Angel's Ransom by David Dodge

position to bargain.’ He was, if George had known him better, altogether too humble. ‘The engineer can be reached through the Commandant du Port, on the Quai des É tats Unis. The steward –’ he went through the papers on his desk until he found the address he was looking for ‘ - at La Rascasse . It is a small bar and cafe at the foot of the Quai du Commerce. If he is not there they will take a message, but please do not waste any time. You understand my position.’
    ‘Better than you think,’ George said.
    Neyrolle lit another Gauloise and smoked thoughtfully for some minutes after the reporter left his office. He had satisfied himself that George was not a gambler, in any sense. His interest could not be won with the probability of an exclusive story, only a guarantee of it. It made the puzzle of the article on Freddy Farr written for a doubtful return more than ever puzzling.
    He called his clerk and made inquiries about the dossier on Saunders, George. The clerk reported nothing new. Inquiries were still in process.
    George tried La Rascasse first because it was closer than the office of the Port Commandant. He had good luck. A waiter pointed Cesar out, alone on the terrace. The steward had a pastis in front of him and was in the process of getting drunk, from the number of saucers on the table to mark the drinks he had already taken that morning. George identified himself, ordered a coffee and another pastis , and mentioned Sûreté Publique .
    No more was necessary. Cesar was ripe for an attentive and not too skeptical audience.
    ‘It is easy to see how a bonehead like Michaud can fail to see the truth when it sticks him in the eye,’ he said sourly. ‘But when a man whose business it is to catch crooks refuses to accept the fact of a gangsterism because we do not have gangsterisms in Monaco –’ He shrugged, finished his drink, and began on the new one George had ordered. ‘Ah, well. Your health, monsieur. And frustration to all flics.’
    ‘Tell me what happened yesterday morning, Cesar. From the beginning.’
    ‘I have already told all there was to tell.’ Cesar made a face. ‘M. Neyrolle has it, in writing.’
    ‘I’m not the flics, and I want to hear it over again. Go ahead. Talk.’
    ‘Well –’
    George was a good listener. He closed his eyes and let Cesar ramble, interrupting now and then only to take him back over a detail that was not clear. Cesar had had just enough drink to stimulate his memory and, to the same extent, his imagination.
    ‘ - snappy about it when I tried to tell him the permis was a blind to get us ashore,’ he said at one point in the narrative.
    ‘Of course he’d had this dame aboard most of the night, so he couldn’t have got much sleep, and he was in a hurry –’
    ‘Wait a minute!’ George sat up straight. ‘What dame? You’re talking about Blake now, aren’t you?’
    ‘That ’s right.’
    ‘He had a girl aboard during the night?’
    ‘A female, anyway. I’d turned in. I didn’t see her.’
    ‘How do you know she was there, then?’
    Cesar explained about the handbag. George said, ‘ Couldn’t it have been one of Freddy ’s girls, thinking he was aboard?’
    ‘Maybe. But Freddy ’s girls generally own something flossier in the way of handbags, and anyway he doesn’t go for innocents. Or maybe they don’t go for him.’
    ‘How do you know she was an innocent?’
    ‘Why, the stuff that was in her purse. You can always tell. A femme du monde , now, she carries a certain set of junk, a schoolgirl something else. This one was in between. Not Freddy ’s type at all.’
    ‘Was Blake - did he often have women aboard?’
    ‘Never that I know of. The dames were always Freddy ’s dames. Of course it ’s hard to tell what the captain did when he was ashore, but he didn’t spend much time ashore. The Angel is his girl.’
    George began to feel the thrill of discovery. He questioned Cesar at length without learning more about the mysterious