Angel's Ransom

by David Dodge

  ‘With that sparrow-gutted Roche sitting on thirty-five million francs?’ Holtz screamed. ‘How long do you expect his nerve to last? Another night to tremble over what will happen to him if I do not come to his rescue, and he will bolt! Go back!’

  ‘You’re crazy!’

  ‘I said, Go back!’

  In his incredulity Jules half turned from the wheel, far enough to see the Walther that now threatened him instead of Blake. It was a bitter pill for Blake that the sailor, in the face of that threat, remained an enemy who would defeat any attempt to take advantage of the shift of the pistol’s menace. And the opening, such as it was, did not last long. Disobedience of a flat order given in Holtz’s raging mood would have been suicidal. Jules put the wheel over, bringing the Angel about in a wide sweep that sent her heading back into the boil of her own wake.

  ‘It will do us no good to return now,’ he said sullenly. ‘Roche won’t be expecting us during the day. Unless he happens to look toward the sea –’

  ‘We will make him look toward the sea!’ Holtz’s fury had disappeared with the change of course. In its place was a driving eagerness, a fierce concentration of will that won even from Blake a reluctant appreciation of the little man’s audacity. ‘We will make all of Monaco look toward the sea! The world knows that Farr has fled an attachment! What is more in keeping with his character than that the Angel should return to lie tantalizingly beyond reach of process servers while a boat goes ashore to meet the man who is to help her owner break the bank at Monte Carlo? Freddy Farr thumbs his nose at authority again!’

  ‘I don’t like it. Too many questions can be asked about a ship that leaves without its crew and doesn’t answer radiophone calls.’

  ‘Questions!’ Holtz laughed, not the fox bark but an exultant crow of confidence. He was drunk on more than cognac. ‘No one questions the actions of six million dollars! And if curiosity is expressed about the Angel –’ the Walther again swung its threat toward Blake ‘– it will be turned aside by the man who holds the lives of his passengers in even greater value than his own.’ His grin was an animal’s baring of teeth. ‘Will it not, Captain?’

  George came instantly awake when the telephone rang at his bedside. He had not been asleep long enough to submerge in the unconsciousness his mind and body craved after the strain of the long night, and he was alert when he took up the receiver. But he found it hard to believe that he understood the sense of Neyrolle’s first words.

  ‘She’s back. Standing off outside the harbor.’

  ‘She can't have - what time is it?’

  ‘Ten o’clock in the morning. I’d hoped for something like this. How soon can you be at the port?’

  ‘Twenty minutes. Fifteen.’ George had already swung his feet out of bed and was feeling for his slippers. ‘Do we use the pilot boat?’

  ‘Yes. You will have your wish to be among the first to board her. But do not waste any time.’

  Neyrolle broke the connection before he added to himself, worriedly, ‘And I wish I knew why it is so important to you. Peste, I hate these unexplainable tag ends.’

  Corsi, who was standing by, said, ‘He is a reporter. They are all the same. For a story, they will risk anything.’

  ‘Not when there is no need for risk,’ Neyrolle said. ‘But let’s go take a look at her while we wait for him.’

  They did not have to wait long. A taxi put George down on the Quai des États Unis in less than a quarter of an hour after the telephone call. He ran the length of the jetty, and was directed up a flight of stairs to the top of the sea wall by an agent de police. Neyrolle and Corsi were studying the Angel through binoculars.

  The rain had stopped. Under still lowering clouds the yacht lay a thousand meters off the bluff of Monte Carlo. She was hove to, her bow to the now moderate breeze that blew from the south, and while the name on her counter was unreadable at that distance, her distinctive lines were unmistakable. Corsi handed over his binoculars to let George see her better.

  ‘Somebody on the bridge wing has got a glass pointed this way,’ he warned. ‘Don’t show too much interest. Look somewhere else now and then.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Neyrolle said. ‘The pilotage would be looking her over if we weren’t. We’re in character.’

  They both seemed unbelievably calm. George’s own pulses were going faster than his short run from the quay would justify. He said, ‘How long has she been there?’

  ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘What do you suppose brought her back so soon?’

