Angel's Ransom Page 10

‘I have very little to tell, as you already know. He called himself Holtz, a small man, as I have described him to you. I never learned his nationality. He did not leave his passport where I would see it –’

  Neyrolle interrupted sternly. ‘You know the law, Madame. A passport or carte d'identité must always be demanded.’

  ‘He was with me only three days, monsieur. He kept promising tomorrow - tomorrow - he did not have his papers with him –’

  ‘And paid well for the oversight, no doubt,’ Neyrolle said. ‘What languages did he speak?’

  ‘French with me, English with the girl, Provençal on the telephone. His clothes do not have tailors’ labels in them, or any other identification. His business, he said, was his own.’ The woman sniffed. ‘I would be as reluctant as he to confess that I was a process-server.’

  The sous-chef did not meet George’s quick glance. George said, ‘How did you learn that, if he would not tell you his business?’

  ‘He told the girl, thinking I would not understand English. One does not run a pension in Monaco-Ville without learning a smattering of languages. I am no busybody, but-’

  ‘What else did you overhear?’

  The woman looked shrewdly at Neyrolle before she answered.

  ‘My English is far from perfect, monsieur. You understand? I could not swear under oath that they said this, that and the other, not a single word. I believe that she came down from Paris looking for work, without a great deal of money, and when she could not find a job he offered her a sum, an amount I never heard mentioned, to witness the service of a legal paper. That is what I think I know.’

  ‘The paper could have been an attachment?’ George suggested. ‘On the yacht of an American, here in the harbor?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a grudging agreement. ‘The milliardaire whose picture appears in the papers from time to time, along with the amount of his losses at the Casino. But beyond that and what I have told you, that the two went away together yesterday morning and have not yet returned, I can swear to nothing.’

  ‘You are not under oath,’ Neyrolle said patiently.

  George said, ‘How long had they been your guests when they left?’

  ‘The girl, nearly a week. The man, three days.’

  The woman answered questions for some time after that before she convinced George that she had no more to tell. She gave up only one further small piece of information which might have possible significance. Although Holtz never had visitors at the pension, he received several telephone calls. At least one was from a man with a growling bass voice who spoke with a Provencal accent.

  ‘The steward’s big salaud from the jetty answers that description well enough,’ Neyrolle said, when the woman had been dismissed. He took an American passport from a drawer and slid it across the desk to George. ‘The girl puzzles me. Holtz, obviously, is an old hand, whatever his game. The clothes without tailors’ labels, the caginess about his identification papers, all speak of the experienced crook. He knew inquiries would be made, and he was hiding his tracks. The girl, on the other hand –’

  Neyrolle stopped. George had opened the passport and was staring at the photograph of its holder with an expression of stunned recognition. The sous-chef said quietly, ‘Where did you know her?’

  ‘In - in Paris.’ George’s bewildered expression did not change. ‘She’s a showgirl.’

  ‘When did you see her last?’

  ‘A week ago. Ten days. Just before I came to Monte Carlo.’

  ‘Where did she live?’ Neyrolle was making rapid notes.

  ‘I don’t know. I met her at the Nouvelle Aphrodite. She took her clothes off there for the tourists - we went out together a couple of times - but it’s all crazy! She can’t be in Monaco! She was doing three shows a day - besides, she would have looked me up - she knew I was here –’

  ‘Apparently she was careful not to let you know that she was also here, which makes her carelessness with the passport and letters even more puzzling. I do not understand why she left such a clear trail behind her.’

  ‘Certainly you don’t think she’s mixed up in anything crooked! At the worst, she may have seen a chance to make a little money by witnessing the service of a writ. There’s nothing wrong in that!’

  ‘There has been no writ of attachment issued against the Angel. An application for such an action is before the high court. That is where matters stand at this moment.’

  It took moments for the implications of the statement to penetrate George’s mind. He said, ‘What about the money he offered her? What was she being paid for?’

  Neyrolle reached to take the passport from George’s lax fingers before he replied.

