The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,58

had too much work to do for any night life.”

“You didn’t see Keefer at all during that time?”

“No,” I said.

“But you did go ashore Thursday night, and didn’t get back till twelve. Keefer could have gone aboard then.”

“Past the watchman at the gate?” I said, wondering if would get by with it. “The cabin of the boat was locked, anyway.”

“With a padlock anybody could open with one rap of stale doughnut.”

“Not without making enough noise to be heard out at he gate,” I said. “That’s the reason your man used bolt-cutters on the hasp.”

We were skirting dangerously close now, and I had to decide in the next minute or so what I was going to do. Sweat it out, and hope they would hold off until that man in Southport could go check? It would be another seven or eight hours before he’d be able to, because he’d have to wait at least until after it was dark, and even as isolated as this place was they couldn’t hang around forever. And as he had said, we were closing the holes as we went; when we got to the last one, what was left?

“How many keys were there to that padlock?” he asked.

“Only one,” I said, “as far as I know.”

“But there could have been another one around. Padlocks always come with two, and the lock must have been aboard when you bought the boat. Where was the key kept when you were at sea?”

“In a drawer in the galley. Along with the lock.”

“So if Keefer wanted to be sure of getting back in later on, he had ten days to practice picking that lock. Or to make an impression of the key so he could have a duplicate made. It wouldn’t take much more than a hundred-and-forty IQ to work that out, would it?”

“No,” I said.

“All right. He had the rest of that money hidden somewhere in the cabin so he could pick it up when you weren’t around. You and the yard people were working on the boat during the day, and you didn’t go ashore at night, so he was out of luck for the next two days. Then Thursday night you went uptown to a movie. You’d hardly got out of sight when he showed up at the gate and tried to con the watchman into letting him go aboard. The watchman wouldn’t let him in. So he did the same thing we did, picked up a skiff over at that next dock where all the fishing boats were, and went in the back way.”

“It’s possible,” I said. “But you’re only guessing.”

“No. Shaw talked to that girl he was with in the Domino. She said Keefer was supposed to pick her up at eight-thirty. He called and said he might be a little late, and it was almost ten when he finally showed. Now guess where he’d been.”

“Okay,” I said. “But if he came aboard and got it, what became of it? He picked the girl up at ten, he was with her until I ran into them a little before midnight, and you know what happened to him after that.”

He smiled coldly. “Those were the last two holes. He didn’t give it to the girl, and we know he didn’t throw it out of the car when Bonner and Shaw ran him to the curb about twenty minutes later and picked him up to ask him about Reagan. Therefore, he never did get it. When he got aboard, it was gone.”

“Gone?” I asked. “You mean you think I found it?”

He shook his head. “What equipment was removed from that boat for repairs?”

“The refrigerator,” I said, and dived for him.

He’d been watching Flowers, and was already reaching for the gun.

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,