Angel's Ransom Page 9

  Valentina had taken simple and effective steps to live up to her promise to concentrate Bruno’s interest on herself. Under a robe which she discarded in the hot sun beating down on the foredeck, she wore a minimal bikini that did nothing to disguise the lush ripeness of her figure. Her skin was a warm golden brown, smoothly and evenly tanned, and her beauty a harsh if unintentional cruelty to Laura di Lucca, who was graceless in a too-frivolous playsuit. Bruno’s well-muscled gladiator’s torso made his wife’s lack of physical charm even more marked.

  Holtz’s voice behind Blake said, ‘He will be less resistant to her charms than you were, Captain.’

  He stood in the open doorway of the pilot-house, his lip curled in pleasure at having taken Blake by surprise. For the first time he carried the Walther in his belt instead of in his hand, and while he was again careful to keep his distance there was a confidence in his manner not wholly dependent on force of arms.

  ‘A convincing example of the misuse of wealth,’ he went on. ‘The gigolo has sold himself to a woman for whom he has nothing but the contempt she invites, and the girl offers her golden body for sale to a flabby alcoholic. I am doing the world a favor to relieve your employer of a portion of the money he deserves so little. Do you not agree?’

  ‘No.’

  Holtz’s laugh was a jeer.

  ‘You contradict me more readily than I like. It is fortunate for you that you cannot be heard at a distance. Grasse is calling the Angel every two hours. I picked the call up on the radio in the salon.’

  ‘Jules wrecked the radiophone. You don’t have to worry.’

  ‘I am not in the least worried.’ The jeer had become a scowl. ‘Do not irritate me with your assurances. I expect the port authorities to be curious about your abandonment of your crew, but I know they will not for a moment seriously challenge the privileges of six million dollars. Farr’s widely known reluctance to have his actions questioned entered into my calculations as much as your own servile obedience to regulations. His disrespect for authority will account for the small irregularities of our departure from Monaco.’

  ‘How much thought have you given to irregularities of arrival?’

  ‘What gives you the privilege of asking the question?’

  ‘Because I want this business to end the way you do, without trouble, and I don’t see how you are going to get away with it. You can’t just sail into Monaco harbor and go ashore the way you came aboard. You know a fuss will be raised as soon as you leave the yacht.’

  ‘You disappoint me.’ Holtz shook his head in mock regret. ‘For a moment I thought you were ready to join with me. I shall give you an explanation of how I intend to leave the Angel without difficulty when you have accepted the offer I made you earlier. In the meantime, observe how the power of wealth is losing ground to the animal urges of the gigolo. His wife is about to burst with jealousy.’

  On the foredeck, Bruno was carrying on a bold wooing of Valentina’s attentions. She had permitted him to bring an air mattress near to the one on which she basked, and they lay side by side in the sun like young and beautiful lovers, their heads intimately together. Freddy slept on, his mouth open, his injured hand awkwardly protecting the bottle in his sling.

  Laura di Lucca’s jealousy was painfully apparent. Her efforts to distract Bruno’s attention from Valentina and bring it back to herself were as pathetic as they were ineffectual. Bruno’s success in ignoring her existence amused Holtz.

  He said, ‘You must find it entertaining, sitting up here in your box seat watching the play acted out for you on the small world you control. I can understand why you might be reluctant to abandon your god-like elevation for a subordinate position in my employ.’

  ‘Most of the time what I watch is the fluttering of the crew’s laundry,’ Blake answered dully.

  Holtz’s contemptuous assumption that Freddy’s man had already become his man, the insulting confidence of the Walther in the belt, did not bother Blake. He wanted it that way; nobody hurt, nobody mad, nobody with bright ideas. He had been allowed only four hours of sleep since leaving Monaco harbor, and the monotony of the endless wheel trick was dulling his senses. It was an effort for him to calculate that fifty-two hours remained to go.

  He felt a vague comfort that almost the first third of the ordeal had passed without serious trouble. Freddy, for the time being at least, was no longer a problem. Bruno’s belligerence had been neutralized by Valentina, and Blake felt reasonably hopeful that, without support from the others, Marian would listen to his advice, however scornful of him she was. Laura di Lucca suffered only from jealousy. If that were the worst any of them suffered, they would be well out of it.

