January 19, 2011

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(page 6)

’Of course not,’ said the Mock Turtle: ‘why, if a fish
came to me, and told me he was going a journey, I should
say ‘With what porpoise?‘‘
’Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?’ said Alice.
’I mean what I say,’ the Mock Turtle replied in an
offended tone. And the Gryphon added ‘Come, let’s hear
some of your adventures.’
’I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this
morning,’ said Alice a little timidly: ‘but it’s no use going
back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’
’Explain all that,’ said the Mock Turtle.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(page 5)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another
hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent
opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other:
the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across
to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it
trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.
By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it
back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out
of sight: ‘but it doesn’t matter much,’ thought Alice, ‘as all
the arches are gone from this side of the ground.’ So she
tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape
again, and went back for a little more conversation with
her friend.
When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was
surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it:
there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(page 4)

’I didn’t know it was your table,’ said Alice; ‘it’s laid for
a great many more than three.’
’Your hair wants cutting,’ said the Hatter. He had been
looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and
this was his first speech.
’You should learn not to make personal remarks,’ Alice
said with some severity; ‘it’s very rude.’
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this;
but all he said was, ‘Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’
’Come, we shall have some fun now!’ thought Alice.
‘I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles.—I believe I can
guess that,’ she added aloud.
’Do you mean that you think you can find out the
answer to it?’ said the March Hare.
’Exactly so,’ said Alice.
’Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare
went on.
’I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean
what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’
’Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might
just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I
eat what I see’!’
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
66 of 130
’You might just as well say,’ added the March Hare,
‘that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I
like’!’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(page 3)

The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all
round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she
did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat
or drink under the circumstances. There was a large
mushroom growing near her, about the same height as
herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both
sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might
as well look and see what was on the top of it.
She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the
edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met
those of a large caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
40 of 130
its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking
not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(page 2)

’Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,’ thought Alice;
‘I daresay it’s a French mouse, come over with William
the Conqueror.’ (For, with all her knowledge of history,
Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had
happened.) So she began again: ‘Ou est ma chatte?’ which
was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The
Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to
quiver all over with fright. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon!’ cried
Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal’s
feelings. ‘I quite forgot you didn’t like cats.’
’Not like cats!’ cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate
voice. ‘Would you like cats if you were me?’
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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’Well, perhaps not,’ said Alice in a soothing tone:
‘don’t be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you
our cat Dinah: I think you’d take a fancy to cats if you
could only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing,’ Alice
went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(page 1)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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CHAPTER I: Down the Rabbit-Hole
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her
sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or
twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading,
but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is
the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or
conversation?’
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she
could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and
stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain
would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the
daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran
close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did
Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the
Rabbit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’
(when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her
that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it
all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually

January 18, 2011

Aesop’s Fables(page4)

The Tortoise and the Birds
A Tortoise desired to change its place of residence, so
he asked an Eagle to carry him to his new home,
promising her a rich reward for her trouble. The Eagle
agreed and seizing the Tortoise by the shell with her talons
soared aloft. On their way they met a Crow, who said to
the Eagle: ‘Tortoise is good eating.’ ‘The shell is too hard,’
said the Eagle in reply. ‘The rocks will soon crack the
shell,’ was the Crow’s answer; and the Eagle, taking the
hint, let fall the Tortoise on a sharp rock, and the two
birds made a hearty meal of the Tortoise.
Never soar aloft on an enemy’s pinions.
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The Two Crabs

Aesop’s Fables(page3)

The Tortoise and the Birds
A Tortoise desired to change its place of residence, so
he asked an Eagle to carry him to his new home,
promising her a rich reward for her trouble. The Eagle
agreed and seizing the Tortoise by the shell with her talons
soared aloft. On their way they met a Crow, who said to
the Eagle: ‘Tortoise is good eating.’ ‘The shell is too hard,’
said the Eagle in reply. ‘The rocks will soon crack the
shell,’ was the Crow’s answer; and the Eagle, taking the
hint, let fall the Tortoise on a sharp rock, and the two
birds made a hearty meal of the Tortoise.
Never soar aloft on an enemy’s pinions.
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52 of 93

Aesop’s Fables(page2)