  ‘Audacity.’ Neyrolle kept his glasses leveled at the cruiser. ‘We will meet it with equal audacity.’ To Corsi he said, ‘The French understand their parts?’

  ‘Their craft are to remain out of sight behind the capes until our own cutter leaves the port, then stand by to block an escape if the need arises. Otherwise they will not participate. It is understood.’

  ‘Good. I have the same feeling for this Holtz as M. Saunders has for his story. I want him all to myself.’

  George had been trying to make out the identity of a figure on the yacht’s bridge, but the distance was too great. Where he looked for a face there was only the glint of binocular lenses directed at the shore. He thought there was a similar glint at one of the pilot-house windows, but it could have been a reflection from the pane. He swept the length of the cruiser’s deck, saw nothing more, and returned the binoculars to Corsi.

  ‘We’re not getting any closer to Holtz or the story by standing here looking at them,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it. Or aren’t you ready yet?’

  ‘We are ready,’ Neyrolle said. He lowered his glasses and turned away to lead the way down the steps.

  The boat they were to use was tied up in the lee of the cutter manned by the Brigade Maritime. It seemed hardly more than a rowboat with an outboard motor, a cockleshell alongside the larger craft. An agent held it steady while the three men stepped in and settled themselves. Another agent handed Corsi a mitraillette, a light machine-pistol mounted with a framework shoulder stock. Corsi examined the weapon to satisfy himself that it was properly loaded, then laid it on a piece of canvas in the bottom of the boat, covered it with a flap of the same material, and made certain that it could be easily exposed and swung to his shoulder by rehearsing the movements several times. A small gallery of uniformed men watched the rehearsal intently from the rail of the cutter.

  Neyrolle’s personal preparations consisted of unbuttoning the slicker he wore, and the coat beneath, so he could easily draw the pistol he carried under his arm. To George he said, ‘Give me identifications as fast as you can make them out. If we’re fired on, jump out of the boat. You’ll make a smaller target in the water. Can you swim?’

  ‘I’ll stay with the boat,’ George said grimly. ‘I’m not going with you for a swim.’

  ‘Everybody set?’ Corsi asked. Sitting at the steering lever of the outboard motor, he sounded almost casual.

  Neyrolle nodded. George nodded. Corsi pulled strongly at the starting cord. The motor popped, fired, and settled down to its steady metallic clatter. One of the men watching from the cutter’s rail raised his hand in silent salute as the pilot boat puttered away from the jetty.

  Aboard the Angel, Holtz was the first to see the boat’s approach. He and Blake were together in the pilot-house. Jules stood outside on the bridge wing, his binoculars fixed intently on the wave-washed rocks where he had landed Roche. He had been watching the same point since the cruiser’s arrival off the harbor, while Holtz explored port, shore and quays with his glasses and Blake, holding the Angel’s head to the sea with enough way on to keep from drifting shoreward, doggedly strove to use his fatigue-dulled brain.

  His chance had still not come. Jules had never been far off since the Angel turned back on its course, and Holtz seemed to sense subconsciously the danger of coming within Blake’s reach. A diversion, something to take Jules away and bring Holtz nearer, was essential, but he could not wait much longer. Not even Holt
z’s cocksureness would keep the Angel standing by all day for a signal that did not come. And each hour that passed sapped Blake’s small store of energy, slowed his reflexes further. The price he could afford to pay was still only one bullet. He remembered three shiny cartridge cases twinkling together in mid-air, spinning brightly in bright sunlight -

  Holtz said sharply, ‘What is that boat doing?’

  Blake looked where the gang leader was pointing. A strong swell still rolled shoreward as an aftermath of the gale, and he did not see the boat immediately in the long waves. Then he picked it out as a chip near the mouth of the harbor. Hidden in the trough one minute, high on a crest the next, the chip moved unmistakably in their direction.

  The realization that it might be the diversion he wanted sharpened his wits. He said indifferently, ‘Pilot boat. She’s coming out to offer us a helmsman.’

  ‘Signal her that we’re not going in!’

