Go Home, Stranger

by Charles Williams

  “And I still want the guy who killed Mac,” Reno said curtly. “I tried to sell the police this Conway deal and they weren’t having any. I’m telling you so you’ll have this much to go on just in case the guy gets behind me the way he did Mac; What I’ve got to find out is why Counsel came back here.”

  “That’s not going to be easy. If he’s alive, you’re up against one of the damnedest minds I’ve ever run into. And if he’s dead, he won’t tell you much.”

  “I know. But look, here’s one other thing. It was something in the paper, the Waynesport Express of July twelfth, that brought him down here. Mrs. Conway’s positive of it. Can you get hold of a copy, from the paper itself or from the library?”

  Gage thought a minute. “That’s easy.” He pressed the buzzer on the intercom. When the brunette came in, he tossed her the keys to his car. “Drive out to my mother’s house, Miss Crews, and ask her to let you have, the July twelfth Express.” He looked at Reno and grinned. “Tell her I’ll take good care of it.”

  When the girl had gone, he added, for Reno’s benefit, “My mother hasn’t thrown anything away since her bridal bouquet. She keeps the papers for six months and sells them to the junkman.”

  “Good,” Reno said. Then he went on, “Did you know Counsel?”

  “As well as anyone, I guess. My grandfather used to have a place out near the Bayou, and I saw quite a bit of him when he was home. He and his mother spent a lot of time in Italy.”

  “Can you think of any reason he’d come easing in here dragging a boat? After being gone that long?”

  Gage shook his head. “None at all. Except that nothing Robert Counsel did would ever surprise me.”

  “Don’t be too sure. Maybe this will.” Reno pulled from his pocket the copy of the letter from McHugh’s friend in the FBI. He tossed it across the desk.

  When Gage had read it, he shook his head and handed it back. “That’s Robert. Bored with the court-martial.”

  “You’re not surprised he was caught stealing. Had he been in trouble before?”

  “Not as far as I know. But let’s just say that it wasn’t out of any regard for what he’d consider middle-class morality. Probably he’d never had to steal before.”

  Reno gestured with irritation. “He doesn’t make much sense to me.”

  Gage crushed out his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “And the more you talk to people around here, the less he’s going to make. Too many contradictory factors.”

  “Such as—” Reno prompted impatiently.

  “Well, to begin with, Robert Counsel should have been a mamma’s boy, by all the rules. But he wasn’t. He was one of the coldest-nerved devils I ever saw. Mamma thought he was her little darling, all right, but she didn’t know the half of it. He had all the drive, audacity, and brilliance of one of those success-story characters who’s born on the wrong side of the tracks and winds up owning half the continent before he’s thirty-five—except that he was already rich when he was born and had nothing but contempt for all the peasant virtues like work. But there was a touch of genius about him in the things that did interest him, like poetry, architecture, the fine art of seduction, speedboat design, and explosives.”

  “Explosives?” Reno asked, puzzled.

  “Just one of the facets of a brilliant mind. I’m trying to show you what you’re up against in attempting to guess what it was he came back for. While the young princeling was being privately tutored, he was already branching out into one of the fields Mamma didn’t know anything about. In his spare time he was trailing around with another genius named Max Easter, learning to crimp dynamite caps and tamp powder charges to blast stumps out of fields. This Easter was a radical and a troublemaker, and an old-time powder monkey who could remove a stump right from alongside a house. Robert, I understand, could do the same thing, except that according to Max he had to watch him all the time to keep him from cutting the fuses too short just to relieve the tedium. The subconscious death wish, or only a screwball kid playing with dynamite? Take your choice.”

  “Sounds more all the time like what Mac’s friend called him. A rare one.”

  “He was. But if he’s really gone bad, God help everybody.”

  “You say they were rich. And now the property’s all gone. What happened?”

  “Nothing. Just attrition. Expensive tastes and no management after the grandfather died. They gradually sold everything. His mother died shortly after he was drafted.”

