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.