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