Angel's Ransom (29 page)

The lights were out in Freddy
’s
cabin. Neither overhead reflector nor reading-lamp responded to the switch. Blake
felt for the bulbs and found them gone.

‘Holtz will have taken them to prevent
signaling
,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to sweat it out in the dark, Fred.’

In the dim illumination of the cabin passageway Freddy
’s
eyes were frightened. But he said, ‘At least I won’t have all
those little green men locked in with me this time,’ and tried
to laugh. ‘Man to man, Sam. We’re alone now. Nobody
listening. What do you think of our chances?’

‘They’re better than even that the
check
was presented. If it was, the police are looking for you. You can be certain
of that. They may be the ones to let you out of here after I
lock you in, but barricade yourself, anyway. Wedge the
door shut with the slats of the blinds, and hope. That
’s
about
your best effort.’

Freddy hesitated only momentarily to step into the black cell of the cabin. He said, ‘I’ve got one good set of fingers to
cross. They’ll be crossed,’ and turned to extend his good
hand. ‘Look out for yourself, Sam.’

The finality of a handshake seemed almost like an
acknowledgement
of defeat. But this Freddy Farr was not the same man who had offered his employee a bribe to risk his life in
taking a gun from Roche. Blake gripped the outstretched
hand, released it, and shut the door between them.

The action of turning the key in the lock reminded him of Laura di Lucca. The key to her cabin was in his pocket. He
tried her door, made sure it was locked, and could think of
nothing more to do to protect her. It was useless to tell her to
barricade herself, or even to hope to communicate with the
mind behind that blank wall of withdrawal. He had no
intention of surrendering the key that kept her safe until a
demand for it was made, and when Holtz, as careful to keep
his distance as ever, silently jerked the pistol barrel in a
peremptory order to hurry in bringing the next captive, he
began to hope that his pos
session of the key had been for
gotten. For all Holtz
’s
boast, he had miscalculated before
then. And the fact of even the most insignificant oversight
was encouraging. The
Angel
’s
prisoners needed all the
encouragement they could find.

Valentina waited where he and Freddy had left her. Before taking her back over the
rainswept
deck, he stopped
for a moment to explain how the metal strips of the slatted
blinds of her cabin portholes could be doubled into wedges
that would hold the door against assault for a time. He did
not add that it could be no more than a stop-gap safeguard
if a determined effort were made to break the door down,
but he doubted that she had any illusions about her safety.
In the salon she watched with her usual cool detachment of
manner as Holtz tossed a key, and showed no particular
emotion upon learning that her solitary confinement would
be in the dark. Her composure did not crack until she stood
inside the cabin and he was about to close the door. She put
out her hand to stop him.

‘Would it surprise you to know that I am afraid?’ she asked.

‘You’ve hidden it well, so far.’

‘That was for Freddy.’ The appeal in her husky voice could not be hidden. ‘For poor weak Freddy I am strong,
and could lend him strength because he is afraid to be alone
in the dark. But where do we strong ones turn, when we,
too, are afraid of loneliness and darkness?’

Once again he was conscious of her perfume, her nearness, her femininity. There was no coquetry of invitation about
her this time, only need. He bent his head to touch her lips
with his own, and felt rather than heard her say something
soundless and soft and meaningless against his mouth. Then
she had closed the cabin door between them, and there was
nothing left but to turn the key in the lock and leave it there,
according to orders.

The key had already disappeared from Freddy
’s
lock. Holtz was taking no chances of an assault by superior
numbers in the narrow confines below deck. But he still
made no demand for the key to Laura di Lucca
’s
cabin
when Blake came up the companionway, only repeated
the peremptory jerk of the pistol that was the order to
hurry. Marian alone remained to be brought to her
imprisonment.

She was not in the forward part of the cruiser. Blake tried the galley first, then the crew
’s
quarters in the forepeak. A
more remote physical withdrawal than to the forepeak was
impossible aboard the yacht, and he suspected that the hurt
he had given her would have driven her into solitude. From
the crew
’s
quarters he worked his way aft, methodically
exploring hiding places. He did not begin to worry until
he had reached the blank obstruction of the engine-room
bulkhead, and had to return to the main deck to continue
the search.

The engine-room required only a glance. It offered no place of concealment. Neither did the rainy foredeck. The
canopied afterdeck was unoccupied, and there were no other
sheltered areas on the storm-swept cruiser but the pilot-house, the salon and the c
abins below. His growing uneasi
ness drove him to face Holtz and ask the inevitable question.

‘I don’t know where she is, but find her quickly.’ Holtz
’s
eyes narrowed. ‘If this is a device of some kind, remember
the warning I gave you. I will hunt for her myself only to
shoot.’ He pointed inexorably at the salon clock. ‘You have
five minutes, Captain. Produce her.’

A futile further search fo
r two of the minutes almost con
vinced Blake that she had gone overboard. On the edge of desperation, dreading to go to the pilot-house and exhaust
his last hope, he found her soaked and shivering on the
boat-deck. She was poorly concealed by the bulk of the
shrouded power launch, but in the windy wet dark he
might have passed her by if she had not made a sudden
rush at him as he came up the ladder from below. The
impact of her body almost threw them both back headlong. They were saved by his greater weight and the chance that he was looking in the right direction when she came
at him. He caught her, pulling her toward him, feeling her
shake and tremble with something more than cold, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arms while she sobbed despairingly into his jacket, ‘I thought it was Holtz! I planned for it to be Holtz! You said he always comes this
way! You said –’

‘Quiet!’

