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,