Angel's Ransom Read online

  ‘I would prefer to say, after a reasonable allowance of time for contingencies. Cashing a check for that much money is not like taking a mandat to the post office. Tomorrow, the next day, within the week certainly.’ The sous-chef sighed heavily. ‘Waiting for it is not going to be easy. Those poor devils, if only there were a way to let them know, without warning the vermin who hold them. How well do you know Marian Ellis?’

  George bristled all over again at the name. He said, ‘What’s the point of bringing her into it again?’

  ‘Because people who know each other intimately — as lovers, perhaps? - often have private codes of communication not recognized by others; nonsense words, particular meanings, innuendos. If there were some way to transmit a message which only she would understand –’

  ‘I told you I knew her casually. I met her three or four weeks ago, and I’ve been out with her two or three times. That’s all there is to it. You’re exploring a blind alley.’

  ‘One tests all possibilities,’ Neyrolle said.

  ‘What else have you done?’

  ‘I have asked all the Mediterranean countries to report the Angel if she is sighted in their waters, without giving them cause to do anything else about it. But as long as she remains cautiously at sea, out of sight and unreported, I shall have more faith in my reasoning and the power of the ransom to bring her back. When it does –’ Neyrolle looked thoughtfully at the palm of his hand, and curled the fingers slowly into a fist, ‘ - I shall not need further assistance.’

  ‘What are you going to do if she comes in at night? There’s nothing to prevent her from standing offshore without lights and sending a launch to the beach. You can’t expect her to sail right into the harbor.’

  ‘I do not. But it would simplify my problem rather than otherwise if she were to launch a small boat, because the coastline of the Principality is small enough to permit a watch on all possible landing points. A launch that brought the gang into our hands would be well received. Even if my reasoning is faulty, and they return not to leave the yacht but to pick up the money and take it elsewhere, a boat that came to meet Roche would permit us to board the yacht in his place.’

  ‘If Holtz is as clever as he sounds, he wouldn’t risk a boat without a signal of some kind from Roche.’

  ‘I agree. For that reason, I have a fast patrol boat standing by in the harbor, with the best of my Brigade Maritime on twenty-four alert. I hope -I earnestly hope - that I shall not have to use it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would bring the trap out into the open. And once Holtz learns that a trap, rather than the ransom, waits for him –’

  Neyrolle broke off, shaking his head unhappily. ‘I cannot forget Roche’s confidence that no one will testify against him. He knows Holtz. That is the reason why I must ask for your word of honor not to reveal the story prematurely before I can permit you to go. Do I have it?’

  ‘You do. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to sue you for false arrest when this is all over.’

  ‘That is your prerogative, monsieur. Good day.’

  He nodded to the two agents standing in front of the door. They stepped aside to let George pass.

  Afterwards Neyrolle took a memorandum headed ‘Saunders, George’ from a desk drawer and studied it thoughtfully. The dossier was still sketchy, but the Paris police had responded promptly to his request for cooperation. Among other odd scraps of information, they had been able to report that George Saunders had been arrested and released without charge after a street scuffle outside the cabaret La Nouvelle Aphrodite. The scuffle had been provoked when a dancer employed by the cabaret, Marian Ellis, was accosted while in Saunders’s company. The incident had taken place almost a year before.

  ‘And why does a man lie when the truth would reveal only his own gallantry?’ Neyrolle asked aloud. In the performance of his duties, he recognized no such thing as an inconsequentiality.

  The heavy wrench bumped the back of Blake’s leg as he climbed the pilot-house ladder. He knew that it could make no visible bulge in the loose ducks he wore, but he was unable to check a twitch of nerves when he took the wheel from Jules. From that moment his back was turned to the sailor,

  and the most casual physical contact could betray the secret. The very fact of the wrench in his possession was enough to invite punishment.