  Reno sat deep in thought. “Well, that’s all we’ve got. He served his time in the military prison and then went back to Italy. When he returned to the States he came in through here on a ship. So in spite of what people think, he had been back once before he came down in the car. Something he saw in the paper made him come back, this time, bringing the boat. He and the boat both disappeared, and when Mac got too hot on the trail he was killed. What was he after?”

  “That’s your question,” Gage said. “You answer it. I wouldn’t even guess.”

  Some fifteen or twenty minutes later Miss Crews returned with the newspaper. They each took a section, and for an hour they studied the columns for a clue. They traded, and tried again.

  Trying to put himself in Counsel’s place, with the information he had gained so far, Reno first read all the local news items, a column at a time, but nothing-clicked. What was there here that could have brought a man all the way from California? He ground his way doggedly through the obituaries, the want ads, the shipping news, and even the editorials. There were a half-dozen ads under the “Personals” heading in the classified section, but they were only the usual come-ons. The shipping news was routine: two loaded tankers had sailed, the government had let another contract for additional dredging of the channel, a Norwegian ship was discharging coffee from Santos. It occurred to him that he didn’t know the name of the ship on which Conway, or Counsel, had returned from Italy. He could call Mrs. Conway and find out, but what would it prove? He folded the paper at last, conscious of the futility of his search. How could he find a clue when he didn’t even know what he was looking for?

  Gage did the same, and sighed. “Assuming Mrs. Conway was right,” he said, “whatever it was jumped right into Robert’s eye as soon as he looked at it. Only we’re not Robert.”

  Reno stood up. “I’ll bring it back to you in a couple of days. It’s right here in front of us, and I’m going to keep trying until I stumble onto it.”

  “How about Vickie? You want to see her?”

  Reno hesitated, feeling the desire pulling at him. Maybe he could cheer her up. … At last he shook his head. “The less we advertise who I am, the better chance I’ve got. Just tell her to hang on a few more days.”

  Chapter Nine

  BUT WHAT ABOUT the trailer? The girl had told somebody she’d found him poking at it with the rod, and the man she’d told had moved it. But did they suspect who he was? Or did they merely think he’d stumbled on it by accident, and had moved it before he could learn what it was? It made a lot of difference. He was playing a dangerous game with somebody in the dark, and if it developed the other man could see, his chances of finding out anything—or even of staying alive—were approaching the vanishing point.

  Where did Patricia Lasater fit in? And how could she have any connection with this ugly business, whatever it was? She wasn’t even from this part of the country, judging from her automobile license plates. And how did you tie in those brown eyes and that delightful smile with murder? He grunted, and angrily flipped the cigarette out into the darkness. Brown eyes, hell! She was in this up to her neck.

  He got up and went inside the cabin. Switching on the light, he sat down on the bed and spread the newspaper open again. I’m Counsel, he thought doggedly; what do I see? Why do I have to go back to Counsel Bayou with a boat? Everything’s sold, I’ve been away for years. … Moths flickered and danced around the light bulb and a mosquito buzzed near his ear. The old sense of futility seized him. He wasn’t Counsel, he didn’t ev
en know Counsel; how could he know what the man had seen?

  Why not walk over to the Counselor and have a drink? Maybe a little rest would freshen his mind so he could see some pattern in all this senseless jumble. Before he went out he put the newspaper and the copy of Mac’s letter in one of the suitcases and locked it.

  The neon sign was a blaze of garish light, and there were a few cars parked in the shell driveway. The front door opened into a short hall, which had been made into a hat check stand. Through an archway on the left he could see the snowy tablecloths of the dining room, while the bar was beyond a smaller door on the right. It was air-conditioned and almost cold after the hot summer night. He sat down on a red leather stool and glanced around in the dimness. Two men in white suits rattled a dice cup against the smooth mahogany at the other end of the bar, and a tall blonde in an abbreviated pirate costume carried a tray of drinks back to the row of leather-upholstered booths. Somebody had spent a lot of money here. A little overripe for the fishing-camp trade, he reflected; there must be gambling upstairs.

