The Sailcloth Shroud (4 page)

“Did he ever use a term that might indicate he could have been an ex-Navy officer? Service slang of any kind?”

“No-o. Not that I can recall at the moment. But now you’ve mentioned it, nearly everything about him would fit. And I’m pretty sure they teach midshipmen to sail at the Academy.”

“Yes. I think so.”

“He didn’t have a class ring, though. No rings of any kind.”

“You didn’t have a camera aboard, I take it?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s too bad; a snapshot would have been a great help. What about fingerprints? Can you think of any place aboard we might raise a few? I realize it’s been sixteen days—”

“No. I doubt there’d be a chance. She’s been in the yard for the past four, and everything’s been washed down.”

“I see.” Soames stood up. “Well, we’ll just have to try to locate somebody in the Zone who knew him. Thank you for coming in, Mr. Rogers. We may be in touch with you later, and I’d appreciate it if you would think back over those four days when you have time, and make a note of anything else you recall. You’re living aboard, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes association helps. You might be reminded of some chance remark he let fall, the name of a city, or yacht club, or something like that. Call us if you think of anything that could help.”

“Sure, I’ll be glad to,” I said. “I don’t understand, though, why he would give me a fake address. Do you suppose the name was phony too?”

Soames’ expression was polite, but it indicated the conversation was over. “We really have no reason to think so, that I can see.”

I walked over and caught a cab in front of the Warwick Hotel. During the ten-minute ride across the city to the eastern end of the waterfront and Harley’s boatyard, I tried to make some sense out of the whole affair. Maybe Willetts was right, after all; Keefer could have stolen that money from Baxter’s suitcase. If you assumed Baxter had lied about where he was from, he could have been lying about everything. And he’d never actually said he didn’t have any money; he’d merely implied it. That was the hell 0f it; he’d never actually said anything. He became more mysterious every time you looked at him, and when you tried to get hold of something concrete he was as insubstantial as mist.

But what about Keefer? Even if you could bring yourself to accept the premise that he was low enough to steal from a dead man—which was a little hard to swallow—how could he have been that stupid? Maybe he was no mental giant, but still it must have occurred to him that if Baxter was carrying that much money somebody must know about it, some friend or relative, and when the money turned up missing there’d be an investigation and charges of theft. Then a disquieting thought occurred to me. So far, nobody had claimed the money. What did you make of that? Had Keefer known, before he took it? But how could he? Then I shrugged, and gave up. Hell, there wasn’t even any proof that Keefer had stolen anything.

The taxi bumped across the tracks. I got out at the boatyard entrance and paid off the driver. This end of the waterfront was quiet on Saturday afternoon. To the right was another small shipyard that was closed now, and a half mile beyond that the city yacht basin, and Quarantine, and then the long jetties running out into the open Gulf. To the left were the packing sheds and piers where the shrimp boats clustered in a jungle of masts and suspended nets. These gave way in the next block to the first of the steamship terminals, the big concrete piers and slips that extended along the principal waterfront of the port.

The old watchman swung back the gate. “Here’s your key,” he said. “They had me come with ‘em while they searched the boat. Didn’t bother anything.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Didn’t say what they was looking for,” he went on tentatively.

“They didn’t tell me either,” I said. I went aboard the
Topaz
and changed clothes in the stifling cabin. Nothing was disturbed, as far as I could see. It was only three p.m.; maybe I could still get some work done. I loaded the pockets of my dungarees with sandpaper, went back up the mainmast, and resumed where I’d left off sanding, just below the spreaders. I sat in the bosun’s chair, legs gripping the mast to hold myself in against it while I smoothed the surface of the spar with long strokes of the abrasive. For the moment I forgot Keefer, and Baxter, and the whole puzzling mess. This was more like it. If you couldn’t be at sea, the next best thing was working about a boat, maintaining her, dressing her until she sparkled, and tuning her until she was like something alive. It seemed almost a shame to offer her for sale, the way she was shaping up. Money didn’t mean much, except as it could be used for the maintenance and improvement of the
Orion.

I looked forward and aft below me. Another three or four days should do it. She’d already been hauled, scraped, and painted with anti-fouling. Her topsides were a glistening white. The spars and other brightwork had been taken down to the wood, and when I finished sanding this one and the mizzen I could put on the first coat of varnish. Overhaul the tracks and slides, replace the lines in the outhauls, reeve new main and mizzen halyards, replace that frayed headstay with a piece of stainless steel, give the deck a coat of gray nonskid, and that would about do it The new mains’l should be here by Tuesday, and the yard ought to have the refrigerator overhauled and back aboard by then. Maybe I’d better jack them up about it again on Monday morning.

