Angel's Ransom (33 page)

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.’

‘
S
orry, 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.’

‘C
an 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.’

‘I’ll see you
–’
Freddy began. He swallowed hard and went dumb, unable to finish. His eyes were agonized. The
Walther jabbed its hard promise in his back.

‘Go on!’ Holtz hissed.

Neyrolle was suffering his own kind of agony. The drift of the pilot boat had only served to screen the white coat
behind Blake
’s
body instead of Freddy
’s
, and to drift any
farther astern would deprive Corsi of his domination over the
man in the pilot-house. Freddy was still tongue-tied; Corsi was looking anxiously at his chief for instructions; George,
desperate for words, could think of nothing further to say;
and Blake was silently crying,
Let it happen now, if it
’s
going to
happen! Let it come!
when Laura di Lucca appeared wraith-like in the doorway of the salon, almost at Holtz
’s
elbow. She
stood there, blinking at the unfamiliarity of daylight, for
seconds before she spoke in a dead, emotionless voice that
carried clearly to the men in the pilot boat.

‘This man murdered my husband. Please inform
–’
Keyed up and waiting for the moment though he was,
Blake was not as quick as Holtz. The gang leader had whirled
and fired point-blank while Blake was still spinning away
from the rail. The impact of the bullet drove Laura di Lucca
back through the doorway as Holtz whirled again to meet
Blake
’s
attack, barely too late to bring the gun around before
Blake
’s
hand met his wrist and snapped the arm up and
aside. The shot went harmlessly into the air.

‘That ends it,’ Blake said. ‘You’re beaten. Drop the gun.’

‘Jules!’ Holtz screamed. He kicked and struggled in the
grip that Blake had on his wrist and body. ‘To me! Jules!’
His answer was a sudden throb of power in the
Angel
’s
hull
as her motors roared into life, followed immediately by a
crackling burst of rapid fire from the
mitraillette
that
Corsi
had whipped from its concealment. The
Angel
heeled over
slowly, gathering speed, driving not away from shore but
towards it. Her circling movement took her almost into
collision
with the pilot boat, so that as they passed it, with Blake
and Holtz still locked together in the embrace that held
Holtz helpless and
harmless, they looked down from a distance of a few feet at George Saunders and the intent up-turned face of Corsi above the ready
mitraillette
. Neyrolle,
holding a drawn pistol, spoke to Blake.

‘Drop the scum overboard, Captain,’ he said calmly. ‘We’ll take care of him. Any more aboard, or does that finish it?’
The faces slid on by. Still gaining speed, the
Angel
yawed,
and yawed again. It told Blake that she was a runaway, her
wheel unmanned. With both motors wide open, she was
headed for the rocks.

Holtz still fought, strong for his size but not strong enough to free himself. Blake felt no triumph, only weariness
and a kind of anger that the gang leader refused to
recognize
defeat. He shook the wrist he held helpless, trying to
snap the gun out of Holtz
’s
hand. Holtz clung to it
tenaciously.

‘You’re beaten,’ Blake said again. The anger swelled and burst in his throat. ‘Everybody tricked you, little man. I did,
and Laura di Lucca, and those men in the boat.’ He released
the grip with which he had pinioned Holtz
’s
body, and susp
ending him by the upheld wrist of the gun hand so that his
frantically kicking toes barely touched the deck, took him by
the back of the neck and forced his head around toward
Freddy, standing weak and shaken at the rail. ‘He tricked
you. From the beginning. You took a
check
that sold you to
the police. Think about that where you’re going.’

The
Angel
yawed again, calling him. Even in victory he could not escape her demands. By wrist and neck, he
picked Holtz up bodily, swung him over the rail and let go.

The smaller boat was altering its course towards the man in the water as he ran for the wheel. A string of evenly
spaced holes in the pilot-house windows, blood from a bullet
wound in the head of th
e body crumpled on the deck mat
ting, were the end of Jules. He would never face the guillotine he had feared. Blake pushed the body out of the way and
took the wheel, seeing for the first time the cutter that bore
down from the direction of the
harbor
, seeing as the
Angel
came about the other boats standing away from the capes
to cut off flight toward the sea. Holtz had been well bottled,
at the end. Blake did not realize that the little murderer had
yet made his escape until the
Angel
lay alongside the still
body rocking on blood-sta
ined swells, and Freddy was sayi
ng foolishly, ‘He spat at me, Sam. He waited until we came
alongside so he could spit at me, and then he lifted the gun
out of the water and shoved it in his mouth. I can’t get over
the way he waited to spit at me.’

