatters me. Anyway, after New York, Paris was easy. Until last week I had a job at a place where the pay scale depended on how little the girls wore. We didn’t even have to know how to dance.’

  ‘What happened last week?’

  ‘The director wanted to give me a raise. I didn’t have enough left to take off, so I quit. But it was just an excuse, really. I was tired of the job. I like to go places.’

  ‘There can’t be very many opportunities for a dancer in Monaco.’

  ‘There aren’t. I found that out after I got here.’ She sighed. ‘It’s no place for a working girl, but it’s so darn beautiful. Look at it.’

  She raised a slim arm in a gesture that took in most of the little principality. He followed the movement of her tracing finger with his eyes, from the dark bulk of Monaco-Ville above the jetty and the quay, past the soaring medieval battlements of the Prince’s palace, down to the clustered lights of La Condamine painting their brilliant reflection in the quiet waters of the tiny harbor, up again to the towering bulk of the Tête de Chien rising high and dramatic against the starlit sky, down once more to the other stars that were the lights of the Quai des États-Unis on the far side of the harbor, rising finally with the avenue that climbed the side of the hill to Monte Carlo, until at last her gesture had circumscribed the harbor and she was pointing over the slow red blink and steady green of the twin harbor lights at the rococo majesty of the still brightly illuminated casino on the peak of the bluff, beyond which lay the open Mediterranean and Italy.

  ‘Do you see what I see?’ she asked, curiously intent on his answer.

  ‘I don’t know what you see.’

  ‘Tell me what it is you see, then.’

  ‘Fixed green, occulting red.’

  She sighed again, and dropped her arm.

  ‘The naked eye of truth,’ she said ruefully. ‘They’re never really Cyclopes winking in the dark, are they? The magic goes out of them as soon as you take a second look. They’re always good old reliable fixed green and occulting red, lighting the way for busloads of tourists with sun-burned noses, and Buvez Coca Cola Bien Froid, and the latest movies from home.’

  ‘I’m beginning to understand why you were worried about seeing France before old age set in,’ Blake said. ‘so that’s why you go wandering by yourself in dark streets at midnight.’

  She nodded, unhappily. ‘And then when something different and exciting does happen to me after all, I get scared and run. Isn’t it maddening?’

  ‘You were wise to run, in the circumstances. You’d be even wiser not to go about alone in the middle of the night. Things like this wouldn’t happen to you.’

  ‘But I want things to happen to me!’ She stretched both hands in an odd yearning gesture toward the lights of the little port. ‘That’s why I’m here, instead of back in the line at Radio City.’

  ‘Freddy is going to be sorry he missed you. He’s been chasing those same will-o’-the-wisps all his life.’

  The reintroduction of Freddy’s name into the conversation changed her mood, sharply and immediately. Without being aware of why it had happened, Blake was conscious of the change. She said nothing more for several moments, and he saw that she was about to leave. He went to help her out of the deck-chair when she made the first move to get to her feet.

  ‘I’d better go now,’ she said formally. ‘I don’t want you to get into trouble if your boss comes back and finds me here.’

  Half irritated, half amused, he said, ‘You needn’t worry. He can’t fire me. We’re sailing in the morning, and he won’t show up until it’s too late for him to find another captain. Besides, even if he did find you here, he’s not an ogre. You might even like him. A lot of people do.’

  ‘Do you?’

  The blunt question invited a blunt reply that he did not want to give. He said, ‘Wait here while I get a flashlight,’ and left her trying her weight on the bandaged ankle.

  She moved quickly and without a limp as soon as he had left the deck. Taking a few essentials from her handbag to slip in her pocket, she dropped the bag into the shadow behind the chair where she had been sitting. Blake returned with the flashlight to find her waiting at the head of the gangplank. He was too preoccupied with the need to light her footing to notice that she left the yacht without the handbag he had carried aboard for her.

