Angel's Ransom Read online

  ‘You managed to be pretty secretive about it,’ George said suspiciously. ‘I thought we agreed to keep each other informed all the way.’

  ‘You are now informed.’ Neyrolle’s answer was without inflection.

  He lit a Gauloise and motioned to Cesar to resume his explanation, studying the curl of smoke that rose from his cigarette. The steward had already been pumped dry of information, but questioning him helped pass the dragging minutes. It also took Neyrolle’s mind, at intervals, off the nagging question for which he could find no answer: Why was George Saunders so insistent on risking his life, unnecessarily, to be one of the first aboard the Angel if Marian Ellis was no more to him than the casual acquaintance he had lied to make her seem? And why had he lied?

  Neyrolle frowned thoughtfully at the curl of smoke.

  Jules grew increasingly restless as the hours passed. Holtz, after giving his orders, had returned to his vigil with the radio in the salon, but the sailor was in and out of the pilot-house every few minutes until midnight. From then on he stayed, taking fixes with the direction-finder at shorter and shorter intervals to order small corrections of course, then coming to stand at Blake’s elbow and stare intently into the rainy dark.

  It was on one such occasion that a steamer broke out of the murk on their port bow to bring the Angel’s captives within a hair’s breadth of destruction and, in the same moment, escape. Because of Holtz’s command the cruiser was going too fast for the visibility, even at reduced speed, and the steamer’s course was dead across their own. Blake’s reflexes acted automatically to reverse the motors, but he had an instant in which to think before he put the wheel over. Instinct and training told him to steer to port, opposing the cruiser’s forward way to the way of the larger ship. His mind saw the opportunity of the other course be-fore the training took over. Without hesitation he put the Angel hard over to starboard, feeling her check and squat under the powerful thrust of the reversed motors, but not soon enough or strongly enough to prevent the crash he was taking her into, bow on at first, then broadside as she came about, finally quartering to the larger vessel as he continued to hold the rudder over, the motors now pulling her into collision rather than away from it and only split seconds remaining before they would strike, with the long row of lighted portholes looming over them ever closer and more promising of rescue, above those the green glow of the steamer’s starboard running light, from somewhere beyond that the startled shout of an invisible look-out and the sharp clang of a warning bell. They were only inches from the impact when Jules, in the last possible moment before it could not have happened, reached around Blake’s body for the throttles and stopped the Angel dead in the water with a burst of forward power on the twin screws that left her without stern way or forward way, her wheel slack and unresponsive in Blake’s hands. The iron bulge of the steamer’s hull nudged the yacht gently as it slid on by, and then they were rocking and bouncing in her wake. The murk closed in to hide the steamer once again.

  Blake could smell Jules’s sweat, or his own. The sailor growled, ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one, Captain. Let’s call it bad seamanship. You were lucky you had me standing by.’

  ‘I was lucky,’ Blake said. ‘It was bad seamanship.’

  ‘I’ll take the wheel, just in case it happens again. If Holtz comes up to ask questions, keep your mouth shut. Let me do the talking.’

  Holtz did not come to investigate in the minutes that passed before the chronometer over the chart table said one o’clock. On the hour, Jules shrugged out of his slicker and sou’wester and handed them over to Blake.

  ‘Do your piece now, Captain,’ he said earnestly. ‘Do it right, and you’ll see the last of us in a few hours. Make a mistake, you’re dead. Keep the hat pulled down over your eyes.’ Without mockery, he added, ‘Good luck,’ as Blake left the pilot-house.

  That’s what we need now, Blake thought. Lots of it.

  Going down the ladder to the main deck he caught a whiff of tobacco-smoke, then the gleam of a cigarette coal reflected on wet oilskin in the shelter made by the bridge wing. He said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Us,’ Freddy’s voice answered. It was more tremulous than usual. ‘Thought we were going to have to swim for it back there. How much longer to go, Sam?’

  ‘We’re about an hour from port. A wreck could have got us into the water and picked up while we still had the chance. I’ve got orders to lock you in your cabins.’

  Valentina’s cool voice said, ‘Then we have given up?’

  ‘At this point, we don’t have any choice of action. It’s either go to your cabins or get shot. Where is Holtz?’

  ‘In the salon.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I can’t swear to it. Is it important?’

  ‘It might be.’

  Blake went aft, his head bent into the blast of wind and rain.

  Holtz sat by the radio. The gun that rested in his lap rose to point its warning when Blake opened the door. Without entering the salon, he said, ‘Who comes first?’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Holtz was bent in concentration over the radio. A tinny voice speaking rapid French was just audible over the sounds of the storm. ‘A word of warning, Captain. I would have shot you first had we rammed that steamer, and not asked whether it was by accident or design. Close the door.’

  Blake closed the door and went back to the foredeck.

  ‘I couldn’t take the chance of being overheard,’ he said. ‘Freddy, is there any possibility that your signature trick might not have worked? Could the check have been paid after all?’

  ‘I don’t see how. The gimmick was the position of the dot. Putting it ahead of the “i” would have made the check good; putting it behind gave the tip-off. There’s no way of misreading it.’

  ‘Could you have been confused yourself - moved it the wrong way?’ Blake stood where he could watch the rain-whipped deck. ‘You were pretty fuzzy.’

  ‘Not that fuzzy. What are you driving at?’

  ‘I’ve had two chances to listen to Grasse, and Holtz has had the radio going off and on for two days, without either of us hearing even a hint that a search is on for the Angel. You’re too much in the headlines not to have made a news broadcast if a search has been begun. That you’re not has to mean one of three things. Roche never presented the check, or it was paid without question, or he’s been gathered in and the arrest kept quiet.’

  ‘The second one is out,’ Freddy said reluctantly. ‘I’d like to believe it might be possible, but it’s just out. It couldn’t have happened.’

  Valentina said, ‘For the first, Roche’s fear of his master might not be enough to keep his courage from failing at the last minute, but it would certainly keep him from returning to Monaco without having made the attempt. If he has not presented the check, he will not keep the rendezvous.’

  ‘No more than he will if he did present the check, according to Freddy,’ Blake said. ‘so Holtz isn’t going to get his signal either way. But in one case we can hope that the police are in charge and realize the spot we’re in, which is good. In the other –’

  He hesitated, searching for words to cushion the brutality of the alternative.

  Freddy said, ‘In the other, Holtz either starts over again from scratch, which will be bad for me, or he writes the whole thing off as a failure, which will be bad for all of us. Isn’t that about it?’

  ‘There’s still the possibility that he may get careless before the showdown. I haven’t given up hoping for a chance to try for the gun.’

  ‘As Bruno did,’ Valentina said. ‘But we all do what we have to do, in the end, and no one is to blame. Shall we go to our cabins now?’

  ‘I have to take you one at a time. Holtz’s orders.’

  There was a brief, constrained pause before Freddy spoke up, in what failed miserably to be the casual tone he hoped for. ‘Women and children first doesn’t seem to apply on this cruise. Lead the way, Sam. ’Bye doll. Where’s your face?’


  Oilskins rustled in the shadow.

  Blake moved away, turning his back to give them a moment of privacy. The embrace was a brief one, but it seemed to buoy Freddy’s spirit. He led the way aft himself, and did not hesitate at the door of the salon.

  Holtz was beginning to show impatience. He said, ‘I meant that you might suit yourself in the order of their bringing, Captain, not in the time you might take to do it. If you expect to win something by delaying me, it will not be what you hope for. Leave the key in the lock when you have used it.’

  He tossed a single key that he took from the top of the radio. The muzzle of the Walther followed Blake’s movement as he took a step forward to retrieve the key from where it fell short, and continued to track the two men warily until they had disappeared down the companion-way. Holtz did not leave the security of his isolated position by the radio.

  The lights were out in Freddy’s cabin. Neither overhead reflector nor reading-lamp responded to the switch. Blake felt for the bulbs and found them gone.

  ‘Holtz will have taken them to prevent signaling,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to sweat it out in the dark, Fred.’

  In the dim illumination of the cabin passageway Freddy’s eyes were frightened. But he said, ‘At least I won’t have all those little green men locked in with me this time,’ and tried to laugh. ‘Man to man, Sam. We’re alone now. Nobody listening. What do you think of our chances?’

  ‘They’re better than even that the check was presented. If it was, the police are looking for you. You can be certain of that. They may be the ones to let you out of here after I lock you in, but barricade yourself, anyway. Wedge the door shut with the slats of the blinds, and hope. That’s about your best effort.’

  Freddy hesitated only momentarily to step into the black cell of the cabin. He said, ‘I’ve got one good set of fingers to cross. They’ll be crossed,’ and turned to extend his good hand. ‘Look out for yourself, Sam.’

  The finality of a handshake seemed almost like an acknowledgement of defeat. But this Freddy Farr was not the same man who had offered his employee a bribe to risk his life in taking a gun from Roche. Blake gripped the outstretched hand, released it, and shut the door between them.

  The action of turning the key in the lock reminded him of Laura di Lucca. The key to her cabin was in his pocket. He tried her door, made sure it was locked, and could think of nothing more to do to protect her. It was useless to tell her to barricade herself, or even to hope to communicate with the mind behind that blank wall of withdrawal. He had no intention of surrendering the key that kept her safe until a demand for it was made, and when Holtz, as careful to keep his distance as ever, silently jerked the pistol barrel in a peremptory order to hurry in bringing the next captive, he began to hope that his possession of the key had been forgotten. For all Holtz’s boast, he had miscalculated before then. And the fact of even the most insignificant oversight was encouraging. The Angel’s prisoners needed all the encouragement they could find.

  Valentina waited where he and Freddy had left her. Before taking her back over the rainswept deck, he stopped for a moment to explain how the metal strips of the slatted blinds of her cabin portholes could be doubled into wedges that would hold the door against assault for a time. He did not add that it could be no more than a stop-gap safeguard if a determined effort were made to break the door down, but he doubted that she had any illusions about her safety. In the salon she watched with her usual cool detachment of manner as Holtz tossed a key, and showed no particular emotion upon learning that her solitary confinement would be in the dark. Her composure did not crack until she stood inside the cabin and he was about to close the door. She put out her hand to stop him.

  ‘Would it surprise you to know that I am afraid?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve hidden it well, so far.’

  ‘That was for Freddy.’ The appeal in her husky voice could not be hidden. ‘For poor weak Freddy I am strong, and could lend him strength because he is afraid to be alone in the dark. But where do we strong ones turn, when we, too, are afraid of loneliness and darkness?’

  Once again he was conscious of her perfume, her nearness, her femininity. There was no coquetry of invitation about her this time, only need. He bent his head to touch her lips with his own, and felt rather than heard her say something soundless and soft and meaningless against his mouth. Then she had closed the cabin door between them, and there was nothing left but to turn the key in the lock and leave it there, according to orders.

  The key had already disappeared from Freddy’s lock. Holtz was taking no chances of an assault by superior numbers in the narrow confines below deck. But he still made no demand for the key to Laura di Lucca’s cabin when Blake came up the companionway, only repeated the peremptory jerk of the pistol that was the order to hurry. Marian alone remained to be brought to her imprisonment.

  She was not in the forward part of the cruiser. Blake tried the galley first, then the crew’s quarters in the forepeak. A more remote physical withdrawal than to the forepeak was impossible aboard the yacht, and he suspected that the hurt he had given her would have driven her into solitude. From the crew’s quarters he worked his way aft, methodically exploring hiding places. He did not begin to worry until he had reached the blank obstruction of the engine-room bulkhead, and had to return to the main deck to continue the search.

  The engine-room required only a glance. It offered no place of concealment. Neither did the rainy foredeck. The canopied afterdeck was unoccupied, and there were no other sheltered areas on the storm-swept cruiser but the pilot-house, the salon and the cabins below. His growing uneasiness drove him to face Holtz and ask the inevitable question.

  ‘I don’t know where she is, but find her quickly.’ Holtz’s eyes narrowed. ‘If this is a device of some kind, remember the warning I gave you. I will hunt for her myself only to shoot.’ He pointed inexorably at the salon clock. ‘You have five minutes, Captain. Produce her.’

  A futile further search for two of the minutes almost convinced Blake that she had gone overboard. On the edge of desperation, dreading to go to the pilot-house and exhaust his last hope, he found her soaked and shivering on the boat-deck. She was poorly concealed by the bulk of the shrouded power launch, but in the windy wet dark he might have passed her by if she had not made a sudden rush at him as he came up the ladder from below. The impact of her body almost threw them both back headlong. They were saved by his greater weight and the chance that he was looking in the right direction when she came at him. He caught her, pulling her toward him, feeling her shake and tremble with something more than cold, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arms while she sobbed despairingly into his jacket, ‘I thought it was Holtz! I planned for it to be Holtz! You said he always comes this way! You said –’

  ‘Quiet!’

  He pressed her face deeper into his jacket, muffling her. Her head was uncovered, her hair soaking under his hand. He could not guess how long she had been waiting by her desperate trap, but it had to have been more than a few minutes. Hours, perhaps. Hours had passed since his too-hasty words had driven her from the pilot-house. He could not afford to speak unwisely to her again.

  He said, ‘Listen to me. I have to lock you in one of the cabins. For your own safety.’

  ‘No! No!’ She tried to push away. ‘I’ve got to stay here! He’ll come looking for me! I know he will! I’ve got to be ready for him when he comes! Let me go!’

  ‘He’ll come looking for you in three minutes, ready to shoot, if I don’t take you below. Be sensible!’

  ‘I am being sensible!’ She was on the verge of hysteria.! ‘I’m being sensible for the first time! It’s my fault it all happened, just as you said it was! I have to pay for it! Let me go!’

  ‘I was wrong to say it. It wasn’t true. For God’s sake –’

  ‘It was true! It is true!’ She strained frantically against his chest. ‘Everything that has happened is my fault. Don’t you see, I’
ve got to get rid of him? I made him! He’s my own monster, my nightmare! Let me go!’

  ‘Blake!’ Holtz’s chill warning carried clearly from the lower deck. ‘Wherever you are! You have two minutes left!’

  ‘Please, oh, please, let me go! I’ve got to hide! I’ve got to be ready for him when he comes up the ladder! You told me to save my fight for him! Let me go.’

  Her writhing struggles increased until he was hard put to hold her. He shifted his grip quickly to her wrists, then pinned her arms behind her. Holding her that way, close against him, he said, ‘I let you go once when I shouldn’t have. I’m not going to do it again. Either you go down that ladder with me or we wait here for Holtz to come up it shooting! Make the choice for both of us!’

  ‘It needn’t be both of us! You don’t have to die! Let him shoot me! I’ll make him turn his back to you! Then you can take his gun and I’ll have paid for everything - Bruno, and that poor miserable woman, and Freddy, and the beatings they’ve given you –’

  She was going to be screaming before she finished. He had only one way to stop her mouth. Taking it, he thought of Valentina’s words, of loneliness, and darkness, and strength that gave to lesser strength. He had not much strength to spare, but something passed from his lips to Marian’s that restrained and then stopped her struggles, so that when at long last he put his cheek comfortingly against her rain-wet cheek she was quiet in his arms, sobbing still but unresisting, and he had won before Holtz’s raging, ominous shout came again: ‘Blake! Damn you! One more minute!’