Angel's Ransom Page 8

  It was seven o’clock in the morning when he switched on the radiophone. Radio Grasse began its daily schedule at 6.30, but the regular morning weather report and news of interest to mariners was broadcast at 7.33, when an announcement was also made of the list of vessels invited to open communications and receive messages that had been filed with the transmitting station. The Angel had been at sea eighteen hours. Time enough for an inquiry to have begun, if it had begun.

  He passed the next twenty minutes trying to find a news broadcast in a language he could understand. There was a possibility that a message for the Angel could come through some other agency than Radio Grasse, but to explore the shortwave channels he had to leave the wheel unattended, and the stiff morning breeze had put up a sea that pushed the Angel’s bearing off as fast as he corrected it. He was listening to a spate of rapid Italian from a Sardinian station when Jules thrust open the door of the pilot-house to scowl at him.

  ‘You’re leaving a wake like a crooked stick,’ he said. ‘What are you doing? What have you got that thing on for?’

  ‘Weather forecast. In ten minutes.’

  ‘Get away from it!’

  Jules followed the order, when Blake did not immediately obey, by reaching for the fat cable that was the radiophone’s power artery. At his sharp tug there was a single crackling flash, an acrid odor of burned insulation, and silence. To make certain that the radiophone remained dead, the sailor took a knife from his pocket and sawed the cable off at the point it entered the cabinet.

  ‘I’ll give you all the weather forecasts you need,’ he growled. ‘You stick to doing what you’re told to do, Captain. Right now you take half an hour off to go look at those engines. They’re running hot, and God help you all if they break down!’

  ‘I have asked Radio Grasse to request communication with the yacht,’ Neyrolle said. ‘The message went out with the morning weather forecast and will go out regularly at two-hour intervals. There is no compulsion on the Angel to be listening for a call, and from what we know of Farr’s attitude toward authority it is wholly possible that he will not choose to respond even if the message reaches him. I can only hope that he wishes to.’

  ‘And is able to,’ George said.

  ‘There is that to consider,’ Neyrolle agreed. He looked tired and worried. ‘Peste, if only we knew something.’

  ‘Is anything else news since yesterday?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no.’

  ‘What about the writ of attachment?’

  ‘The answers are negative, so far. We have not found that it was issued, and we have not proved that it was not issued. I expect to hear by the end of the day.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It depends on what we learn. If an attachment exists, then it would seem quite reasonable that the Angel escaped its service, as the engineer has suggested. If no attachment exists, I shall’ - Neyrolle sighed heavily - ‘continue to investigate.’

  ‘Why don’t you put the International Police on it? Or the American Sixth Fleet? The Navy is spread all over the Mediterranean. It could find the Angel in hours.’

  ‘I shall not hesitate to ask for help from both organizations when I am reasonably sure that help is needed.’

  The rebuke was plain. George flushed. Before he could fire back, the sous-chef went on, ‘At the moment, I need a different kind of assistance.’

  ‘What kind is that?’

  Neyrolle shook a Gauloise out of a crumpled pack on his desk, offered one to George, and lit his own when the reporter declined.

  ‘Someone to talk further with the steward and the engineer. I suspect that more facts can be had from them by proper questioning, but unfortunately they are both anti-police, the steward stubbornly so because he knows I am skeptical of his story. I doubt that I would learn more, directly, than either of them has told already. On the other hand, someone not connected with the police, a man with a legitimate interest in the Angel as news, who could perhaps buy a drink, join in cursing the stupidity of the flics and, with what he already knows about the ways of Freddy Farr, interpret other information intelligently - you follow me?’

  ‘I follow you. You need me, so you’re talking soft. Quite a change from yesterday.’

  George made no attempt to keep the note of triumph out of his voice. Neyrolle spread his hands in a Gallic gesture of helplessness, and did not let the other man see his eyes.

  ‘I need you,’ he agreed. ‘My hands are tied unless I am given something to go on. I do not even know that a crime has been committed. Without that knowledge, I can neither move forward nor stand still.’

