Go Home, Stranger

by Charles Williams

  Reno grunted. Mac had the same hunch I did, he thought. And probably she had it too, though she wouldn’t admit it. But if Conway was meeting somebody, she hadn’t shown up. He went on reading.

  Questioned about the type of trailer, the service-station attendant insisted that what Mr. Conway had been towing was not a trailer at all, but a boat. He was quite definite on this point and was even able to give me a rather good description of it, since, fortunately, he was a fisherman and interested enough to examine it. It appeared to be the usual rig, rather common in this country, consisting of a pipe-frame-and-axle trailer with the boat cradled between the wheels. The boat itself, he said, had apparently been bought at a sporting-goods store, since it was a lightweight skiff of about ten feet and was varnished rather than painted.

  Needless to say, I would be inclined to doubt the whole thing if it were not for the finality of the man’s identification of the car, and the fact that it does have a trailer hitch installed. There seems to be no logical reason why Mr. Conway would need a boat if he were coming to Waynesport on business, and if, on the other hand, he were going fishing, there are hundreds of boats for rent all along the ship channel and the bayous of this area.

  So far I have had no success in tracing his movements beyond this point, but tomorrow I shall take the car and start covering the area south of the city, the forty miles or so of ship channel and bayou between here and the Gulf, for which he must obviously have been heading if he were towing a boat.

  Very truly yours,

  WALTER L. MCHUGH

  Reno slipped the report back inside its envelope and looked around at Mrs. Conway. She shook her head with utter hopelessness.

  “I have no idea what on earth he would have wanted with a boat,” she said.

  It’s crazy, Reno thought. The whole thing’s insane. He took the other report and spread it open.

  Dear Mrs. Conway:

  I am writing this in the early morning to try to catch today’s air mail with it. Two days of search since my first report have turned up a few facts and conclusions, which I shall pass on to you before continuing. The first of these is that it is quite definite now that your husband was not headed for Waynesport at all—that is, not for the city iself—but for the country around Counsel Bayou, some thirty-five miles southwest of here on the ship channel. He apparently drove right through the city, stopping just long enough to mail the letter to you. The service-station attendant referred to in the previous, report believes it was around three-thirty P.M. when he stopped there for gasoline. That was nearly a hundred miles north of Waynesport, a good two hours’ drive for anyone pulling a boat, And the only other person who can remember seeing him states that just at dusk he was thirty-five miles down the ship channel below the city. Since we already know he did not register at any Waynesport hotel on that night, this appears likely.

  The witness, a girl living at a tourist camp and fishing resort on Counsel Bayou, states that she saw the boat and car parked momentarily just across the highway from a roadhouse named the Counselor about a quarter mile from her cabin. She says there was one man in the car and that he was apparently doing nothing except sitting there looking at the front of the inn. After she had driven past she happened to glance into the rear-view mirror and see him start up. He followed her a short distance down the highway and turned off onto an old dirt road leading into the timber as if he were going camping or fishing. To this date I have found no one who saw him after that time.

  Along the other line of search, I have turned up nothing at all. I mean, of course, the attempt to find someone who knew Mr. Conway and what the business was that brought him down here. In spite of the fact that it was your impression that he is from this area and that his family has lived here for a long time, no one recalls any member of the four Conway families living in the county who in any way answers his description. I have talked to nearly all of them personally, visited the police and some of the county officers, and questioned a number of men who served on county draft boards during the war, and so far have had no success at all. This is extremely odd in view of the general background he obviously had from your description of him as a man of considerable education and culture and who must necessarily have come from a family of some means, if not prominence. If it were not for the fact that he was obviously quite familiar with this section, I would say that you had probably been mistaken in believing he came from here.

  I am going back down the channel today to make more inquiries around and beyond Counsel Bayou, and will advise you of further developments.

  Very truly yours,

  WALTER L. MCHUGH

  Reno looked up from the last page and she was watching him anxiously. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “That it’s a little funny Mac didn’t have a picture of him,” he said. “How come?”

  “I didn’t have one.”

  “Isn’t that a little odd? No picture at all?”

  She nodded. “I asked him a number of times to have some photographs made and he always said he would. But he kept putting it off. And there were no snapshots because neither of us owned a camera.”

  “But you met him in Italy. So he must have had a passport.”

  “I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere.”

  Reno stared thoughtfully through the windshield. “In that case, he either destroyed it or took it with him. And if he took it, he must be leaving the country.”

  “Yes,” she said wretchedly. “I’ve thought of that.”

  Suddenly she hunched forward with her hands over her face, shaking as if with a violent chill. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in a moment, her voice taut with horror. “It keeps coming back. The gun—and the glass breaking—and the car turning over.”

  Reno waited until she had recovered. “Now, about that telephone call from Mac,” he reminded gently.

