Angel's Ransom Read online

‘How can you talk about a pipe when a whole yacht has been pinched under your eyes, dumbhead!’ Cesar raged. ‘Don’t you see why we were sent off to chase the moon? Those two gangsters planned it all!’

  ‘Gangsters!’ Michaud gave a snort that blew out the match with which he was trying to light his pipe. ‘You have gangsters on the brain. What gangsters?’

  ‘The big salaud and the rabbit-faced salaud who were on the jetty! The ones who invented the fake permis! Do you see them there now, or anywhere?’ Cesar shook an angry finger at the deserted jetty. ‘No! Where are they? Aboard the Angel?’

  ‘It is wholly possible. A crew of some kind would be necessary to work ship, even the bums to be picked up at quay-side. And a green hand at the wheel accounts for the sloppy business in the harbor mouth. But as for gangsters - pah!’

  ‘Would the captain turn the wheel over to a green hand even before getting out of the harbor? And why were we hoaxed? Answer me those, grease monkey!’

  Michaud shrugged indifferently.

  ‘I am not clairvoyant. The fact remains that we have been beached, for whatever reason. I, for one, am going to the Commandant du Port and lodge a complaint. Who’s with me?’ As the others hesitated, he added slyly, ‘It will protect the pay checks, lads. It shows that the ship has abandoned us, not we the ship.’

  Cesar spat.

  ‘That for you and your pay checks! I know gangsters when I see them! The Angel was grabbed, and it is our business to see first that the police know about it! Pay-check protection can wait!’

  Cesar was conscious that the rest of the crew were not with him. So was Michaud. The engineer said sourly, ‘Then if you do not mind making a fool of yourself with the flics, take them your ideas while the rest of us go to the Commandant. We will explain —’

  He did not finish. Cesar had turned away and was running hard for the Sûreté Publique. Michaud looked after him for a moment, then shrugged and turned in the other direction. The others followed him.

  It seemed to Blake that a long time passed before he was aware of his surroundings again, although Holtz’s calculated brutality could only have knocked him out for seconds. He became vaguely conscious that his cheek was pressed against rough deck matting, then of pain, then that someone was tugging him with difficulty to a sitting position. He opened his eyes to find himself with his back against a bulk-head, looking out through the open doorway of the pilot-house at a baroque wedding-cake that gradually cleared in his vision and became the casino on the bluff of Monte Carlo gleaming in bright sunshine. The Angel was running smoothly eastwards at cruising speed, angling away from the land, but still only a few hundred meters offshore. Jules stood at the wheel, and Holtz was nowhere in sight.

  Marian said anxiously, ‘Are you all right?’

  She knelt at his side, bracing his body with her own against the rock of the cruiser until his lax muscles took over. The bright red mark of Holtz’s blow was still deepening its color on her cheekbone.

  ‘I’ll survive.’ With an effort, Blake shifted his brace from her to the bulkhead. ‘How about you?’

  ‘My face feels numb, that’s all. He didn’t hurt me much.’ She shuddered uncontrollably. ‘The nasty little animal! I thought he was going to break your back!’

  ‘He almost did. Thanks for intercepting the last one.’

  ‘Don’t be grateful to me! Please!’ Her voice was low and miserable. ‘I’ll burst into tears.’

  Blake flexed his muscles against the pain in his back. It was going away, but he did not want to try to move further for a few minutes.

  He said, ‘Would you mind telling me what this is all about? How did you get mixed up in it?’

  She looked a question at Jules’s broad shoulders. Blake said, ‘He probably doesn’t understand English, but don’t give away any secrets if you’d rather not.’

  ‘It can’t be a secret to him that I’ve been a fool. He -Holtz, I mean - moved into my pension a few days after I did, and he saw me reading the newspaper story about the baroness’s suit for the yacht. We talked about it afterwards. He said that an attachment had been issued, and when I asked him how he knew, he said it was his job to serve it. He showed me a legal paper, and said he needed an English-speaking witness to the service. He offered me 25,000 francs to help him. I - I needed the money - it would get me back to Paris and keep me going until I found a job. Besides —’

  She was ashamed to go on.

  Blake said, ‘Besides, it was a challenge. I know. But I still don’t understand what your part in it was. What was the ankle business for, last night?’