  ‘I’ll make you a deal. You keep me posted on what you know, I’ll bring you whatever I can find out, and I get the story, whatever it may be, exclusively.’

  ‘I concede that your help could be of value to me. But I can hardly be expected to pledge that I will say nothing at all to any other reporter if I am questioned. I will guarantee you preferential rights, not an exclusive story.’

  George shook his head stubbornly.

  ‘That’s not enough. If I’m going to work for you, I’ve got to have an assurance that it will pay dividends. My time is all I’ve got to sell.’

  Neyrolle hesitated for another moment, then shrugged. ‘Very well. I am in no position to bargain.’ He was, if George had known him better, altogether too humble. ‘The engineer can be reached through the Commandant du Port, on the Quai des États Unis. The steward –’ he went through the papers on his desk until he found the address he was looking for ‘ - at La Rascasse. It is a small bar and cafe at the foot of the Quai du Commerce. If he is not there they will take a message, but please do not waste any time. You understand my position.’

  ‘Better than you think,’ George said.

  Neyrolle lit another Gauloise and smoked thoughtfully for some minutes after the reporter left his office. He had satisfied himself that George was not a gambler, in any sense. His interest could not be won with the probability of an exclusive story, only a guarantee of it. It made the puzzle of the article on Freddy Farr written for a doubtful return more than ever puzzling.

  He called his clerk and made inquiries about the dossier on Saunders, George. The clerk reported nothing new. Inquiries were still in process.

  George tried La Rascasse first because it was closer than the office of the Port Commandant. He had good luck. A waiter pointed Cesar out, alone on the terrace. The steward had a pastis in front of him and was in the process of getting drunk, from the number of saucers on the table to mark the drinks he had already taken that morning. George identified himself, ordered a coffee and another pastis, and mentioned Sûreté Publique.

  No more was necessary. Cesar was ripe for an attentive and not too skeptical audience.

  ‘It is easy to see how a bonehead like Michaud can fail to see the truth when it sticks him in the eye,’ he said sourly. ‘But when a man whose business it is to catch crooks refuses to accept the fact of a gangsterism because we do not have gangsterisms in Monaco –’ He shrugged, finished his drink, and began on the new one George had ordered. ‘Ah, well. Your health, monsieur. And frustration to all flics.’

  ‘Tell me what happened yesterday morning, Cesar. From the beginning.’

  ‘I have already told all there was to tell.’ Cesar made a face. ‘M. Neyrolle has it, in writing.’

  ‘I’m not the flics, and I want to hear it over again. Go ahead. Talk.’

  ‘Well –’

  George was a good listener. He closed his eyes and let Cesar ramble, interrupting now and then only to take him back over a detail that was not clear. Cesar had had just enough drink to stimulate his memory and, to the same extent, his imagination.

  ‘ - snappy about it when I tried to tell him the permis was a blind to get us ashore,’ he said at one point in the narrative.

  ‘Of course he’d had this dame aboard most of the night, so he couldn’t have got much sleep, and he was in a hurry –’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ George sat
up straight. ‘What dame? You’re talking about Blake now, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He had a girl aboard during the night?’

  ‘A female, anyway. I’d turned in. I didn’t see her.’

  ‘How do you know she was there, then?’

  Cesar explained about the handbag. George said, ‘ Couldn’t it have been one of Freddy’s girls, thinking he was aboard?’

  ‘Maybe. But Freddy’s girls generally own something flossier in the way of handbags, and anyway he doesn’t go for innocents. Or maybe they don’t go for him.’

  ‘How do you know she was an innocent?’

  ‘Why, the stuff that was in her purse. You can always tell. A femme du monde, now, she carries a certain set of junk, a schoolgirl something else. This one was in between. Not Freddy’s type at all.’

  ‘Was Blake - did he often have women aboard?’

