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.”
I followed him down the hallway to the last door. The office
inside was small, spotlessly neat, and cool, with light green
walls, marbled gray linoleum, and one window, across which
were tilted the white slats of a Venetian blind. There was a
single desk, with a swivel chair in back of it. An armchair
stood before it, near one corner, facing the light from the
window. Soames nodded toward it, and held out cigarettes.
“Sit down, please. I’ll be right back.”
I fired up the cigarette. As I dropped the lighter back in my
pocket, I said curiously, “I don’t get this. Why is the FBI
interested in Keefer?”
“Keefer?” Soames had started out; he paused in the
doorway. “Oh, that’s a local police matter.”
I stared blankly after him. If they weren’t interested in
Keefer, what did they want to know? Soames returned in
moment carrying a Manila folder. He sat down and began
emptying it of its contents: the log I had kept of the trip, the
signed and notarized statement regarding Baxter’s death and
the inventory of his personal effects.
He glanced up briefly. “I suppose you’re familiar with all
this?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “But how’d it get over here? And
just what is it you want?”
“We’re interested in Wendell Baxter.” Soames slid the
notarized statement out of the pile, and studied it
thoughtfully. “I haven’t had much chance to digest this, or
your log, so I’d like to check the facts with you just briefly, if
you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I replied. “But I thought the whole thing was
closed. The marshal’s office—”
“Oh, yes,” Soames assured me. “It’s just that they’ve run
into a little difficulty in locating Baxter’s next of kin, and
they’ve asked us to help.”
“I see.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 21
He went on crisply. “You’re owner and captain of the fortyfoot
ketch Topaz, which you bought in Cristobal, Panama
Canal Zone, on May twenty-seven of this year, through
Joseph Hillyer, Miami yacht broker who represented the
sellers. That’s correct?”
“Right.”
“You sailed from Cristobal on June one, at ten-twenty a.m.,
bound for this port, accompanied by two other men you
engaged as deckhands for the trip. One was Francis L.
Keefer, a merchant seaman, possessing valid A.B. and
Lifeboat certificates as per indicated numbers, American
national, born in Buffalo, New York, September twelve, nineteen-
twenty. The other was Wendell Baxter, occupation or
profession unspecified but believed to be of a clerical nature,
not possessed of seaman’s papers of any kind but obviously
familiar with the sea and well versed in the handling of small
sailing craft such as yachts, home address San Francisco,
California. Four days out of Cristobal, on June five, Baxter
collapsed on deck at approximately three-thirty p.m. while
trimming a jib sheet, and died about twenty minutes later.
There was nothing you could do to help him, of course. You
could find no medicine in his suitcase, the boat’s medicine
chest contained nothing but the usual first-aid supplies, and
you were several hundred miles from the nearest doctor.”
“That’s right,” I said. “If I never feel that helpless again,
it’ll be all right with me.”
Soames nodded. “Your position at the time was 16.10
North, 81.40 West, some four hundred miles from the Canal,
and approximately a hundred miles off the coast of
Honduras. It was obvious you were at least another six days
from the nearest Stateside port, so you put about
immediately to return to the Canal Zone with his body, but in
three days you saw you were never going to get there in
time. That’s essentially it?”
“In three days we made eighty-five miles,” I said. “And the
temperature down there in the cabin where his body was ran
around ninety degrees.”
You couldn’t have gone into some port in Honduras?”
I gestured impatiently. “This has all been threshed out with
the Coast Guard. I could have tried for some port on the
mainland of Honduras or Nicaragua, or gone on to
The Sailcloth Shroud — 22
Georgetown, Grand Cayman, which was less than two
hundred miles to the north of us—except that I wasn’t
cleared for any of those places. Baxter was already dead, so
it’s doubtful the port authorities would have considered it a
legitimate emergency. And just to come plowing in
unauthorized, with no bill of health or anything, carrying the
body of a man who’d died at sea of some unspecified ailment
—we’d have been slapped in quarantine and tied up in red
tape till we had beards down to our knees. Besides being
fined. The only thing to do was go back.”