  ‘I haven’t anything to signal with. You’ll have to wait until she comes within hailing distance.’

  It was another encouragement that Holtz seemed uncertain what to do. He scowled mistrustfully for a moment, then called Jules in from the bridge to take his own look.

  ‘It’s the pilotage, all right,’ Jules agreed. ‘They think we’re waiting to be taken in. It’s normal enough in this kind of a sea. I’ll wave her off as soon as - wait a minute!’

  His binoculars had shown him something Blake could not make out. He sharpened the focus of the lenses, peering intently at the boat bobbing on the swells.

  Holtz said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘One of them isn’t pilotage. I’ve seen him before. He came down to the port in a fiacre with Farr and the others the day we sailed.’

  Holtz swore. For the first time since his initial show of arms in the pilot-house three days earlier, he came close enough to Blake to jab the Walther into his middle.

  ‘Who is it? Talk quickly! Who was in the fiacre?’

  I could do it now, Blake thought. Even with Jules here. I could do it. With a bullet in the belly.

  He said, ‘A newspaper reporter.’

  ‘What does he have to do with Farr?’

  ‘He’s writing, an article about him.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’ Jules said uneasily. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  ‘I’ll make the decisions.’

  ‘I told you questions would be asked! And you can’t wave a reporter off the way you wave off a pilot! He’ll want to know the answers!’

  ‘Be quiet! Let me think!’

  The pilot boat had come half way from the port, dipping and soaring on the long swells. Jules had pushed in between Blake and the wheel and stood with his hands on the throttles, waiting, tense.

  Blake could see the angry indecision in Holtz’s face. With the pistol pressing into his middle, he thought, Sidestep, chop and grab. All you have to lose is a little blood. The bullet will go right on through, this close. His stomach muscles gathered into a cold ache of dread and anticipation, but he was not to know how far his courage might have carried him. Holtz reached a decision first.

  He stepped back, snapped, ‘Watch him!’ to Jules, and hurried from the pilot house.

  Blake needed no watching. The let-down after the peak to which he had nearly keyed himself left him sweating and weak. His knees were still treacherous when Holtz returned wearing one of Cesar’s white mess jackets.

  He was indecisive no longer. He said, ‘I have changed my mind about permitting you to answer questions, Captain. I have a feeling that you might accept martyrdom if an opportunity arose. So that you will not be persuaded to recklessness, we are about to bring Farr on deck to deal with this situation. He, not you, will suffer from any mistakes of judgment by either of you. Walk ahead of me.’

  He marched Blake back to the salon and tossed the key to Freddy’s cabin on the stretch of carpet between them. He was once more alert, cool and sure of himself when he gave his orders.

  ‘Bring him up. Remind him and the others that he dies if they create a disturbance, and don’t waste time.’

  Blake tasted the gall of humiliation as he bent to pick up the key. The workings of his own glands had betrayed him. Holtz knew too well the power of terror. He turned away from the leveled pistol, feeling more shamed by his fear because it had followed such brave promises, and in that instant, with the key to Freddy’s release in his palm, saw the means to attack Holtz where he had no defense, the single counter-weapon against which terror and the promise of death were powerless.

  He did not know exactly how he was going to use the weapon when he went below, but he was thinking clearly again. He went first to Freddy’s cabin.

  The door was barricaded. Behind it Freddy’s unsteady voice said, ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes. Open up. Hurry.’

  The improvised wedges jammed between door and frame took a moment to displace. When the door opened, Blake outlined the situation quickly in a voice that would not carry up the companionway.

  ‘We’ve got to do exactly what we’re told. Explain to Valentina and Marian that unless they stay away from the portholes and keep quiet, you’ll get it. Let Holtz hear you. He’s at the head of the companionway, and he’ll be listening. Sound scared.’

  ‘I am scared.’ Freddy was ghastly pale. ‘What are you up to? Do we have a chance? Are we going to get out of this?’

  ‘We have a chance. That’s all I can say.’

  The key to Laura di Lucca’s door, Holtz’s small miscalculation, was still in his pocket. He used it, stepped inside the cabin, and closed the door softly behind him.