  He had no thought in mind of an immediate attack with the weapon. An opportunity, risky though it was, presented itself when Jules took time to chart the change of course he had made during the night, necessarily turning his attention to the dividers and parallel ruler with which he worked. The gun in his belt was Blake’s goal, but its possession was not enough unless he could stand with it between Holtz and the other captives. Holtz would not hesitate to kill any hostage within his reach at the first sign of danger to himself, so an initial attack on Jules would have to succeed at a time when Blake knew the positions of everyone aboard, and could cut Holtz off from the other prisoners.

  That time was difficult to foresee. Jules did not relieve the wheel at regular intervals. There was no hope of planning ahead for a safe grouping at a moment when he was certain to come to the pilot-house. There was no moment at all at which he was certain to come to the pilot-house, unless such a moment could be created.

  Blake considered the possibilities while Jules worked at the chart table. Once the sailor looked up at the chronometer over his head. It gave Blake an idea.

  He said, ‘We need a time signal.’

  Jules grunted, still busy at his calculations.

  ‘The chronometer hasn’t been checked since we left port.’

  ‘If you’re worrying about my dead reckoning, it’s close enough. You can check it with the direction finder.’ Jules made final marks on the chart. ‘The whole wide Mediterranean is around you, Captain. Nothing to get fidgety about.’

  ‘I’d still like a time check.’

  ‘This time tomorrow you can have one. Nobody will be stopping you.’

  ‘I’d prefer to have one this noon. The radio in the salon will pick up a signal. You could count off seconds, bringing it up here.’

  Jules laid down his pencil and came without hurry to drop his hand on the point of Blake’s shoulder, tightening his strong fingers in a crushing grip that was like a slowly closing vice. Blake took it without a murmur, although the grinding pressure made him clamp his teeth to keep from wincing before the grip relaxed.

  ‘That’s just so you’ll remember who gives orders and who takes them for a while yet,’ Jules growled. ‘Don’t crowd anything ahead of time. Do your job. You’ll have your ship back tomorrow, he’ll have his booze, and she’ll be out of this. Everybody will be happy.’

  The ‘he’ and ‘she’ were Freddy and Valentina, who had come out on the foredeck and now stood together at the rail in the cruiser’s bow. Something in the way the sailor spoke made Blake turn his head quickly enough to catch the frank hunger in Jules’s eyes as he watched the blonde girl.

  That morning she wore dark slacks and a sweater, both flattering to her superb figure. With the breeze of the cruiser’s progress whipping her hair about her face, she made a lovely figurehead for the Angel. Blake had still not thought of a way to use the weapon of her beauty against Jules, but the opportunity to test the weapon was at hand.

  He said, ‘Dropping her over the side with a weight on her feet wouldn’t be as easy as dropping Bruno.’

  Jules cursed him.

  ‘Forget the macaroni. He was a boob. He asked for what he got. There’s no need for the rest of you to get it.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You don’t know what can happen between now and tomorrow. You said yourself that Holtz enjoys killing. Why should he take any of us back?’

  ‘That’s the trade. You bought the round trip when Moneybags paid off.’

  ‘He’ll pay better for a better trade.’ Blake took the plunge. ‘You can name your own price to tip us off when Holtz is asleep and look the other way.
I’ll take care of the rest.’

  Surprisingly, Jules’s reaction was a mild one.

  ‘My own price? That’s real generous. How much cash is there aboard this ship that I haven’t raked up already? Or am I supposed to take another check?’

  ‘We’ll work out some way to guarantee payment.’ The empty promise was ridiculous, but Blake kept on. ‘And without the risk of your going back to Monaco. You can be in Algiers by the time we make Mallorca in the launch. Leave the yacht there –’

  ‘You’re wasting your time, Captain. The only time anyone will ever cross Holtz and live to talk about it, Holtz will be dead. I won’t say that for enough francs, cash on the zinc, or even for a clear inside track with the poule down there, I might not think about arranging it. But you can’t give me either of those, so I’ll take my third of what Roche brings back from Geneva and call it quits.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t come back from Geneva?’

  ‘He will. Holtz saw to that.’

