The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,31

when I changed planes in Chicago, and registered as Howard Summers from Portland, Oregon. They wouldn’t locate me this time merely by calling the hotels. I asked for a room overlooking Bayfront Park, bought a Herald, and followed the boy into the elevator. The room was on the twelfth floor. As soon as he left I went over to the window and parted the slats of the Venetian blind. Just visible around to the left was City Yacht Basin. Sticking up out of the cluster of sightseeing and charter fishing boats were the tall sticks of the Orion. It made me sick to be this near and not be able to go aboard.

I turned away and reached for the telephone. Bill Redmond should be home by now. He answered on the first ring.

“Stuart—” I began.

He cut me off. “Good God, where are you?”

I told him the hotel. “Room 1208.”

“You’re in Miami? Don’t you ever read the papers?”

“I’ve got a Herald, but I haven’t looked at—”

“Read it. I’m on my way over there now.” He hung up.

The paper was lying on the bed, where I’d tossed it when I came in. I spread it open, put a cigarette in my mouth, and started to flick the lighter. Then I saw it.

LOCAL YACHT CAPTAIN

SOUGHT IN SEA MYSTERY

The police had Baxter’s letter.

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.

It was all there. The hotel detective had gone up to her room shortly after 3:30 a.m. when guests in adjoining 100ms reported a disturbance. He found her wildly upset and crying out almost incoherently that somebody had been killed. Since there were no evidences of violence and it was obvious no one else was there, dead or otherwise, he had got her calmed down and left her after she’d taken one of her sleeping pills. At 10 a.m., however, when they tried to call her and could get no response, they entered the room with a pass key and found her unconscious. A doctor was called. He found the remaining pills on the table beside the bed, and had her taken to a hospital. It wasn’t known whether the overdose was accidental or a suicide attempt, since no note could be found, but when police came to investigate they found the letter from Baxter. Then everything hit the fan.

My visit came out. The elevator boy and night clerk gave the police my description. They went looking for me, and I’d disappeared from the boatyard. The letter from Baxter was printed in full. There was a rehash of the whole story up to that time, including Keefer’s death and the unexplained $4000.

Now apparently $19,000 more was missing, I was missing, and nobody had an idea at all as to what had really happened to Baxter.

... in light of this new development, the true identity of Wendell Baxter is more deeply shrouded in mystery than ever. Police refused to speculate as to whether or not Baxter might even still be alive. Lieutenant Boyd parried the question by saying, “There is obviously only one person who knows the answer to that, and we’re looking for him.”

Local agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no comment other than a statement that Captain Rogers was being sought for further questioning.

I pushed the paper aside and tried the cigarette again. This time I got it going. The letter itself wasn’t bad enough I thought; I had to make it worse by running. That’s the way it would look; the minute I read it I took off like a goosed gazelle. By this time they would have traced me to the Bolton and then to the airport. And I’d rented the car in Tampa under my own name, and then turned