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
A Wolf found great difficulty in getting at the sheep
owing to the vigilance of the shepherd and his dogs. But
one day it found the skin of a sheep that had been flayed
and thrown aside, so it put it on over its own pelt and
strolled down among the sheep. The Lamb that belonged
to the sheep, whose skin the Wolf was wearing, began to
follow the Wolf in the Sheep’s clothing; so, leading the
Lamb a little apart, he soon made a meal off her, and for
some time he succeeded in deceiving the sheep, and
enjoying hearty meals.
Appearances are deceptive.
Aesop’s Fables
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The Dog in the Manger
A Dog looking out for its afternoon nap jumped into
the Manger of an Ox and lay there cosily upon the straw.
But soon the Ox, returning from its afternoon work, came
up to the Manger and wanted to eat some of the straw.
The Dog in a rage, being awakened from its slumber,
stood up and barked at the Ox, and whenever it came
near attempted to bite it. At last the Ox had to give up the
hope of getting at the straw, and went away muttering:
‘Ah, people often grudge others what they cannot
enjoy themselves.’

Aesop’s Fables(page1)

1.Aesop’s Fables
2 of 93
The Cock and the Pearl
A cock was once strutting up and down the farmyard
among the hens when suddenly he espied something
shinning amid the straw. ‘Ho! ho!’ quoth he, ‘that’s for
me,’ and soon rooted it out from beneath the straw. What
did it turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance had
been lost in the yard? ‘You may be a treasure,’ quoth
Master Cock, ‘to men that prize you, but for me I would
rather have a single barley-corn than a peck of pearls.’
Precious things are for those that can prize them.
Aesop’s Fables
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The Wolf and the Lamb
Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a
hillside, when, looking up, what should he see but a Lamb
just beginning to drink a little lower down. ‘There’s my
supper,’ thought he, ‘if only I can find some excuse to
seize it.’ Then he called out to the Lamb, ‘How dare you
muddle the water from which I am drinking?’

January 17, 2011

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 15)

Biremes, triremes, galleys, ships of war, whole
cargoes of works of art lost on the way to Imperial
Rome, and who knows, maybe whole lost cities
inundated before the dawn of history—”
Colby noted that Martine was sorting through the
photographs, and he had an idea she was struck by
the same curious aspect of the yacht’s personnel
that had attracted his attention. Aside from Sabine
Manning herself, the entire membership of the
expedition seemed to consist of only slightly
different versions of Carlito—all Latin, sunburned,
beautiful as Greek gods, of a median age of
nineteen, and—thanks to the scantiness of their
swim trunks—quite demonstrably and abundantly
male.
There appeared to be eight or ten different ones,
but then this was a six-months’ supply. No doubt the
membership was fluid; only the expedition went on
as an established and continuous entity.
He made another attempt to break in. “Yes, I
know. I’ve read quite a bit about it, and it’s
fascinating. But I’m not sure I understand why you
want to change your image, just to do a book about
it—”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 14)

Colby checked the man on the floor. He was heavyshouldered,
dark, about thirty, still unconscious but
breathing all right. Colby pulled him over against
the wall out of the way, looked at him again,
shrugged, and put a sofa pillow under his head. He
was just an instrument, one of the workmen.
Decaux was still across the street, along with one
of the cars, deadly, inevitable, as impervious to
annulment or modification as planetary motion.
Colby let the drape fall back in place. Answer?
Where was it? Smuggling Kendall out of France had
sounded like an impossible project, but that was the
good old days. Try smuggling her into the next
block. Dudley came back. Colby gave him the
automatic.
“Yell, if you hear anything,” he said. He went in
search of Madame Buffet, retrieved his bag, and had
a shower and a change of clothing. When he got to
the office Martine had the Michelin road map of
France spread out on the desk, along with her
address book and a scratchpad covered with figures
and what looked like several names with telephone
numbers. She was just putting down the phone.
The Wrong Venus — 140

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 11)

