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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