“And you had nothing but bad luck, right from the
beginning?”
“Look,” I said hotly, “we tried. We tried till we couldn’t
stand it any longer. Believe me, I didn’t want the
responsibility of burying him at sea. In the first place, it
wasn’t going to be pleasant facing his family. And if we
couldn’t bring the body ashore for an autopsy, there’d have
to be a hearing of some kind to find out what he died of.
There’s nothing new about burial at sea, of course, especially
in the old days when ships were a lot slower than they are
now, but a merchant or naval vessel with thirty to several
hundred people aboard is—well, a form of community itself,
with somebody in authority and dozens of witnesses. Three
men alone in a small boat would be something else. When
only two come back, you’re going to have to have a little
better explanation than just saying Bill dropped dead and we
threw him overboard. That’s the reason for all that detailed
report on the symptoms of the attack. I wrote it out as soon
as I saw we were probably going to have to do it.”
Soames nodded. “It’s quite thorough. Apparently the
doctor who reviewed it had no difficulty in diagnosing the
seizure as definitely some form of heart attack, and probably
a coronary thrombosis. I wonder if you’d fill me in just briefly
on what happened after you started back?”
“To begin with,” I said, “we tore the mains’l all to hell. The
weather had turned unsettled that morning, even before
Baxter had the attack. Just before dusk I could see a squall
making up to the eastward. It looked a little dirty, but I didn’t
want to shorten down any more than we had to considering
the circumstances. So we left everything on and just turned
in a couple of reefs in the main and mizzen. Or started to. We
were finishing the main when it began to kick up a little and
The Sailcloth Shroud — 23
the rain hit us. I ran back to the wheel to keep her into the
wind, while Keefer tied in the last few points and started to
raise sail again. I suppose it’s my fault for not checking, but
I’d glanced off toward the squall line and when I looked back
at the mains’l it was too late. He had the halyard taut and
was throwing it on the winch. I yelled for him to slack off, but
with all the rain he didn’t hear me. What had happened was
that he’d mixed up a pair of reef points—tied one from the
second row to another on the opposite side in the third set.
That pulls the sail out of shape and puts all the strain in one
place. It was just a miracle it hadn’t let go already. I
screamed at him again, and he finally heard me this time and
looked around, but all he did was shake his head that he
couldn’t understand what I was saying. Just as I jumped from
behind the wheel and started to run forward he slipped the
handle into the winch and took a turn, and that was the ball
game. It split all the way across.
We didn’t have another one aboard. The previous owners
had pretty well butched up the sail inventory on the way
down to the Canal—blew out a mains’l and lost the genoa
overboard. I managed to patch up this one after a fashion,
using material out of an old stays’l, but it took two days.
Maybe it wouldn’t have made much difference anyway,
because the weather went completely sour—dead calm about
half the time, with occasional light airs that hauled all
around the compass. But with just that handkerchief of a
mizzen, and stays’l and working jib, we might as well have
been trying to row her to the Canal. We ran on the auxiliary
till we used up all the gasoline aboard, and then when there
was no wind we just drifted. Keefer kept moaning and
griping for us to get rid of him; said he couldn’t sleep in the
cabin with a dead man. And neither of us could face the
thought of trying to prepare any food with him lying there
just forward of the galley. We finally moved out on deck
altogether.
“By Sunday morning—June eighth—I knew it had to be
done. I sewed him in what was left of the old stays’l, with the
sounding lead at his feet. It was probably an all-time low in
funerals. I couldn’t think of more than a half dozen words of
the sea-burial service, and there was no Bible aboard. We did
shave and put on shirts, and that was about it. We buried him
at one p.m. The position’s in the log, and I think it’s fairly
The Sailcloth Shroud — 24
accurate. The weather improved that night, and we came on
here and arrived on the sixteenth. Along with the report, I
turned his personal belongings over to the marshal’s office.
