The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,22

was futile. If he was still down there, he’d heard me already. Well, I could find out. The light switch was right beside the ladder, accessible from here. I stepped to one side of the hatch, reached down silently, and flipped it on. Nothing happened. I peered in. He was gone. But he’d been there. The whole cabin looked as if it had been stirred with a giant spoon.

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 Topaz lay near the outer end of the pier, bow in and starboard side to. There was a light at the shoreward end of the pier, but out here it was somewhat shadowy, especially aft. The marine railway and the shrimp boat that was on it blocked the view from the gate. There was a high wire fence, topped with barbed wire, on each side of the yard, so no one could go in or out afoot except through the gate, but the bayfront was wide open, of course, to anyone with a boat.

I threw the beam of the flashlight over the port side, and found it almost immediately. Freshly painted white topsides are both the joy and the curse of a yachtsman’s life; they’re beautiful and dazzling as a fresh snowfall, and just as easily marred. Right under the cockpit coaming was a slight dent, with green paint in it. Skiff, I thought, or a small outboard; it had bumped as it came alongside. If they had a motor, they had probably cut it some distance out and sculled in. Probably happened on Otto’s watch, right after I left. That meant, then, that there were at least four of them. But what were they looking for?

I was just straightening up when I saw something else. I stopped the light and looked again to make sure. There was another dent, about ten feet forward of this one. What the hell, had they come alongside at twenty knots and ricocheted? I stepped forward and knelt to have a closer look. There was a smear of yellow paint in this one. Two boats? That made no sense at all. One of the dents must have been made before, I thought. But it couldn’t have been very long ago, because it was only Thursday I’d painted the topsides.

Well, it didn’t make any difference. The point was that they’d been here, and they could come back. If I wanted to get any sleep I’d better move to a hotel; this place was too easy to get into. I went below and straightened up the mess. So far as I could tell, nothing was missing. I changed into a lightweight suit—the only one I had with me—put on some more shoes, and packed a bag with the rest of my gear. I gathered up the sextant and chronometer, the only valuable items aboard, and went up to the gate.

The old man was shocked and apologetic and a little frightened when I told him about it. “Why, I didn’t hear a thing, Mr. Rogers,” he said.

“It probably happened on Otto’s shift,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter; nobody would have heard them, anyway. Just keep this chronometer and sextant in your shack till Froelich gets here in the morning.” Froelich was the yard foreman. “Turn them over to him, and tell him to put a new hasp and padlock on that hatch. At yard expense, incidentally. And tell him not to let anybody down in the cabin until the police have a chance to check it for fingerprints. I’ll be back around nine o’clock.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll sure do that. And I’m awful sorry about it, Mr. Rogers.”

“Forget it,” I told him. I