He stepped inside. The room was the sitting room of a suite, furnished with a pearl-gray sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table. At the far end was a window with flamingo drapes. The door into the bedroom was on the left. There was soft light from the lamps at either end of the sofa. The thing that caught his eye, however, was the chart spread out on the coffee table. He stepped nearer, and saw it was the Coast & Geodetic Survey No. 1002, a general chart of the Florida Straits, Cuba, and the Bahamas. A highball glass stood in the center of it, in a spreading ring of moisture. He winced.
“Sit down,” she said, with a careless gesture toward the armchair in front of the coffee table. She seated herself opposite it on the sofa and crossed her legs, the knit skirt hiking up over her knees and molding itself against the long and rather heavy thighs. He wondered if he was supposed to look appreciative. Then he decided he was being unfair; it was just that highball glass on the chart. She picked up the glass, rattled the ice in it, and took a drink, not bothering to offer him one. If this was the new look in yachting, he was caring less and less for it. You are in a nasty mood, he thought.
“You are a captain, aren’t you?” she asked. “That’s what they called you.”
“I don’t have a boat now,” he said. “As you may have heard. But who called me?”
“Some people I talked to about you. Lieutenant Wilson of the Coast Guard, and a yacht broker named Leon Collins. They said it was stupid. You never stole anything in your life.”
“Thanks,” he said laconically.
She shrugged. “I’m just repeating what they said. But anyway, I’m willing to take their word for it. You didn’t know that man Hollister , did you?”
“No,” he said.
“Would you tell me what he looked like?”
He repeated the description he’d given the police. She listened intently, but with no change of expression. “I see.”
“What did you want to see me about?” he asked.
“I want you to help me find the Dragoon.”
He frowned. “Why me?”
“For several reasons. I’ll get to that in a minute. But will you?”
“Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to find the Dragoon. And Hollister,” he added grimly. “But if the police can’t locate her—”
“She’s at sea. Outside police jurisdiction.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I forgot—you still don’t know where the dinghy was picked up.”
“No,” he said.
“It was right here.” She leaned over the chart and indicated a pencil mark with one red-lacquered fingernail. It was in the open sea, far out over the western edge of the Great Bahama Bank along the Santaren Channel, probably a hundred and fifty miles south-southeast of Miami. At five-thirty yesterday afternoon.”
“The time doesn’t mean much,” he said. “There’s no telling how long ago they lost it, or where. They could be five hundred miles from there by now.”
She shook her head. “Didn’t they tell you about the clothes, and the watch?”
“Yes. But what about them?”
“The watch was still running.”
“Oh,” he said. Then the dinghy must have been adrift for less than twenty-four hours. “Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. I went down and talked to the captain of the Dorado myself. And the Coast Guard doesn’t think the Dragoon was under way when they lost it.”
“No, of course not, if they lost it out there. They wouldn’t have been towing it. But, look—the men in the Dorado didn’t see anything of the schooner at all?”
“No. They watched with binoculars until it got dark, but they didn’t really search the area. She might have been in over the Bank somewhere. Maybe anchored.”
“Not for long, unless they were gluttons for punishment,” he said. “Except in a dead calm, it’d be like riding a roller-coaster. With fifty to seventy-five miles of open water to windward—”
“But it’s all real shallow—or is shoal the word you use? Less than four fathoms, according to the chart.”
“It can still kick up a nasty chop, in any breeze at all. Not to mention the surge running in from the Santaren Channel. It’s more likely they were in trouble of some kind.”
“Then she might be still there. Will you help me find her?”
“How?” he asked.
“How would I know?” she asked, rattling the ice in the glass. “That’s why I’m asking you. Maybe we could charter a boat?”
He shook his head. “You’d just be wasting money.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think you realize what you’re up against. In the first place, that position you’ve got marked is where they think they were when they picked up the dinghy. Big-game fishing guides aren’t the world’s greatest navigators, as a rule. That far at sea, on dead reckoning, they could have been as much as twenty miles out. Add another thirty for the possible drift of the dinghy in the currents and tides along the edge of the Bank, and you’re in real trouble. You have any idea of the area of a circle with a radius of fifty miles?”
“God no, you figure it out.”
“Around eight thousand square miles. That’s not somebody’s front yard.”
“But—”
“Furthermore, that Bank is nothing to fool with—especially at night or in poor light conditions. It’s several thousand square miles of shoals, reefs, coral heads, and sand bars, and it’s poorly charted, especially down there where you want to go. But disregarding all that for the moment, what good would it do if you did get lucky and find her? Assuming, I mean, that the people who stole her are still aboard? There’s no way you can regain possession or have ‘em arrested until she goes into port somewhere; out on the open sea’s a poor place to try to call a cop.”
“Well, you’re sure not much help, are you?” she asked. “Or maybe you just don’t want the job? Can’t you use the money?”
He stifled the slow burn of anger. “I’m trying to keep you from throwing yours away. I’m just as interested in finding the Dragoon as you are, but you’ll never do it that way.”
“Well, what about a plane?”
“You’d have a better chance of finding her, if she’s still in that area. But you couldn’t get aboard, if you did.”
“At least I’d know where she is—and whether she’s in trouble. What kind of plane would it take?”
“An expensive one.”
“That doesn’t matter. Where can we get one?”
“Why do you keep saying we?” he asked. “If you charter a plane, what do you need me for?”
“As I said, for several reasons. You’re an experienced yachtsman. You’ve been sailing boats all your life. So you’d be able to tell if she was in trouble of some kind. But the main reason is I’m not sure I’d recognize the Dragoon if I saw her. They must have repainted her and changed the name.”
He remembered then what Schmidt had said about her not being very familiar with the schooner. It also occurred to him that he knew nothing about her whatever except that presumably she was a widow; the ad in Yachting had listed the schooner under her own name. Alarm bells began to go off in his head. He glanced at her left hand. She wore engagement and wedding rings, but that didn’t prove much.