  “Oh.” She took the cigarette he offered and held it mechanically between her fingers, forgetting it. “It was the same day he wrote the second report. In the afternoon. Of course, I hadn’t received the report at that time, but he told me what was in it and asked me some questions. They were rather odd, the things he asked, but he didn’t explain except to say he wanted to be sure about something and that he would write me that night or the next day. And, of course, he never did, because that night he was killed.”

  “What did he ask?”

  “First, whether Mr. Conway had ever mentioned being in Italy with the Army during the Second World War. And whether he had a little scar, like an old burn, along the side of his left wrist. And last, whether he ever addressed people as ‘old boy’—you know, the way some of the English do.”

  “And the answers?” Reno prompted.

  “Yes. To all of them.”

  Well, there it is, he thought bitterly. Mac ran it down at last. And he was killed before he could tell anybody else. Maybe we’ll never know.

  “Mr. Reno,” she asked at last, her face full of bottomless misery, “what do you think it all means?”

  He hated to do it, because he liked her. But, hell, he thought, she must know it herself. “I don’t know,” he said. “Except one thing that telegraphs itself all over the place.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s simple enough. Your husband’s name wasn’t Conway.”

  He started the car in a minute and drove to the railroad station. Neither of them said anything until he parked on a street near the entrance. The train was coming.

  “Now listen,” he said, “I’m not going in with you. I’ll be behind you all the time, but you’ll have to carry your own bags until you get a redcap. Pick up your ticket and get aboard the train as fast as you can. I don’t think there’s a chance in the world he’ll be around here, but I’ve quit trusting anybody. And I don’t want him to find out who I am or what I look like.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll be around here, but I’ve quit advertising it. Now, if I were you, I’d get o
ut of San Francisco. And don’t leave a forwarding address. It’s always possible whoever it was might go out there after you. But let me know where you are. Write me care of General Delivery here. I think that’s about it, except that next time somebody says he has some information for you, tell him to meet you at a police station or just write you a letter.”

  He saw her get aboard, a lonely figure going slowly up the steps. Then he drove the car back to the U-Drive agency and took a cab to the hotel. He was numb with weariness, but he changed clothes and called the police station.

  The Lieutenant had gone off duty. There was only one Wayland in the telephone book, however, so he caught another taxi and went out to his home. A pleasant-faced woman admitted him and left the two of them alone in the comfortable living room. Wayland was pasting stamps in an album.

  “Sit down,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “What’s on your mind?”

  Reno remained standing. “I don’t know whether you bring your job home with you or not, but I’ve got some news that wouldn’t keep. It proves she didn’t do it, and you can turn her loose. The man that killed McHugh is still doing business.”

  The tough brown eyes expressed no emotion whatever. “What makes you think so?”

  “He just tried to kill Mrs. Conway.”

  “Mrs. Conway?” Then the name registered. “Oh, I remember. What happened?”

  Reno told him. When he had finished Wayland stared at him thoughtfully. “Where is she now?”

  “I put her on a train for California.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Reno repeated. “You want another corpse on your hands? Whoever it was will try again.”

  “We might be able to protect her. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “And what,” Reno asked harshly, “would give me a stupid idea like that?”

  “Look, Reno,” Wayland said coldly. “I’m glad you were able to save her. And probably she is too. But you’re going to get yourself in a jam if you don’t watch your step. If somebody did try to kill that woman, you should have notified the sheriff and had her taken to a hospital. It’s outside our jurisdiction, and we can’t do anything about it except to notify the county people. And as far as its having anything to do with McHugh’s murder, that’s only your guess. So what if Conway was a foul ball? You don’t even know he was, and it wouldn’t prove anything if you did. And if you’re trying to get your sister out on bail, you’re talking to the wrong man. I haven’t anything to do with that.”

  “I’m not trying to get her out on bail,” Reno said curtly. “I don’t want her out on bail. I want her turned loose.”

  “Well, this won’t get it.”

  They stared at each other. “Listen,” Reno said, the gray eyes hard, “the man who tried to kill Mrs. Conway is the one who killed McHugh. And I want him. Do you?”

  “Yes. If there is such a man.”

  “There is. I just told you.” Reno started for the door, and looked back. “And if you do want him, you’d better start looking. Because if I find him first he’s going to be secondhand when you get him.”

  Chapter Six

  HE WAS OUT ON his feet, but sleep would not come. An endless horde of questions chased themselves through his mind. Who was Conway, and what had he been trying to do? And why, in the name of God, had he needed a boat? Where was the one little thing that tied it all together? Mac’s death. Counsel Bayou, the girl with the dimple in her chin, Mrs. Conway’s long-distance telephone call and the attempt on her life—they were all parts of the same thing; there was no longer any doubt of that, but what was it?

  He sat on the side of the bed smoking cigarettes and pawing wearily through this senseless jumble of evidence. Counsel Bayou, he thought; you always come back to that. It was the last place anybody had ever seen Conway, it was where Mac had gone to ask questions that last day before he was killed. He stopped and jerked his head upright. The thing Vickie had said—that the only word she heard in the mumbled conversation between Mac and the killer there in the hotel room was something that sounded like “counsel.” That figured, he thought; but what did it prove?

