Angel's Ransom (6 page)

The crew
of the
Angel
did not leave the Bureau de la
S
û
ret
é
Publique
as they had entered the building, in a
group. Cesar burst through the door first, running hard for
the
harbor
. The others, old Michaud still stubbornly
refusing to be hurried, caught up with him on the Quai du
Commerce, where he stood cursing steadily at the sight of
the
Angel
pointed for the Mediterranean. Together they
watched the yacht approach the mouth of the
harbor
, veer
unexpectedly toward the south jetty, hang for moments on
the edge of catastrophe, then clear the danger and slip out
to sea.

‘Beached, by God!’ Michaud said darkly. ‘I would not have believed it of the captain! Money corrupts all that it
touches!’

‘Beached, my eye!’ Cesar
’s
reply was hot. ‘Are you so thick that you can’t see we were tricked ashore by those two
gangsters so they could seize the yacht while we were out of
the way? They have knocked the captain over the head and
are falling over their heels to make a getaway!’

‘You read too many detective stories.’

‘And you too much political puff! How do you explain the near wreck in the
harbor
mouth, if the captain is still in
command? Or does a yacht take the bit in its teeth and shy
like a runaway horse? Eh? Eh?’

‘The probable truth - I say probable, because I am not gifted with the positive insight granted to those who know
everything
–’
Michaud took out his pipe and stoked it with
irritating calm - ‘the probable truth is that the writ we have
all been expecting from day to day to take the
Angel
into
court has made its appearance, and Farr has ordered a
departure while departure is still possible. The rights of his
crew are of little importance compared to the safety of his
property. It is always so with the rich.’

The cook said, ‘Just the same, the law is the law. We are
not discharged until we are paid up and signed off. He must
still pay us wages.’

‘All we have to do is collect them,’ one of the deckhands said. ‘And what about our gear? I am not as lucky as some,
to have come away with my pipe.’

‘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
che
ck
s, 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 tha
t 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 Com
mandant. 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
meter
s 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 goin
g 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
meter
s 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
pé
dalo
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.