  ‘His plane could crash. His train could smash up. He could be run down by a taxi. Anything could happen to him.’

  Jules had continued to watch Valentina while they talked. He said sombrely, ‘Hope that nothing does happen to him. She wouldn’t look good with weights on her feet,’ and left the pilot-house.

  Marian arrived within a few minutes of his departure. Again she brought coffee in the thermos jug.

  ‘It’s a kind of excuse for the - other excuse,’ she explained. ‘Holtz saw me come.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘At the rail, near the door to the salon. He’s been in there most of the morning. He and Jules are talking now.’

  ‘I just tried to bribe Jules. He’s probably reporting it, but it can’t be helped. We’d better get busy before Holtz comes around to check on us.’

  He gave her the course and the wheel. The bright morning sea was still empty.

  Freddy and Valentina had already taken up their lookout, in position to signal from either side of the foredeck. The captives had been spending their waking hours in the forward part of the yacht since Holtz’s seizure of the salon, and Blake had no fear that the couple on the foredeck would attract particular attention. It was Marian’s continued presence in the pilot-house that invited suspicion. He took the substitute power cable from the core of the roll of charts in which he had hidden it during the night and went on with his work of taping the battery clips, laying the tape on with care that it should not bind the free operation of the spring clips. A shock would be painful to him, but the failure of a clip to function as it should could be disastrous to them all.

  Marian said, ‘If Freddy signals, what do you want me to do?’

  She sounded entirely too unemotional for a girl who was preparing to deceive a killer with a pretense of passion. For a moment Blake’s confidence in the scheme wavered. But they were launched on it, and time was far too important to permit turning back. He said, ‘I’ll make the advances. Just stay there at the wheel.’

  Working swiftly but carefully, he watched the time. The radiophone, when repaired, could afford them not only a possible means of sending a call for help but word of the moment when the call for help might become urgently necessary. The powerful short-wave station at Grasse broadcast a regular program of meteorological data, news of interest to mariners and requests for the opening of radio-telephone communication with ships at sea, transmitting on schedule every other hour during the day at thirty-three minutes past the hour. Radio Grasse handled all ship-to-shore traffic in that part of the Mediterranean, and would inevitably be the station that Holtz had heard calling the Angel. It would just as inevitably be the station which would give warning of the all-out search for the cruiser that must follow Roche’s arrest. When Holtz heard that warning, his prisoners would survive only by their own resourcefulness.

  The substitute cable was ready in good time to let him practice the action before attempting the tricky business of clipping it into place on the live wires exposed at the bulk-head insulator. One sharp jerk would snap the clips free, another movement would dispose of the cable in a drawer of the chart table. Blake was ready to go when the chronometer said seven-thirty.

  ‘How does it look?’ he asked, and tried to make the question casual. His nerves were tight. Much depended on what he was about to attempt.

  ‘All clear. They’re both in sight. Freddy is pacing.’

  ‘I’m hooking up. Keep your eyes open.’

  The fat spark that sputtered under his fingers when he made the final connection was an encouragement. He turned the volume control of the receiver to bare audibility as the tubes warmed up, and stood with his ear close to the speaker. Tense, waiting, he found his hands reaching automatically for dividers and parallel rule to check the position Jules had marked on the chart that still lay on the table where he had spread it. The Angel was considerably less than twenty-four hours’ cruising time from Monaco - if Monaco was to be her destination.

  A strong Spanish ship transmitter was the first to come in, almost on the Grasse wave-length. For an uncomfortable moment he thought it would blanket the other station entirely, but the ship operator was probably also interested in the French broadcast. He cut off in time for Blake to hear the familiar clear, ‘Sécurité, Sécurité, Sécurité’ with which the Grasse operator came on the air, then the regular morning announcement: ‘Ici Radio Grasse, void un avis urgent aux navigateurs…’ followed by a report of a gale building up off the French coast. The small voice in the speaker talked on as Blake, frowning, stared at a cross Jules had penciled on the chart several hours ahead of their calculated position. Part of his mind groped for the significance of the marking, the rest tightened in concentrated attention to the small voice and its calm words of invitation to craft at sea: ‘Ici Radio Grasse. Trafic en instance pour les navires suivants…’

  The list of vessels invited to call in on another wave-length for two-way communication was longer than usual, or so it seemed to Blake. The Angel’s call letters were not on the list. And neither the Angel’s name nor Freddy Farr’s had been mentioned when the Grasse operator signed off.

