Angel's Ransom
Authors: David Dodge
DAVID DODGE
ANGEL
’
S
RANSOM
Copyright © 1956 by David Dodge
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author
’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Angel
’s
Ransom
The girl
came running out of the dark, almost on the stroke of midnight. Blake was on the
Angel
’s
foredeck, making a conscientious last round of the yacht before turning in, when he
heard the hurried sharp rap of feminine heels on the stone
steps that led dow
n from the winding
Chemin
des
Pê
cheurs
to the landward end of the jetty where the
Angel
was moored.
He could not see her from where he stood, but he knew by
the change of sound when she reached the bottom of the
steps that her flight was bringing her out on the cobbles of
the jetty. From the desperate hurry of the clicking heels he
guessed that she was frightened, too frightened to realize
that she was running toward a dead end.
The
Angel
was the last of the boats moored along the jetty. Beyond was nothing, only the end of the sea wall and its
slowly winking red light that marked the mouth of the port
of Monaco. Blake
’s
distaste for involvement in the affairs of
others was not strong enough to let him wholly ignore a
frightened woman alone and in flight toward open water at
that hour. He went quickly aft, and reached the stern rail in
time to call to her as she ran past the end of the
Angel
’s
gangplank.
She shied at the sound of his voice, missed her footing, and said, ‘Oh!’ startled, then, ‘Oh!’ again, sharply, painfully, as
she fell. The lights on the sea wall behind her were too
poorly placed to show him more than her sprawled figure
dark against the light cobbles. He touched the switch of the
reflector over the gangplank, and in its bright glare saw her
sitting, white-faced, clutching her ankle with both hands.
A handbag had spilled open beside her.
‘I’m sorry.’
She was breathless and slightly hysterical when he went to her help. ‘I mean,
Je
vous
demande
pardon. Ma - ma
jambe
-
oh, couldn’t you please,
justthisonce
, speak English?’
‘I’m American. Relax.’ He gathered up the contents of her handbag, and lifted her to her feet. ‘It
’s
my place to
apologize, for startling you. C
an you walk?’
‘I -I don’t know. I’d rather not try, right away. If I could
sit down for a few minutes
–’
She broke off to look uneasily over her shoulder, balancing precariously on one foot.
There was nothing to be seen but the jetty lights and the shadows they failed to dispel, no sound but a thin thread of
music coming from the cas
ino on the bluff across the harbor
, the wash of waves between the jetty and the small fleet
of quiet boats tied up in its
shelter. The jetty and the land
ward quay from which it sprang were deserted. Whatever
she fled from, it did not seem to be an imminent menace.
But he could not leave her standing there, helpless. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and picked her up without further formality.
She was light in his arms, passive, but he was acutely aware of her femininity. He had not held a woman that way
for years, and the intimacy of the physical contact was increased by her need to pull her body against his by an arm
around his neck in swinging her feet out of the way of
stanchions at the head of the gangplank. He eased her into
one of the canvas chairs on the afterdeck, then turned on
another light.
She was slim and dark-haired, rather more fair-skinned than most girls who passed the summer months on the Mediterranean coast, young, and pretty in a fresh, undramatic
way. Most European women, given her features, would
have made themselves eye-catching. Her nose was straight,
her teeth were even, her figure was good, she was dressed in
a manner designed to display the good figure without
flaunting it, and even before hearing her speak he would
have identified her as a fellow American as far as he could
see her. He was expert at guessing the nationalities of the
girls who came aboard the
Angel
, and often their motives.
She had still not wholly recovered her breath. He said, ‘Take off your shoe and
stocking while I hunt up a band
age,’ refusing to listen to her protests that she did not want
to trouble him further. ‘If you sprained it, it should be taped
before it begins to swell. What were you running from?’
‘A man.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Nothing, really.’ She flushed at his look. ‘I know it
sounds silly. But he kept following me, and no one else was in sight. When we came to the steps and I saw the lights, I
came down here to get away from him, but he followed me
and I got scared and ran. That
’s
all, until you spoke to me
and I fell.’
‘He came after you down the steps?’
‘I thought so. He doesn’t seem to have come very far, does he?’