Probably start the newspaper ad next Wednesday, I thought. She shouldn’t be around long at $15,000, not the way she was designed and built. If I still hadn’t sold her in ten days, I’d turn her over to a yacht broker at an asking price of twenty, and go back to Miami. The new mains’l had hurt, and I hadn’t counted on having to rebuild the refrigerator, but still I’d be home for less than nine thousand.

Six thousand profit wouldn’t be bad for less than two months’ work and a little calculated risk. It would mean new batteries and new generator for the
Orion
. A leather lounge and teak table in the saloon. . . . I was down on deck now. I stowed the bosun’s chair and began sanding the boom.

“Mr. Rogers!”

I glanced up. It was the watchman, calling to me from the end of the pier, and I noted with surprise it was the four-to-midnight man, Otto Johns. I’d been oblivious of the passage of time.

“Telephone,” he called. “Long distance from New York.”

New York? Must be a mistake, I thought as I went up the pier. I didn’t know anybody there who would be trying to phone me. The watchman’s shack was just inside the gate, with a door and a wide window facing the driveway. Johns set the instrument on the window counter. “Here you go.”

I picked it up. “Hello. Rogers speaking.”

It was a woman’s voice. “Is this the Mr. Stuart Rogers who owns the yacht
Topaz?”

“That’s right.”

“Good.” There was evident relief in her voice. Then she went on softly, “Mr. Rogers, I’m worried. I haven’t heard from him yet.”

“From whom?” I asked blankly.

“Oh,” she replied. “I
am
sorry. It’s just that I’m so upset. This is Paula Stafford.”

It was evident from the way she said it the name was supposed to explain everything. “I don’t understand,” I said. “What is it you want?”

“He
did
tell you about me, didn’t he?”

I sighed. “Miss Stafford—or Mrs. Stafford—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who told me about you?”

“You’re being unnecessarily cautious, Mr. Rogers. I assure you I’m Paula Stafford. It must have been at least two weeks now, and I still have no word from him. I don’t like it at all. Do you think something could have gone wrong?”

“Let’s go back and start over,” I suggested. “My name is Stuart Rogers, age thirty-two, male, single, charter yacht captain—”

“Will you please—”
she snapped. Then she paused, apparently restraining herself, and went on more calmly. “All right, perhaps you’re right not to take chances without some proof. Fortunately, I’ve already made plane reservations. I’ll arrive at two-twenty a.m., and will be at the Warwick Hotel. Will you please meet me there as soon as I check in? It’s vitally important.” She hung up.

I shrugged, replaced the instrument, and lighted a cigarette. There was a weird one.

“Some nut?” Johns asked. He was a gaunt, white-haired man with ice-blue eyes. He leaned on the window shelf and began stoking a caked and smelly pipe. “I got a son-in-law that’s a cop, and he says you get your name in the paper you’re pestered with all kindsa screwballs.”

“Probably a drunk,” I replied.

“Too bad about that Keefer fella,” Johns went on. “Did I tell you he was here Iookin’ for you the other night?”

I glanced up quickly. “He was? When was this?”

“Hmmm. Same night they say he was killed. That’d be Thursday. I reckon I must have forgot to tell you because when you come in Ralph’d just relieved me and we was shootin’ the breeze.”

“What time was he here?”

“About seven, seven-thirty. Wasn’t long after you went out.”

I frowned. It was odd that Blackie hadn’t mentioned it when I ran into him at the Domino. “You’re sure it was Keefer?”

“That’s the name he said. Dark-haired kind of fella. Said he was the one that sailed up from Panama with you. I told him you’d gone uptown to a movie and wouldn’t be back till around eleven.”

“Was he in a car?” I asked. “And was there a girl with him?”

Johns shook his head. “He was by hisself. And I didn’t see no car; far as I know he was afoot. I reckon he’d had a couple snorts, because he got pretty hot under the collar when I wouldn’t let him go aboard the boat. He told me again about bein’ a friend of yours and comin’ up from Panama on it, and I said it didn’t make no difference to me if he’d helped you sail it here from Omaha, Nebraska. Long as he wasn’t in the crew no more he wasn’t goin’ aboard without you was with him.”

“What did he want?” I asked. “Did he say?”

“Said he forgot his razor when he was paid off. I told him he’d have to see you about that. He left, and didn’t come back.”

“Oh,” I said. “The companion hatch was locked; he couldn’t have got aboard anyway. He should have known that.”

