Aground - By Charles Williams & Franklin W. Dixon Page 0,1
Hollister and explain what he’d done. He was just reaching for the telephone when someone rapped on the door.
He put down the drink and opened it. There were two men in the dingy hallway. The nearer one crowded the door just enough to prevent its being closed again, and asked, “Your name John Ingram?”
“Yes,” he said. “What is it?”
The other flipped open a folder containing a badge. “Police. We’d like to talk to you.”
He frowned. “About what?”
“We’d better come inside.”
“Sure.” He stepped back. They came in and closed the door. One took a quick look into the bathroom, and then the clothes closet, reaching in to pat the suit hanging there. Ingram went over to the suitcase lying open on its stand at the foot of the bed, and started to reach inside. “Keep your hands out of there,” the other man ordered.
He straightened. “What the hell? I just wanted to put on some pants.”
“You’ll get ‘em. Just stand back.”
The one who’d checked the bathroom and the closet came over and riffled expertly through the contents of the bag. “Okay,” he said. Ingram took out a pair of gray slacks and started to put them on. The two detectives noticed the scars. One of them opened his mouth to say something, but looked again at the big man’s face and closed it.
“Who are you?” Ingram asked. “And what is it you want?”
It was the one near the doorway who replied. “I’m Detective Sergeant Schmidt, Miami Police.” He was a dark, compactly built man in his early thirties with an air of hard-bitten competence about him, neatly dressed in a lightweight suit and white shirt. He nodded to the other. “This is Arthur Quinn. You’re from Puerto Rico—is that right?”
“More or less,” Ingram replied.
“What do you mean, more or less? That’s what the hotel register says.”
“I lived in San Juan for the past three years.”
“What line of work are you in?”
“I was in the boat-repair business down there. Another man and I had a boatyard and marine railway.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
“No. We had a bad fire. He was killed in it, and his widow wanted out, so we liquidated what was left.”
“What are you doing in Miami?”
“Looking for a boat.”
“To buy, you mean?”
“That’s right,” he replied. “What’s this all about?”
Schmidt ignored the question. “You checked in here the first time fifteen days ago, but you’ve been gone for the past eight. Where’ve you been?”
“Nassau. Tampa. Key West.”
“When were you in Key West?” Quinn asked. He was a slender, graying man with a narrow face and rather cold eyes. He looked more like the manager of a loan company than a cop, Ingram thought.
“Sunday,” he said. “A week ago yesterday.”
The two men exchanged a glance. “And you went down there to look at a boat?” Quinn asked.
Ingram nodded. “A schooner called the Dragoon. What about it?”
Quinn smiled. It didn’t add any appreciable warmth to his face. “We thought you knew. The Dragoon was stolen.”
Ingram had started to take a drink of the whisky. He lowered the glass, stared blankly at the two men, and went over and sat down beside the desk. “Are you kidding? How could anybody steal a seventy-foot schooner?”
“It seems to be easy, when you know how,” Quinn replied. He moved nearer the desk. Schmidt leaned against the corner of the bathroom and lighted a cigarette.
“When did it happen?” Ingram asked.
“Oddly enough, the next night after you were aboard,” Quinn said.
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Ingram asked quietly.
“It means you’d better come up with some answers. Somebody cased that job, and you look mighty good for it.”
“You mean just because I was aboard? That boat was for sale, and open to inspection by anybody.”
“The watchman says you were the only one that’d been aboard for nearly a month. He gave us a description of you, and we traced you back here.”
“Description? Hell, I told him my name, and where I lived.”
“He says you gave him some name, but he couldn’t remember it. So it could have been a phony.”
“Well, I’ll have to admit that makes sense.”
“Don’t get snotty, Ingram. You can answer these questions here, or I can take you back down there and let you answer ‘em. I’m from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. That boat had been lying there at her mooring in the harbor for nearly a year, but whoever stole it knew she was still in condition to go to sea.”
“Maybe they towed her away.”
“She left under her own power.” Quinn