  Blake felt both puzzlement and relief as he explored the airbands for another station. There was still time to plan. News of Roche’s arrest might or might not come over Radio Monte Carlo and any of the other powerful Continental transmitters, but a report of the sea-search it would trigger off would certainly be announced by Radio Grasse if by no other stations. Why had it not been announced? Roche must have reached Geneva long since. And where were the Angel’s call letters on the list of ships with whom radio contact had been requested?

  ‘What did you hear?’ Marian asked anxiously.

  ‘Nothing about us. Not a word.’

  Blake stared unseeingly at the cryptic cross on the chart. His mind was wholly occupied by the larger question.

  Holtz had said that Grasse was trying to get in touch with the Angel. He could not have been simply enjoying one of his taunting jokes. The irregularities of the cruiser’s departure from port, her abandonment of her crew if nothing else, would have given rise to inquiries. That the inquiries had stopped so soon might be no more than an indication that the Monaco authorities did not think of the irregularities as significant ones. Freddy Farr’s willfulness was well known. But a check for one hundred thousand dollars mis-signed in a special way was not just another eccentricity. Could it be that Freddy’s trick had failed? Would the ransom be waiting in Monaco after all, and the prisoners’ safety assured as long as they did not challenge Holtz? Or was Grasse’s silence an assurance that Roche had been taken by police intelligent enough to recognize the danger a warning of his arrest might mean to the captives, and the lack of news only a promise that the search was on?

  Puzzled, facing the dilemma, reluctant to abandon hope that the radiophone might still give an answer, Blake was exploring its- limited range of wave-bands for another station when Marian said, ‘Hurry! Freddy’s signaling!’

  The power cable s
napped out of place at a single pull. He pushed it into the drawer already standing open, slammed it shut, then sprang for Marian and the wheel. She had obeyed his instructions to stay in her place, but she turned to come into his arms, her back to the wheel and her face lifted to his. In that position she was within the loop of his arms as he took the wheel, pressed between it and him with her arms tight around his neck, and although he could not properly hold her and the wheel at the same time, the embrace was convincing. So, also, was the pretense of passion he had been led to doubt. As on the occasion when she had tricked him into carrying her aboard the Angel, she made him sharply conscious of her body; swell of breast, slim roundness of waist, the firm encompassment of the arms around his neck. Her lips, faintly flavored, were on his for only seconds before the door to the pilot-house slammed open. They sprang guiltily apart, once again with the Walther menacing them from the doorway.

  This time Holtz’s suspicions were more than mere drunken distrust. A deadly purposiveness was on his face. His eyes went around the pilot-house for some sign of unusual activity, stopping briefly at the thermos jug and the instruments lying on the chart table. He did not look twice at the radiophone. Quite unexpectedly he began to smirk, in a way that made Marian remember the taunts he had thrown at her after her first meeting with Blake.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Captain.’ He made an over-elaborate gesture of apology. ‘I did not know I would be interrupting a lesson in navigation. My business with you can wait until you are less agreeably occupied.’

  He stepped back, closing the door behind him. Through the windscreen they could see him waiting on the bridge wing, still smirking.

  It was the reference to a navigation lesson, by some quirk of association, that made Blake recognize at that moment the significance of the puzzling cross Jules had penciled on the chart. A full understanding of the opportunity it presented did not come to him at the same moment. But the germ of an idea was born instantaneously, and the success of the deception that had just been worked on Holtz encouraged him to believe it could be continued. He reached for Marian’s wrist, drawing her into an embrace that put his lips to her ear.