Angel's Ransom Read online

  Holtz said, ‘Get out!’ He made a loose brushing gesture, and came into the pilot-house only far enough to let Marian slip by him. When she had gone, he stepped back into the doorway, bracing himself there with his shoulder against the frame.

  Blake flexed his cramped fingers, feeling all at once the accumulation of hours of fatigue and strain. He pulled the steering chair into place and sat down. It was hard for him to breathe normally. He felt as if he had been running.

  Holtz said broodingly, ‘That’s twice I have let you persuade me not to pay her off for you. How many other cheeks do you have to turn, Captain?’

  ‘It isn’t a matter of turning the other cheek. I’d prefer not to have any more shooting.’

  ‘The gigolo need not have died. His own stupidity killed him.’

  Blake said nothing. He was still trying to control his breathing.

  Holtz moved restlessly in the doorway.

  ‘An intelligent man wouldn’t have tried anything like that,’ he said. ‘You’re intelligent. I know how to handle a man like you. You behave according to a reasonable pattern. It’s the stupid ones who are unpredictable. When are you going to make up your mind to come in with me?’

  ‘Do you predict that I will?’

  ‘I can make you.’

  Blake felt his skin prickle at the drunken, deadly assurance in Holtz’s voice. He said, ‘Why do you want me? What good would I be to you?’

  ‘I told you. Intelligence. I would not have to insure the regularity of your behavior.’ Holtz moved restlessly again. ‘Jules is an ignorant peasant, Roche a brainless rabbit. I have to take precautions to make sure they behave intelligently. I can’t trust them.’

  ‘You seem to have plenty of faith in Roche.’

  ‘Because of the money? That is only an example of my precautions. If the cautious Swiss banker does not shepherd all those dollars to Monte Carlo, as I am sure he will, Roche would bring them just the same. I have made him identify himself so plainly to get the money that he has no hope of escape without me. He is not too stupid to know that. He will keep the rendezvous, never fear.’

  Behind Blake’s back, Holtz made another movement of restlessness.

  ‘I’ll give you a quarter share. As if you were with us from the beginning.’

  ‘I’ll want to think about it some more.’

  ‘Don’t think about it too long, then!’ The gang leader’s mood changed with vicious suddenness. ‘I don’t have to let you make up your own mind! Suppose I promise you that you and all of your passengers won’t return to Monaco alive unless you come over to my side ? How long would you have to think then ? ’

  ‘Not long.’ Blake was on very thin ice, and knew it. ‘I want to be sure I know what I’m doing. If I do say I’ll come over, is that enough?’

  Holtz sneered.

  ‘I would take your word as readily as I would take Roche’s. No, no, Captain. You will prove your good faith in a way that will not permit you to change your mind once you have joined me, nor betray me afterwards.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Simply. You have seen me kill one of your passengers. I shall watch you kill a second. You may have your choice, but the sniveling old woman in her cabin will be the smallest loss. She will make us partners in crime.’

  The doorway was empty when Blake turned his head.

  His first reaction to the merciless promise was one of in-credulity. Cold-bloodedness of that degree was incredible, even in a man who had already murdered. But he knew with increasing conviction that Holtz would be capable of living up to his threat. The gang leader was not subject to normal restraints of behavior. Only the commands of his own swollen ego mattered.

  For the first time since the seizure of the yacht, Blake began to know panic. He had an irrational feeling that he would not be able to take his hands from the wheel-spokes if he tried, unless Holtz withdrew the force of the will holding them there. Whatever whim had first led the little gunman to consider his recruitment into the gang, the whim was rapidly becoming a determination. The offer of a full share in the ransom money gave evidence of that. But the offer had not served its purpose, and it was almost certain that sooner or later Holtz would make a flat demand instead. When that happened, the point of no return would have come for both of them. In a direct conflict of wills, ego against ego, Blake would have to be subjugated, either by forced employment on Holtz’s terms or by extinguishment. In one event Laura di Lucca would die, in the other he would die.

  The Angel rocked smoothly toward the south-west over a calm, dark and empty sea.