  The thing that was so terrible was that it was just beyond the tips of his outstretched fingers. Mac had known who Conway was. He found out definitely. The telephone call to Mrs. Conway proved that. He shook his head and groaned. If only Mac had had a chance to tell somebody …

  At last, in desperation, he put through a call to Carstairs residence in San Francisco. “Dick,” he said, “this is Pete again.”

  “Sure, Pete,” Carstairs replied. “Anything new?”

  “A little,” Reno said. He told briefly what had happened to Mrs. Conway and added that he had finally read Mac’s reports. “The answer to this thing is down around that Bayou somewhere. But look. What I called about—I’m grabbing at straws. Mac found out something after he wrote that last report. He learned who the guy really was. And you gathered up his gear here at the hotel. There wasn’t anything in it that would give us a lead? No unfinished report? No notes of any kind?”

  “No,” Carstairs said regretfully. “There wasn’t a thing, Pete.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “There was a letter that came the other day, forwarded out here by the hotel. But it didn’t have anything to do with Conway.”

  Reno frowned. “A letter, you say? From where?”

  “Oh, from some friend of Mac’s in the FBI. Came after he was killed, and the hotel sent it on out here with the rest of his things. But as I say, it wasn’t about Conway. Some other guy entirely.”

  Reno was gripping the telephone with sudden tenseness and leaning forward. “Who?” he barked. “What was his name?”

  “As I remember, it was some joker named Counsel. Yes, that was it. Robert Counsel.”

  Reno exhaled slowly. “All right, Dick,” he said softly. “Read it to me. I don’t care if you have to walk down to your office in your bare feet and pajamas to get it, but read it to me. Slowly, so I can write it down.”

  “It’s, right here at home, in Mac’s gear. You think Counsel was—?”

  “Dick, will you read that letter?”

  It took several minutes, writing it down in longhand. When he had hung up he read it over again.

  Dear Irish:

  Always glad to hear from an old classmate. This is all I’ve been able to dig up since your phone call this afternoon, but I think it’ll answer your questions. I just happen to have a friend who’s a major over at the Pentagon, and he was able to get at the joker’s service record.

  Robert Counsel was a rare one, from the looks of it. Inducted as a private in 1942, though he had the educational background for a commission if he’d wanted it. Refused OCS also, so guess he meant it. Made sergeant, and was busted back to private for insubordination. General snottiness, the major said, judging from the record. Served in North Africa, then in Italy, and was still in Italy after the war ended. Had points enough to go home, but didn’t seem to care whether he did or not. Court-martialed in 1946 for black-market operations with stolen Army supplies. Sent to military prison Stateside and was released in 1951. Dropped out of sight and nothing on him since. No criminal record or arrests for anything in civil life, as far as I can find in our records.

  Odd thing about the case was the fact that they knew definitely that he’d got away with thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes and medical supplies, but never did find any of it or any money. He hadn’t sent any money out of Italy that they could discover and apparently hadn’t spent more than the usual GI quota in entertaining the local belles, nothing at all on liquor because he didn’t drink. He had lived in Italy before the war, however, and spoke the language fluently, so probably had good connections. Good crooked connections, that is.

  Nor did they ever catch anybody else involved in the shenanigan. He probably wasn’t working alone, but they never did find the others, and he wouldn’t talk. The general impression seemed to be that he was bored with the trial, and considered the officers of the court hi
s social inferiors. Snooty; or did I say that?

  Any time I can help you with an easy one like that, just let me know.

  As ever,

  CHUCK

  There was a postscript. Reno studied it for a long time and shook his head. It didn’t seem possible, but the more you learned about the mysterious Conway, the less you understood.

  “P. S. They discovered he had a room in town. But when they searched it, all they found was a vacuum pump, the kind you use in physics or chemistry lab in college. When you figure out what he was doing with that, drop me a line, will you?”

  Reno sat on the side of the bed and looked at the cigarette in his hands. I’m headed in the right direction, he thought, but I’ll be nuts before I get there. Mac was killed because he was looking for Conway. Mrs. Conway was almost killed, apparently for the same reason. And if you accepted all the evidence and agreed that Conway and Counsel were the same man, what did you have? You had a dilettante GI with overtones of larceny, and a vacuum pump, and a trailer hitch, and a boat that had disappeared. You also had his showing up back in Italy a year after he was released from military prison, and something he read in the Waynesport paper …

  I’ve got to get some sleep, he thought. A few more hours of this and I’ll be running down the street foaming at the mouth.

  The next morning he felt refreshed, with his mind clear again, and he knew what he had to do. He bought a secondhand car with out-of-state license plates and checked out of the hotel, giving San Francisco as a forwarding address. Then he bought some fishing tackle, picking it up in secondhand stores and pawnshops so it wouldn’t be glaringly new.