Angel's Ransom Read online

  She came to him without hesitation. He said, ‘Put your arms around me and listen carefully. The key to Laura di Lucca’s cabin is in the side pocket of the jacket I’m wearing, right under your hand. Get it out while I’m talking to you. In three hours’ - he calculated swiftly, seeing the chart again in his mind’s eye - ‘no, two and a half, to be safe – lock her in and take the key with you. Then get out with Freddy and Valentina on the foredeck where I can see you. All of you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. But what does it mean?’ Her answer was breathless. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I haven’t time to explain.’ Holding her, a lover whispering a last intimacy into the ear of his beloved, he watched Holtz through the windscreen, alert for any sign of returning suspicion. The gang leader had half-turned his back in a pretense of tactfulness, but not so much that he was unable to see what went on in the pilot-house. ‘I expect Jules to relieve the wheel soon after you’re out on deck. If Holtz is where you can see him, do nothing. If he’s out of sight, tell Freddy and Valentina to have a fight as soon as Jules comes up here. I want Freddy to hit her. Hard. Knock her down if possible.’

  ‘What are you going to do?'

  ‘Have you found the key?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He could feel her heart thudding against his chest, the small movement of her cheek against his lips as she whispered, ‘Please - tell me - I’ve got to know –’

  ‘Holtz is getting restless. You’d better go.’

  He pushed her away, not roughly, and turned his full attention to the wheel.

  The Angel had wandered off course. He brought it back on bearing, heard the pilot-house door open and close when Marian left, heard it open and close again as Holtz entered.

  ‘I would not have thought her to your taste, Captain,’ Holtz purred at his back. ‘Twice you have surprised me; once by rebuffing the Polonaise, now by accepting the naïve adoration of the American. Can it be that you are repelled by sophistication and attracted by artlessness?’

  ‘It was a friendly gesture,’ Blake said. ‘she was feeling unhappy about her part in this; I was trying to make her feel better. That’s all.’

  Holtz laughed. ‘Come, come, Captain. You are not that imperceptive. She is obviously deeply infatuated - and why not? You are mature, courageous, strong, resolute, upright, a knight in armor for her maidenly fancy, even if a knight temporarily unhorsed.’ The mocking jocularity changed suddenly to a sneer. ‘Besides, she is a fool.’

  Blake made no reply. His eyes watched the empty sea beyond the Angel’s bow. In his mind he saw the line of her course on the chart creep toward a penciled cross on the open blankness. He thought, Two hours and a half. Maybe three.

  Holtz went on moodily, ‘I used her because she was a fool, as you tried to use Jules, who is less of a fool. Did you really hope to be able to bribe him away from me with a promise?’

  ‘I could try.’

  ‘You should not have tried.’

  Blake shrugged.

  ‘Was it your idea, or Farr’s?’

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘That was bad judgment on your part, if you are telling the truth. It shows that while you have been pretending to consider the offer I made you, you have no intention of joining me.’

  ‘I’m not capable of murder.’

  Holtz made a noise of angry disgust.

  ‘Murder! The word frightens you! What, you say, blood on my hands? Human blood? No, no! Animal blood, bird blood, fish blood, the blood of snakes and insects. Those we kill for sport, or because they have no right to exist in a world where we do not want them. But sacred human blood? Horror!’

  Close to Blake’s back now, so close that he drew instinctively away from the expected jab of the Walther in his spinal column, the sneering, contemptuous voice went on: ‘I would kill a dozen useless old women for half of what I offered you! I would kill you now for no other reason than that you think you have been clever, except that I prefer to let you live and know that you live just so long as I permit it!’ Venom dripped from his final promise. ‘The word frightens you, Captain. The act is no more to me than a movement of the fingers! Bear it in mind!’

  Perspiration was running down Blake’s back under his shirt when Holtz left him alone. He thought, Jules may beat you to it, little man. In two hours and a half, maybe three. But he knew, even in his bravado, that Jules could never make him afraid as Holtz made him afraid. The little man’s complete viciousness was unnerving. He shut Holtz out of his mind by concentrating his thoughts on the moment that lay ahead.

