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.
It was all there. The hotel detective had gone up to her
room shortly after 3:30 a.m. when guests in adjoining 100ms
reported a disturbance. He found her wildly upset and crying
out almost incoherently that somebody had been killed. Since
there were no evidences of violence and it was obvious no
one else was there, dead or otherwise, he had got her calmed
down and left her after she’d taken one of her sleeping pills.
At 10 a.m., however, when they tried to call her and could
get no response, they entered the room with a pass key and
The Sailcloth Shroud — 71
found her unconscious. A doctor was called. He found the
remaining pills on the table beside the bed, and had her
taken to a hospital. It wasn’t known whether the overdose
was accidental or a suicide attempt, since no note could be
found, but when police came to investigate they found the
letter from Baxter. Then everything hit the fan.
My visit came out. The elevator boy and night clerk gave
the police my description. They went looking for me, and I’d
disappeared from the boatyard. The letter from Baxter was
printed in full. There was a rehash of the whole story up to
that time, including Keefer’s death and the unexplained
$4000.
Now apparently $19,000 more was missing, I was missing,
and nobody had an idea at all as to what had really happened
to Baxter.
... in light of this new development, the true identity of
Wendell Baxter is more deeply shrouded in mystery than
ever. Police refused to speculate as to whether or not Baxter
might even still be alive. Lieutenant Boyd parried the
question by saying, “There is obviously only one person who
knows the answer to that, and we’re looking for him.”
Local agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no
comment other than a statement that Captain Rogers was
being sought for further questioning.
I pushed the paper aside and tried the cigarette again. This
time I got it going. The letter itself wasn’t bad enough I
thought; I had to make it worse by running. That’s the way it
would look; the minute I read it I took off like a goosed
gazelle. By this time they would have traced me to the Bolton
and then to the airport. And I’d rented the car in Tampa
under my own name, and then turned it in here. As soon as
the man in the Hertz agency read the paper he’d call them;
the taxi driver would remember bringing me to the hotel.
Then it occurred to me I was already thinking like a fugitive.
Well, I was one, wasn’t I? There was a light knock on the
door.
I went over. “Who is it?”
“Bill.”
I let him in and closed the door. He sighed and shook his
head. “Pal, when you get in a jam, you’re no shoestring
operator.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 72
We’re the same age and about the same height, and we’ve
known each other since we were in the third grade. He’s
thin, restless, blazingly intelligent, somewhat cynical, and
one of the world’s worst hypochondriacs. Women consider
him handsome, and he probably is. He has a slender reckless
face, ironic blue eyes, and dark hair that’s prematurely
graying. He smokes three packs of cigarettes a day, and
quits every other week. He never drinks. He’s an AA.
“All right,” he said, “let’s have it.”
I told him.
He whistled softly. Then he said, “Well, the first thing is to
get you out of here before they pick you up.”
“Why?” I asked. “If the FBI is looking for me, maybe I’d
better turn myself in. At least they won’t kill me. The others
will.”
“It can wait till morning, if that’s what you decide. In the
meantime I’ve got to talk to you. About Baxter.”
“Have you got any lead on him at all?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “That’s the reason I’ve got to talk
to you. What I’ve come up with is so goofy if I tried to tell the
police they might have me committed. Let’s go”
“Where?” I asked.
“Home, you goof. Lorraine’s scrambling some eggs and
making coffee.”
“Sure. Harboring a fugitive’s just a harmless prank. Be our
guest in charming, gracious Atlanta.”
“Oh, cut it out, Scarface. How would I know you’re a
fugitive? I never read anything but the Wall Street Journal.”
I gave in, but insisted we leave the hotel separately. He
told me where the car was, and left. I waited five minutes
before following. The streets were deserted. I climbed in, and
he swung onto Biscayne Boulevard, headed south. They lived
close to downtown, in a small apartment house on Brickell
Avenue. From habit, I looked out the rear window. As far as I
could tell, nobody was following us.
“The Stafford woman’s still alive, the last we got,” he said,
“but they haven’t been able to question her yet.”
“I’ve got a sad hunch she doesn’t know too much about
him, anyway,” I said. “She told me she didn’t know who those
The Sailcloth Shroud — 73
men were, or what they wanted, and I think she was telling
the truth. I’m beginning to doubt Baxter even existed; I think
he’s an hallucination people start seeing just before they
crack up.”
“You haven’t heard anything yet,” he said. “When I tell you
what I’ve come up with you’ll think we’re both around the
bend.”
“Well, be mysterious about it,” I said sourly. “That’s just
what I need.”
“Wait’ll we get inside.” He swung into a driveway between
shadowy palms and parked beside the building. It had only
four apartments, each with its own entrance. Theirs was the
lower left. We came back around the hibiscus-bordered walk,
and went in the front. The living room was dim and quiet,
and cool from the air-conditioner. There were no lights on,
but there was enough illumination from the kitchen to find
our way past the hi-fi and record albums and rows and stacks
of books, and the lamps and statuary Lorraine had made. She
does ceramics.
At the moment she was scrambling eggs, a long-legged
brunette with a velvety tan, rumpled dark brown hair, and
wide, humorous, gray eyes. She was wearing Bermuda shorts
and sandals, and a white shirt that was pulled together and
knotted around her waist. Beyond the stove was a counter
with a yellow formica top and tall yellow stools, a small
breakfast nook, and a window hung with yellow curtains.
