The sailcloth shroud

  “Has anybody read this letter except me?”

  “Mr. Rogers, are you crazy? Of course nobody else has seen it.

  “Well, look,” I went on, “do you think he had twenty-three thousand dollars with him?”

  “Yes. Of course he did. But why are you asking all these questions? And why don’t you answer mine? Where is he?”

  “I keep trying to tell you,” I said. “He died of a heart attack four days after we left Cristobal. And in those four days he never said anything at all about wanting to be put ashore. I made an inventory of his personal effects, and he didn’t have any twenty-three thousand dollars. He had about a hundred and seventy-five. Either Baxter was insane, or we’re not even talking about the same man.”

  Her face became completely still then. She stared at me, her eyes growing wider and wider. “You killed him,” she whispered. “That’s why I’ve never heard from him.”

  “Stop it!” I commanded. “There has to be some answer—”

  “You killed him!” She put her hands up alongside her temples and screamed, with the cords standing out in her throat. “You killed him! You killed him!”

  “Listen!”

  She went on screaming. Her eyes were completely mad.

  I ran.

  7

  Doors were opening along the corridor and faces were peering out. When I reached the elevator it was on its way up. That would be the hotel detective. I plunged down the stairs with the screams still ringing in my ears. When I reached the lobby at last, it was quiet. Hotels in the Warwick’s class don’t like police milling around in the lobby if they can help it. I crossed the deserted acres, feeling the eyes of the clerk on my back. In less than five minutes I was back in my own room at the Bolton. I hooked the chain on the door and collapsed on the side of the bed. I reached for a cigarette and got it going somehow.

  Now what? There was no use trying to talk to her again; she was on the ragged edge of a crackup. Even if they got her calmed down, seeing me would only set her off again. The thing to do was call the FBI. Then I thought of the letter. If they ever saw that . . .

  It was absolutely deadly; the more I looked at it, the worse it became. How could anybody ever believe me now? Baxter had sailed on the Topaz with $23,000 and had never been seen again. I swore he’d died of a heart attack and that all the money he’d had was $175. Then Keefer was discovered to have $4000 nobody could explain, and he was killed. I was the only survivor. There was only my unsupported word that Baxter had even had a heart attack, and $19,000 was still missing.

  The least I would be suspected of would be stealing from a dead man and then burying him at sea and destroying his identification to cover up the theft. Or landing him on the coast of Central America as he’d asked, and swearing to a false report that he was dead. The third was even worse. Keefer and I could have killed him. Maybe they couldn’t convict me of any of it—they wouldn’t have any more actual proof on their side than I had on mine—but even the suspicion would ruin me. I was in the charter business. Cruise the exotic Bahamas with Captain Rogers, and disappear. They’d take away my license. Except of course that the hoodlums who were after Baxter might kill me before any of these other things could happen. I sat on the side of the bed with my head in my hands.

  Then I was struck by an odd thought. What had given them the idea I’d put Baxter ashore? It seemed now there was some basis for their insane theory, but how had they known it? So far as I knew he’d written only that one letter, and she swore nobody else had seen it.

  I closed my eyes, and I could see Baxter. Baxter at the wheel, watching the compass, looking aloft for the flutter at the luff of the mains’l, Baxter trimming and starting the sheets, Baxter washing dishes, Baxter quietly smoking a cigarette and looking out across the darkening sea at dusk. He haunted me. He was becoming an obsession. If he’d meant what he had written to Paula Stafford, why had he never once, in all those four days, brought up the subject of being put ashore? I wouldn’t have done it, of course, but there was no way he could have been sure of that until he’d dangled the proposition and the money in front of me. Why had he changed his mind? If he’d had $23,000, where was it? Maybe Keefer had stolen $4000 of it, but why stop there?

  He’d had four whole days in which to bring up the subject, but he never had. Why? Something must have changed his mind, but what? For one agonizing instant I had the feeling that I knew the answer to that, and that I should know who Baxter really was. Then the whole thing was gone. I wanted to beat my fists against my head.