  His plan of attack against Jules stemmed from his recognition of the cryptic chart marking as a point where the sailor intended to change the Angel’s bearing again. Jules was not taking the cruiser northward over precisely the same course he had followed coming south, but by a shorter route, inside and flatter than the outward bound dogleg. The yacht’s bearing was then thirty degrees, a course which would bring her to the sailor’s marking by late forenoon, due south of Monaco and, because of the shortened route and prevailing winds, within a fourteen- or fifteen-hour run of the Principality. So far Jules had made all changes of course himself, during his irregular and, until now, unpredictable reliefs of the wheel.

  Blake went over the scheme in his mind, checking step by step for possible oversight. A tray of food would serve Marian as a legitimate excuse to reach Laura di Lucca’s cabin. No danger in that part of it. If Holtz chose to investigate afterwards, the cabin door would be locked, not a circumstance to excite suspicion. With the cabin’s single available key beyond his reach, Laura di Lucca would be in a position of maximum safety. Blake could not make her absolutely safe. He could not make any of the prisoners absolutely safe, only provide them with a protection against Holtz, and that protection only if he were successful in using the smuggled wrench. But with Jules’s gun in his hands, Laura di Lucca safely locked away, and the other captives under his eye where he could defend them, Holtz would be stalemated.

  After that the man who held the Angel’s wheel would be her master, not her prisoner.

  The minutes dragged. He watched the patent log repeater, the chronometer and the weather with increasing anxiety, tempted more than once to advance the throttles but fearful that any change in the steady drum of the motors would invite Jules’s attention prematurely. The weather was worsening. An overcast promised rain, and a stiff breeze was beginning to whip spray from the wave tops. Freddy and Valentina had disappeared from sight while Holtz was in the pilot-house, but it was imperative that they be on the foredeck when Jules arrived, and free to do more than cling to a stanchion. If the weather continued to worsen, a pitching, spray-swept deck could nullify Blake’s whole scheme.

  He felt both frustration and a shamed relief at the thought that heavy weather could take things out of his hands. His mouth was dry. Waiting was by far the most difficult part.

  The weather held moderately bad. The Angel rolled steadily over the long waves, pitching a little now. The line creeping toward the cross on the chart that was in Blake’s mind lengthened steadily. He found himself mentally checking the yacht’s probable northing against the time that had elapsed since Marian’s departure. The first moment when Jules might be expected to come to the wheel had arrived.

  Marian appeared on the foredeck, alone. She stood looking up at the pilot-house for a long time, the wind molding her dress to her slim figure. She maintained her equilibrium against the roll and swing of the cruiser’s deck with a dancer’s easy balance, yet for all her physical poise she looked oddly uncertain, insecure. Blake had the windscreen-wipers going against the spray that was coming aboard, but even then the glass was too blurred by wind and weather to let him see her expression. He did not understand why she stood there so long; not signaling, not trying to convey a message, only looking up with the wind whipping at her dress. He gestured sharply, imperatively, hoping she could see him and would understand that time was running out. She turned and left the deck.

 
The minutes that elapsed before she reappeared with Freddy and Valentina were long. All three had put on slickers, a development that Blake had not foreseen. The success of the plot depended on Valentina’s ability to catch and hold Jules’s eye, and even her physical charms could not penetrate the sexless, heavy-weather clothing. But she had left her blonde head uncovered, and her identity was clear enough. So was Freddy’s, marked by the sling on his arm. All three stood with their heads together, huddled in a small protective group. Now and then they looked up at the pilot-house.

  Blake shifted the weight of the wrench in his pocket, making sure it would come free easily, and wiped his damp hands on his jacket. His mouth was drier than before, his heart pumping hard. The windscreen-wipers clacked at the blurred glass. The three figures on the foredeck were visible at one moment, obscured at the next by a new sweep of spray. Through the blur he saw the group break, draw quickly apart, and arrange itself in a different pattern. Valentina’s blonde head and Freddy’s sling had paired off. Marian walked away in a conspicuous withdrawal from what appeared to be a too-personal conversation at the same moment that Jules came into the pilot-house, holding the door to keep it from slamming on his heels from the push of the wind behind it.