  ‘Perhaps you can give me the answer to that.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Observe. You go out with a girl in Paris while you are studying the habits and escapades of Freddy Farr. Inevitably, you discuss the subject which interests you, with her. : She learns that Farr and his yacht are in Monaco, other facts concerning his weakness for young and pretty girls. She is young and pretty, as witness her photograph. She comes to Monaco, careful to hide from you the fact of her presence here, and vanishes at the same time that Farr, his yacht and his guests disappear from the port in mysterious circumstances. We find a clear link between her, Holtz and the two men on the jetty, who have also disappeared. The plot, whatever it is, gives evidence of careful planning, and intimate knowledge of — ’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ George, furious, interrupted Neyrolle’s merciless logic by springing to his feet. ‘By God, if you’re back on that same old single track again, I’m through! I’m getting off here and now! You make your investigation! I’ll dig up my own story!’

  ‘You are not through, and you are not getting off, monsieur.’ Neyrolle looked up at the red-faced reporter with chill assurance. ‘I have, at last, reason to believe that a crime against Freddy Farr was committed within my jurisdiction. By what means and to what end I intend to discover, and take steps to bring the criminals to justice. Until that is done, I shall not ask for your cooperation. I shall demand it!’

  Valentina came to the pilot-house late in the day, alone. She said, ‘Holtz is still in hiding, and Jules is back on the after-deck. I thought it was safe for me to come for a few minutes.’ ‘Not seeing Holtz doesn’t mean he isn’t seeing you,’ Blake reminded her. ‘You’ll be safer if you keep it in mind. Even up here.’

  ‘But we can talk.’

  ‘We can talk. For a few minutes, anyway. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Jules.’

  ‘What about Jules?’

  ‘He - wants me.’

  Blake looked quickly sideways at her, not sure that he had heard correctly. She stood with her back to the windscreen beside the wheel, watching him gravely. He was again sharply conscious of her beauty, and of the faint perfume she wore. He said, ‘Has he made approaches?’

  ‘No. But I know. I did not want to speak of it in front of the others, and I do not have reason for conceit after failing with Bruno, but I know.’

  ‘You’re afraid of him?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I am afraid only of the men who are indifferent to me.’

  If she meant it as a gibe, it was a gentle one. Blake said, ‘Why do you tell me, then?’

  ‘I don’t know what to do. That is why I came to talk to you. It gives us a weapon, of a kind. I thought you might think of a way to use it.’

  Blake shook his head, slowly. ‘It’s not the kind of weapon I’d want to try against Jules. Bruno was different. You could have handled him. With Jules - if he got the idea that you were trying to use him, make a fool of him –’

  He did not know how to finish. Valentina said coolly, ‘I did not necessarily have in mind making a fool of him. But think about it, Captain. Perhaps there is a way I can be of more use to you than by keeping Freddy company on the foredeck. The little Américaine is not the only one who wants to help.’

  Blake was g
lad of the change of subject. Valentina’s golden eyes saw things far too realistically even for his realistic mind. He said, ‘How is she?’

  ‘Still suffering.’

  ‘And Laura di Lucca?’

  ‘Still numb. It is hard to say what goes on inside. She does not speak, or move, or show that she hears.’

  ‘What about Freddy?’

  ‘He will surprise you. He has stopped shaking, and even manages to think now and then of something besides his own unhappiness. He has not once reminded Marian that she is responsible for his troubles, since Bruno died.’

  ‘I’m glad of that. She’s already at the point of doing something desperate, and we’ve got to be even more careful with Holtz than we were before.’ He turned from the wheel to look at the chronometer over the chart table. ‘You’d better go now. He’s liable to come around at any time. Tell Marian to bring my dinner at half past eight. I’ll expect you and Freddy to be on lookout when she gets here.’

  Valentina went obediently toward the doorway. She stopped there, for once uncertain of herself.

  ‘Please, do not speak to Freddy about what we were discussing. I would not want him to know what I have suggested.’

  ‘Naturally not.’

