The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams 1960(page 13)

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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.

We heaved over once more, with Bonner cutting at me
again with the blackjack, and then I saw her. She hadn’t run.
She’d just reached the telephone and was lifting it off the
cradle and starting to dial. I heard Bonner snarl. Slidell and I
rolled again, and I couldn’t see her, but then I heard the
sound of the blow and her cry as she fell.
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My arm was free now. I hit Slidell in the face. He grunted,
but still held onto the gun, trying to swing it around to get
the muzzle against me. I hit him again. His hold on it was
weakening. I beat at him with rage and frustration. Wouldn’t
he ever let go? Then Bonner was leaning over us, taking the
gun out of both our hands. Beyond him I saw Patricia Reagan
getting up from the floor, beside the telephone where Bonner
had tossed it after he’d pulled the cord out of the wall. She
grasped the corner of the desk and reached for something on
it. I wanted to scream for her to get out. If she could only
understand that if one of us got away they might give it up
and run . . .
Just as he got the gun away from us she came up behind
him swinging the 35-mm camera by its strap. It caught him
just above the ear and he grunted and fell to his knees. The
gun slid out of his fingers. I grabbed it, and then Slidell had
it by the muzzle.
“Run!” I yelled at her. “Get away! The police!”
She understood then. She wheeled and ran out the front
door.
Slidell raged at Bonner. “Go get her!”
Bonner shook his head like a fighter who’s just taken a
nine count, pushed to his feet, and looked about the room.
He rubbed a hand across his face and ran toward the back
door.
“The front!” Slidell screamed. He tore at the gun and tried
to knee me in the groin. I slid sidewise away from him,
avoiding it, and hit him high on the side of the face. Jagged
slivers of pain went up my arm. Bonner turned and ran out
the front door. I jerked on the gun, and this time I broke
Slidell’s grip. I rolled away from him and climbed to my feet.
My knees trembled. I was sobbing for breath, and the whole
room was turning. When the front door came by I lunged for
it. But the wreckage of the lie-detector was still fast to my
right arm; it spun me around and threw me off balance just
as Slidell scrambled up and hit me at the waist with a harddriving
tackle. We fell across the edge of the table the
instrument had been on. Pain sliced its way through my left
side and made me cry out, and I heard the ribs go like the
snapping of half-green sticks. The table gave way under us,
and when we landed the gun was under me. I pulled it free,
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shifted it from my left hand to the right, and hit him across
the left temple with it just as he was pushing up to his knees.
He grunted and fell face down in what was left of the table.
I made it to my feet, and this time I remembered Flowers’
beloved machine. I tried to unwrap the pressure cuff from
around my arm, but my fingers were trembling and I couldn’t
half see, so I stepped on the machine and pulled upward
against the wire. It broke. The one to the tube around my
chest had already parted. I ran to the front door. A steel trap
of pain clamped shut around my left side. I bent over with my
hand against it and kept going.
The sunlight was blinding after the dimness inside. I saw
Bonner. He was a good hundred yards away, near the
mailbox, running very fast for a man with his squat, heavy
build. I started after him. She wasn’t in sight from here, but
he turned left, toward the highway, when he reached the
road.
My torso felt as if it had been emptied and then stuffed
with broken glass or eggshells. Every breath was agony, and
I ran awkwardly, with a feeling that I had been cut in two
and the upper half of my body was merely riding, none too
well balanced, on the lower. Then I saw her. She was running
along the marl road less than fifty yards ahead of him. He
was gaining rapidly. Just as I came out onto the road she
looked back and saw him. She plunged off to the right,
running through the palmetto and stunted pine to try to hide.
I would never get there in time. I raised the gun and shot,
knowing I couldn’t hit him at that distance but hoping the
sound would stop him. He paid no attention. Then he was off
the road, closing in on her.
I plunged after him. For a moment I lost them and was
terrified. It wouldn’t take him more than a minute to kill her.
Why didn’t she scream? I tore through a screen of brush then
and saw them in an open area surrounding a small salt pond.
She ran out into it, trying to get across. The water was a
little more than knee-deep. She stumbled and fell, and he
was on her before she could get up. He bent down, caught
her by the hair, and held her head under.
I tried to yell, but the last of my breath was gone. My foot
caught in a mangrove root and I fell into the mud just at the
edge of the water. He heard me. He straightened, and looked
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around. She threshed feebly, tried to get up, but fell back
with her face under water.
“Pick—pick—” I gasped. “Lift her—”
He faced me contemptuously. “You come and get her.”
I cocked the gun, rested it across my left forearm, and shot
him through the chest. His knees folded and he collapsed
face down. When I got to her the water around him was
growing red, and he jerked convulsively and drew his legs up
and kicked, driving his head against my legs as I put my
arms around her shoulders and lifted. I got her out somehow,
up beyond the slimy mud, and when she choked a few times
and began to breathe I walked another few steps and fell on
my knees and was sick.
After a while we started out to the highway and a phone.
When the police got back to the house they picked up Slidell
over in the pines trying to bridge the switch on their rented
car. The keys were in Bonner’s pocket.
* * *
A doctor in Marathon taped my side, and by that time the FBI
men were there. They took me to a hospital in Miami for Xrays
and more tape and a private room that seemed to be full
of people asking questions. They said Patricia Reagan had
been examined and found to be all right, and she had gone to
a hotel. I finally fell asleep, and when I awoke in the morning
with a steel-rigid side and a battered face through which I
could see just faintly, there were some more FBI men, and
after they were gone Bill came in.
“Brother, what a face,” he said. “If that’s the only way to
become a celebrity, include me out.”
Soames, the FBI agent in Southport, had found the letter.