  All right, I thought angrily, what did I know about him? Add it all up. He was from Miami, or had been in Miami at some time. I was from Miami myself, and knew a lot of people there, especially around the waterfront. His first name was Brian. The photograph had showed him at the topside controls of a sport fisherman, which was definitely a clue because I had an idea of the type and had seen the last two letters of the name. Maybe I’d seen him somewhere before, or had heard of him. Why not go back to Miami now, instead of sitting here like a duck in a shooting gallery? I reached for the phone.

  There were two airlines with service from here to Florida. The first had nothing available before 12:30 p.m. I called the other.

  “Yes, sir,” the girl at the reservations desk said, “we still have space on flight 302. That departs Southport five-fifty-five a.m., and arrives Miami at one-forty-five p.m., with stops at New Orleans and Tampa.”

  I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes of five. “Right,” I said. “The name is Stuart Rogers. I’ll pick up the ticket at the airport as soon as I can get there.”

  I broke the connection and got the hotel operator again. “Give me long distance, please.”

  When the long-distance operator came on, I said, “I’d like to put in a call to Miami.” I gave her the number.

  “Thank you. Will you hold on, please?”

  I waited, listening to the chatter of the operators. Bill Redmond would love being hauled out of bed this time of morning. He was an old friend—we’d been classmates at the University of Miami—but he was a reporter on the Herald, and had probably just got to sleep. The Herald is a morning paper.

  “Hello.” It was a girl’s voice. A very sleepy girl.

  “I have a long distance call from Southport, Texas—” the operator began.

  “I don’t know any Texans—”

  “Lorraine,” I broke in, “this is Stuart.”

  “Oh, good God. Bachelors! There ought to be a law.”

  “Will you put Bill on? It’s important”

  “I’ll bet. Well, stand back, and I’ll poke him with something.”

  I heard him mutter drowsily. Then, “Look, pal, you got any idea what time it is?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “You can sleep when you get old. I need some help. It’s about that trip up from Cristobal with that ketch I went down there to buy.”

  He interrupted, fully awake now. “I know about it. AP carried a few lines, and we ran it on account of the local angle. Guy died of a heart attack, what was his name?”

  “That’s it exactly,” I said. “What was his name? It was supposed to be Baxter, but it turns out that was phony. There was something wrong about him, and I’m in a hell of a jam I’ll tell you about as soon as I can get there. I’ve got to find out who he was. I think he was from Miami, and there’s some sort of screwy impression I’ve heard of him before. Are you still with me?”

  “Keep firing. What did he look like?”

  I gave him a short description, and went on. “The Miami hunch comes from a photograph of him that was shown me. I’m pretty sure what I saw in the background was part of the MacArthur Causeway and some of those islands along Government Cut. He was on the flying bridge of a sport fisherman. It was a big one and expensive looking, and I think it was one of those Rybovich jobs. If he owned it, he was probably well-heeled when he was around there because they’re not exactly the playthings of the Social Security set. One of the life rings was just behind
him, and I could see the last two letters of the name. They were ‘a-t’ From the size of the letters, it could be a long name. His first name was Brian. B-r-i-a-n. Got all that?”

  “Yeah. And I’m like you. I think I hear a bell trying to ring.”

  “There was also mention of another man I don’t know anything about at all. Slidell. Maybe somebody’s heard of him. I’ll be in Miami as soon as I can get there. See if you can find out anything at all.”

  “Right. Take it easy, sailor.”

  Packing was no problem; I hadn’t unpacked. I called the desk to get my bill ready and send for a cab. The lobby was empty except for the clerk. I settled the bill and was putting away my change when the taxi driver came in and got the bag. We went out. It was growing light now. The street had been washed, and for this brief moment just at dawn the city was almost cool and fresh. I looked up and down the street; there were no pedestrians in sight, and only an occasional car. “Airport,” I told the driver, and we pulled out.