  Blake fought his panic. The position was not hopeless. The demand had not yet been made. His initial mistake had been in letting Holtz believe he might consider the gang leader’s offer. Now, before it was too late, he had to reject the offer once and for all, before the point of no return was reached. It would be dangerous, but not as certainly fatal as the other course.

  He was weighing the relative risks when he heard, faintly, a woman’s strident, agonizing scream. It was abruptly silenced, and did not come again.

  In the urgency of the moment he did not think of his orders against leaving the wheel. Throttling the motors, he abandoned the cruiser to her drift and ran aft on the boat-deck. The scream had come from the salon. He saw another shadow hurrying that way as he swung down the ladder to the deck below, and caught up with Freddy in the open doorway of the salon.

  Three people were inside. With blood streaming from a deep gash under his eye, Holtz stood over Laura di Lucca’s unconscious body, holding the Walther clubbed. Jules, pistol in hand, his hair rumpled, stood head and shoulders out of the cabin companionway. An ordinary table fork lay on the carpet inches from Laura di Lucca’s limply out-stretched fingers.

  Holtz bared his teeth in the wolf grin when he saw Blake.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Captain. She’s still alive. I haven’t forgotten our arrangement.’

  Jules growled, ‘What happened?’

  ‘She tried to blind me when I came through the doorway.’ Holtz brushed at his bloody cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Where were you? I told you to stay by the radio.’

  ‘A man needs sleep sometimes, ’Jules answered sullenly.

  ‘The captain survives without it.’ Holtz did not seem to be particularly upset by the attack. He brushed at his cheek again. ‘Take her below, lock her in her cabin, then bring me something to stop this bleeding.’

  Jules stuffed his gun in his belt and bent to pick up the unconscious woman. Holtz went to the open bar, poured himself an oversized glass of brandy, and raised it in mock salute to the two men in the doorway.

  ‘To your good health, messieurs. I should say, to your continued good health. Will you join me in a cognac, Mr Farr?’

  Wordlessly, Freddy shook his head. Holtz shrugged and tossed the brandy off at a gulp.

  ‘I shall not force my hospitality on you. Captain, why have you left the wheel?’

  Blake indicated the companionway down which Jules had carried the unconscious woman. ‘You’d better let me look at her. She may need attention.’

  ‘She has received attention.’ Holtz grinned at his own humor, moistening a finger with brandy to dab at the still-bleeding cut on his cheek. Violence seemed to have changed his drunken moodiness almost to geniality. ‘Go back to your post. You have not yet acquired any special privileges.’

  He poured another brandy. Blake hesitated for a moment, then turned away.

  Freddy followed him. When they were together in the pilot-house he said uncomfortably, ‘Nobody has got around to telling me I can’t come here if I feel like it, and right now I feel like it, Sam. If you don’t mind.’

  It sounded almost humble, coming from Freddy. Blake said, ‘I can use your company. I’m about ready to pass out on my feet.’

  ‘We make a good pair.’ Freddy smiled wanly. ‘You have trouble staying awake on black coffee, I can’t go to sleep without a shot.’

  ‘You turned Holtz down when he offered y
ou one.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ There was frank surprise in Freddy’s voice. ‘This morning I’d have crawled to get it, even from a rat like that. The hard-way cure really works, if you live through it. Do you want me to take the wheel for a while?’

  ‘Thanks, no. You can’t stay here for any length of time. Holtz or Jules will be up to run you off.’

  Freddy grunted meaninglessly and began to prowl the pilot-house. His broken finger seemed to preoccupy him. He kept taking the bandaged hand out of its sling and testing the movement of his fingers.

  Blake felt fatigue wash over him again as soon as the conversation lagged. His mind was as numb as his body was tired. He had much to think about, with an unconscious and perhaps badly injured woman to add to other responsibilities, but he could not bring himself to concentrate. Without rest, it was impossible.

  Freddy said, ‘Sam.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve got to ask you a couple of questions. Don’t get sore.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What did Holtz mean when he said he hadn’t forgotten your arrangement? And that you hadn’t acquired any special privileges - yet?’