But I don’t understand why they couldn’t locate some of his
family; his address is right there—1426 Roland Avenue, San
Francisco.”
“Unfortunately,” Soames replied, “there is no Roland
Avenue in San Francisco.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So we hoped you might be able to help us.”
I frowned, feeling vaguely uneasy. For some reason I was
standing at the rail again on that day of oily calm and
blistering tropic sun, watching the body in its Orlon shroud
as it sank beneath the surface and began its long slide into
the abyss. “That’s just great,” I said. “I don’t know anything
about him either.”
“In four days, he must have told you something about
himself.”
“You could repeat it all in forty seconds. He told me he was
an American citizen. His home was in California. He’d come
down to the Canal Zone on some job that had folded up after
a couple of months, and he’d like to save the plane fare back
to the States by sailing up with me.”
“He didn’t mention the name of any firm, or government
agency?”
“Not a word. I gathered it was a clerical or executive job of
some kind, because he had the appearance. And his hands
were soft.”
“He never said anything about a wife? Children?
Brothers?”
“Nothing.”
“Did he say anything at all during the heart attack?”
“No. He seemed to be trying to, but he couldn’t get his
breath. And the pain was pretty terrible until he finally lost
consciousness.”
‘I see.” Soames’ blue eyes were thoughtful. “Would you
describe him?”
I’d say he was around fifty. About my height, six-one. but
very slender; I doubt he weighed over a hundred and
The Sailcloth Shroud — 25
seventy. Brown eyes, short brown hair with a good deal of
gray in it, especially around the temples, but not thinning or
receding to any extent. Thin face, rather high forehead, good
nose and bone structure, very quiet, and soft-spoken—when
he said anything at all. In a movie you’d cast him as a doctor
or lawyer or the head of the English department. That’s the
thing, you see; he wasn’t hard-nosed or rude about not
talking about himself; he was just reserved. He minded his
own business, and seemed to expect you to mind yours. And
since he was apparently down on his luck, it seemed a little
on the tasteless side to go prying into matters he didn’t want
to talk about.”
“What about his speech?”
“Well, the outstanding thing about it was that there was
damned little of it. But he was obviously well educated. And
if there was any trace of a regional accent, I didn’t hear it.”
“Was there anything foreign about it at all? I don’t mean
low comedy or vaudeville, but any hesitancy, or
awkwardness of phrasing?”
“No,” I said. “It was American.”
“I see.” Soames tapped meditatively on the desk with the
eraser end of a pencil. “Now, you say he was an experienced
sailor. But he had no papers, and you don’t think he’d ever
been a merchant seaman, so you must have wondered about
it. Could you make any guess as to where he’d picked up this
knowledge of the sea?”
“Yes. I think definitely he’d owned and sailed boats of his
own, probably boats in the offshore cruising and oceanracing
class. Actually, a merchant seaman wouldn’t have
known a lot of the things Baxter did, unless he was over
seventy and had been to sea under sail. Keefer was a good
example. He was a qualified A.B.; he knew routine
seamanship and how to splice and handle line, and if you
gave him a compass course he could steer it. But if you were
going to windward and couldn’t quite lay the course, half the
time he’d be lying dead in the water and wouldn’t know it.
He had no feel. Baxter did. He was one of the best wind-ship
helmsmen I’ve ever run into. Besides native talent, that takes
a hell of a lot of experience you don’t pick up on farms or by
steering power boats or steamships.”
“Did he know celestial navigation?”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 26
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a funny thing, but I think he did. I mean,
he never mentioned it, or asked if he could take a sight and
work it out for practice, but somehow I got a hunch just from
the way he watched me that he knew as much about it as I
did. Or maybe more. I’m no whiz; there’s not much occasion
to use it in the Bahamas.”
“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.”
* * *
The Sailcloth Shroud — 27
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.
The Sailcloth Shroud — 28
“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
The Sailcloth Shroud — 29
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-tomidnight
man, Otto Johns. I’d been oblivious of the passage
of time.
“Telephone,” he called. “Long distance from New York.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 30
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