He pressed her face deeper into his jacket, muffling her. Her head was uncovered, her hair soaking under his hand. He could not guess how long she had been waiting by her desperate trap, but it had to have been more than a few minutes. Hours, perhaps. Hours had passed since his too-hasty words had driven her from the pilot-house. He
could not afford to speak unwisely to her again.

He said, ‘Listen to me. I have to lock you in one of the cabins. For your own safety.’

‘No! No!’ She tried to push away. ‘I’ve got to stay here! He’ll come looking for me! I know he will! I’ve got to be ready for him when he comes! Let me go!’

‘He’ll come looking for you in three minutes, ready to shoot, if I don’t take you below. Be sensible!’

‘I am being sensible!’ She was on the verge of hysteria.! ‘I’m being sensible for the first time! It’s my fault it all happened, just as you said it was! I have to pay for it! Let me go!’

‘I was wrong to say it. It wasn’t true. For God’s sake –’

‘It was true! It is true!’ She strained frantically against his chest. ‘Everything that has happened is my fault. Don’t you see, I’ve
got
to get rid of him? I made him! He’s my own monster, my nightmare! Let me go!’

‘Blake!’ Holtz’s chill warning carried clearly from the
l
ower deck. ‘Wherever you are! You have two minutes left!’

‘Please, oh, please, let me go! I’ve got to hide! I’ve got to be ready for him when he comes up the ladder! You told me to save my fight for him! Let me go.’

Her writhing struggles increased until he was hard put to hold her. He shifted his gri
p quickly to her wrists, then
pinned her arms behind her. Holding her that way, close
against him, he said, ‘I let you go once when I shouldn’t
have. I’m not going to do it again. Either you go down that
ladder with me or we wait here for Holtz to come up it
shooting! Make the choice for both of us!’

‘It needn’t be both of us! You don’t have to die! Let him shoot me! I’ll make him turn his back to you! Then you can
take his gun
and I’ll have paid for everything - Bruno, and
that poor miserable woman, and Freddy, and the beatings
they’ve given yo
u –
’

She was going to be screaming before she finished. He had only one way to stop her mouth. Taking it, he thought of
Valentina’s words, of loneliness, and darkness, and strength
that gave to lesser strength. He had not much strength to
spare, but something passed from his lips to Marian’s that
restrained and then stopped her struggles, so that when at
long last he put his cheek comfortingly against her rain-wet
cheek she was quiet in his arms, sobbing still but unresisting,
and he had won before Holtz’s raging, ominous shout came
again: ‘Blake! Damn you! One more minute!’

‘We’re coming! Wait!’

Over Marian’s head he had caught a fleeting glimpse of color. He strained his eyes for seconds to verify that it was
not his imagination, then led her toward the ladder and her
imprisonment. Off the
Angel
’s starboard bow, now briefly
visible, now obscured by scud and rain, a faint hazy red eye
winked beside a steady green one.

The port beacons were still two or three miles away when Holtz ordered the motors throttled down.

The
Angel
had been wholly dark for half an hour, without running lights or interior illumination. So that he
and Holtz could see better from the pilot-house with the
binoculars they both carried, Jules had switched off even the
binnacle lamp and the shielded glow of the instrument panel.
Blake, again at the wheel, needed neither compass nor
instrument
in those familiar waters. In the wind-whipped mistiness through which the cruiser crept shoreward under bare
steerage way, the lights of the Principality were only a dim
c
urtain of spangled brightness framing the stronger beams of the beacons, but his mind saw what his eyes could not, the
familiar stretch of rocky coast between Cap Martin and Cap
d’Ail
; here the sandy hook that was Monte Carlo beach,
there the facing bluffs of Monte Carlo and Monaco-Ville,
the shelter of the port between them, depth markings on a
chart, a compass rose. Sea
and wind were pushing the
Angel
toward the shore, as they would push any buoyant object,
and an able-bodied man could stay afloat indefinitely in
Mediterranean water even during a storm. With darkness to
shield him, Holtz and Jules both intent on their shoreward
watch, his escape called for no more than a quick plunge
toward the door, a dive over the rail. Half a dozen steps
would carry him to freedom.

He had no intention of taking those steps. A plan for action was in his mind, but it called for an advance on
Holtz
’s
gun, rather than flight from it. Marian
’s
attempted
sacrifice had shown him a way, the only certain way, he
could hope to gain possession of the Walther. Since Holtz
could not be brought within reach except to shoot, someone
would have to accept a bullet
as the price of the accomplish
ment. Blake had come to the state of mind where he was
ready to make the trade himself. He did not intend to die,
unless luck went wholly against him. His death without control of the weapon would be as purposeless as Bruno
’s
. The
limit was a single bullet, and with an assurance that he
would be able to close with Holtz before the shot took effect.
At that price, Holtz could be defeated.