  ‘Never that I know of. The dames were always Freddy’s dames. Of course it’s hard to tell what the captain did when he was ashore, but he didn’t spend much time ashore. The Angel is his girl.’

  George began to feel the thrill of discovery. He questioned Cesar at length without learning more about the mysterious midnight visitor, but he had enough to take to Neyrolle. The rest was up to the sous-chef’s organization, which, as George knew, was highly efficient at routine investigations. All they needed, he thought - and jeered inwardly as he hurried back to the Sûreté Publique - was the kind of a lead a good news-hawk could give them. He was feeling pleased with himself.

  One of the motors was running hot, as Jules had said, but only one. An oil feed line was plugged. It took Blake barely five minutes to clear the block. He used another twenty minutes to check temperatures and pressures, assuring himself that nothing else in the engine-room required immediate attention. He was grateful that Michaud’s superb care of the Angel’s motors made trouble improbable.

  But he had other cares besides the motors. Climbing the engine-room ladder after he had finished below, he went over in his mind the list of duties of the crew for which he was now sole substitute. Deck, machinery, deckhouse, cabins, galley –

  He remembered the stove that was not working, and went forward.

  Marian and Freddy were together in the galley. Marian had managed to get a coffee percolator functioning, and Freddy was drinking black coffee in quantity. From the signs - Marian’s white face and tight lips, Freddy’s black scowl - he had had something further to say about her part in the kidnapping. But the subject had been exhausted before Blake got there, and it was not reopened after his arrival. Marian handed him a cup of coffee without a word.

  Freddy looked like death; baggy-eyed, twitchy and grey. His broken finger pained him, and it was obvious that he had not taken his clothes off during the night.

  Blake said, ‘Did you sleep at all?’

  ‘How do you sleep when you can’t sit still? Even when you take the cure, they let you taper off. This way is slow death.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the bar business. It had to be done. Sweat it out for another two days and you can stay drunk for a week afterwards.’

  ‘Sure.’ Freddy looked into his coffee cup. ‘sure. If he lets us go.’

  ‘He’ll have got everything out of you he can hope for. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t let us go.’

  ‘Sure,’ Freddy said again. ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t leave the bar open, either. He just likes it closed.’

  The cup made a sharp rattling noise against his teeth when he lifted it to drink. He took his injured hand out of its sling to hold the cup clumsily with both hands.

  Blake said, ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the salon, the last time I looked. He’s taken it over.’

  ‘Any chance of your getting to use the radio when he isn’t around?’

  ‘For what?’

  Blake touched the button that controlled the galley ventilation. When the soft roar of the blowers came on to muffle their conversation - he had not forgotten the eaves-dropping of the night before - he said, ‘I’d like to know if there is anything on the air about us. Jules wrecked the radiophone.’

  ‘I don’t see what good it will do us to know even if there is.’ Freddy took another jittery mouthful of coffee. ‘Sam, listen. Forget about the radio. We’ve got to talk about something that’s more important.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I –’

  Freddy looked sideways at Marian. She said, ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘What I want you to do is jump overboard,’ he answered viciously. ‘I don’t expect that you will. I -I was just wondering - Sam - if we could wreck the motors, say –’

  ‘Stop wondering. We want to get back to Monaco alive. The Angel is the only thing that will take us there. It will all be over in two days, Freddy.’

  ‘But you don’t know - oh, God, I can’t think!’ Freddy put a shaking hand to his forehead. ‘I’m going nuts. If I don’t get a drink of some kind, I’ll jump overboard myself. I can’t stand it!’

  It was impossible not to be sorry for him. His suffering was too real. Blake said reluctantly, ‘All right. There’s a bottle of bay rum in my cabin. It may make you sick, but it’s drinkable.’

  Freddy put the cup down with a crash. ‘Where in your cabin?’

  ‘With my shaving gear. Keep out of Holtz’s way afterward.’

  ‘I will. Thanks, Sam. Thanks! I - thanks.’

  He was gone.