  There was no possibility of finding a taxi or a fiacre in that neighborhood at that hour, and the nearest telephone, of doubtful accessibility, was at the far end of the Quai du Commerce. But she was quite certain she could walk to her pension with his help, and Blake, who had never explored the seaward cliffs of Monaco-Ville, did not think to question her judgment until they had climbed the steps from the jetty and followed the winding Chemin des Pêcheurs along its rocky ledge for a good 500 meters to its dead end above the sea. There, steeper and considerably more difficult steps led up the cliffside through the dark gardens of the Musée Oceanographique to the avenue at the top of the bluff.

  It was a stiff test for an injured ankle, even with the flash-light beam to show the way and his supporting arm to take some of the weight. Climbing, he said, ‘How in the world did you find this way to come, and why did you try it in the dark? You could have broken a leg.’

  ‘I wanted to see where the stairs led.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They looked challenging.’

  ‘Do you always accept challenges?’

  ‘Certainly. Always. Don’t you?’

  ‘Never. I’m the man who will live to run another day.’

  ‘Where are you running tomorrow? When you sail, I mean.’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  She kept her hand on his arm, but he felt her withdrawal. It was strange, he thought, how aware he was of her. None of Freddy’s sleekly handsome women affected him that way. He said, ‘I don’t mean I won’t. I can’t. I don’t know. Freddy hasn’t given me a destination. Only sailing orders.’

  ‘And when six million dollars gives you sailing orders, you sail, whether you know where you’re going or not, naturally.’

  ‘I have a feeling that you dislike Freddy Farr because he has too much money. You say you’ve read about the Angel in the newspapers. You must know that a Belgian baroness has claimed he gave it to her, and is suing to get it away from him. She’s trying to attach it through the Monaco courts; he’s taking it out of her reach before she can do it. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘You’re loyal to your boss, of course.’

  ‘shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘What about the Belgian woman? Hasn’t she any rights?’

  ‘I’m not going to sound very chivalrous, but a shakedown is a shakedown whether it’s tried by a baroness or a B-girl. She hasn’t any chance of getting the yacht. She wants a settlement out of court.’

  His patience was irritating. In a flash of quick temper, she said, ‘Men always band together against the avaricious female, don’t they?’

  ‘I’m not banding together with Freddy. I work for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you work for him?’

  ‘Why does anybody work for anybody? To earn a living.’

  ‘I hope he pays you well.’

  They did not talk again until they came at last up out of the cliffside garden to the brightly lighted avenue in front of the Musée. There had
been no sign of her buglike molester along the way, and an agent de police strolled along not far ahead of them. The girl took her hand from Blake’s arm.

  ‘I can go on from here by myself,’ she said coolly. ‘My pension isn’t far. Thank you very much for all you’ve done, and I’m sorry I’ve been such a bother.’

  ‘It was no bother. You broke the monotony of a dull anchor watch. Let me take you the rest of the way.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d rather not trouble you anymore. Good night.’

  Even then he would still have made a further effort, but he had a feeling that she deliberately chose to make the parting a chilly one. Without meaning to do so, he had piqued her, and she was closing the door on their brief acquaintance. He smiled his regret that it was so, said good night, and left her.

  Following the bright beam of the flashlight down the steep insecurity of the cliffside steps, he wondered again that anyone, even a girl who always accepted challenges, could descend alone with so little hesitation into the darkness and uncertainty of a way whose end she did not know.

  ‘Very amusing,’ the buglike man said, sneering. He was waiting on a shadowed bench only a few yards from where Marian had parted from Blake. ‘Very amusing indeed. Did you enjoy the way I scrambled for cover after you persuaded your obliging compatriot to turn his searchlight on me?’

  ‘I didn’t persuade him. I didn’t even know he was going to do it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ His manner changed to mock humility. ‘I cannot complain. I should be grateful that you are willing to soil your clean American hands with a deception. I congratulate you on your acting ability, dear talented Miss Ellis. You limp as convincingly as a Greek beggar.’

  ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course. But I did not realize that I was engaging such superior talent.’ It was another sneer. ‘The captain was clearly captivated by your feminine charms. Were you in turn thrilled by the clasp of his manly arms, or was the coy thrust of the bosom on the gangplank only another evidence of your acting ability?’