And we’ve got good old Roberto to help us, Colby
thought; that was all the situation had lacked,
having your friendly neighborhood pickpocket to
hold your coat during the fight. He looked around at
Roberto, however, saw the way the latter was eying
Kendall, and realized he might have jumped to the
wrong conclusion about those two cracks back there
beside the stream. Roberto hadn’t been trying to
knife him with Martine. He’d only been trying to cut
his throat with Kendall.
It wasn’t that they weren’t good friends and boon
companions. They were, and had been for a long
time. Roberto was amusing company, undeniably
talented as a painter—he turned out the best Utrillos
since Utrillo—and a prince of a guy who’d give you
his last hundred francs. Except that while you were
in the bank to see if it was counterfeit he’d
disappear with your girl. He respected no right of
ownership or prior claim. They were all, in his view,
simply part of the public domain, like National
Parks, and any old friend zeroing in on a really
outstanding girl with Roberto around had only to
drop his guard for a few minutes to go home on his
shield. But here, apparently, it was Kendall he was
after.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 10)

She turned and looked. “My God!” Her elbow
knocked over the briefcase, and several packets of
one-hundred-franc notes spilled out on the table just
as the waiter arrived with the champagne. He
stopped, rooted, his mouth hanging open. Then
Colby’s gears meshed at last. He began scooping up
the bundles of francs and cramming them back into
the briefcase. Stripping a note from the last one, he
threw it on the table, zipped the briefcase, and they
headed for the entrance just as the gendarme
trotted in.
“One moment, Mademoiselle!” he said, and made
what was probably the greatest mistake of his
career up to that time. He put out a hand. Colby
groaned.
The Wrong Venus — 100
9
He went up, wheeling, came off the shoulder, and
headed rearward in a spectacular flash of blue. In
some corner of his mind not completely numb with
horror, Colby noted that she didn't seem to be
getting quite the distance she had earlier in the
morning. It might have been because he was a
bigger man, mature and solid and heavier all
around, and perhaps a little out of balance for
perfect flight trim with the gun attached to one side
of his belt, but more likely it was simply because she
hadn't had breakfast.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 9)

“Actually, she can imitate any style of writing, and
this stuff of Manning’s was a cinch for her. She did a
The Wrong Venus — 79
page of it in Faulkner one day, just to bug
Merriman, and it was perfect. She could write as
fast as Sanborn, too, but she’s just not overwhelmed
with the seriousness of it all. The reason he got
ahead of her is he slept nights.
“Sometimes she wouldn’t get home till ten a.m.,
long after he’d gone to work. For breakfast she’d
have a split of champagne, six cups of coffee, and
three or four eggs, and then sit down at the
typewriter and start banging away. Vitality galore.”
“I can see how she and Dudley might get on each
other’s nerves,” Colby said. “Oh, she never paid any
attention to him. She just laughed at him or brushed
him off like a gnat—except that morning they had
the argument, I mean. She was apparently upset
about something, and when he started complaining
about her late hours, she blew up and told him off.”
“And that was the day she was kidnapped.”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 8)

And then with a shy little smile she was
fumbling with the straps and buckles. The
negligee slipped from her body and she
stood before him completely nude, glossy,
deep-chested, clean-limbed, her
conformation impossible to fault. His
heart leaped. . . .
He ought to get a bet down on her before the
windows closed, Colby thought. There wasn’t much
doubt it needed the Flanagan touch to whip it into
final shape. After four o’clock he began to check the
time every few minutes. It was four-twenty . . . fourthirty-
five. ... At four-forty Dudley came in carrying
the two maps and a briefcase bulging with francs.
Colby checked the money. It was all right. As he was
closing the briefcase they heard the tapping of heels
in the hallway. Martine came in. She had changed
into a severe dark suit that looked like Balenciaga,
and in place of the mink was wearing a cloth coat
that was probably easier to drive in. It was obvious
from her expression that she had news.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 7)

She shrugged. Happy prisoners were probably
rare anywhere. Colby gathered she had work of her
own to do without getting involved in American
activities like trapping each other, and in any event
nothing that happened in this household would ever
surprise her in the slightest. When, however, he
outlined just how the prisoner was to be allowed to
escape, her interest quickened. Yes, of course she
could understand one hundred francs spoken in
English. Also two hundred. Who knows, maybe he
would bring five hundred, if allowed to age a little
more.
No, Colby said, the essential was to harvest him as
quickly as possible; price was secondary. While he
wouldn’t dream of subjecting her to the humiliation
of taking the first offer, she must limit the
negotiations to a maximum of three minutes. She
agreed, though somewhat reluctantly. And now—
about splitting the take? It was all hers, Colby said,
and realized at once this was probably a tactical
error.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 6)

