The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,12

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.

“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 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-to-midnight man, Otto Johns. I’d been oblivious of the passage of time.

“Telephone,” he called. “Long distance from New York.”

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 now, and I still have no word from him. I don’t