  Blake studied a faint far-off sweep of illumination in the sky that signaled a lighthouse. The Balearics lay over the horizon. Jules would be altering course again soon. The time was not far off when the Angel would have to turn back, toward the rendezvous and the end of the ordeal, one way or another, for all of them - if the end did not come sooner.

  He told Freddy of Holtz’s offer, and of the threat that had not yet become a promise.

  ‘He’s joking!’ Freddy said it without conviction. ‘It’s impossible! Nobody can be that bloodthirsty! Even killing Bruno, he had to have an excuse!’

  ‘He doesn’t need an excuse to kill. He likes it. He’s let you and me and Marian get by with minor rebellions, so far, because it does his ego good to humble us, and our opposition has been minor. Bruno’s was major, a direct challenge. Bruno needed more than humbling. He got it.’

  ‘You think he’ll kill you if you don’t kill Laura?’

  ‘He would kill me if he had ordered me to kill her and I refused. It hasn’t got that far yet. I can still head it off.’ Blake rubbed his tired eyes. ‘If I could think clearly, I’d know what to do.’

  Freddy took his injured hand out of its sling and tried the movement of his fingers for the twentieth time since coming to the pilot-house. In what he tried hard to make a normal voice he said, ‘I’ve been wondering how I could take another mashed finger or two. I guess I don’t have to worry. If Holtz is what you say he is, it will be a bullet next time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There isn’t going to be any hundred thousand dollars waiting when we get back to Monaco. I cooked the scheme right from the beginning. That check took Roche straight to jail!’

  Neyrolle said, ‘I called you here because I have received a piece of important news that makes cooperation between us not only desirable but imperative. Before I tell you what it is, have you thought of anything to add to what you had to say this morning about Marian Ellis?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything there is to tell,’ George answered doggedly. ‘She’s a girl I knew casually in Paris. I don’t know why she came to Monaco, or where she is now, or anything else about her except what you know yourself.’

  ‘What I know leads me to believe that she is aboard the Angel. I would welcome any shred of information that might help explain why, and how she got there.’

  ‘I can’t give it to you. But if you think she’s joined up with some gang of crooks in a plan to take Freddy Farr in some melodramatic way, you’ve been seeing the same kind of cinema that Cesar goes to. She’s a dancer, not an apache’s moll. She wouldn’t know one end of a kidnap plot from another.’

  ‘I have never believed that she helped Holtz plan a kidnap plot,’ Neyrolle said. ‘The fact that she left such easily findable identification behind her speaks against it. At this point, I am inclined to believe that she has been - let us say, utilized, in some manner. But whether she has a part in it or not, the kidnap plot exists.’

  He handed George the blue slip of a telegram. It read:

  REQUEST DISCREET URGENT EMPHASIZE DISCREET URGENT INQUIRY INTO CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING SIGNATURE OF CHEQUE DRAWN DOLLAR ACCOUNT FREDERICK FARR BANQUE SUISSE GENEVA AMOUNT ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND U.S.A. DOLLARS PAYABLE LOUIS ROCHE STOP FARR’S LAST KNOWN ADDRESS YACHT ANGEL YOUR PORT STOP PROBABILITY CHEQUE SIGNED UNDER DURESS STOP REEMPHASIZE DISCREET URGENT STOP CABLE REPLY.

  It was signed by the Geneva police.

  George read the telegram twice before he could believe it, but the implications of the message were too obvious to deny. He said, ‘By God, what a story this is going to make! Who is Louis Roche? Holtz?’

  ‘No. Not Holtz.’ Neyrolle sighed. ‘The Swiss are a remarkable people; always discreet, always cautious. Observe the careful use of the word “probability”, and the almost complete lack of any information in the cable. I was on the telephone for more than an hour with Geneva before I learned that Roche has a face like a Belgian hare.’

  ‘Cesar’s rabbit-faced salaud from the jetty!’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the check?’

  ‘Ransom, clearly, although Banque Suisse prefers not to use the ugly word.’

  ‘How did they get on to it?’