  She lay as before, supine, the crucifix clasped in her hands. Her eyes opened when he came in. She did not turn her head, but looked at the ceiling. He could hear Freddy talking urgently in the passageway and, through the port-hole, the swelling putter of the approaching boat.

  He said, ‘Will you listen to me?’

  She gave no sign that she had heard. He went to the bed and bent over her, his eyes on her blank unfocused eyes while he spoke, slowly and simply. He did not know that his words had penetrated behind that blind stare when he left the cabin. He could only hope.

  In the pilot boat, George said tensely, ‘That’s Freddy with the bandaged hand. The man in ducks is Blake. Don’t know who is wearing the steward’s jacket. Holtz?’

  ‘He’s the right size,’ Neyrolle agreed.

  ‘He’s got a gun in Farr’s back,’ Corsi said matter-of-factly. ‘Look at the way they’re standing.’

  The three men had come out on the cruiser’s deck while the pilot boat was still a hundred meters off. Blake and Freddy stood at the rail, Holtz inconspicuously in the rear. His height was such that Freddy’s body effectively screened him from the view of the men in the boat. They could see that someone behind the other two wore a white coat. That was all.

  ‘We’ll be waved off in a minute,’ Neyrolle said. ‘Don’t notice it right away. We’ve got to get in closer.’

  ‘There’s another man watching us from the pilot-house,’ George said. ‘I can’t make out his face, but he’s big. Must be the Provençal.’

  ‘Leave him to me,’ Corsi said. ‘At this distance, I’ll stop anything he starts before he gets started. It’s the little type in the white coat who’ll give us trouble. He’s going to be hard to get at behind all that protection.’

  ‘Closer,’ Neyrolle said fiercely. ‘Closer!’

  Holtz said, ‘All right, Captain. Wave them off. Easy and friendly. Just tell them we’re not going into port.’

  Blake made a megaphone of his hands. In the boat, Neyrolle cupped his hand questioningly to his ear at the shout. The racket of the outboard motor covered his order: ‘Keep going.’

  Blake shouted again.

  The boat continued to putter on. At fifty meters, Holtz said tightly, ‘An excuse won’t save Farr if you let them come any closer. Stop them your own way.’

  Freddy made an agonized sound in his throat. He was pressed up tight against the rail by t
he barrel of the pistol boring into his back. Blake wigwagged his arms in a signal to the other boat to sheer off.

  Neyrolle said, ‘That’s about as far as we can press it without being obvious. Throttle down and drift in toward her stern.’ To George he said, ‘You earn your story now. I’m going to try to take the white coat from the flank, but we have to look natural. Talk, and keep talking.’

  The sharp popping of the outboard died to a mutter. Shouting was unnecessary, after the racket of the motor died. George was surprised by the easy naturalness of his own voice when he called, ‘Ahoy, the Angel! May I come aboard with the pilot?’

  ‘We aren’t taking a pilot,’ Blake called back. ‘We’re not going in.’

  ‘May I come aboard? I have to talk to you, Freddy.’

  The pistol nudged Freddy’s backbone. He swallowed hard before he could obey its silent command.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I finished the article. I need your okay before I send it off.’

  ‘No objections.’

  ‘Sorry, that’s not enough.’ The swell and Corsi’s handling were carrying the pilot boat inconspicuously toward the Angel’s stern. ‘You’ll have to read it over. Editors want a written authority for biographies.’

  ‘Mail me a copy,’ Freddy said hoarsely.

  ‘What’s the matter? Are you still afraid of an attachment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not going to serve it on you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Let me come aboard.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Keep talking,’ Neyrolle muttered.

  ‘I’ll interview you from here, then,’ George said. ‘Why did you leave your crew behind?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘You’re still paying their wages, if you don’t know it. The Port Commandant has filed a lien against you.’

  ‘Let him file.’

  ‘Can I quote you as saying that you have no intention of recognizing the lien?’

  ‘Quote what you like.’

  Holtz’s impatient whisper said, ‘Tell him you’ll see him ashore tomorrow. Make a date. Get rid of him.’