  On the foredeck, Bruno’s intimate conversation with Valentina had progressed to a point where he was showing her something written on a piece of paper, letting her see the writing without giving her the paper to hold. That she immediately wanted the paper itself was apparent from the pantomime that followed. She asked for it, he declined. She pleaded prettily, he grinned and refused again. When she reached for it, he kept it beyond her fingertips, making the playful fight an excuse for a maximum of bodily contact between them. The sight of the half-naked brown bodies struggling together on the mattresses was more than Laura di Lucca could stand. Valentina would have had the paper after another moment of horse-play, but the wife intervened with a desperately gay effort to take it from Bruno herself. His reaction was to turn over on his back and kick at her with both feet. She was pitiful and ridiculous in her persistence. He stood up, now fending both women away from the paper while he rolled it into a spill, then dodged away from them to pull the hidden bottle from Freddy’s arm-sling.

  The disturbance of his injured finger woke Freddy in time to see the last of the liquor he had been protecting gurgling away in the scuppers. Bruno’s intentions were clear even before he again dodged from the women: he stuffed the message into the bottle, then capped it and waved his triumph defiantly at the pilot-house before he pitched it into the sea. Blake knew that the taunting gesture was for him, not for Holtz. But the gang-leader made an unpleasant sound in his throat as he reached for the pistol in his belt.

  ‘It’s only show-off,’ Blake said quickly. ‘There isn’t a chance in a million it will be picked up. Forget it.’

  ‘I don’t like gigolo show-offs.’ Holtz’s face was ugly. ‘Stop your motors. He needs a taste of discipline.’

  ‘Let it go! I’ll handle –’

  The lifted Walther interrupted him. Holtz said, ‘I gave you an order, Captain. Stop your motors.’

  Blake reached to close the throttles. As the purr of the diesels died and the Angel lost way, Holtz went swinging down the ladder to the foredeck.

  Bruno, watching him come, showed no fear. There was almost an air of expectation in the way he waited for Holtz’s approach. Holtz stopped three yards away, the pistol leveled.

  Blake did not hear the question that was asked. But he had abandoned the now-drifting Angel to her own helm and was on the bridge-wing in time to hear Bruno’s reply: ‘A letter to my tailor. Why?’

  Bruno was magnificent in the cool contempt of his manner toward the little man. Valentina and Laura di Lucca had drawn slightly away; Freddy still blinked in his deckchair by the rail, craning his neck to see around the two women. Holtz’s words about a god-like elevation flashed incongruously into Blake’s mind.

  Holtz said, ‘Jump over the side and bring it back. I want to read it.’

  ‘I don’t permit anyone to read my mail.’

  The pistol muzzle made a small lifting gesture. ‘Over the rail. I want that bottle.’

  Laura di Lucca said tremulously, ‘Do - do as he says, caro. It’s only a little swim. I’ll go in with you.’

  ‘Mind your business,’ Bruno said.

  Only then did Blake see his intention to try for the pistol. The realization came so tardily before the attempt that he had no time even to shout a warning against it. Bruno turned as if to obey Holtz’s order, then thr
ew himself aside and down in a flashing wrestler’s lunge that brought his outstretched foot sweeping like a flail at Holtz’s ankles. The flail missed. Holtz shot three times so rapidly that the third of the cartridge cases ejected by the automatic was glinting brassily in mid-air when the first fell to the deck. Another, and final, bullet he fired more deliberately, stepping toward Bruno’s still struggling body on the deck. In the stunning silence that followed the roar of the last shot, they heard Jules’ shout from the after-part of the cruiser, the pad of his feet as he ran forward. Laura di Lucca put her hand gropingly halfway to her throat, choked, and crumpled to the deck without another sound.

  FOUR

  ‘We’ve stopped being excess baggage, Blake said. ‘We’re witnesses to a murder.’