It was in the door of the Topaz’ refrigerator, in the electrical
shop at the Harley boatyard, along with a large Manila
envelope containing $19,000. It was a thick door, wood on
the outside and enameled steel inside, and packed with
insulation. Keefer had taken out some screws, pulled away
the steel enough to remove some of the insulation, and put in
the envelope. That wasn’t what caused it to need repairs, of
course; the trouble was in the refrigeration unit itself and
had begun the first day out of Panama. If Keefer hadn’t been
an indifferent sailor who never paid any attention to what
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went on aboard a boat he might have known I’d have it
overhauled when we got to the yard.
Reagan had worked it out very cleverly. The letter was in a
separate airmail envelope, stamped, addressed to Paula
Stafford, but not sealed. The money was in this large Manila
deal he’d found on the boat; it had originally held some
Hydrographic Office bulletins. But he hadn’t merely stuffed
the money in, by single bills or bundles; he had packed it in a
dozen or more individual letter-sized envelopes and sealed
them, so that when the big one was closed it felt like a bunch
of letters. It was sealed—or had been until Keefer tore it
open.
The letter read:
Yacht Topaz
At Sea, June 3rd
My Darling Paula:
I don’t really know how to start this—I write it
with a heavy heart, for if you read it at all it will
only be because I am dead. The truth is that I have
been troubled by angina for some time, and
yesterday I suffered what I think was a coronary
attack. And while there is no reason to think I
might have another before we reach port, I felt I
should write this just in case one did cause my
death before I had a chance to say my last good-by
to you.
I am afraid this has changed my plans for the
future that I wrote you about, but if I arrive safely
in Southport we can discuss new ones when we
are together. I still have all your precious letters
that have meant so much to me. They are in an
envelope in my bag, which will be sent to you in
case I have a fatal attack before we reach port.
My darling, I hope you never receive this letter.
But if you do, remember that I love you and that
my last thoughts were of you.
Forever,
Wendell
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“Very neat,” Bill said. “This one would have been open in
the suitcase, so you’d read it to find out whom to notify and
where to ship his stuff. And naturally you wouldn’t open a
sealed package of old love letters. Inside the sealed envelope
with the money there was another note to her, this one
signed Brian, saying he’d put the other suitcase in a bonded
warehouse of the Rainey Transfer and Storage Company in
New York. Enclosed was the storage receipt and a letter
signed Charles Wayne authorizing the Rainey people to turn
the bag over to her. He told her to get it, but if Slidell caught
up with her to turn it over to him rather than try to run any
longer.”
I nodded. It made my face hurt. “Apparently we were
wrong, though, about Keefer’s first seeing the money when
he went to search the bag for medicine. The big envelope
was already sealed then. So he must have seen Reagan when
he was fixing it up.”
Bill grinned. “Well, it’s lucky old Nosy Keefer smelled even
more and bigger money in the letter and decided to hang
onto it too. If he’d thrown it overboard, you might have been
an old man before it was settled to everybody’s satisfaction
that Reagan did have a bad heart. Think of trying to run
down the doctor who wrote the prescription for those nitro
pills, with the places Reagan had been and the names he’d
used the past two months.”
“Lay off,” I said. “It still scares me. Have they found out yet
who Slidell is?”
He lighted a cigarette and gestured toward the paper.
“Big-shot hoodlum from Los Angeles. Several arrests for
extortion and a couple for murder, but no convictions. The
bonds came from three or four big bank robberies in Texas
and Oklahoma. They’re not sure yet whether Slidell actually
took part, or just planned them. Ran with the cafe-society set
quite a bit, or what passes for it in Southern California, and
owned a home in Phoenix. Funny part is he came from about
the same kind of family background Reagan did, and was
well educated, even a couple of years in medical school.
Bonner was his bodyguard and hunker and general muscle
man. The FBI was able to talk to the Stafford woman last
night, and they got the suitcase out of the warehouse in New
York, but they’re still buttoned up as to how much it was.
They’re pretty sure she didn’t know anything about where it
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had come from, or that her boy friend’s real name was
Clifford Reagan. When he closed the book, pal, he closed it.”
I looked out the window. “What about Bonner? Nobody’s
said anything yet.”
“Justifiable homicide, what else? They took her statement
this morning. Were you supposed to stand there and watch
him kill her?”
I didn’t say anything. In the movies and on television, I
thought, you point the gun and everybody obeys, but maybe
they didn’t run into Bonners very often. There hadn’t been
any choice. But it would be a long time before I forgot the
horror of that moment when he kicked out with his legs and
nudged his head against me in the reddening water. If I ever
forgot it.
I was waiting impatiently when Patricia Reagan finally
came to see me that afternoon. She’d gone back to close the
house and get her things. She was fully recovered, and
looked lovely except for a little puffiness on one side of her
face. I wanted to pay for the damage to the furnishings and
having the phone reinstalled. We argued amicably about it
and finally decided we’d share the responsibility. We talked
for a while, sticking pretty closely to boats and sailing, the
things we both knew and loved, but it trailed off and she left.
She came back again, the following afternoon, and it was
the same thing. I was waiting eagerly for her, she seemed
prettier each time, and apparently was glad to see me, she
smiled, we talked happily about the Bahamas and about her
future in photo journalism, and how we’d go out to the
Islands where she could shoot some really terrific pictures,
and then it began to trail off and we grew polite and formal
with each other.
Just before she left, Bill and Lorraine showed up. Bill had
already met her, but I introduced her to Lorraine.
After she’d gone, Lorraine looked at me with that old
matchmaker’s gleam in her eye. “There’s a really stunning
girl, Rogers, old boy. What’s between you two?”
“Her father,” I said.
I had a card from her after she’d gone back to Santa
Barbara, but I never saw her again.
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