  “Martini,” he said, when the barman came over.

  The drink was good and very cold. He was still sipping it and about to order another when the girl came in. He had been idly watching the door in the dark mirror behind the bar, and at first he didn’t recognize her. Both times he’d seen her before she had been dressed in slacks, but now she was very cool and lovely in a white skirt, white shoes, and a tawny wide-sleeved blouse. She went on past and sat down at one of the booths. Wonder if she gets paid overtime for snooping after five o’clock, he thought.

  On sudden impulse Reno got up and walked back to her booth.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Oh.” She looked up and smiled.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Not at all. You’ll have to pay for your own drink, though. I’m a schoolteacher.”

  “I’ll buy you one, if you’ll let me. I’m a patron of the arts.”

  When the drinks came, he said, “My name’s Reno. Pete Reno. I already know yours. I asked.”

  “Thank you. That’s quite flattering. What do you do, Mr. Reno, when you aren’t being a patron of the arts?” She paused, and smiled charmingly. “Or fishing with your head under water?”

  She’s a cool one, he thought. Or didn’t she know he had gone back and found the trailer moved? “I’m a construction stiff,” he answered. “Dams—things like that. You name it, we build it.”

  “It sounds interesting.”

  “So does painting. Tell me about it. Do you sell them?”

  She nodded. “A few. I ruin a lot more than I finish, though.”

  “Landscapes?”

  “Mostly.”

  “How’d you happen to pick this country. I notice from your car that you’re from Ohio.”

  She leaned back in the booth. The brown eyes were thoughtful, and a little moody. “It’s hard to explain, exactly, I’d seen it once before, and it interested me. It’s picturesque, but there’s more to it than that. A feeling, you might say.”

  “What kind?”

  “Peace? No. That’s only partly it. Deceptive peace, with violence just under the surface. I think that’s it. It’s a hard thing to capture, because the violence is only felt. But I’m probably boring you.”

  “No,” he protested. “On the contrary.” He held out cigarettes and lit one for her.

  “Probably most of it, of course, comes from the bayous themselves,” she went on. “The water is so quiet and dark, and yet you have a feeling of all sorts of things you can’t see, just below the surface!”

  Like trailers, he thought. It was a good line, though, and she did it convincingly.

  He glanced around at the bar. “Odd place,” he commented. “I understand it used to be a residence.”

  She nodded, and he thought he saw a brief shadow of pity cross her face. “The fall of the House of Counsel, I suppose you’d call it. It’s a strange story, and a little tragic. Do you know it?”

  “No. Only that they were a wealthy family and owned this part of the country at one time.”

  “You might call it from, family portraits to neon in three generations. And, incidentally, the portraits are very good. They’re all by the same, man, an Italian, dead now, but who used to get very high prices for his commissions. The people who bought the house left them right where they were, and I come over here for dinner two or three times a week so I can look at them.”

  “Speaking of dinner,” he said, “I’d like to see them too. How about having it with me, and pointing them out?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Why, yes. Thank you.” Probably just what she was hoping for, he thought, cynically. It should be an enjoyable meal with each of them trying to pump the other. He paid for the drinks and they went into the dining room.

  There were three of the portraits. One was a tough-eyed older man somewhere in his fifties or sixties, the second was a handsome youth in the uniform of a flier in the First World War, but it was the third that caught the eye. It was obviously a young mother and her son, and in it the artist had been fortunate or skillful enough to capture something besides the golden good looks of the two. It was all in the mother’s face, in the way she was looking at the boy. There was adoration, and devotion, and an almost voracious possessiveness. The boy appeared to be about five, with blond curly hair and gray eyes, very much the young aristocrat.

  “Robert. The last of the Counsels.”

  “Crown up now, I suppose?” Reno asked politely.

  She nodded. “He’d be—oh, thirty-three or thirty-four. That portrait was painted in 1923.”

  “You didn’t know him, then?”

  “Oh, no. Only some of the stories,” she replied. “They say he hasn’t been back here for years.”

  Just the routine press release, he thought. And that trailer swam away without any help. He looked at the portraits again, while the waiter brought their menus. “Grandfather, father, and son. Is that it?”

  “Yes. The father was killed on the Italian front during the First World War. But not until after he had married. An expatriate American girl studying voice in Milan. In the winter of 1918 she came back here to have her baby. Robert Counsel was born in the same upstairs room as his father and grandfather. I understand there is a dice table there now. He didn’t have any father, of course, and his mother’s devotion to him was, from what they say, very close to neurotic.

  “Daniel Counsel—the grandfather, and from all accounts a regular old pirate—was still alive then. I think he died in 1925. The family still had plenty of money, but it must have been a very lonesome life for a small boy, and maybe even a little unhealthy. They spent part of the time in Italy, and when they were here on the plantation he never went to school. Private tutors, mostly English, at least until he was of high-school age—”

  She broke off suddenly. Five musicians had come in through the archway and were taking their places on the stand just beyond the small dance floor. It wasn’t this, however, that had stopped her. He followed her gaze and saw a tall, red-haired young man bearing down on them.

  The redhead stopped, glanced carelessly from Patricia Lasater to Reno and back again, and grinned. “Howdy, Miss Patricia. How y’all?” He winked at Reno, and said, “Yankee artist, looking for local color. Expects everybody to have a cawn pone in his mouth.”

  “Mr. Reno, Mr. Griffin,” she said. Then she added, “Mr. Griffin flies a speedboat.”

  Reno stood up and they shook hands. He was conscious of a lean and reckless face, and cool green eyes with perhaps just a shade too much self-assurance. The well-tailored white linen suit and blue tie and handkerchief reminded him suddenly of his own indifferent clothing. What the hell? he thought. Who cared for her opinion?

  “You don’t mind if I sit down for a minute, do you?” Griffin asked. “I’ll buy a drink. You can’t eat on an empty stomach.” Before Reno could nod assent he pulled out a chair and motioned impatiently for a waiter.

 
“I was just telling Mr. Reno a little about the house,” Patricia said.

  “Oh. Interesting place,” Griffin looked at Reno. “You don’t live around here, then?”

  “No,” he replied. “Just on vacation. Bass fishing.”

  “Oh, bass!” Griffin dismissed them with good-humored disdain. “Come down to my place and I’ll take you out in the Gulf for some real fishing. Tarpon and kings.”

  Patricia looked up at this. “Is your new boat ready to go?”

  “Sure. Came down from the yard yesterday. Taking it outside for a shakedown tomorrow or the next day. How about coming along?”

  “I’d love it. You can go, can’t you, Mr. Reno?”

  Reno looked uncertain. “You too. I meant both of you,” Griffin said, nodding.

  “Well, sure. Thanks. I’d like to,” he said. Why? he wondered. Haven’t I got anything better to do than go yachting with these characters? But you never knew where you’d find what you were looking for. And she was going.

  Patricia Lasater asked, “Do you think they’ll ever find out what happened to the other one? Have you heard anything yet?”

  Griffin shrugged. “Not a word. It’s just one of those things they’ll never solve.”

  Reno tried to keep the sudden stirring of interest from showing in his face. Another missing boat? “How’s that?” he asked casually. “Somebody liberate one of your boats?”

  Griffin stared at Patricia with burlesque amazement. “Pat, this man’s from Mars. He hasn’t heard about our explosion.”

  Patricia made no reply. Reno glanced across at her and saw her face had gone strangely still.

  “Explosion?” he asked.

  The redhead nodded. “It’s a wonder you didn’t read about it. Big mystery. Made all the papers, and even a blurb in Time.”

  “I’ve been in South America,” Reno explained.

  “Oh. That accounts for it.” Griffin grinned briefly, and then went on. “A man—or maybe it was two men, they never could be sure—stole one of my boats one night, and it blew up out there in the ship channel.”