Angel's Ransom (34 page)

Neyrolle lifted his brandy glass politely to Valentina. ‘Mademoiselle?’

‘Madame.’ She smiled at her proudly grinning husband. In the mellow glow of the candle flames, she was more spectacularly beautiful than ever.
‘
S
ince this afternoon.’

Neyrolle
’s
congratulations were as sincere as his surprise was genuine. He said, ‘I thought I knew everything important that goes on in the Principality. You keep a secret
well.’

‘It didn’t happen in the Principality,’ Freddy said. 'We drove down to
Menton
. I wanted to give it to George as an
exclusive, if I could. He
’s
kind of become my official bio
grapher. And I can’t forget the risk he took to come out in
the pilot boat.’ He added quickly. ‘Of course you and your
man took the same risk. I don’t mean that I’m not just as
grateful to you. More so, even.’

‘You need not feel indebted to any of us.’ Neyrolle swirled the cognac in his brandy bell, inhaling the bouquet.
‘For Corsi and me, it was part of our work. And George
Saunders did not take the risk on your behalf.’

There was silence at the table for a moment. Valentina broke it.

‘Why did he take the risk?’

‘I am not quite certain. Primarily, I think, to be the first to speak with Marian Ellis when she was released from
imprisonment. It was she, you will remember, whom he was
most anxious to find when we first came aboard - even to the
extent of searching Holtz
’s
body, not a particularly pleasant
task, for the key that would open her cabin.’

Blake said, ‘They’d known each other in Paris. You’d found that out yourself. Naturally he would be worried
about her.’

‘Perhaps. But my experience with George Saunders leads me to question his exposure of himself to probable gunfire in
a small boat simply to be assured of the girl
’s
safety a few
minutes sooner than he might have been otherwise.’

‘Why did he do it, then?’

‘Probably for the same reason that he punched a man who once accosted Mademoiselle Ellis on the street in Paris.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I am not certain,’ Neyrolle answered pleasantly.

Blake felt a growing irritation with the
sous-chef
. He did not like George Saunders, but Neyrolle
’s
hints struck him as a
detraction behind the reporter
’s
back. And there was the
coupling of Marian
’s
name to the same hints. Blake had
known that she and George were more than casual
acquaintances
since her release from the
Angel
’s
cabin. From that
moment, George had been constantly in her company;
guarding her from questioning by other reporters, standing
by her side during Neyrolle
’s
own interrogation, stubbornly
arguing against a condemn
ation of her part in the kidnap
ping, defending her against any implication of wrongdoing
and insisting on his own explanations of her
behavior
until
Neyrolle, who wanted only to know as much of the truth as
possible, had dismissed them both. That the
sous-chef
should
resent George
’s
protectiveness as interference was understandable. But that his resentment should reflect itself in
innuendo directed at George and Marian behind their backs
was unfair.

Blake said, ‘He probably punched him because he needed punching,’ and stood up. ‘I’d like to be excused now, if you
don’t mind. I have a lot to do tonight.’

‘Ah, we’re celebrating,’ Freddy protested. ‘This is my wedding day. Forget the
Angel
until tomorrow and have
another cognac. Cesar!’

‘I’m afraid not. I’ve got an announcement of my own to make. Tomorrow I leave the
Angel
, Freddy. I’m quitting
you.’

The candle flames flickered in a light breath of breeze that passed across the deck. They were burning straight and clear
again before Freddy said unbelievingly, ‘No, Sam.’

‘Yes.’

‘But why? Why now? What have I done wrong?’

Valentina
’s
golden eyes were asking their own question. Blake said, ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve
started doing things right. I began liking you about a week
ago, and I won’t go on taking your money. If you don’t
understand that, I can’t explain. Take it that the
Angel
is
going to be tied up for a while and I don’t feel like being tied
up with her.’

He walked quickly away, to end the uncomfortable moment.

His departure was churlish. He knew it and was ashamed of it. But the conversation at the dinner table had become
distasteful to him, and he had already delayed his announcement until the last possible moment. He wanted Freddy to
have the certainty of Valentina
’s
companionship before he
withdrew his own. As for the
Angel
, she no longer meant
anything to him but a responsibility he was eager to be rid
of. It had taken Holtz to show him what a servant he was to
his command, the five days since Holtz
’s
death to tell him
that the service could not continue.

That he had fallen in love with Marian was a truth he had accepted only since their return to Monaco. He had seen her
only occasionally, and then always in George Saunders
’s
company. Jealousy, pure and simple, had brought the hard
fact home to him. She was avoiding him, or seemed to be,
and their infrequent conversations were awkward and
restrained when they were brought together by the circumstance of an interview or a pose to be taken for Press photographers. How much of it was because of George
’s
presence
forever in the background, Blake did not know. He meant to
find out, one way or another. He had lived too long without
love to yearn vainly for another man
’s
woman if she could be
won away, and if she could not be won he had to know it. A
declaration would force the issue, but even a declaration had
been impossible until then. George on her side, Freddy and
the demands of the
Angel
on his, had stood between them.
Now, at last, he was free to make a move.