  It sounded more ironic than he meant it to be. She did not take offence. Without reproach, she said, ‘I do not ask it as a favor for myself. He has neither liquor nor company to fall back on now, only himself and me. If he doubts me, he will have only himself. And I am better for him than he is for himself, whatever you may believe of me.’

  She left him wondering in his own mind what he believed about Valentina Walowska.

  Jules relieved the wheel once before nightfall, briefly. He allowed Blake only enough time for a quick check of the engine-room, where he pocketed a roll of rubber tape to supplement what he had already smuggled to the pilot-house. He saw no one before his return to the wheel. A change in the weather had brought rain, making the open deck untenable and cutting visibility to a few miles. The two lookouts were going to be painfully obvious if the rain continued.

  The swish and clack of the windscreen-wipers was a discouraging sound for some time before the rain stopped. When the clouds lifted, shortly after nightfall, Blake saw the lights of a steamer dead ahead on the horizon. It was the first vessel the Angel had sighted in nearly twenty-four hours. He found his eyes wandering restlessly from it to the mute, powerless radiophone almost within reach of where he stood at the wheel. To be deaf and dumb was far worse than simply being muzzled.

  Marian came to the pilot-house on the dot of eight-thirty. The food she brought was hot, this time, and accompanied by a thermos of black coffee. She said, ‘I know you’re not getting much sleep. I thought this might help.’

  ‘It will. How are things below?’

  ‘Laura di Lucca is still sitting in her cabin, staring at nothing. I tried to get her to eat something, but she wouldn’t even look at me.’ Marian added miserably, ‘If she would only cry, or scream, or hit at me. That awful dead look is worse than anything she could say.’

  ‘I think you’re over-punishing yourself,’ Blake said. ‘Try to remember that Holtz put a lot of time and planning into this thing. He needed a dupe, and he happened to pick you because you were convenient. He would have brought it off equally well with someone else. There’s no guilt in being used.’

  ‘It’s no use. I’ve said the same thing to myself a hundred times, and the answer still comes out the same. I am to blame. I was used.’

  ‘Then don’t think about it. Have you seen Holtz?’

  ‘He’s in the salon now. Most of the time he listens to the radio. I had to go that way to get to Laura di Lucca’s cabin, and he snarled at me like an animal. The bar was open.’

  It was bad news. Holtz drunk would be even more dangerous than Holtz sober. Blake had no hope that the gang leader would drink enough to lose his watchfulness. Even if he did, Jules would be more than normally alert.

  He said, ‘Jules?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘He may be sleeping. They’ll do it in relays. What about Freddy and Valentina?’

  ‘They’re already out there. Waiting.’

  Like a second answer to the question, a lighter flared on the foredeck. Valentina’s classic profile showed briefly in the small illumination of the flame as Freddy held it for her cigarette. The glow of the burning coal hung in the darkness after the lighter snapped off, glowed brightly once, twice and again, and was extinguished in a shower of wind-whipped sparks. Afterward there was nothing to see but the brilliant lights of the steamer Blake had sighted earlier, nearer now by an hour’s steaming.

  Its approach was so nearly on their own bearing that he had been steering a point off the course prescribed by Jules for some minutes, to give the steamer sea-room. Now, coming back on course, he closed his mind to the thought that the Angel’s, running lights could be used to blink an S.O.S. Bruno would have been calculating the possibilities of rescue in the nearness of the other ship, not giving it careful clearance. But Bruno had been a bolder man than he.