  ‘He knew you were planning to sail, but not when. I was to find out, and arrange some way to get him aboard.’ Her face was suddenly pink. ‘He made you sound like a different kind of a challenge. And he was certain you wouldn’t be suspicious of an American.’

  ‘I see. But why did he have to get aboard - or why did he say he had to get aboard? He could serve a paper on Freddy any place.’

  ‘He had to - he said he had to - serve you both at the same time, you and Freddy, so one of you couldn’t warn the other to take the yacht away. I was to testify in court that you’d been served.’

  ‘Very neat. I can see how you might be taken in.’

  Blake tested his back muscles again. The soreness was only moderate now. He could stand up, if he tried, but there seemed to be no particular point in standing, just then. It was easier to sit against the bulkhead and try to reason the situation out. Action without a plan of some kind had already proved its futility.

  Jules was paying no attention to them. The sailor clearly understood nothing of what they were saying, and cared little that they talked together. It encouraged Marian to gesture cautiously at the open door of the pilot-house and make swimming gestures towards the shore, by then several hundred meters away.

  ‘I can do it,’ she said. ‘I’ve swum farther than that lots of times. I’d need a chance to get out of my clothes first, but if you can think of a way to occupy his attention –’

  ‘You wouldn’t last a minute in the water even if I could. Nobody can swim faster than a thousand horse-power. They’d run you down like a waterbug.’

  ‘But we’ve got to do something! We can’t just sit here and wait to find out what they’re going to do with us!’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long,’ Blake said. ‘Holtz doesn’t strike me as the kind of a man who will waste time.’

  The bridge telephone rang moments later. He got to his feet to take the call, not thinking until Jules, reaching for the phone, growled, ‘Get away!’ The sailor’s end of the conversation was, ‘Yes... ... Yes... ... Yes... ... No... ... Yes... ... Right.’ Instead of hanging the receiver back on its hook, he pulled it loose from the wire with a jerk, and put it in his pocket with the radiophone headset he had appropriated earlier. Afterwards he brought the Angel’s bow around into the wind, cut the motors to let the yacht drift, and motioned the two captives ahead of him out of the pilot-house with the pistol he took from his belt for the first time.

  ‘Down to the salon, and no more horseplay, either of you,’ he warned. ‘It’s strictly business from here on.’

  The Angel lay almost half a mile off Monte Carlo beach. Even at that distance the clarity of the Mediterranean air made figures clearly visible in the waves and beneath the brightly-striped umbrellas blooming on the sand. A white-painted pédalo moved lazily along the shore like a distant swan, and a breeze raised small ripples on the blue water. It was all so sunny and peaceful and familiar that Blake had difficulty in facing the reality that he was a prisoner aboard his own command, with a gun in his back herding him and a girl he hardly knew into the salon to take their places with the other captives already gathered there.

  Freddy’s tastes were apparent in the Angel’s interior furnishings. The salon was decorated like a drawing-room. Its carpeting was thick, its lighting discreetly indirect, its polished walnut paneling flawless. Slatted blinds reduced sun glare at the windows, and
a panel that pretended to be a bookcase stood aside to reveal a heavily stocked bar. Except for a barograph, a gimbaled clock and a ship’s radio, there was nothing about the salon to suggest the sea.

  Holtz stood at the bookcase-bar, idly sliding the panel open and shut. He still held the Walther, but he seemed too preoccupied with his amusement to pay any attention to the group of half-dressed people held under guard at the other end of the salon by Jules’s rabbit-faced companion of the jetty, now armed like Holtz. Freddy, bleary-eyed in a rumpled dressing-gown, seemed only half awake, unable to grasp fully what was going on. Valentina looked cool-eyed and immaculate as ever in a white negligée, Laura di Lucca badly frightened in a swirl of pink lace. Bruno was a scowling, brown-skinned, bare-chested, handsomely muscled Roman gladiator, wearing only pajama trousers.

  Holtz continued to ignore the captives until Blake and Marian had joined the group. He looked up then, aiming the Walther at Blake as if it were a pointer.

  ‘Now that we are all together, I’ll take your keys, Captain. You carry them on a ring in your right-hand coat pocket. Throw them to Jules.’