“That’s right.”
The Wrong Venus — 41
“If they’re going to kidnap Americans, why the hell
don’t they learn English?”
“Look at the rest of it. Are there any figures?”
“Yeah. Here’s something that looks like one
hundred thousand. I guess that’s a one in front.”
“The European one. Dollars or francs?”
“Dollars—” Dudley did a double take, and gasped.
“A hundred thousand dollars? Are they nuts?”
“They think they’ve got Miss Manning.”
“I don’t care if they’ve got the Lido floor show. I
haven’t got a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Okay,” Colby said crisply. “You need help, and
you need it bad. But one thing at a time. We’ve got
to get to Paris.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ll see
what we can do about that reporter, and then try to
be at the house when your friend calls again. We
should be able to make it before five p.m. If he calls
before we get there, keep saying rappelez à cinq
heures—rappelez à cinq heures. Can you do that?”
“Rappley a sank ur. I can remember it.”

January 14, 2011

The Wrong Venus by Charles Williams 1966(page 5)

“Beautifully—until four days ago.”
The Wrong Venus — 33
In July, Dudley had gone to New York and located
a couple of writers, and brought them back to Paris
as a security measure. Naturally, the whole thing
had to be kept secret. Miss Manning’s literary agent
and publisher didn’t know she had disappeared, and
would go up like Krakatoa if they found out what
was going on. Dudley forged her signature on
correspondence and contracts.
As a team, the two writers clicked from the first
minute. Neither could have written it alone—one
hadn’t written anything in fifteen years and the
other had never written fiction at all—but together
they rolled it out like toothpaste, and it was pure
Manning. In two months they had half of it done.
Dudley sent that much of it off to New York, and her
agent and publisher raved about it. They said it was
the best thing she’d ever done.

January 13, 2011

The Wrong Venus by Charles Williams 1966(page 4)

3
It was one of those mornings Colby loved best in
London— that rare October day when miraculously
it was cursed with neither the Automobile Show nor
rain. Pale lemon sunlight slanted in on the carpet at
the other end of the room where her window
overlooked the traffic on the Thames. A breakfast
cart draped with a white cloth was parked near an
armchair, on it a silver coffee pot and a covered
chafing dish.
“Please sit down,” she said, indicating another
armchair near the writing desk. The dark hair was
rumpled, and she wore no make-up except a touch of
lipstick. Her uniform of the day, at least up to this
point, seemed to consist of nylon briefs, bra, a sheer
peignoir that wasn’t even very carefully belted, and
one fur-trimmed mule. In her left hand was a plate
containing the herring, or what was left of it. She sat
down crosswise in the armchair with a flash of long
bare legs, kicked off the other mule, and stretched
like a cat. She grinned at Colby. “A little stiff after
that workout yesterday. How about a kipper?”
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Coffee?”

January 12, 2011

The Wrong Venus by Charles Williams 1966(page 3)

The man in the seat glanced up. “I say, you don’t
happen to have the time?” He gave an apologetic
little smile. “My watch appears to have stopped.”
Colby stared down at him wordlessly, held out his
watch so the man could see it, and lunged forward
to his seat. His topcoat was lying in it. He grabbed it
up, sat down, and fastened his belt. The plane was
already dropping toward the end of the runway.
He leaned toward Martine, and whispered, “I’d
better leave ‘em. Ditch ‘em under a seat—”
“Don’t be silly. I said I’d get you through Customs,
didn’t I?” She was smiling, her eyes bright with
excitement. “We’ll muffle them, to start with. Roll
the vest in your topcoat, and then in this.” He
noticed then that she had a fur coat across her lap.
Apparently the stewardess had just returned it to
her.