  ‘We might as well get at it,’ he said. ‘Take the wheel. The course is two hundred and forty, and you know what to watch for. Is there anything else you want me to tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  She was listless, indifferent. To take her thoughts off Bruno’s death, he took time to explain what he was doing while he worked, although he was concerned with the need to get the radiophone repair job done before they were interrupted. The wires he had smuggled out of the engine-room, mounted at both ends with spring battery clips, would serve to make a quick, easily removable bridge between the snapped ends of the original cable at the bulkhead insulator and the sawed ends where Jules had cut the cable away. But while the radiophone’s power supply could be shut off in the engine-room, the jury-rigged cable had practical value only while the power was on, and that fact made the dangerous handling of live wires unavoidable. The answer was to insulate the battery clips with windings of rubber tape, a job he worked at between hastily snatched mouthfuls of food. Because a light in the pilot-house was necessary for that labor, and to preclude the possibility of being seen from below, he sat spraddled-legged on the deck near the chart table, where tools and wires could be thrust out of sight in a moment.

  He became aware that Marian had not been listening to his explanation when she said, without preliminary, ‘Bruno was brave.’

  ‘Stop thinking about Bruno. It doesn’t do any good.’

  ‘I can’t help it. I have to think about him. He was brave, and I called you a coward. So he’s dead, and you’re alive, and I - I owe both of you an apology.’ He was glad that, at the wheel, she could keep her back turned toward him. It was easier for both of them. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I said last night –’

  ‘You needn’t talk about it.’

  ‘- but I want you to know that I - I’m not brave any more. I’m scared. Horribly scared.’

  ‘It’s sensible to be afraid of Holtz. I told you that before. But don’t give up hope that we’re going to get out of this.’

  ‘Do you really think he’ll let us go? Is there any reason for him not to shoot us all, now that he’s killed one of us? Wouldn’t he - enjoy it, the way he enjoyed smashing Freddy’s finger?’

  Her appeal for reassurance was pathetic.

  Blake was silent while he laid a careful turn of tape around a spring clip. It reminded him of the time he had bandaged her ankle - had it only been two nights earlier? - and his mouth twisted at the memory. It was so easy to lay blame, so hard to hold out a promise of hope. But he could not be less generous than Freddy. He reached for another spring clip and said, ‘Jules doesn’t want any more killing. He wants to turn us loose when they get the money. We’ve got to believe that he can influence Holtz his way. If and when it begins to look as if he isn’t going to be able to, I’ll try an S.O.S. with this thing. If that doesn’t work –’

  ‘Fred
dy is lighting a cigarette!’

  He bundled wire, tape and tools into a drawer of the chart table as he came to his feet, then jumped for the wheel. More startling than anything else was the imminence of the lights of the steamer now looming up ahead of them. The Angel’s bearing would take it past the larger vessel dangerously close to the steamer’s strong bow wave. Even as Blake spun the wheel and slammed at the throttles, her whistle boomed a warning. The Angel heeled sharply to starboard, scrambling for clearance as the door of the pilot-house banged open.

  Holtz’s voice, ugly with venom, said, ‘Trying to wreck us again, Captain?’

  He was drunk. The first rock of the passing wave that lifted the cruiser’s hull made him clutch the doorway for support, but the pistol he held was as unwavering as ever. Its pointing barrel swung from Blake to Marian, who had been thrown against the far bulkhead by the yacht’s abrupt change of course.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘She brought my dinner.’ Blake did his best to sound calm. ‘She took the wheel while I was eating. No harm done.’

  He saw his mistake almost before he had finished speaking. Holtz seemed to shrink in upon himself in the doorway, an animal crouching to spring.

  ‘What were you trying to do?’ he said. The blunt nose of the Walther lifted, only a little.

  Blake willed desperately, Grovel! Let him see you cringe! Marian stood flat against the bulkhead, her hands spread wide to brace herself against the lurch of the still rocking cruiser. The defiance with which she had once faced the little gunman was all gone now. Her frozen pose was one of sick fright and insecurity.

  She said unsteadily, ‘I was trying to stay on course. I didn’t realize we couldn’t pass so close. I - I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s nothing to get excited about,’ Blake said. ‘Holtz! Listen to me!’

  Holtz swayed in the doorway, scowling, still doubtful. The cruiser’s pitching diminished as the wave passed under it. Blake came back on course, inching the throttles again to cruising speed. He was careful not to make a too-sudden move. The palms of his hands were slippery on the spokes of the wheel.