He was in the pilot-house gathering up his navigation instruments when a taxi came along the quay, its headlights
jerking crazily as it bumped over the irregular paving, and
stopped in the shadows where the quay was joined by the
jetty. In a moment the headlights went off. The glass had
not yet been replaced in the gaping pilot-house windows
opened by Corsi
’s
bullets, and in the quiet of the still night
Blake could hear the grind of the taxi
’s
old motor, the dying
wheeze it gave when its driver shut off the ignition. Afterwards there were voices, a man
’s
and a woman
’s
; barely
audible at first, then rising in what Blake assumed, without
particular attention to it, t
o be an altercation between pas
sengers and driver. His interest came to quick focus when
the argument ended with a woman
’s
sharp ‘No!’, a man
’s
oath, and the hurried click of running heels on the cobbles of
the jetty.

The dim lights on the sea wall showed only two running shadows; a slim one fleeing, a heavier one in pursuit. But he
had heard those same clicking heels in flight before, and he
did not hesitate in his own charge out of the pilot-house
towards the after ladder. The candlelit table had been
removed from the deck below. In its place were deck-chairs,
and three dark figures in the immobile listening attitudes of
people whose conversation has been interrupted by an alarm.
Blake was quicker than any of them in getting to the head of
the gangplank and the switch of the reflector.

The bright cone of light threw a glare on the figures struggling together on the jetty. George Saunders held her
by wrist and waist, and was propelling her back toward the
taxi waiting on the quay. She fought him silently, bracing
her heels on the cobbles but unable to hold back against his
greater
weight and strength until Blake said, ‘Let her go.’
George
’s
face was ugly when he looked up into the glare of
the reflector. He said,
‘
S
tay out of this!’

‘Let her go!’ Blake repeated. The hot, coppery taste of challenge was in his mouth. He went down the gangplank
into the cone of light, his shadow looming black and large
before him. George had released the girl before he reached
them.

She rubbed her wrist. Her expression was defiant and fearful at the same time. She said, ‘Is Neyrolle here?’

From the darkness behind the reflector Neyrolle
’s
voice said, ‘What do you want with me, mademoiselle?’

‘I have something to say.’ She spoke to Blake without looking at him. ‘May I go aboard, Captain? It isn’t a trick,
this time.’

‘We’ll both go aboard,’ George said angrily. ‘If you’re going on with this nonsense, I want to be there to hear it.’

‘I am going on with it. You can do what you like.’

‘You nitwit,’ George said. ‘You stubborn, stupid nitwit.’

Blake followed them aboard. On deck, Marian said, ‘Could we go into the salon, please? I’d like to be able to
see.’

There was a compulsiveness about her that took them all to the salon, silently and without question. No one sat down.
Blake was reminded of the other gathering, when they had
stood under the threat of Holtz
’s
pistol. Marian had been by
his side then, not facing him with the half fearful, half defiant
look on her face and a red mark on her wrist where George
Saunders
’s
fingers had hurt her.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party,’ she said to Freddy. ‘It would have been under false
pretenses
, and I’ve
stopped pretending to - to - anybody.’

‘For the last time, will you stop this nonsense?’ George said.

‘You needn’t listen. I didn’t ask you to come.’ She spoke to Freddy with a kind of breathless urgency. ‘I’m leaving for
Paris in the morning. I don’t expect that you’ll see me again.
Before I go, I think you ought to know that I came here, to
Monaco, to see if I could meet you and interest you, in - in
the way the Belgian baroness interested you. George gave me
the idea, in Paris. He had been studying you for a long time,
reading about you in the newspapers, talking to people who
knew you, and he had a scheme to use a girl to take your
money. I was
–’

‘Liar,’ George said.

‘
–
to be the girl. The newspaper article he was writing was an excuse to learn all he could about you and then meet
you, so he could introduce me to you. He drew up an agreement for me to sign, promising to divide anything I was able
to get from you
–’

‘Liar,’ George said. ‘It was an ordinary employment contract.’

‘
–
in return for a wardrobe he was going to buy me and the introduction.’ She was speaking sometimes to Freddy,
sometimes to Neyrolle, always with the same breathless
urgency to get it said, never once looking at Blake, yet the
conviction that the explanation was for him grew in his mind.
‘I was sick of the cabaret. I hated exposing myself night
after night to drunken tourists who followed me on the
street afterwards and propositions in sign language
–
I’m not defending myself, only trying to explain why I
did it
–’

‘Get back to my villainy,’ George taunted. ‘Tell them how I led you astray.’

‘I never pretended that you led me astray. I wanted to do it. I wanted to have money, and nice clothes, and to be able
to gamble at the casino, and see my picture in the papers as
Freddy Farr
’s
guest aboard the
Angel
. When you came here
and wired me that he was already interested in another girl,
that we’d have to postpone our plan until he was tired of her,
I thought you were trying to cheat me. I followed you to
make sure that you didn’t. I thought I might be able to meet
you by myself, Freddy - I couldn’t arrange it at the casino
or any of the other places you went, because he was always
with you - I thought I might be able to get aboard the
yacht, somehow, before you sailed - I was certain I could
make myself attractive to you, even if you did have another
girl - and then all of a sudden it all seemed so shabby and
mean and indecent - at least in Paris I wasn’t
making
the
propositions, or trying to - that I just couldn’t go through
with it.’