  I watched out the rear window, and just before we reached the end of the block I saw a car pull out from the curb behind us. It had its lights on, so it was impossible to get an idea of what make it was, or what color. Two blocks ahead we turned to the left. The car—or another one—was still behind us. I kept watching. For a time there were two, and then three, and then we were back to one again. There was no way to tell if it was the same one, but it always stayed the same distance back, about a full city block. We made another turn, picking up the highway leading out of town, and it was still there.

  I began to worry. The airport was pretty far out, and there were no doubt plenty of deserted stretches of road where they could force us off if they were after me. My only chance—if I had any—would be to jump and run for it. I’d have to warn the driver, though. If he tried to outrun them, they’d probably kill him. The minute I saw them start to close in, I’d tell him to stop.

  Then, suddenly, they turned off and we were alone. After another mile with the pavement completely empty behind us I heaved a sigh of relief. False alarm. I was too jittery.

  Hell, they didn’t even know I was at the hotel; nobody had followed us when I came uptown from the boatyard.

  Then I realized I was a baby at this sort of thing and that I was up against professionals. Maybe they had been following us. By the time we’d reached the place where they had turned off it was obvious where I was headed so they no longer had to stay in sight. It could have been the same thing when I came up from the yard. They’d merely called the hotels until they located me; there probably weren’t over half a dozen. I felt ridiculous and stupid, and a little scared.

  If they were after me, what was the best plan? I remembered what Willetts had said—they’re all afraid of witnesses. Then stay in the open, surrounded by plenty of people, I thought. We left the city behind, rolling through the outlying housing developments, and crossed a bayou overhung with dark liveoaks and dangling pennants of Spanish moss. The sun was just rising when we pulled up in front of the airport passenger terminal. I paid off the driver and went inside with my bag.

  It was a good-sized terminal, busy even at this hour in the morning. Long windows in front looked out toward the runways, and at either end were the concourses leading to the gates. To the left were some shops and the newsstand and restaurant, while all the airline counters were strung out along the right. I went over, checked in, and paid for my ticket.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rogers,” the girl said. She clipped my luggage check to the boarding pass and gave me my change. “Concourse B, Gate Seven. The flight will be called in approximately ten minutes.”

  I bought a newspaper, moved back to a leather-cushioned bench, and sat down to sweat out the ten minutes. If they were following me, they’d try to get on this flight, or at least get one man on it. I was just in back of the two lines checking in. I looked them over cautiously while pretending to read the paper. There was a slight, graying man with a flyrod case. Two young girls, who might be teachers on vacation. An elderly woman. A fat man carrying a briefcase. A Marine. Two sailors in whites. A squat, heavy-shouldered man carrying his coat over his arm. My eyes stopped, and came back to him.

  He was at the head of the line now, in the row in which I’d checked in. He would have been about two places behind me, I thought. The girl was shaking her head at him. I strained to hear what she was saying.

  “. . . sold out. We’d be glad to put you on stand-by, though; there are still about four who haven’t checked in.”

  He nodded. I could see nothing but his back.

  “Your name, please?” the girl asked.

  “J. R. Bonner.”

  The voice was a gravelly baritone, but there was none of the rasp and menace there’d been in the other. Well, why should there be, under the circumstances? You couldn’t tell much about a voice from one or two words, anyway. I glanced down at his shoes. They were black, size ten or eleven, but I was a little to the left and couldn’t see the outside of the right one. I returned to my paper, pretending to read. In a moment he turned away from the counter. I looked at him in the unseeing, incurious way your eyes go across anyone in a crowd.

  Aside from an impression of almost brutal strength about the shoulders and arms, he could have been anybody—line coach of a professional football team, or the boss of a heavy construction outfit. He wore a soft straw hat, white shirt, and blue tie, and the coat he carried over his arm and the trousers were the matching components of a conservative blue suit. He was somewhere around forty, about five-nine, and well over two hundred pounds, but he walked as lightly as a big cat. His eyes met mine for an instant with the chill, impersonal blankness of outer space, and moved on. He sat down on the bench over to my left. I looked back at my paper. How did you know? What did appearances mean? He could be a goon with the accomplished deadliness of a cobra, or he might be wondering at the moment whether to buy his five-year-old daughter a stuffed bear or one of the Dr. Seuss books for a coming-home present. I glanced at his feet again, and this time I could see it. The right shoe had been slit along the welt for about an inch just under the little toe.