  ‘Like many very wealthy men, Farr has a signature code with his bankers, for protection in just such circumstances as seem to have involved him. The improper dotting of an “i”, to be exact, indicated that the check, as well as a very plausible explanation for its existence which the bearer carried in Farr’s undeniable handwriting, had both been written under pressure. It was my suggestion to Geneva that Roche be banged about by a couple of experts until he gave up further information, but unfortunately the Swiss do not bang their criminals. Roche stands on his story that he is a fellow-member with Farr in a gambling syndicate that Farr is financing, and Geneva requests that we supply them with evidence that he is lying.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing, yet. It seemed more important to ask questions than to answer them. Among other things I learned that, in searching Roche, their men found that he carried a pistol, a return plane ticket from Geneva to Nice, and a return train ticket from Nice to Monte Carlo.’

  Neyrolle lit a Gauloise and left his chair to pace around the room. At intervals he looked at the clock on the wall behind his desk. He talked rapidly, like a man who had much to say but only a limited time in which to say it.

  ‘I asked myself: Why was this Roche type planning to come back to Monaco with the money? Obviously that was his intention. It would not be to gamble at Monte Carlo, although that reason was given in the letter signed by Farr to explain the need of such a large amount of cash. Clearly there was to be a rendezvous here, a reassembling of the crooks when the loot was in hand. It followed that those of the gang who had made off with the Angel must have planned to return here, and an even more provoking question then presented itself. Why should they take the risk? If the existence of a gambling casino is essential to their scheme, why not Cannes, or Nice, or the Lido, or Estoril, or Biarritz, or any of a dozen other convenient places unconnected with the kidnapping? On the face of it, a rendezvous here is a stupid chancing of arrest and punishment.’

  ‘Too stupid for a man who cuts the labels out of his clothes.’

  ‘Exactly. I said to myself, very well. Here is a gang of crooks who have brought off a well-executed coup. Everything points to careful planning; the trick of the permis, the smooth seizure of the yacht, an elaborate and plausible story prepared for the benefit of the banker, everything. The guiding mind is not unclever. Therefore the return to Monaco is neither stupid nor unnecessary.’

  The sous-chef lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first, looking again quickly at the clock as he ground out the stub.

  ‘I dismissed the possibility that the
crooks were so contemptuous of the efficiency of my office that they did not think the risk worth considering. Not as a matter of pride, but because underrating one’s opponent is a stupidity in itself. No, they would be well aware of the danger of the return. Why do they plan it, then? Can it be that Monaco is a less dangerous place for a rendezvous than France, or Italy, or Portugal? What is there about this Principality that distinguishes it from other countries in Europe? The answer, of course, is informality of entry and exit. On the entire Mediterranean coast of Europe, only the borders of Monaco can be crossed without need of passport, piece d’identité or laissez-passer, and without questions asked. Five minutes from the port, a stranger can disappear into another country as easily as crossing a road. You will see the possibilities.’

  ‘I see that the gang can be in France and out of your reach within five minutes after they return, if they return. But they could reach France even more easily by leaving the yacht in a French port, and you have extradition treaties. I still don’t get it.’

  ‘To leave the kidnapped Angel in France is to commit a crime in France. That, by my reasoning, is the whole point of the gang’s termination of the coup here. The crime remains localized. They can be punished only in the Principality, only under the laws of the Principality. As for extradition, once they have fled, we have the treaties you speak of, but it is not possible to extradite shadowy figures without name, nationality, or dimension from a country of refuge which is itself unknown. No, once they have slipped us here, they will have slipped us forever. That is the reason I am explaining the situation to you with such care.’

  George, who had been frowning at his shoes, looked up. ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘I will try to make myself wholly clear during the next’ -Neyrolle looked once more at the clock - ‘minute and a half. Forgive me for being pressed for time. You have suggested that a request for help be made to Interpol or to your American Sixth Fleet. Very well. Assume that I report a stolen yacht, with captives being held under duress at sea. A search would be instituted immediately; planes dispatched, radio calls sent out, other vessels asked to be on lookout for the Angel. The yacht would be found, inevitably. But we already know that we are not dealing with fools. They are alert, on guard for any warning that their scheme has failed; listening to the radio, watching the air, searching the horizon. They are prepared to take certain steps if necessary. Once the warning comes –’