  Hours had passed since the killing. The Angel again drove southward, now with Jules at the wheel. Grim and hostile after giving Bruno’s weighted body to the sea, he had accepted Blake’s statement that the engine-room required more attention than he could give it in a half-hour break from the interminable wheel watch. Having won a full hour of relative freedom to move about, and with Holtz brooding sullenly in some hidden corner of his own, Blake had risked calling a council of war in the galley. Even as prisoners they had to eat, or could pretend the need.

  Only Laura di Lucca was absent. She had come out of her faint in a state of emotional shock that left her unreachable, beyond tears or comfort, staring silently at nothing alone in her cabin. Blake was grateful for her withdrawal from reality. She, at least, need not know of the new danger in which they all stood.

  The galley blowers roared their soft assurance against eavesdropping when he said, ‘Until this morning, I’m reasonably sure Holtz meant to take us back to Monaco and let us go. He talked that way, and he seemed certain that he could do it without any danger to himself. I thought the best chance for all of us was to let him do it, without interference.’ Blake looked at Marian, at Freddy, at Valentina. ‘We didn’t all see eye to eye about it, but it doesn’t matter now. Bruno’s death changes things. We have to reconsider our position.’

  Valentina said calmly, ‘Is that another way of warning us that we will all probably follow Bruno, Captain?’

  Freddy made an incoherent sound of protest.

  Blake said, ‘I didn’t mean it to be. I meant that Holtz has no particular reason to let us go now. He may intend to, he may not. I think our best chance is still to play along and hope that he will, after he gets the money, but we’ve got to do all we can to be ready for him in case he doesn’t. Short of recklessness, that is.’

  Freddy said, ‘I saw Holtz’s eyes while he was pulling the trigger on Bruno. I’m not reckless.’

  ‘Don’t, please!’ Marian’s appeal was hardly above a whisper. Her face was more haggard than pretty now. ‘I -I - Can’t you stop talking about it? I know it’s my fault he died. I’ll do anything to pay for it, reckless or not. Just don’t - don’t - please –’

  Her throat closed. She could not go on.

  ‘Bruno died because he was Bruno,’ Valentina said. ‘Blame yourself for what is your fault, if you must. Not for his rashness.’ Marian shook her head, still unable to speak.

  Blake said, ‘Sharing the responsibility for what has already happened won’t help. We’ve got arrangements to make. Freddy, how are your nerves?’

  Freddy extended his good hand, regarding its unexpected steadiness with surprise.

  ‘Better than they ought to be. Why?’

  ‘You’ll have to start acting jumpy again.’

  ‘That won’t be hard.’

  ‘I want you pacing the foredeck this evening, along about dinner time. Too nervous to keep still. Valentina can keep you company.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Keep a lookout for Jules and Holtz. They both have a habit of creeping up on the pilot-house when I’m not expecting them. You keep moving around to spot them if they come my way, but one of you will have to stay in sight of the wheel at all times. A lighted cigarette will mean danger; dousing it means all clear.’

  ‘What will you be doing?’

  ‘Rewiring the radiophone. Jules took the handset and pulled out the power cable, but if I can jury-rig a new cable I may be able to fix the transmitter to send code, an S.O.S., when we get a chance to risk it. I’m going to try, anyway.’ Blake tried to sound more hopeful than he felt. Whistling in the dark would not save them from their desperately precarious situation, but a whistle was better than a cry of despair. It seemed to be one or the other, since Bruno’s death.

  ‘I want to help,’ Marian said. Her voice was as low as before. ‘I’ve got to help.’

  ‘You will. I need you to man the wheel and watch for signals while I’m working. You’re logically it because you have my dinner as an excuse to bring you up to the pilot-house, but don’t go into it with your eyes closed. You’re taking the same risk I am. If I’m caught, you’re caught with me. Another thing.’ Blake looked around at his small audience. ‘It was my idea that we all agree on any action before we took it. I’ve told you what I think is best for us. Holtz is still primarily after money more than blood, and I think we can hope for the ransom to pull him back to Monaco for the rendezvous. That means we might have the next two days to work with. If anyone can think of a better effort, or another effort, we can make in that time, let’s hear it while we’re here together. We may not have many chances to talk.’

