Angel's Ransom Read Online Free PDF

drifted slowly backward from his line of sight.
    He said again, more demandingly, ‘What is this?’
    ‘Be quiet!’ The gun muzzle lifted to emphasize the order.
    Marian ’s paralysis of will broke at the slight movement. She sounded inane even to herself when she said, ‘I - I don’t understand.’
    ‘Of course you don’t understand!’ Holtz did not shift his eyes. His complete concentration of attention on Blake while he spoke to her emphasized the contempt in his words. ‘You were never intended to understand, only to serve a purpose. You have done it admirably.’
    ‘But - but what are we doing here?’
    ‘I am here to kidnap Freddy Farr and persuade him that he has more money than he needs. You are here because you were necessary to my plans, and you are not ingenuous enough to be safely left behind to talk. Now be quiet!’
    He had still not looked at her.
    His intense concentration of attention on Blake at the same time as he listened for whatever sound or signal he was expecting f rom outside the pilot-house kept him from the realization that Marian was about to scream until she took a shuddering deep breath. He moved with amazing speed then, reaching to shut the door that would muffle both scream and shot as he swung the pistol toward her. Death, ugly and unmistakable, was in his eyes. But his move to close the door before he pulled the trigger had given Blake the chance, risking a bullet, to clap his hand over Marian ’s mouth and pinion her arms, locking her body against his own with her head pulled back against his shoulder, muzzled and helpless before the threat of the pistol that Holtz held leveled at her breast, his face still twisted with the barely checked impulse to kill.
    ‘Look at it!’ Blake said harshly. ‘Take a good look! If he squeezes his finger, you’re done! Do what he says!’
    He held her that way for a moment, feeling the moisture of her lips against his palm, making her face the leveled pistol, letting the truth that was in Holtz ’s face penetrate before he released her. He could feel sweat prickling his skin at the narrowness of the escape.
    Holtz said thinly, ‘If your employer is as sensible as you are, Captain, we will all avoid a great deal of difficulty.’ He reached behind him to open the door, his eyes again intent on Blake. To Marian, he said, ‘You are even more stupid than I believed you to be. Do not challenge me carelessly again.’ The tension that gripped the lit tle gunman did not make the big Walther waver in his hand, nor interfere with his alert attentiveness for the sound he was waiting for. It came at last when they heard the grind and grumble of the diesels starting up in the engine-room. First one motor, then the other, turned over, caught, fired and settled down to its steady mutter.
    Blake felt the familiar pulse of power in the cruiser ’s hull with an unfamiliar sinking of the heart. That moment, when the motors were started and the Angel took on life of its own, was the moment its captain assumed command and the responsibilities of command. Ashore, Freddy Farr and his guests were no concern of Blake ’s . Afloat, they were in his charge, the guarantee of their safety his duty. The Angel ’s passengers were his to defend against a man who had already shown his willingness to kill at the smallest evidence of opposition.
    Holtz shifted his position in the doorway to bring the wheel more directly under the threat of his weapon.
    ‘Take the controls, Captain,’ he said. ‘We are about to put to sea, according to schedule.’
    ‘I can’t put to sea without a crew,’ Blake said. ‘It ’s out of the question. Shooting me won’t weigh anchor.’
    ‘You have a crew.’ Holtz nodded at the foredeck, still without moving his watchful eyes.
    Blake thought, So Cesar was right after all . Jules, the big Provenç al of the permis , was at the bow winch maneuvering the Angel away from the jetty on her anchor chains. It was skillfully done, better