She stopped stirring the eggs long enough to kiss me and
wave a hand toward the counter. “Park it, Killer. What’s this
rumble you’re hot?”
“Broads,” Bill said. “Always nosy.” He set a bottle of
bourbon and a glass on the counter in front of me. His theory
was that nobody could be sure he didn’t drink if there was
none around. I poured a big slug and downed it, had a sip of
scalding black coffee, and began to feel better. Lorraine put
the eggs on the table and sat down across from me, rested
her elbows on the counter, and grinned.
“Let’s face it, Rogers. Civilization just isn’t your
environment. I mean land-based civilization. Any time you
come above high tide you ought to carry a tag, the way
sandhogs do. Something like “This man is not completely
The Sailcloth Shroud — 74
amphibious, and may get into trouble ashore. Rush to
nearest salt water and immerse.’“
“I’ll buy it,” I said. “Only the whole thing started at sea.
That can scare you.”
“Have you told him yet?” she asked Bill.
“I’m going to right now.” He pushed the untouched eggs
off his plate onto mine and lighted a cigarette. “Try this on
for size—your man was forty-eight to fifty, six feet, a hundred
and seventy pounds, brown hair with a little gray in it, brown
eyes, mustache, quiet, gentlemanly, close-mouthed, and boatcrazy.”
“Right,” I said. “Except for the mustache.”
Somebody may have told him about razors. He came here
about two and a half years ago—February of nineteen-fiftysix,
to be exact—and he seemed to have plenty of money. He
rented a house on one of the islands—a big, elaborate one
with private dock—and bought that sport fisherman, a thirtyfoot
sloop, and a smaller sailboat of some kind. He was a
bachelor, widower, or divorced. He had a Cuban couple who
took care of the house and garden, and a man named Charley
Grimes to skipper the fishing boat. Apparently didn’t work at
anything, and spent nearly all his time fishing and sailing.
Had several girl friends around town, most of whom would
have probably married him if he’d ever asked them, but it
appears he never told them any more about himself than he
told anybody else. His name was Brian Hardy, and the name
of the fishing boat was the Princess Pat. You begin to get it
now?”
“It’s all fits,” I said excitedly. “Every bit of it. That was
Baxter, beyond a doubt.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Bill replied. “Brian Hardy’s
been dead for over two months. And this is the part you’re
going to love. He was lost at sea.”
It began to come back then. “No!” I said. “No—”
Lorraine patted my hand. “Poor old Rogers. Why don’t you
get married, so you can stay out of trouble? Or be in it all the
time and get used to it.”
“Understand,” I said, “I’m not prejudiced. Some of my best
friends are married. It’s just that I wouldn’t want my sister to
marry a married couple.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 75
“It happened in April, and I think you were somewhere in
the out islands,” Bill went on. “But you probably heard about
it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Explosion and fire, wasn’t it? Somewhere
in the Stream.”
“That’s right. He was alone. He’d had a fight with Grimes
that morning and fired him, and was taking the Princess Pat
across to Bimini himself. He’d told somebody he planned to
hire a native skipper and mate for a couple of weeks’ marlin
fishing. It was good weather with hardly any wind, and the
Stream was as flat as Biscayne Bay. He left around noon, and
should have been over there in three or four hours.
Afterward, there were two boats that reported seeing him
drifting around, but he didn’t ask for help so they didn’t go
over. Some time after dark he called the Coast Guard—”
“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.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 76
“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
The Sailcloth Shroud — 77
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
The Sailcloth Shroud — 78
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
The Sailcloth Shroud — 79
slot, but we hadn’t seen it when we came in because it’s
behind the door when it’s open.
“Apparently what had happened was that this stuff had
been delivered between the time the police were there last—
shortly after the accident—and the time somebody finally got
around to notifying the Post Office he was dead. Anyway, it
was all postmarked in April. The detective opened it, but
none of it amounted to anything. There were two or three
bills and some circulars, and this letter and the book. They
were both postmarked Santa Barbara, California, and the
letter was from the author of the book. It was just a routine
sort of thing, saying the book was being returned,
autographed, as he’d requested, and thanking him for his
interest. The detective kept them both, of course, but he let
me read the letter, and I got another copy of the book out of
the public library. Just a minute.”
He went into the living room and came back with it. I
recognized it immediately; in fact, I had a copy of it aboard
the Orion. It was an arty and rather expensive job, a
collection of some of the most beautiful photographs of
sailing craft I’d ever seen. Most of them were racing yachts
under full sail, and the title of it was Music in the Wind. A
good many of the photographs had been taken by the girl
who’d collected and edited the job and written the
descriptive material. Her name was Patricia Reagan.
“I’m familiar with it,” I said, looking at him a little blankly.
I couldn’t see what he had in mind. “They’re beautiful
photographs. Hey, you don’t mean—”
He shook his head. “No. There’s no picture of anyone in
here who resembles the description of Brian Hardy. I’ve
already looked.”
“Then what is it?” I asked.
“A couple of things,” he replied. “And both pretty far out.
The first is that he had hundreds of books, but this is the only
one that was autographed. The other thing is the name.”
“Patricia!” I said.
He nodded. “I checked on it. When he bought that fishing
boat its name was Dolphin III, or something like that. He was
the one who changed it to Princess Pat.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 80
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