Far in the rear, in a slant of light through a dirty window, a gaunt figure worked at a carpenter’s bench. He wore white overalls powdered with sawdust. He was sawing planks for a dinghy. Its little transom of flare-grained mahogany lay already shaped on the bench beside him. Frames, clamped to templates, were steaming over a caldron at the end of the bench.

“Mr. Cox?” asked Mitch.

The man flicked off his table saw. He had pale blue, steady eyes. He was bald, tall as Mitch, with a tanned lined face that must once have been handsome. Mitch sensed recent weight loss in the folds of his neck.

When Mitch met a man with eyes level with his own, he usually sensed rapport. They were tall men in a world built for averages. This time he felt between them a mutual impulse to test their strength. The vibes were very strong.

“Mr. Cox?” he asked again.

“Cox,” the man said, “is no more. He died thirty years ago. John Dugan is Cox.” He nodded toward a glassed cubicle at the corner of the loft. “Dugan’s in there.”

Mitch, who had promised himself to stay casual, found himself blurting suddenly: “Do you know who owns that ketch out there?”

The man stiffened. There was something familiar in the unbending way he carried his frame. And now his face was guarded.

“Dugan’s in there,” he said again. He turned away and the saw screamed into life. They moved toward the office, wondering where they had seen the man before.

Behind the office glass a man was jabbing an ancient adding machine. When Mitch tapped on the door he motioned them in. He was shorter, more solid, and older than the man at the carpenter’s bench. His eyes lacked some of the other’s clarity, but he resembled him. Probably brothers. He leaned on a drafting table stacked with boat-plans. The plans were as dusty as the unplanked hull in the loft. Mitch, trying to hide his eagerness, introduced himself and asked if the ketch was for sale.

“What makes you think so?”

“I heard a rumor. Wasn’t she red?”

“Red, yeah. For sale? It seems to depend.”

A fly attacked the dust-streaked window above him. He turned and swatted it with a rolled nautical chart. He wandered to his desk and reached down its side. He picked up a four-foot steel rod, two inches thick. An area a foot from one end was almost eaten through by corrosion. “Know what this is?” he asked Mitch suddenly.

“Keel-bolt,” Mitch said. “Somebody pulled it just in time. Who owns the ketch?”

Dugan waved a hand toward the bench outside. “Andrew. My brother.”

That explained why the tall man had looked familiar: from the Farallon Island start. He wondered if Dugan had recognized them. “Why’d he send us in here?”