  The sailor did not wear heavy-weather clothing, but had put on a jersey belonging to one of the crew, with ANGEL in white lettering across the front. Although the sweater was too tight over his wide chest and heavy shoulders, it came down far enough to cover the pistol that bulged his belt.

  With the moment for action at hand, Blake found himself calmly assessing the value of that small handicap to the sailor’s freedom of movement. It would take him a split second longer to bring the pistol into play, and split seconds were what counted. Freddy was already gesticulating at Valentina, pantomiming anger.

  Jules said, ‘We’re changing course. Steer five degrees.’

  He went to the chart table to pick up the instruments lying there.

  Blake thought, still calmly, That’s the oversight. It’s too soon for a relief. He’s not going to take the wheel.

  Otherwise his timing had been perfect. Freddy was working himself up to strike at Valentina’s face. The imminence of the blow was implicit in the way he stood, the threat of his gestures. When the blow fell, Blake had planned that Jules, at the wheel, would be distracted by it long enough for him to strike his own blow. Everything about the attempt was a success except that when the slap did come, ineffectually delivered, Blake alone was there to see it. Jules still bent over the chart table, vulnerable, but at Blake’s back instead of in front of him.

  Blake swore. It was involuntary, a curse at failure. He did not know that the sharp oath and his concentrated attention on what was happening below would bring Jules away from the chart in time to see Freddy’s second, more forceful, slap. This time it sent Valentina reeling away down the slanted deck, to catch her heel and crumple convincingly, helplessly, in the bow. Freddy was still gesticulating angrily at her.

  Jules gave an unintelligible growl. His initial charge took him out of the pilot-house to the bridge wing. From the wing rail he shook his fist at Freddy, roaring, ‘Bougre de salaud, stay there only a minute and I’ll break your other hand off at the wrist! Dirty little –’

  The performance stopped too abruptly. There was a warning in the way the actors turned immediate attention from each other to him, and his interruption of his own shout let him hear the slip of Blake’s rubber soles on the storm-sill of the doorway at his back. He turned while Blake was still coming on.

  Even then the end might have been won with sufficient savagery of attack. But the act of striking without mercy, of bringing a heavy weapon ruthlessly down on another man’s head without care for what it might do to skull and brain and life, was beyond Blake’s capacity. He could not strike to kill, only to stun. Even when Jules had taken the first blow on an uplifted forearm and was pawing the pistol out of his belt, he could not bring himself to smash the wrench into the sailor’s unprotected face. He struck, instead, at the pistol as it came out from under the jersey, felt the jar of metallic contact, saw the gun soar through the air, drop, hit the rail of the lower deck and fall into the sea, then found himself at close grips with the stronger, heavier man.

  They were fairly well-matched for a moment. The first blow had numbed Jules’s forearm and hand. Until feeling came back, he fought to smother Blake with superior weight, dragging at his arms, clutching, pressing in close, locking his chin against Blake’s shoulder to protect his head from a clear swing of the wrench. The silent, grunting struggle without outcome seemed to go on for a long time, a nightmare of straining inaction during which Blake caught brief, photographic glimpses of the three upturned faces watching the fight from the deck below. He thought he saw horror in Marian’s face, but the glimpse was a brief one. Burdened by the wrench that was only a handicap until he broke free, he made the mistake of opposing Jules’s one good arm with his own single effective arm until the chance of pulling free was gone, and Jules had wrestled him into a reversal of their positions. He fought then with his back to the watchers, while the sailor pounded punches into his body with returning strength.