  The soft blast of the blowers was the only sound for moments. Freddy was the first to speak.

  ‘I don’t like counting on the ransom at all,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Too many things can happen to keep it from being there when we get back.’

  ‘Holtz doesn’t think so. He’s put a lot of planning into making certain it will be there.’

  ‘He would be a fool if he were not absolutely sure of Roche,’ Valentina said. ‘And he is not a fool. The money will arrive.’

  Freddy’s expression of unhappy doubt did not change, but he did not offer other argument. No one else had any further suggestions before Blake left the galley, cautioning the others to stay in the forward part of the cruiser. Holtz, hidden somewhere back aft, was unpredictable in his present mood.

  Afterward Blake spent more time than was necessary in the engine-room, leaving it with several lengths of wire wrapped around his middle under his shirt. He had armed the ends of the wires with battery clips, and he carried a screwdriver and pliers in separate pockets so they would not clink.

  The precautions were well taken. Jules did not leave the pilot-house immediately, but stayed to chart and log a change of course he had made. The Angel’s new bearing was 240 degrees, a course that would take them away from southern Mediterranean steamer lanes and within sight of the Balearics if they continued on it.

  Bending over the parallel ruler and dividers with which he was working, Jules said gruffly, ‘You were lucky only one of you got shot.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘What did he do it for?’

  ‘He was a fool.’

  ‘If there are any more fools aboard, Captain, sit on them.’ Jules looked up from the chart table almost in plea. ‘The fat boy’s money is none of your loss. Would you put up a fight for it if the roulette wheel got it from him instead of us?’

  ‘Nobody is putting up a fight for it. Bruno wanted to be a hero.’

  ‘So he’s feeding the fishes.’ Jules moved toward the door, then turned back for a final, urgent word of warning. ‘Listen to me, Captain. If you haven’t learned it already, Holtz is a killer. Me, I’ll give it to you quick enough if you ask for it, but not for fun. He likes it. If you want the rest of your passengers to get back to Monaco alive, you tell them to stay out of his way as much as they can, jump when he tells them to jump, and forget any smart ideas they may be thinking about. Understand me?’

  ‘I understand you.’

  The sailor jerked his head at the chronometer over the chart table. ‘You’ve got only forty-eight hours to go. Stick it out.’

/>   George Saunders continued to feel pleased with himself. Neyrolle’s humble request for assistance had given him a feeling of power over not only the sous-chef but the whole organization of Sûreté Publique as well. It was almost like having the police force of the Principality working as legmen to gather pieces of a story which, he had a feeling, might be one of the news breaks of the year, all his own. He did not see anything censurable in hoping that the Angel had, in fact, been pirated, and that its passengers were in spectacular captivity. He regretted only that he did not know the facts. To George, the story was what counted. That, and the by-line.

  Neyrolle telephoned in the middle of the afternoon with news of progress. He said, ‘We’ve picked up a connection to Blake’s feminine visitor. She’s in my office now - the connection, that is. Do you want to talk with her?’

  ‘I’ll be right down. Keep her there.’

  George was at the Bureau within minutes. The woman waiting in the sous-chef’’s office was a plainly dressed, middle-aged Monegasque with workworn hands and a shrewd peasant face whom Neyrolle presented by explaining that she ran a small pension in Monaco-Ville.

  ‘It is one of the advantages of an arrondissement as small as mine that there are not an infinite number of places for transients to stay,’ he said. ‘Had the girl been a resident, it could have been more difficult. Be kind enough to tell M. Saunders the facts about your vanished guests as you told them to me, Madame.’

  ‘I did not say that they have vanished,’ the woman protested. ‘An absence for a single night does not mean a disappearance forever. I only said that when one stays at a pension like my own, one ordinarily eats the meals for which one is paying, and I have not seen either of them since breakfast yesterday. The American girl left her clothes behind, also her luggage. Also her passport, which I have already given to you, monsieur, and certain letters.’

  ‘You can see them later,’ Neyrolle told George. ‘The girl will be easy enough to trace. Tell us more about the man, Madame.’