January 11, 2011

The Wrong Venus by Charles Williams 1966(page 2)

The Wrong Venus — 9
The malevolent pulsing of the mainsprings died with
the first contact, like spiders in cyanide. They looked
at each other and winked. Then the plane dropped
from under them.
They were against the door in a frozen and
exaggerated tango step, the girl leaning backward
under him with her face against his chest, looking
upward. His clothing, which had flown off the hook,
began to settle. The shirt fell across his head like a
white burnoose. She grinned, and began to hum
“The Sheik of Araby.”
The plane was shooting upward now and he
couldn’t straighten against the pull of gravity.
Something was digging into his shoulder, and he
realized that it was the watch movement she still
had in her hand. He looked around on the floor for
the other.

January 10, 2011

The Wrong Venus by Charles Williams 1966(page 1)

1
Lawrence Colby by the age of thirty had been a
Korean paratrooper, art student, PR man, scriptwriter,
a dealer in art forgeries, and newspaperman,
and had once ghost-written the autobiography of a
homicidal maniac; he had been married twice, once
to an Italian actress with kleptomania and once to a
wealthy middle-aged woman who stoned embassies
and slugged cops with protest signs at
demonstrations; he had been beaten up in riots, shot
through the leg in Houston, Texas, by a woman who
was trying to kill her husband, and had been down
the Cresta Run at St. Moritz three times; but
afterward he was prone to look back on all this part
of his life before he met Martine Randall as a time
when nothing ever happened.

January 4, 2011

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 13)

13
I was on him before it came clear. His chair went over
backward under the two of us. I felt the tug of the wires
connecting me to the lie-detector as I came out to the end of
their slack, and I heard it crash to the floor behind us,
bringing the table with it. Flowers gave a shrill cry, whether
of outrage or terror I couldn’t tell, and ran past us toward
the door.
Slidell and I were in a hopeless tangle, still propped
against the upended chair as we fought for the gun. He had
it out of his pocket now. I grabbed it by the cylinder and
barrel with my left hand, forcing it away from me, and tried
to hit him with a right, but the wire connected to my arm was
fouled somewhere in the mess now and it brought me up
short. Then Bonner was standing over us. The blackjack
sliced down, missing my head and cutting across my
shoulder. I heaved, rolling Slidell over on top of me. For an
instant I could see the couch where she had been sitting. She
was gone. Thank God, she’d run the second I’d lunged at
him. If she had enough lead, she might get away.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 12)

12
They crowded around the table, staring down at the
instrument and the sudden, spasmodic jerking of its styli.
I gripped the arms of the chair as it all began falling into
place—the nameless fear, and what had actually caused it,
and the apparently insignificant thing that had lodged in my
subconscious mind on an afternoon sixteen years ago aboard
another boat, a chartered sport fisherman off Miami Beach. I
had killed Baxter. Or at least I was responsible for his death.
Bonner growled, and swung around to grab me by the
shirt. “You’re lying! So now let’s hear what really happened
—”
I tried to swing at his face, but Slidell grabbed my arm
before I could pull the instrument off the table by its
connecting wires. “Shut up!” I roared. “Get off my back, you
stupid ape! I’m trying to understand it myself!”
Slidell waved him off. “Get away!” Bonner stepped back,
and Slidell spoke to me. “You didn’t get the bathrobe?”
“No,” I said. All the rage went out of me suddenly, and I
leaned back in the chair with my eyes closed. “I touched it
with the end of the boathook, but I couldn’t get hold of it.”
That was what I’d seen, but hadn’t wanted to see, the
afternoon we buried him. It wasn’t his body, sewn in white
Orlon, that was fading away below me, disappearing forever
into two miles of water; it was that damned white bathrobe.
The Sailcloth Shroud — 121

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 11)

11
“Both of you stay where you are,” Slidell ordered. He stood
up and turned to Bonner. “Bring Flowers a table and a
chair.”
Bonner went down the hall and came back with a small
night table. He set it and one of the dining chairs near the
chair I was in, and swung me around so I was facing the
front window with the table on my right. Then he lighted a
cigarette and leaned against the front door, boredly
watching.
“This jazz is a waste of time, if you ask me,” he remarked.
“I didn’t,” Slidell said shortly.
Bonner shrugged. I glanced around at Patricia Reagan, but
she avoided my eyes and was staring past me at Flowers, as
mystified as I was. He was a slightly built little man in his
thirties with a bald spot and a sour, pinched face that was
made almost grotesque by the slightly bulging eyes. He set
the black case on the table and removed the lid. The top
panel held a number of controls and switches, but a good
part of it was taken up by a window under which was a sheet
of graph paper and three styli mounted on little arms.
I glanced up to find Slidell’s eyes on me in chill
amusement. “We are about to arrive at that universal goal of
all the great philosophers, Rogers. Truth.”
“What do you mean?”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 107
“That’s a lie-detector.”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 10)