  Without room to use the weapon, Blake dropped it and hammered with both fists to break out of the trap into which he had been forced. He was backed into the small bay formed by the circling rail of the bridge wing, where he could neither retreat nor sidestep. In such a position, agility and speed were of no value. Jules was an alley fighter, a man who had learned rough-and-tumble in waterfront brawls, and he took every advantage of the fact that his thumping blows to the body were made doubly effective by the unyielding railing at his opponent’s back. He wasted only a few punches on Blake’s face, smashing relentlessly instead at ribs and chest and stomach. Blake felt his own blows losing their strength as Jules grew stronger. In a last desperate effort to win freedom of movement before he was finished, he put his heel against a stanchion and thrust himself forcefully away from the encumbering rail at the same moment that Jules landed a hard punch below his breastbone. The doubly augmented blow paralyzed his diaphragm and drained the strength from his muscles. He slid helplessly to the deck, straining to pull air into his lungs, the bitter taste of blood and defeat in his mouth.

  Jules stood over him, panting, his big fists still clenched. He glanced only briefly at the three people on the lower deck. If they had not already betrayed their parts in the plot, the way they had grouped protectively together was revealing. Freddy had taken a step to the fore, standing like a slightly ridiculous champion in front of the two women.

  ‘I’ll take care of you in a minute,’ Jules snarled at him. ‘Don’t run away!’

  He brushed his mouth with the back of his hand, then stooped to pick up the fallen wrench and hook his fingers inside the collar of Blake’s jacket. By that grip he dragged him, still helpless, bumping over the storm-sill into the pilot-house to dump him on the deck in front of the slackly swinging wheel.

  ‘Steer five degrees,’ he grated. ‘I’ll kick your liver loose if you’re not on it when I finish taking care of your playmates.’ Blake’s diaphragm had begun to function. He said weakly, ‘It was my idea. Don’t take it out on them.’

  ‘You were all in on it.’ Jules made an angry, despairing gesture with the wrench. ‘Name of God, what is the matter with you? A single night to go before you’re all turned loose, and you try to knock the pins out from under everything. Is the fat boy’s pocket-money more important than your lives? Do you want to die the way the macaroni died? Holtz will shoot you all in a minute if he finds out about this!’

  ‘He needn’t know.’ Blake felt an unexpected hopefulness at the sailor’s choice of words. ‘If you don’t tell him, there’s no reason for him to find out.’

  ‘How can I keep it quiet? I lost my gun! What do I do to explain that, eh?’ Jules thrust the wrench savagely into his belt and pulled the jersey down to cover its bulge. ‘He’ll shoot me first if I cross him, the rest of you afterwards. Damn
you for a blundering boob, you deserve whatever you get! You all deserve what you get!’

  He yanked Blake to his feet to slam him against the wheel, hard. ‘Steer five degrees - while you can!’

  Blake said urgently, ‘Wait! That offer still stands. Come in with us now, and I’ll give you my own word that Freddy will pay off once we’re free.’

  Almost at the door, Jules hesitated. Blake said, ‘You can have your own hundred thousand dollars. Thirty-five million francs. No one to split with, and no trouble with the law.’

  The sailor came back. For long seconds of suspense he studied Blake’s face before he shook his head, slowly, reluctantly and with finality.

  ‘Maybe you believe it,’ he said. ‘I think you do. Maybe even your boss does, now. But a man with a choice to make doesn’t pay thirty-five million francs just to escape paying thirty-five million francs, and they’d give me to the guillotine because of the gigolo as fast as they would Holtz. No, I’ve got to play it out the way it started. So have you all –’

  He did not finish what he had begun to say. Holtz had come out on the foredeck, pistol in hand, and was motioning peremptorily at the three spray-soaked, slicker-clad people still clustered together under the bridge wing. Suspicion and threat were in the little man’s movements as he ordered them to separate. The group broke and disappeared from sight. Holtz, standing alone on the wet, rolling deck, scowled up at the pilot-house for a moment before he, too, went under cover.

  Jules said heavily, ‘Steer five degrees, Captain. You’re on the last lap.’

  It was Valentina, rather than Marian, who brought Blake’s lunch to the pilot-house, some hours after the fight.

  ‘We did not think you were as hungry for food as you might be for encouragement,’ she explained. ‘Jules has told Holtz nothing of the attack. Holtz stays in the salon with the radio, and Jules does not go near him. It is difficult to understand, but we thought you would want to know.’