I went back aboard the
Topaz
. It was after six now; I might as well knock off for the day. I walked over to the washroom, showered, shaved, and dressed in clean slacks and a fresh sport shirt. Back in the cabin, as I was putting away my shaving gear, I thought of Keefer. Odd, with all that money he had, that he would come clear back out here just to pick up the cheap shaving kit he’d bought in Panama. I paused. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t even seen it since Keefer had left. Was it just an excuse to get aboard? Maybe the man was a thief. I pulled open the drawer under the bunk Keefer had occupied. There was no razor in it. Why, the dirty . . . Well, don’t go off half-cocked, I thought; make sure it’s not aboard. I stepped into the head and pulled open the tiny medicine cabinet above the basin. There it was, the styrene case containing a safety razor and a pack of blades. My apologies, Blackie.

I went up the companion ladder. The deck now lay in the lengthening shadows of the buildings ashore, and with a slight breeze blowing up bay from the Gulf it was a little cooler. I sat down in the cockpit, took out a cigarette, and then paused just as I started to flip the lighter.

Paula.

Paula Stafford.

Was there something familiar about the name? Hadn’t I heard it before, somewhere? Oh, it was probably just imagination. I dropped the lighter back in my pocket, and inhaled deeply of the smoke, but the nagging idea persisted. Maybe Keefer had mentioned her sometime during the trip. Or Baxter.

Baxter . . . For some reason I was conscious again of that strange sensation of unease I had felt there in the office of the FBI. Merely by turning my head I could look along the port side of the deck, between mizzen and main, where I had stood that day with head bared to the brazen heat of the sun and watched the body as it faded slowly and disappeared, falling silently into the depths and the crushing pressures and eternal darkness two miles below. It was the awful finality of it—the fact that if the FBI couldn’t find out something about him, pick up his trail somewhere, they might never know who he was. There’d never be a second chance. No fingerprints, no photograph, no possibility of a better description, nothing. He was gone, forever, without leaving a trace. Was that it? Was it going to bother me the rest of my life—the fact that I had failed to bring the body ashore where it might have been identified?

Oh, hell, I thought angrily, you’re just being morbid. You did everything humanly possible. Except remove the stomach; that would have helped, but you chickened out. So you did like the man; that’s no excuse. It’s done. But it wouldn’t have changed anything in the long run. You were still three hundred miles from the Canal. And in that heat, trying to stretch it any longer would have been more than just unpleasant; it could have become dangerous. Burial was a practical necessity long before it became a ritual.

But there must be some clue. We’d been together for four days, and in that length of time even a man as uncommunicative as Baxter would have said
something
that would provide a lead as to where he was from. Think back. What was it Soames had said about association? Right here within this span of forty feet was where it had all taken place. Start at the beginning, with the first time you ever saw Baxter, and go over every minute.

I stopped. Just why was it necessary? Or rather, why did I feel it was? Why this subconscious fear that they weren’t going to find anybody in Panama who knew Baxter? The man said he’d worked there. If he had, the FBI would run him down in a day. Was it merely because the San Francisco address had proved a dead end? No, there must be more. . . .

It had rained during the afternoon, a slashing tropical downpour that drummed along the deck and pocked the surface of the water like hail, but it was clear now, and the hot stars of the southern latitudes were ablaze across the sky. The
Topaz
was moored stern-to at a low wooden wharf with her anchor out ahead, shadowy in the faint illumination from a lamp a half block away where the row of palms along the street stirred and rustled in the breeze blowing in from the Caribbean.

It was eight p.m. Keefer had gone off to the nearest bar with two or three dollars he had left from the twenty I’d advanced him. I went below to catalogue and stow the charts I had bought. I switched on the overhead light and stood for a moment at the foot of the companion ladder, looking forward. She was all right. She had a good interior layout, and the six-foot-two-inch headroom was adequate.

The small bottled-gas stove and stainless-steel sink of the galley were on the port side aft, with the wooden refrigerator below and stowage above. To starboard was a settee. Above it was the RDF and radiotelephone, and a chart table that folded back when not in use. Just forward of this area were two permanent bunks, and beyond them a locker to port and the small enclosed head to starboard. These, and the curtain between them, formed a passage going into the forward compartment, which was narrower and contained two additional bunks.

The charts were in a roll on the settee. I cut the cord binding them, and pulled down the chart table. Switching on the light above it, I began checking them off against my list, rolling them individually, and stowing them in the rack overhead. It was hot and very still here below, and sweat dripped off my face. I mopped at it, thinking gratefully that tomorrow we would be at sea.