  Marian said, ‘Aren’t you afraid that Holtz will punish you for insubordination, Captain?’

  Blake had opened the shut-off valve of the stove. He made an excuse of testing each burner so he could choose his words before he answered.

  ‘You’re still having trouble facing realities, aren’t you? I don’t mind that you think I’m a coward. What is dangerous is that you don’t seem to understand how important it is that we all be cowardly. We’re excess baggage as far as Holtz is concerned. We’ve got to cringe, show him we’re helpless against him, so he can lord it over us and enjoy the fact of our existence. The minute he thinks we’re a danger to him, we’re finished. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘You were dangerous to him when you tried to wreck us. You survived without cringing.’

  ‘He needed me, for one thing, or thought he did. He doesn’t now. He hasn’t needed anyone else for a minute, except you and Freddy, and he stopped needing you the minute you brought him aboard. I don’t think you realize even now how close you came to being shot, when you were going to scream for help back there in the harbor.’

  She did not answer. The stubborn opposition in her face remained.

  He said, ‘Bruno’s scheme is as ridiculous as it is dangerous. He doesn’t know enough to be afraid of Holtz. I do. You’d better try to learn.’

  ‘I’d rather spend my time thinking of a way to beat him.’ The sheer mulishness of her attitude, his frustrating inability to make an impression by reasoning with her, angered him suddenly beyond control. In the small confines of the galley she was within his arm’s reach. He took her by the shoulders and shook her like a doll, until her teeth clicked and her hair fell into her eyes and her weight was more in his hands than on her own feet.

  ‘You’re not accepting challenges just for yourself now,’ he said bitterly. ‘Get it through your head! We’re all in this together! If you want to die, do what Freddy told you to do. Jump overboard! But don’t try to take the rest of us with you!’

  She swayed dizzily against him, her eyes closed. His anger faded as quickly as it had come. Her shoulders were soft under his gripping fingers, fragile, and she did not struggle against what must have been a painful grip. Ashamed, he held her until he was sure she had her balance, then left the galley. He was grateful that he had not descended to the ultimate cruelty of reminding her that it was through her fault they were there. Adding the burden of his blame to Freddy’s could do no good, and would certainly not make her any less determined to thwart Holtz.


  A few minutes more than his allotted half hour had passed before he returned to the pilot-house. When he took the wheel, Jules pointed out the tardiness, and warned against a repetition of it.

  ‘I’m not going to slug you for it this time,’ he said. ‘We’re all getting along fine, so far. Let’s keep it that way, eh? Nobody hurt, nobody mad, nobody with any bright ideas. Right?’

  Blake agreed wearily. Nobody hurt, nobody mad, nobody with bright ideas. He wished it were true.

  Minutes after the sailor had left him again alone, Freddy appeared on the foredeck. He wore a jaunty yachting cap, carried a suspicious bulge in his arm sling, and dragged a deck-chair after him. His relaxed, almost cheerful, manner showed that he had already been at the bay rum bottle. For Blake’s benefit, he pantomimed that he was obeying orders to stay out of Holtz’s way by putting the length of the cruiser between them. He set up the chair on the open deck, plumped himself down in it, took a long drink from the bottle that was in his sling, then made an exaggerated face of revulsion and tipped the yachting cap over his eyes for the delayed nap he was about to enjoy. He was asleep in seconds.

  An hour later Bruno, in swimming trunks, came out on the foredeck to shake him awake and ask a question. Freddy returned to consciousness only long enough to mumble a reply, then felt protectingly for his bottle before he drifted off again. Bruno stood looking at the pilot-house, his hand shading his eyes, for some moments. Afterwards he went away, to return with an armload of pneumatic mattresses which he inflated and spread around the foredeck.

  From the preparations, it looked to Blake as if the Angel’s passenger list intended to abandon the after part of the yacht entirely to Holtz and Jules. His guess was confirmed when Bruno was joined by Valentina and Laura di Lucca.