Charles Williams - The Sailcloth Shroud

“Sure,” I broke in. “That was it. I remember now. He was talking to them right at the moment she blew up.”

Bill nodded. “It was easy enough to figure out what happened. When he got hold of them, he said he’d been having engine trouble all afternoon. Dirt or rust in the fuel tanks. He’d been blowing out fuel lines and cleaning strainers and settling bowls and probably had the bilges full of gasoline by that time. He’d know enough not to smoke, of course, so it must have been the radio itself that set it off. Maybe a sparking brush on the converter, or a relay contact. That was the Coast Guard theory. Anyway, he went dead right in the middle of a sentence. Then about fifteen minutes later a northbound tanker pretty well out in the Stream off Fort Lauderdale reported what looked like a boat afire over to the eastward of them. They changed course and went over, and got there before the Coast Guard, but there wasn’t anything they could do. She was a mass of flame by then and in a matter of minutes she burned to the waterline and sank. The Coast Guard cruised around for several hours, hoping he’d been able to jump, but if he had he’d already drowned. They never found any trace of him. There wasn’t any doubt, of course, as to what boat it was. That was just about the position he’d reported. He’d been drifting north in the Stream all the time his engines were conked out.”

“Did they ever recover his body?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did his life-insurance companies pay off?”

“As far as anybody could ever find out, he didn’t carry any life insurance.”

We looked at each other in silence. We both nodded.

“When they come after you,” Lorraine said, “tell them to wait for me. I think so too.”

“Sure,” I said excitedly. “Look—that’s the very thing that’s been puzzling me all the time. I mean, why those three goons were so sure I’d put him ashore somewhere, without even knowing about the letter. It’s simply because he’d done it to ‘em once before.”

“Not so fast,” Bill cautioned. “Remember, this happened at least twenty miles offshore. And on his way out that day he stopped at a marine service station in Government Cut and gassed up. They were positive he didn’t have a dinghy. Sport fishermen seldom or never do, of course, so they’d have noticed if he had.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing,” I said, “except that we’re right. He wanted it known he didn’t have another boat with him. Somebody else took him off, and five will get you ten it was a girl named Paula Stafford. The Stream was flat; she could have come out from Fort Lauderdale in any kind of power cruiser, or even one of those big, fast outboard jobs. Finding him in the dark might be a tough job for a landlubber, unless he gave her a portable RDF and a signal from the Princess Pat to home on, but actually she wouldn’t have to do it in the dark. She could have been already out there before sundown, lying a mile or so away where she wouldn’t have any trouble picking up his lights. Or if there were no other boats around, she could have gone alongside before it got dark.”

“But neither the tanker nor the Coast Guard saw any other boat when they got there.”

“They wouldn’t,” I said. “Look. They took it for granted the explosion occurred while he was talking to them, because his radio went dead. Well, his radio went dead simply because he turned it off. Then he threw several gallons of gasoline around the cabin and cockpit, rigged a fuse of some kind that would take a few minutes to set it off, got in the other boat, and shoved. It would have taken the tanker possibly ten minutes to get there, even after they spotted the fire. So with a fast boat, Baxter was probably five to seven miles away and running without lights when it showed up, and by the time the Coast Guard arrived he was ashore having a drink in some cocktail lounge in Fort Lauderdale. It would be easy. That’s the reason I asked about the insurance. It would be so simple to fake that if he had a really big policy they probably wouldn’t pay off until after seven years, or whatever it is.”

“Well, he didn’t have any,” Bill replied, “so that was no strain. He also had no heirs that anybody has been able to locate, and the only estate besides the other boats seems to be a checking account with about eleven thousand in it.”

“What else did you find out?” I asked.

“I pulled his package in the morgue, but there wasn’t a great deal in it after the clippings for those first few days. So I started calling people. The police are still trying to locate some of his family. The house is sitting there vacant; he had a lease, and paid the rent on a yearly basis, so it has until next February to run. Nobody can understand his financial setup. The way he lived was geared to a hell of a big income, but they don’t know where it came from. They couldn’t find any investments of any kind, no stocks, bonds, real estate, savings, or anything. Just the checking account.”

“Well, the bank must know how the checking account was maintained.”

“Yes. Mostly by big cashiers’ checks, ten thousand or more at a time, from out-of-town banks. He could have bought them himself.”

“That sounds as if he were on the run, and hiding from somebody, even then. If he had a lot of money it was in cash, and he kept it that way so he could take it with him if he had to disappear.”

“The police figure it about the same way. After all, he wouldn’t be exactly unique. We get our share of lamsters, absconding bank types, and Latin American statesmen who got out just ahead of the firing squad with a trunk full of loot.”

I lighted a cigarette. “I want to get in that house. Do you know the address?”

He nodded. “I know the address, but you couldn’t get in. It’d be tough, even for a pro. That’s about seventy thousand dollars’ worth of house, and in that class they don’t make it easy for burglars.”

“I’ve got to! Look—Baxter’s going to drive me insane, get me killed, or land me in jail. There must be an explanation for him. If I could only find out who the hell he really was, I’d at least have a place to start.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t find it there. The police have been over every inch of it, and they found absolutely nothing that would give them a lead, not a letter or a clipping or a scrap of paper, or even anything he’d bought before he came to Miami. They even checked the labels and laundry marks in his clothes, and they’re all local. He apparently moved in exactly the way a baby is born—naked, and with no past life whatever.”

I nodded. “That’s the impression you begin to get after a while. He came aboard the Topaz the same way. He just appears, like a revelation.”

“But about the house,” Bill went on, “I haven’t told you everything yet. I was in it this afternoon, and there’s just a chance I stumbled onto something. I don’t know.”

I looked up quickly. “What?”

“Don’t get your hopes up. The chances are a thousand to one it’s nothing at all. It’s only an autographed book and a letter.”

“How’d you get in?” I demanded. “What book is it, and who’s the letter from?”

He lighted another cigarette. “The police let me in. I went to a lieutenant I know and made him a proposition. I wanted to do a Sunday-supplement sort of piece on Hardy, and if they’d cooperate it might help both of us. Any newspaper publicity is always helpful when you’re trying to locate friends or relatives of somebody who’s dead. You know.” He made an impatient gesture, and went on.

“Anyway, they were agreeable. They had a key to the place, and sent a man with me. We spent about an hour in the house, prowling through all the desks and table drawers and his clothes and leafing through books and so on—all the stuff that had been sifted before. We didn’t find anything, of course. But when we were leaving, I noticed some mail on a small table in the front hall. The table was under the mail slot, but we hadn’t seen it when we came in because it’s behind the door when it’s open.