I had a Hydrographic Office general chart of the Caribbean spread out on the table and was lighting a cigarette when a voice called out quietly from ashore, “Ahoy, aboard the
Topaz.”

I stuck my head out the companion hatch. The shadowy figure on the wharf was tall but indistinct in the faint light, and I couldn’t see the face. But he sounded American, and judging from the way he’d hailed he could be off one of the other yachts. “Come on aboard,” I invited.

I stepped back, and the man came into view down the companion ladder—heavy brogues first, and then long legs in gray flannel slacks, and at last a brown tweed jacket. It was an odd way to be dressed in Panama, I thought, where everybody wore white and nothing heavier than linen. The man’s face appeared, and he stood at the foot of the ladder with his head inclined slightly because of his height. It was a slender, well-made face, middle-aged but not sagging or deeply lined, with the stamp of quietness and intelligence and good manners on it. The eyes were brown. He was bareheaded, and the short-cropped brown hair was graying.

“Mr. Rogers?” he asked politely.

“That’s right,” I said.

“My name is Baxter. Wendell Baxter.”

We shook hands. “Welcome aboard,” I said. “How about some coffee?”

“Thank you, no.” Baxter moved slightly to one side of the companion ladder, but remained standing. “I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Rogers. I heard you were looking for a hand to take her north.”

I was surprised, but concealed it. Baxter had neither the appearance nor the bearing of one who would be looking for a job as a paid deckhand. College students, yes; but this man must be around fifty. “Well, I’ve already got one man,” I said.

“I see. Then you didn’t consider taking two? I mean, to cut the watches.”

“Watch-and-watch does get pretty old,” I agreed. “And I certainly wouldn’t mind having two. You’ve had experience?”

“Yes.”

“Offshore? The Caribbean can get pretty lumpy for a forty-foot yawl.”

Baxter had been looking at the chart. He glanced up quickly, but the brown eyes were merely polite. “Yawl?”

I grinned. “I’ve had two applicants who called her a schooner, and one who wanted to know if I planned to anchor every night.”

A faint smile touched Baxter’s lips. “I see.”

“Have you had a chance to look her over?” I asked.

“Yes. I saw her this morning.”

“What do you make of her?”

“This is just a guess, of course, but I’d say she was probably an Alden design, and New England built, possibly less than ten years ago. She seems to have been hauled recently, probably within two months, unless she’s been lying in fresh water. The rigging is in beautiful shape, except that the lower shroud on the port side of the main has some broken strands.”

I nodded. I already had the wire aboard to replace that shroud in the morning before sailing. Baxter was no farmer. I nodded toward the chart. “What do you think of the course, the way I’ve laid it out?”

He studied it for a moment. “If the Trades hold, it should be a broad reach most of the way. Once you’re far enough to the north’ard to weather Gracias a Dios, you can probably lay the Yucatán Channel on one course. Do you carry genoa and spinnaker?”

“No,” I said. “Nothing but the working sails. We’ll probably be twelve days or longer to Southport, and all I can offer you is a hundred for the passage. Are you sure you want to go?”

“The pay isn’t important,” he replied. “Primarily, I wanted to save the plane fare.”

“You’re an American citizen, I suppose.”

“Yes. My home’s in San Francisco. I came down here on a job that didn’t work out, and I’d like to get back as cheaply as possible.”

“I see,” I said. I had the feeling somehow that behind the quiet demeanor and well-bred reserve Baxter was tense with anxiety, wanting to hear me say yes. Well, why not? The man was obviously experienced, and it would be well worth the extra hundred not to have to stand six-and-six. “It’s a deal, then. Can you be aboard early in the morning? I’d like to get away before ten.”

He nodded. “I’ll have my gear aboard in less than an hour.”

He left, and returned in forty-five minutes carrying a single leather suitcase of the two-suiter variety. “Keefer and I are in these bunks,” I said. “Take either of those in the forward compartment. You can stow your bag in the other one.”

“Thank you. That will do nicely,” he replied. He stowed his gear, removed the tweed jacket, and opened the mushroom ventilator overhead. He came out after a while and sat silently smoking a cigarette while I rated the chronometer with a time signal from WWV.

“I gather you’ve cruised quite a bit,” I said tentatively.

“I used to,” he replied.

“In the Caribbean, and West Indies?”

“No. I’ve never been down here before.”

“My normal stamping ground is the Bahamas,” I went on. “That’s wonderful country.”