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 leaned his arms on the desk and stared coldly. “So how would they know there was even an engine aboard, let alone whether it’d run or not, or whether there was any fuel in the tanks, or the starting batteries were charged? You were on there all afternoon, poking into everything, according to old Tango. You started the engine and ran it, and inspected the rigging and steering gear, took the sails out of their bags and checked them—”

“Of course I did. I told you I was looking for a boat to buy. You think I went down there just to find out what color it was painted? And, incidentally, what was the watchman doing all the time they were getting away with it? He lived aboard.”

“He was in the drunk tank of the Dade County jail. Clever, huh?”

“Dade County? How’d he get up here?”

“He was helped. He went ashore Monday night in Key West and had a few drinks, and all he can remember is he ran into a couple of good-time Charlies in some Duval Street bar. About three o’clock in the morning a patrol car found him passed out on die sidewalk on Flagler Street here in downtown Miami. He didn’t have any money to pay a fine, so it was three days before he got out, and it took him another day to thumb his way back to Key West and find out the Dragoon was gone. Of course, everybody around the Key West water front knew it was, but didn’t think anything of it. He’d already told several people there’d been a man aboard thinking of buying it, so they took it for granted it’d been moved to Marathon or Miami to go on the ways for survey. See? Just a nice convenient string of coincidences, so the boat was gone four days before anybody even realized it was stolen.”

“I was in Tampa Monday night,” Ingram said. “Also Tuesday, and Tuesday night.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Sure.