The
Angel
mounted an extra searchlight aft. It was a whim of the yacht
’s
owner, who liked to see as much as he enjoyed
being seen. Blake took the canvas hood from the stern
mount, pushed the switch and swung the bright lance of light
to sweep the steps down which the girl had run. He had
heard no pound of pursuing feet behind the tap of her
running heels, and he was as unprepared for it as the other
man when the searchlight
’s
powerful beam silhouetted a
figure at the top of the steps, until then hidden in darkness
above the line of illumination cast by the hooded lights of
the jetty.
In itself, a loiterer
’s
presence on the
Chemin
des
P
ê
cheurs
meant nothing, even at that hour. But there was something
buglike
in the way the man
fled the light, an acknowledge
ment of evil intent in his haste to dart back and away into
the shadows. He was visible for only an instant, small and
scuttling, before he vanished.
The girl said shakily, ‘I wish you hadn’t done that. I’d rather not have seen him quite so clearly. I have to go back
that way.’
‘I’ll go with you when yo
u’re ready to leave,’ Blake pro
mised. ‘There
’s
nothing to worry about.’
He taped her ankle with a tight bandage of gauze, and was irritated with himself because his sharp consciousness of her
as a woman persisted. The smooth trimness of her bare leg in
his hands did not help. The ankle had not yet begun to swell,
but she winced when he pulled the first turn of gauze tight.
He was laying a second tight turn over the first when she
said abruptly, ‘You work for Freddy Farr, don’t you?’
‘Are you a detective?’
She pointed to the name of the yacht on a ring buoy hanging at the after rail. ‘It
’s
been in the papers. Everybody knows about the
Angel
.'
‘I could be Freddy Farr himself, of course.’
‘I’ve seen his pictures. He
’s
fat and homely and bald. What do you do for him?’
‘I’m his skipper. Tell me if I’m hurting you.’
‘Would he mind that you brought me aboard his yacht?’
‘He’ll mind that he wasn’t here. He likes pretty girls.’
‘I’ve heard that about him.’ She watched the gauze
sheath grow on her ankle for moments before she said, ‘I’ve
heard that he gives them things. Like fur coats and diamond
necklaces, if they’re pretty enough.’
Blake tucked the end of the bandage in place and straightened up. ‘You can put on your shoe and stocking
now.’
‘Thank you. Am I being tactless?’
He had to smile at her directness. He said, ‘Let
’s
say I’d talk with more freedom about some other subject than the
personal habits of the man who pays my salary. My name is
Sam Blake and I’m pleased to meet you. What are you
doing wandering around the waterfront of Monaco at
midnight?’
She was as direct and
unembarrassed in answering ques
tions as in asking them. Her name, she said, was Marian Ellis. She had come down from Paris on holiday a week
earlier, she was staying at a
pension
in Monaco-Ville, and she
earned her own living. As a dancer.
‘I used to be a
Rockette
, in New York,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a
Rockette
is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Most people over here
think it
’s
some kind of an auto
mobile. Then I decided I wanted to see France before I got too old, and I stopped being a
Rockette
.’
‘How old is too old for France?’
She caught the hint of amusement in his voice, and shook her head. ‘I’m not that dewy. The dim light flatters me.
Anyway, after New York, Paris was easy. Until last week I
had a job at a place where the pay scale depended on how
little the girls wore. We didn’t even have to know how to
dance.’
‘What happened last week?’
‘The director wanted to give me a raise. I didn’t have enough left to take off, so I quit. But it was just an excuse,
really. I was tired of the job. I like to go places.’
‘There can’t be very many opportunities for a dancer in Monaco.’
‘There aren’t. I found that out after I got here.’ She sighed. ‘It
’s
no place for a working girl, but it
’s
so darn
beautiful
. Look at it.’
She raised a slim arm in a gesture that took in most of the little principality. He followed the movement of her tracing
finger with his eyes, from the dark bulk of Monaco-Ville
above the jetty and the quay, past the soaring medieval
battlements of the Prince
’s
palace, down to the clustered
lights of La
Condamine
painting their brilliant reflection in
the quiet waters of the tiny
harbor
, up again to the towering bulk of the T
ê
te de
Chien
rising high and dramatic
against the starlit sky, down once more to the other stars
that were
the lights of the Quai des
É
tats
-Unis on the far
side of the
harbor
, rising finally with the avenue that
climbed the side of the hill to Monte Carlo, until at last her
gesture had circumscribed the
harbor
and she was pointing
over the slow red blink and steady green of the twin
harbor
lights at the rococo majesty of the still brightly illuminated
casino on the peak of the bluff, beyond which lay the open
Mediterranean and Italy.
