The Sailcloth Shroud Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 ocean-racing 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?”
    “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.”
    * * *
    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