10
She brushed sand from her bare feet and opened the door at
the left end of the porch. The kitchen was bright with colored
tile and white enamel. I followed her through an arched
doorway into a large dining and living room. “Please sit
down,” she said. “I won’t be long.” She disappeared down a
hallway to the right.
I lighted a cigarette and looked around at the room. It was
comfortable, and the light pleasantly subdued after the glare
of the white coral sand outside. The drapes over the front
window were of some loosely woven dark green material,
and the lighter green walls and bare terrazzo floor added to
the impression of coolness. Set in the wall to the left, next to
the carport, was an air-conditioner unit whose faint humming
made the only sound. Above it was a mounted permit, a very
large one. Between it and the front window on that side was
a hi-fi set in a blond cabinet. At the rear of the room was a
sideboard, and a dining table made of bamboo and heavy
glass. A long couch and two armchairs with a teak coffee
table between them formed a conversational group near the
center of the room. The couch and chairs were bamboo with
brightly colored cushions. On the other side of the room,

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 9)

9
“You both have a boarding-house reach,” Lorraine said.
“Where I’m sitting, I need one,” I replied. “How was the
letter worded? Any indication at all that she knew him?”
“No. Polite, but completely impersonal. Apparently he’d
written her, praising the book and sending a copy to be
autographed. She signed it and sent it back. Thank you, over,
and out. The only possibility is that she might have known
him by some other name.”
“You don’t remember the address?”
He looked pained. “That’s a hell of a question to ask a
reporter. Here.” He fished in his wallet and handed me a slip
of paper. On it was scrawled, “Patricia Reagan, 16 Belvedere
Pl., Sta. Brba., Calif.”
I looked at my watch and saw that even with the time
difference it would be almost one a.m. in California. “Hell,
call her now,” Bill said. I went out in the living room, dialed
the operator, gave her the name and address, and held on.
While she was getting Information in Santa Barbara I
wondered what I’d do if somebody woke me up out of a
sound sleep from three thousand miles away to ask me if I’d
ever heard of Joe Blow the Third. Well, the worst she could
do was hang up.
The phone rang three times. Then a girl said sleepily,
“Hello?”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 8)

8
It was datelined Southport.
The aura of mystery surrounding the voyage of the ill-fated
yacht Topaz deepened today in a strange new development
that very nearly claimed the life of another victim.
Still in critical condition in a local hospital this afternoon
following an overdose of sleeping pills was an attractive
brunette tentatively identified as Miss Paula Stafford of New
York, believed by police to have been close to Wendell
Baxter, mysterious figure whose death or disappearance
while en route from Panama to Southport on the Topaz has
turned into one of the most baffling puzzles of recent
years. . . .
I plunged ahead, skipping the parts of it I knew. It was
continued in a back section. I riffled through it, scattering
the pages, and went on. Then I sat down and read the whole
thing through again.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 7)

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 . . .

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 6)

6
The bunks had been torn apart. The bedding was piled on the
settee and in the sink. My suitcase and duffel bag were
emptied into the bunks, the drawers beneath them dumped
upside down on the deck. Food lockers were emptied and
ransacked. Charts, nautical almanacs, azimuth tables,
magazines, and books were scattered everywhere. I stared at
it in mounting rage. A hell of a security force they had here,
one creaky old pensioner sitting up there calmly reading a
magazine while thieves tore your boat apart. Then I realized
it wasn’t his fault, nor Otto’s. Whoever had done this hadn’t
come in the gate, and was no ordinary sneak thief. The
watchmen made the round of the yard once every hour with
a clock, but there was no station out here on the pier. I
grabbed a flashlight and ran back on deck.