  Blake did as he was told. Jules disappeared down the companionway leading to the cabins.

  ‘I am glad to see that your lesson in cooperation has taken effect.’ Holtz grinned wolfishly. ‘Who else holds ship’s keys?’

  ‘Farr. The steward.’

  ‘The steward can be ignored, since he is not with us. Mr Farr’s keys will be taken care of. You are sure there are no others aboard?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Freddy said dully, ‘Sam. What’s it all about? Who are these guys?’

  The pistol swung toward him, not in threat but to indicate the direction of Holtz’s attention. He said, ‘I shall ask the questions, Mr Farr,’ and brought the pistol again to bear on Blake. ‘It will be bad for everybody, not only yourself, if you lie to me, Captain. Do you understand me?’

  ‘I understand you. There are no more keys.’

  ‘Good.’ The Walther’s indicating barrel moved on to Valentina. ‘Who are you? What is your name?’

  Valentina’s wise honey-colored eyes studied the little gunman briefly. What she saw made her answer, without fright but equally without challenge of his right to ask the question, ‘Valentina Walowska.’

  ‘Polish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Husband? Family?’

  ‘I have none.’

  ‘Protector?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you live?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Sam,’ Freddy said again, pleadingly. ‘Do something. Throw these hooligans overboard. Call the cops.’

  ‘The captain has already made the attempt, at some cost to himself. Please be quiet.’ Holtz’s menacing pointer moved on, to Bruno. ‘Who are you?’

  With infinite and deliberate insolence, Bruno said, ‘None of your business.’

  The pointing pistol held steady, leveled at his brown chest. Holtz’s expression did not change. Blake was aware that Marian, standing at his side, had stopped breathing. In the dead silence, broken only by the faint putter of the yacht’s idling motors, Laura di Lucca said hurriedly, ‘Please. I’ll answer your questions. He’s my husband, Bruno di Lucca. I am Laura di Lucca.’

  Holtz made her a small ironic bow.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I should have recognized the head of the family immediately.’

  Bruno’s handsome face darkened. He took a quick for-ward step, then froze in the face of the leveled pistol. He held the advance for a moment before he slowly, grudgingly stepped back to his place. There was no fear in his retreat, only an acceptance of superior force.

  Holtz said calmly, ‘Roche, if he moves out of his place again, shoot him.’

  The rabbit-faced man nodded. Blake suspected that he was too tightly strung to trust his voice. Holtz, on the other hand, showed none of the tautness of nerves that had marked his actions in the pilot-house. He seemed wholly at ease.

  He pointed the pistol barrel to indicate that he was speaking to Laura di Lucca. ‘Now. You’re American?’

  ‘By birth. I took my husband’s nationality. He’s Italian.’ ‘Family?’

  ‘He has family in Rome. I have only - him.’

  ‘How do you live? Whose money supports you?’

  ‘I have a trust fund. My first husband left it to me when he died.’

  ‘So your second husband could spend it.’

  A faint color came to Laura di Lucca’s cheeks. She said nothing. Holtz made an impatient gesture that dismissed her and Bruno.

  ‘Never mind. Your little affairs are of no importance.’ The pointer came to bear on Freddy at last. ‘Mr Farr, you look tired. Please sit down. Over here - at the writing-desk.’

  Now it comes, Blake thought.

  Freddy did not move until Roche took him by the arm, swinging him loosely into the chair that Holtz held with mock consideration. Holtz took a sheet of stationery from a desk pigeonhole and looked at its letterhead.

  ‘ “Aboard the Angel ”,’ he read. ‘A good beginning.’ He put the paper on the desk in front of Freddy. ‘Add the date, please. Then write as I tell you.’

  Freddy reached obediently, mechanically, for a pen. He wrote like a man in a trance, his eyes half closed. To the others who watched, there was an indecency in the solicitous way Holtz took care to speak slowly enough for Freddy’s clumsy fingers to follow.

  Holtz said, ‘The letter is to Alain Krug, Banque Suisse, Geneva. It will read, “Dear Alain. The bearer of this note, Louis Roche, is my partner in a project to break the bank at Monte Carlo. Before you start making noises like a banker, I will remind you that it is my own money I am playing with and that the house has been shoving Fun-loving Fred around long enough. Louis has a system that is unbeatable if enough cash is put into it. That is all you have to know about it except that I am - I mean you are - putting up the cash.” New paragraph.’

  Holtz paused. Freddy’s pen scratched faintly, steadily. The Angel, now broached to the wind, had a more pronounced rock than before. Blake shifted his feet to hold his balance.

  He was beginning to feel a new and sobering respect for Holtz. The letter the little man was dictating was the kind of letter Freddy wrote, even to its typically peremptory refusal to be questioned. Other things - Holtz’s certainty about Blake’s keys, his knowledge that Freddy used the Swiss banker’s first name, the very fact that he knew of the existence of the Swiss account - showed careful preparation for the venture that was revealing its nature as Freddy wrote. Blake again had the feeling that Holtz was moving through a well-rehearsed performance in which he would make no mistakes.

  Freddy’s pen stopped. He sat with his shoulders hunched, waiting.

  Holtz said, ‘The new paragraph. “Please satisfy yourself, as if I didn’t know you will, that Louis is not a crook or a phony by double checking his passport, identification papers, and birthmarks, then cash the check I have given him and start him back this way. If you feel like sending somebody along with him to see that the money gets here safely, that is up to you, but keep your nose out of the system or I will take my business somewhere else.” ’

  Freddy’s pen scratched and stopped.

  Holtz said, ‘Another paragraph. “As you may have seen by the yellow press, one of my almosts is trying to grab the Angel. I am going to have to disappear with it for a while, but do not worry about Louis and the money after he gets here. We have made our own arrangements.” Add “All the best” and sign it “Freddy”.’

  The import of what he was writing had begun to penetrate Freddy’s blurred mind before he finished the letter. When Holtz slipped it out from under his hand, to read it over with care, he said heavily, ‘It’s a cute project, but you’re wasting your time. I haven’t got enough money in the Banque Suisse to keep me warm. Everything I own that Monte Carlo hasn’t got is in the United States.’

  ‘You have more than enough money in the Banque Suisse for my purposes.’ Holtz did not
interrupt his reading. ‘You have been investigated very carefully, Mr Farr. Do not doubt for a moment that I know what I am doing.’

  He folded the note, slipped it in an envelope, and gave the envelope to Roche. Roche took it without concealing his reluctance to do so.

  ‘It ought to be in French,’ he grumbled. ‘A man should be able to read what is said about him in a letter he delivers himself. I could be sticking my head in a trap.’

  ‘I have read it.’ Holtz paid no particular attention to the complaint. He took another, larger envelope from his pocket. ‘It says what I told you it would say.’

  ‘I still think it ought to be in French. What happens if the Swiss sausage begins asking questions?’

  ‘The questions are all answered in advance, and Farr could no more write intelligible French than you can write Japanese. Everybody knows it but you. Put the letter in your pocket and stop trying to think for yourself.’

  ‘I still say — ’

  Roche faltered into silence. He had at last gained Holtz’s full attention.

  Facing one another, each with a pistol in his hand, the two men were as dissimilar as a rabbit facing a ferret poised to spring at its throat. There was a chill ferocity about Holtz, a promise as cruel as that of a pointed gun. He did not speak or change expression, yet in the few brief seconds during which he seemed to wait, almost eagerly, for Roche to go on before Jules came up out of the cabin companionway to interrupt the tableau, the rabbit-faced man waited visibly. His relief at Jules’s arrival was painfully apparent.

  Jules carried an armload of loot: handbags, wallets, jewelry, a shotgun.

  ‘No other guns,’ he reported. ‘Nothing sharp bigger than a razor-blade. The old dame’s rocks could be worth something, but nobody is carrying much cash. Moneybags’ pockets are emptier than mine.’

  ‘He lost heavily at the casino last night.’ Holtz was indifferent to Roche again. ‘so much the better. It will be in the newspapers, and he will logically need more dollars. We will get them for him.’

  The envelope he had taken from his pocket contained several pale-blue blank checks and a photostat of another. He put one of the blanks and the photostat on the desk in front of Freddy. By accident or design, the muzzle of the Walther touched the back of Freddy’s head as he did so.