The storm blew again, for a time, then subsided. The sea swell smoothed, the sky cleared, a moon rose, and the
Mediterranean once more lay silvery and placid in the night below the bluff from which the lights of the casino looked
down on the little port. The twin beacons at the
harbor
mouth threw bright reflections of red wink and green beam
on the still water behind the jetty where the
Angel
was
moored.

‘The damage to his ego was too much to take,’ Blake said. ‘He couldn’t stand knowing that his pawn had beaten him
on the very first move. Spitting on Freddy was a last gesture
of superiority. He couldn’
t quite make it, but he tried.’

Neyrolle said, ‘There is a question I have not asked until
now. You need not answer it, if you would rather not, and I
shall not repeat anything you tell me. What did you say to
Laura di Lucca when you unlocked her cabin door?’

Blake looked thoughtfully at the beacon reflections in the water. Neyrolle
’s
question led to other questions harder to
answer, even in his own mind. But he wanted to answer
them, if he could.

He said, ‘I told her that a boat was coming, and that Holtz would shoot her if she came up on deck.’

‘You expected it to bring her on deck?’

‘I hoped that it would. A promise of death was the only way I could reach her.’ Blake was heartened that he saw no
condemnation in the face of any of his listeners. ‘I didn’t
intend that she should die. I had to have a diversion to take
the gun out of Freddy
’s
back, and I hoped that she would
put in an appearance while I was expecting it and Holtz
wasn’t. I was certain that I’d be faster than he. I was
wrong. So she died.’

Valentina said,
‘
S
he welcomed death. She would have been grateful.’

‘I try to persuade myself of that. It takes some of the sting out of the realization that I didn’t have the courage to tackle
Holtz head on. I tried to bring myself to it, several times, but
in the end I had to use her.’

‘You tackled him when you had a chance,’ Freddy said. ‘I wouldn’t call that cowardly, Sam.’

Blake did not answer. He had answered Neyrolle
’s
question
, if not his own.

The four sat around a candle-lit table that Cesar had set up on the
Angel
’s
afterdeck. The steward and the cook, alone
of the crew, remained in Freddy
’s
service. The Belgian
baroness had served her writ, and the yacht would lie at her
moorings until the courts decided her ownership. Freddy
’s
invitation to a last dinner aboard had been extended to
Marian and George Saunders as well as to the others, but
both had declined with palpably flimsy excuses. Freddy had
taken the excuses in good grace. In an earlier day he would
have been piqued by a refusal to attend his court, angered
that he could not command their presence. A short week had
worked great changes in Freddy Farr.

Five days had passed since the
Angel
came into port with the bodies of Jules and Holtz under a tarpaulin on her
foredeck
and Laura di Lucca lying dead in the salon. The
interval had been a difficult period for the survivors of the
cruise, days of endless questioning in a glare of flash-bulbs
and publicity. George Saunders had scored a clean twenty-four-hour beat over his competition, but after that Freddy
had been fair game for the reporters who had descended on
Monaco in hordes for the sensation of the moment. The
sensation had held the headlines for three days, slipped to
second pages by the fourth day, and given way on the fifth
to the Tour de France as news of the moment. Already the
curiosity-seekers had stopped coming down to the port to
stare and gossip. The
Angel
was only another white yacht
lying at her moorings, distinguished now by
stipplings
of fresh
red lead where a line of bullet-holes had scarred her pilot-house, and a candlelit table on her afterdeck where a steward
in a white coat served coffee and cognac to her owner
’s
guests.

‘I’m sorry George couldn’t come,’ Freddy said. ‘I’m saving a piece of news for him.’

He put his bandaged hand over the brandy bell in front of him as Cesar presented the bottle. Neyrolle said, ‘It will
make headlines that you have given up cognac?’

‘I haven’t given it up. I just found out that I can take it or leave it alone, and I’m enjoying the sensation of leaving it
alone. That wasn’t what I meant by news.’ Freddy grinned
at Valentina. ‘Ask her.’