  I folded the paper, slapped it idly against my hand, and got up and walked past him. He paid no attention. I strolled over and looked out the long glass wall in front at the runways and dead grass and the bright metal skin of a DC-7 shattering the rays of morning sunlight. It was a weird sensation, and a scary one, being hunted. And in broad daylight, in a busy, peaceful airport. It was unreal. But what was even more unreal was the fact that there was nothing I could do about it. Suppose I called the police. Arrest that man; he’s got a cut place in his shoe.

  I wondered if he had a gun. There didn’t seem to be any place he could be carrying one unless he had it in the pocket of the coat slung over his arm. If he held it just right, nobody could tell. He had no luggage. And the chances were he was alone. With the flight sold out there wasn’t much percentage in more than one of them bucking the stand-by list. If he got aboard, he could keep me in sight until the others caught up. Well, he wasn’t aboard yet. Maybe he wouldn’t make it. They announced the flight. I walked out Concourse B, feeling his eyes in the middle of my back in spite of the fact that I knew he probably wasn’t even looking at me. Why should he? He knew where I was going.

  Number 302 was a continuing flight, so there were only nine or ten people at Gate 7 waiting to go aboard. Some through passengers who had deplaned to stretch their legs were allowed to go through first. Boarding passengers went through single file while the gate attendant checked our tickets. I was last. As I went up the steps I resisted an impulse to look back. He would be watching from somewhere to be sure I went aboard. There were still four or five empty seats, but that meant nothing. Two would be for the stewardesses, and some of the through passengers might still be in the terminal. I took one on the aisle, aft of the door. There might even be people ahead of him on stand-by. I waited. I was on the wrong side to see the gate, even if I’d had a window seat. It was stifling wit
h the plane on the ground. Sweat gathered on my face. Another passenger came aboard, a woman. Then one in uniform, an Air Force major. I began to hope. The captain and first officer came through the doorway and went forward. The door to the flight compartment closed. Then two minutes before they took away the ramp Bonner came through the door. He took the last empty seat.

  We were down in the steamy heat of New Orleans at 8:05 for a twenty-minute stop. Bonner played it very cagey; I remained in my seat while the first wave deplaned, but he went out with them. I could see the beauty of that. He could watch the ramp from inside the terminal to see if I got off or not, so he had me bottled up without being in evidence himself. But if he stayed and I got off, five minutes later he would have to follow me. Smart, I thought. I left the plane. As soon as I was inside the terminal I saw him. He was reading a newspaper, paying no attention to me. I sauntered out front to the limousines and taxis. There he was, still paying no attention.

  There was no longer any doubt. Maybe I could call the police and have him picked up. No, that wouldn’t work. I had no proof whatever. He would have identification, a good story, an alibi—they couldn’t hold him ten minutes. I had to escape from him some way. But how? He was a professional and knew all the tricks; I was an amateur. Then I began to have an idea. Make it novice against novice, and I might have a chance.

  We landed at Tampa at 11:40 a.m. As soon as the door was open I arose and stretched and followed the crowd into the terminal. I stood for a moment looking idly at the paperback books in the rack at the newsstand, and then drifted outside. I’d had a forlorn hope that I might catch the taxi stand with only one cab on station, but there was no such luck. There were four. The driver of the lead-off hack, however, was behind the wheel and ready to go. Bonner was just coming through the door about twenty feet to my left, lighting a cigarette and looking at everything except me. I strolled on past the line until I was abreast the lead one.

  Turning quickly, I opened the door and slid in. “Downtown. Tampa,” I told the driver.