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 5)

5
“Baxter?” I put a hand up over my eyes to shield them I from
the light. “Ashore?”
“He couldn’t be that stupid.” This seemed to be a different
voice. Tough, with a rasping inflection. “Let me belt him
one.”
“Not yet.” This was the first one again—incisive,
commanding, a voice with four stripes.
A random phrase, torn from some lost context, boiled up
through the pain and the jumbled confusion of my thoughts. .
. . Professional muscle . . . That policeman had said it.
Willard? Willetts? That was it. Sounds like professional
muscle to me. . . .
“We’re going to have to soften him up a little.”
“Shut up. Rogers, where did you land him? Mexico?
Honduras? Cuba?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“We’re talking about Wendell Baxter.”
“Baxter is dead,” I said. “He died of a heart attack—”
“And you buried him at sea. Save it, Rogers; we read the
papers. Where is he?”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 4)

4
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
The Sailcloth Shroud — 31
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—”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 3)

3
At least, I thought morosely as we stepped from the elevator,
the Federal Building was air-conditioned. If you were going
to spend the rest of your life being questioned about Keefer
by all the law-enforcement agencies in the country, it helped
a little if you were comfortable. Not that I had anything
against heat as such; I liked hot countries, provided they
were far enough away from civilization to do away with the
wearing of shirts that did nothing but stick to you like some
sort of soggy film. The whole day was shot to hell now, but
this was an improvement over the police station.
I glanced sidewise in grudging admiration at Special Agent
Soames—cool, efficient, and faultlessly pressed. Sweat would
never be any problem to this guy; if it bothered him he’d turn
it off. In the ten minutes since I’d met him in Lieutenant
Boyd’s office, I’d learned exactly nothing about why they
wanted to talk to me. I’d asked, when we were out on the
street, and had been issued a friendly smile and one politely
affable assurance that it was merely routine. We’d discuss it
over in the office. Soames was thirty-ish and crew-cut, but
anything boyish and ingenuous about him was strictly
superficial; he had a cool and very deadly eye. We went down
the corridor, with my crepe soles squeaking on waxed tile.
Soames opened a frosted glass door and stood aside for me
to enter. Inside was a small anteroom. A trim gray-haired
woman in a linen suit was typing energetically at a desk that
The Sailcloth Shroud — 20
held a telephone and a switchbox for routing calls. Behind
her was the closed door to an inner office, and to the left I
could see down a hallway past a number of other doors.
Soames looked at his watch and wrote something in the book
that was on a small desk near the door. Then he nodded
politely, and said, “This way, please.”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 2)

2
I shook my head in bewilderment. “I don’t get it. Are you
sure about all this?”
“Of course we’re sure. Where you think we first got a lead
on the identification? We got a body, with no name. Traffic’s
got a wrinkled Thunderbird with rental plates somebody
walked off and abandoned after laying a block on a fire
hydrant with it, and a complaint sworn out by the Willard
Rental Agency. The Willard manager’s got a description, and
a local address at the Warwick Hotel, and a name. Only this
Francis Keefer they’re all trying to locate hasn’t been in his
room since Thursday, and he sounds a lot like the stiff we’re
trying to identify. He’d been tossing big tips around the
Warwick, and told one of the bellhops he’d just sailed up
from Panama in a private yacht, so then somebody
remembered the story in Wednesday’s Telegram. So we look
you up, among other things, and you give us this song and
dance that Keefer was just a merchant seaman, and broke.
Now. Keefer lied to you, or you’re trying to con me. And if
you are, God help you.”

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 1)

1
I was up the mainmast of the Topaz in a bosun’s chair when
the police car drove into the yard, around eleven o’clock
Saturday morning. The yard doesn’t work on Saturdays, so
there was no one around except me, and the watchman out
at the gate. The car stopped near the end of the pier at which
the Topaz was moored, and two men got out. I glanced at
them without much interest and went on with my work,
hand-sanding the mast from which the old varnish had been
removed. They were probably looking for some exuberant
type off the shrimp boat, I thought. She was the Leila M., the
only other craft in the yard at the moment.
They came on out on the pier in the blazing sunlight,
however, and halted opposite the mainmast to look up at me.
They wore lightweight suits and soft straw hats, and their
shirts were wilted with perspiration.
“Your name Rogers?” one of them asked. He was middleaged,
with a square, florid face and expressionless gray eyes.
“Stuart Rogers?”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn