Go Home, Stranger

by Charles Williams

  “Remember how he cut that pilot off with some phony excuse about listening to the motor? You see, Griffin didn’t know until then where the real drop had been thrown overboard. He realized just at that moment what the pilot had been talking about, and he shut him up before we could get wise. The next thing Captain Shevlin was about to say was that the night all this happened was the same night that explosion took place. You see it now, Pat?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice low and choked with emotion. “We’ve got to get word to the police.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pat. We can’t prove a word of it.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He caught the improvised crutch and pulled himself upright, white-faced with pain. “We’ve got to get down to that Number Fourteen buoy by the time it’s dark. If it is Griffin, he’ll be there.”

  “But hadn’t we better get the police too?”

  “No. They might scare him off.” He paused; then went on softly. “I want Griffin, Pat. The police can have him after I get through with him.”

  It was dusk when they came out at last on the main arm of the bayou, near the camp, and he sank down, exhausted and drenched with sweat. It had been agonizing, and maddeningly slow, with long stops to rest every two or three hundred yards. The crutch kept sticking into the ground, and he had had to cut off his trouser legs and bind them around the end of it to form a cushion. The ankle throbbed with pain whenever he stood upright, even with no weight on it. And every weary step of it had been goaded by the refrain going around in his head. We’ll be too late. We’ll be too late.

  They squatted down now in the screen of shrubbery and looked out across the bayou in the deepening twilight. “We still have to get across,” she whispered.

  “I have to get across,” he corrected. “You wait here, Pat.”

  “But how are you going to do it? If you leave your crutch here you won’t be able to walk when you get over there.”

  “I’m going to take it,” he replied. He stood up again and limped painfully along the bank. In a moment he found what he sought, a piece of dried-out timber left by the high water of some long-past flood. Getting down onto, his hands and knees, he rolled and tugged it into the water. She helped him.

  “Let me go, Pete,” she begged.

  “No,” he said shortly. He was working fast now. He sat down on the edge of the bank, placed the crutch lengthwise along the piece of driftwood, took off his shoes, tied the laces together, and set them across it. Then he removed his belt, strapped it around the whole thing, and fastened his wrist watch on the belt.

  It was growing dark now. Time was running out. He could scarcely see her in the dense shadow along the shore. Taking the gun out of the waistband of his trousers, he handed it to her.

  “Wait for me right here,” he said quietly. “Sit still, and don’t smoke. When somebody comes along in a boat it’ll probably be me, but don’t believe it until you hear me speak and recognize my voice. If Easter shows up, don’t try to bluff him with this gun. Shoot him.”

  He moved slowly, kicking with only one foot, but he could stop and rest by holding onto the timber. When he climbed out on the other side he could not get his left shoe back on because of the swelling and pain in his ankle. He threw it away and began groping his way along the bank. It was black under the trees. He bumped into them and floundered in vines and underbrush. Several times he banged the ankle, and cursed the sickening pain.

  Griffin would be there now. He had an insane desire to throw the crutch away and try to run. If Griffin found what he sought, and got away, they’d never prove a thing. There was no evidence except whatever it was lying there on the bottom of the channel. He lost track of time; there was no knowing how long it was before he began to see the lights of the store and restaurant ahead.

  He kept on along the bank, coming in behind the cabins. There was no one around as he hobbled onto the float and felt his way along toward the skiffs. He groped around in three of them before he found one with oars. Getting in was awkward; he had to crawl off the dock onto the seat on his hands and knees. His head was aching again. When he was sitting up on the seat at last with his legs stretched out, the ankle didn’t hurt so badly. He picked up the oars and shoved away from the landing.

  A low overcast was pushing in from the Gulf, blotting out the stars. He could just make out the dark loom of the timber on both sides of him as he swung the oars with long, hard strokes. When he had rounded the bend and passed the branching channel he pulled in close to shore and began calling her name softly.

  “Here, Pete,” she said, quite near. He came up against the bank stern first. She stepped in and sat down, and gingerly handed him the gun.

  “I’ll drop you off at the boat landing, he said. “And go on out under that first highway bridge, by the Counselor.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I’m going with you.”

  “You can’t. It may be dangerous.”

  “Please, Pete,” she whispered. “Can’t you understand? I have to go. I can’t let you do it alone. We’re in this together.”

  Delay was agony. Time ran past them while they talked. Against his better judgment he relented. “O.K., Pat,” he said. He dug in the oars and went straight up the bayou past the old camp ground. Sweat ran down his naked shoulders. He felt his way around the bend and under the highway bridge. A few cars slipped past on the highway. He looked away from the lights to avoid cutting down his vision even more. Patricia was quiet in the stern seat, and he could see only the pale blur of her face. It was intensely still except for the creak of the oarlocks.

  Maybe I’m wrong, he thought. Maybe Counsel had already found it and hauled it up before Griffin shot him. But, no. There hadn’t been time. Easter had said it was just after dark when he heard the shots. Griffin had been waiting for him. Shooting him before Counsel could lead him to the place where it had been thrown overboard was stupid of Griffin, but it almost had to be that way.

  That was the thing that had made it so nearly impossible to figure out. One man had shot Counsel and another had buried him, and neither knew about the other. Counsel had probably fallen out of his boat and had swum ashore to try to get back to his car and a doctor, and Griffin didn’t know he was dead until he had already approached McHugh. He thought Mac was working for Counsel until it was too late and he’d already exposed himself. He’d killed Mac, and then tried to kill Mrs. Conway because he knew that if she’d put one man on the trail there’d be others unless he stopped her.

  They were nearing the ship channel. “Not a sound from now on, Pat,” he whispered. “Don’t talk, and don’t move around. If he’s down here he’ll be working without lights and we’ve got to get close enough to board him.”

  “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she pleaded.

  He thought of everything that depended on them now. If they failed … He pushed the thought of failure out of his mind and felt the hard weight of the gun against his waist. “I’ll be careful,” he said grimly.

  They were out in the ship channel now and he could see the lighted buoy winking on and off below them. Swinging wide, against the opposite shore, they slipped past in the impenetrable darkness beyond the range of its flashes. He rowed softly now, guarding against every sound.

  When they were a hundred yards or more beyond the light he stopped pulling on the oars and held his breath to listen. There was no sound except an occasional faint rumble from the dredge working below them. The darkness of the water and of the sky seemed to run together, as if they were suspended in a black void and cut off from all contact with the world except the intermittent flashing of the buoy just visible out of the corner of his eye.

  He felt cold and hollow inside. There was nothing here, no one at all. He’d been wrong, or they were too late. Griffin would have been here as soon as darkness fell, dragging for whatever it was that was so valuable and had cost so many lives. They had missed him. Or, he thought, there never was anything. I added it up
wrong. It was a pipe dream.

  The boat was swinging a little. They were drifting on the sluggish current, and the buoy light was coming around in front of his eyes. He started to swing his head to keep from looking at it; then he stopped, feeling the quick surge of excitement along his nerves.

  Something had blocked the light. And there it was again. Somewhere between them and the buoy another boat was drifting, as silently as their own. He leaned forward and tapped Patricia on the knee, uttering no sound. Catching her hand, he gestured toward the buoy, and could feel her grow tense as she caught his meaning. He heard her sharp intake of breath. She had seen the boat too.

  He dipped the oars, very softly, and stopped the boat’s swinging. They lay astern toward the buoy as he backed water on up against the current.

  Below them, in salt water, the tide was ebbing and water was running slowly out of the channel. If the other boat was Griffin’s, he was letting it drift on the current as he dragged for what he sought.

  Easy, he thought; take it easy. The slightest noise now would ruin it all. He pushed on the oars again. They were drawing nearer. He could see a pale blur ahead of them now and knew it was the cabin cruiser with its new white paint.

  Then he stopped, listening. They were some fifteen yards from the larger boat now. and he was conscious of a peculiar rasping sound and a trickle of water. It puzzled him for an instant; then he knew what it was. A line was being hauled in over the stern of the cruiser, coming up out of the water and dripping a little as it sawed across the transom. The sound stopped; and was replaced by another a heavy thud as something was lifted and deposited in the bottom of the cockpit. Reno pushed hard at the oars. He knew Griffin had found what he was dragging for. In another instant he would press the starter and be gone.

  They were closing—ten yards, five. Reno swung the skiff to come up alongside where he could reach the cockpit. His heart was hammering with excitement. He shipped the oars, quickly, silently, and prepared to grab as the cruiser loomed above them. Then haste was their undoing. He came up off the seat, forgetting the numb and useless ankle, and lost his balance. He fell to his knees in the bottom of the skiff, and the gun clattered against the wooden grating.

  Glaring and pitiless light broke over them, and a jocular voice hailed them from behind it.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the stump-jumper navy,” the voice said. “Relax, boys and girls, and just hold that pose.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  PATRICIA GASPED. RENO TRIED to sit up, his hand involuntarily reaching for the gun in front of him; then he froze. It was hopeless; he could see nothing at all except that malevolent light.

  “Friends,” Griffin’s amused voice continued, “on your right you’re looking into the wrong end of a Luger, so let’s don’t have any old college try. Just maintain the attitude, Reno. And, honey, you can reach over and take that roscoe in your warm, little hand and drop it over the side.”

  She stared at Reno helplessly. “Go ahead,” he said quietly. She lifted it from the grating and let it fall into the water.

  The end of a line fell across the boat. “Come alongside,” Griffin said. Reno stared wickedly at the lights for an instant; then he thought of Patricia. He caught the line and pulled. The skiff bumped against the side of the cruiser.

  “All right, get aboard,” Griffin said crisply. “We haven’t got all night.”

  Patricia climbed onto the stern. Reno made it with difficulty, the ankle throbbing. They still stood in the glare of the light, which had retreated to the forward end of the cockpit.

  “Now,” Griffin went on, the disembodied voice issuing from somewhere behind the light, “tip that skiff up. Let it fill with water, then turn it upside down.” The voice chuckled. “Let ’em drag for you down here. It’ll keep ’em happy.”

  Reno turned and faced the light, his face savage. “Why the delay? Why not there in the skiff, the way you did Counsel? Or in the back of the head, like McHugh?”

  Griffin laughed easily. “Friend Robert got a little trigger-happy. And he thought I wouldn’t shoot because I still didn’t know where the stuff was. Only time I ever knew Marse Bob to make a bum decision.” He paused, then went on briskly. “But get with it. Dump that boat. I picked you up because I can use you, but if you want to commit suicide your lady friend can do the job.”

  Reno stared with cold deadliness; then he sat down on the stern. He pushed down on the edge of the skiff until it began to fill with water. When it was awash he caught the other edge and heaved it over.

  He faced the light again. “What job?” he asked.

  “Just a minute, pal. Got to get these running lights on.”

  A switch clicked. In a moment the powerful light went out, but it was replaced at the same instant with a lesser one, still shining in Reno’s eyes.

  “Don’t get any happy ideas,” Griffin warned. “The Luger’s still looking at you. And remember, if I have to kill you, Pat will do.”

  “Do what?” she asked. Her voice was calm now. She sat down in the stern beside Reno. “I won’t do anything.”

  “Come now, honey.” Griffin chuckled. “That’s an obstructionist attitude. Don’t puzzles fascinate you?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked coldly.

  “Look down at your feet.”

  The light dipped a little and they looked down. In the desperate bitterness of defeat Reno had forgotten the thing Griffin had been dragging for, but now it came back to him and he stared, completely mystified. This was what had caused the death of Mac, and of Counsel and Pat’s brother and a man named Charles Morton—but what was it?

  It lay on the flooring of the cockpit still wet and plastered here and there with the black silt of the channel bottom, and for an instant he could make nothing of it except a welter of very thin, flexible steel cable. Then he began to see what it was. There were two net pouches or bags made of this flexible wire and they were tied together by a short length of it, possibly fifteen or twenty feet. But it was the two objects in their respective pouches that made his eyes narrow in wonder. They were about the size and shape of small watermelons, and had a metallic sheen as if they were covered with lead.

  “What’s in those things?” Patricia asked defiantly.

  “A very interesting question, honey,” Griffin replied. “And that’s exactly why I had to put on a larger staff. You ever hear the old wheeze about the electrician who told his helper to take hold of a wire? And when the poor joker did, he says, ‘All right. Mark it. But don’t touch the other one. It’s got 20,000 volts in it.’ You see, you just got to have help to figure out things like that.”

  “You mean you don’t know?” she demanded.

  “Well, let’s put it this way. It’s a little question of trying to outguess our friend Robert. You might say I know what’s in there, but I’m a little hazy as to what else there might be, and how it’s distributed—” He broke off, and gestured with the flashlight. “But never mind. We’ll go into that later. Right now we’ve got to get out of this channel. This way, friends.”

  He opened the door going forward. A switch clicked, and the engine compartment was flooded with light. Griffin backed into the other corner of the cockpit.

  “All the way forward, men,” he ordered. “Into that locker in the bow.”

  Patricia glanced coldly in the direction of the flashlight and entered the engine compartment. Reno followed her, limping awkwardly and supporting himself by holding onto anything he could reach. Bent over, they went past the idle engine and into the locker. It was no more than a triangular cubbyhole right in the prow of the boat, half filled with coils of line and paint pots, with no room to stand upright. They sat down on the deck, squeezed together, with their backs against a sloping out board bulkhead.

  Griffin appeared in the engine compartment behind them. “Sleep tight,” he said. “Big day as soon as it’s light.” He closed the door, and they were in total darkness. Reno heard the rattle of a hasp; then a padlock clicked shut. />
  Griffin rapped on the door. “Lot of turps and paint-thinner in there,” he said, “so think it over before you try to smoke.”

  Neither of them gave him any reply. They heard his footsteps going back toward the cockpit. Reno realized that Pat was shaking violently. She was making no sound, but he knew how desperately she was fighting to keep her nerves from breaking.

  He put his arms about her and pulled her head against his chest, holding her very tightly. With his face softly brushing her curls, he whispered, “Pat, I’m sorry. I should have made you stay.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “And let you face it alone? I’m all right, Pete. I’m not much afraid, with you here.”

  “We’ll be all right,” he said, trying to make it sound convincing. “Griffin can’t get away with it.”

  The starter growled, and in a moment the noise of the engine filled the compartment. The boat vibrated, gathering speed. I had him, Reno thought; I had it made, and still I lost it.

  “Pete,” she asked softly, “what did he mean about out guessing Robert Counsel? And why doesn’t he know what’s in those things?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” he said, lying. He was beginning to see why, and thinking about it gave him a chill.

  But what were the lead containers supposed to have in them, to make them worth all the lives they had cost so far? He knew what Griffin suspected, and why the redhead had abducted them instead of killing them on the spot, but he still couldn’t guess what made the things so valuable. Griffin’s probably right, too, he thought; he’s no fool. He outguessed Robert Counsel before, and let Pat’s brother and Morton get blown to hell while he played it safe. It was a savage game of double-cross and double-double-cross and maybe Robert Counsel would still have the last laugh.

  But that wasn’t important now. The only thing in the world that mattered now was getting out of here before it was too late. Unless they could stop Griffin, every minute was bringing them nearer death. The redhead couldn’t turn back now, even if he wished; he had to kill them, as he had killed McHugh. And it would mean the end for Vickie. With them would vanish forever any evidence against Griffin. It swept over him all at once, and he fought for calmness. If he lost his head now they had no chance at all. Griffin would hear it and be waiting with the gun. They had to do it silently. Maybe with his knife he could cut out the section of the door that held the hasp.