The roaring was going out of his head now and he was beginning to
think again. He knew what she meant. The other man had crossed
over and would be coming down this side with his rifle.
She ran swiftly, and at first he had difficulty keeping up. In a
moment he began to get his breath back and came up alongside her,
helping her with a hand on her arm. Now and then he looked back
over his shoulder as they raced through the timber.
She began to tire. She stumbled once and would have fallen, but he
caught her. They stopped at last and sank to the ground in a mass of
ferns while they sobbed for breath.
“It’s—not much farther,” she gasped.
“What?”
“My boat. Just below—the bend.”
“The motor on it?”
She nodded, too winded to speak again. Reno came up to his knees
and swiftly searched the forest behind them. There was no movement.
A jay sat on a limb above them and scolded raucously. Stool pigeon,
he thought grimly. Time to move.
“Can you make it now?” he asked gently.
She merely nodded, and started pulling herself up. He helped her.
The bend of the bayou was off to their left, then behind them as they
approached the channel below it. She ran ahead now, searching for
the boat.
It was well hidden, tied up under overhanging limbs. “Get in,” he
commanded. “And lie down. I’ll handle the motor.”
She started to protest, but after a glance at his face she obeyed. He
took one last look; behind them, untied the anchor rope, swung the
bow outward, and climbed on the stern. It’d better catch the first
time, he thought. They’ll hear it.
The motor coughed. He pulled again; it caught this time and lifted
its popping roar above the stillness. They slid out into the channel,
turned sharply, and began to gather speed. He pulled the throttle
Go Home, Stranger — 94
wide, his back feeling icy. They were out in the open now, sitting
ducks if either of the men had made it as far as the bend. Seconds
dragged by and there was no shot. They rounded the next bend in the
channel and he breathed again, the tension running out of him.
She sat up in the middle seat, facing him, and ran an unsteady hand
through her dark curls. Noticing how the blouse was plastered
against her, she attempted to pull it away, faintly embarrassed. She
had mud on one cheek and on her chin, and traces of bayou scum on
her forearms. Reno looked briefly at her and then at the channel
ahead, wondering when he had seen a girl as mussed—or as beautiful
in spite of it. Neither of them said anything. The motor made too
much noise.
A mile of twisting waterway fled astern, and then another. They
were beyond the last fork now, almost back to the main arm of the
bayou and the camp. They were safe. Abruptly, he cut the motor and
let the boat drift to a stop in the shade near overhanging trees along
the bank. He caught a limb and held it. The bayou stretched out
deserted and quiet ahead of them.
She looked at him questioningly.
“We’re all right now,” he said. “There’s something I have to tell
you.”
“What is that?”
“Thanks.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. I’m just not very
good with words.”
She looked gravely at his face and then away. “Anyone would have
done it.”
“Under fire? Those weren’t blanks they were shooting.”
“Yes. I know. But I tried not to think about them.”
After they made this kid, he thought, they threw away the plans and
broke up the molds. Even with swamp on her face she looks like
something you’d run into in a dream, and she’s got a system about
being shot at. Keep busy and don’t think about it.
“Look,” he said at last, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want
to, but how did you happen to be there?”
She studied the bottom of the boat. “Could we call it just luck?”
He felt the sharp stab of disappointment, but waited a moment
before answering. When she looked up again and their eyes met, he
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said, “Yes. I’ll tell you how it is, Pat. After what’s just happened, we
call it anything you say.”
“Thank you. In that case, I’ll amend it. It wasn’t all luck.”
“No?”
“No. I was following you.”’
“Why?”
She answered slowly, “I was looking for something.”
“What?”
This time she waited a long time before replying. “I’d rather not say
now, if you don’t mind. Not yet, anyway.”
“Did you find it, whatever it was?”
“I’m not sure.”
She’ll tell me when she’s ready, he thought. I can’t rush her.
“I didn’t hear your motor. Or see you.”
“I was using the oars. And staying way back.”
“Did you hear those explosions? Just before they shot at me the first
time?”
She nodded.
“You have any idea at all what they were?”
“No. It sounded like dynamite, but rather muffled.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m almost certain they were I set off under
water. But you don’t know who could have done it? Or why?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I was hoping to
find out, the same as you were. But apparently whoever was doing it
had other ideas.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
She stared at him. “I’ve noticed that about a number of things
around here.” Then she added, “But I think we’d better go on. I’d like
to change clothes, and put some iodine on this scratch.”
“Oh.” He reached back to start the motor. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”
“Not much. But I’d like to attend to it.”
When they pulled up at the float there was no one around. Shadows
were lengthening now, and dark tranquil water mirrored the timber
along the other shore. She stepped out and started to turn toward the
path while he made the skiff fast. Then she paused.
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He looked up. The brown eyes were regarding him with a
disconcerting levelness. “I almost forgot,” she said quietly. “There
was something I wanted to tell you.”
“What?”
“That good-time floozie you were so humorous about this morning
—”
It caught him off guard. He could only stare.
“I thought you might like to know. She turned herself in to the
police today.” Swinging about, she started up the path.
“Wait,” he called. But she was gone.
He caught her as she was passing his cabin. “I’ve got to talk to
you.”
“Yes?” she said coolly.
“Yes. It’s important.”
She relented then. “All right. In about a half hour.”
He changed into dry clothing and shaved without knowing what he
did. His thoughts ran futilely after a hundred questions at once. If she
had gone to the police maybe that would take the pressure off Vickie.
Wouldn’t that explode their so-called motive? Couldn’t they see it?
But why had she waited all these days? It was obvious she had wanted
to before this. And what about the trailer? And Easter? Who was she,
and what was she looking for? She’ll tell me; she’ll clear it up.
When she came out of her cabin the short curls had been restored
to their casual symmetry and to the dull gleam of polished ebony. She
had changed to a white cotton dress and gilt sandals, but the smooth
tanned legs were stockingless. She was fresh and sweet and very
disturbing as she stepped down from the porch. She did not smile,
however; the large eyes were quite serious.
He helped her into the car and got behind the wheel. “Would you go
up past the Counselor?” she asked as they came out onto the
highway. “I’d like to show you something.”
They went past it. She said nothing. A quarter mile beyond, as they
neared a dirt road leading off to the right, she nodded, and he turned
into it, wondering. The only thing in this direction was the ship
channel, and there wouldn’t be a bridge—not on this road. In a few
minutes they came to the end of it. There was only a field, off to their
left, and the dark line of trees along the waterway. He stopped, and it
was not until then that he saw, the scars of torn limbs and trunks that
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disfigured a pair of huge live oaks directly ahead over the edge of the
water.
He turned and looked at her. “This was where it was?” It was as if
the thing he had sensed before was now a certainty—that there was
some dark link between her and that boat explosion.
“Yes,” she said simply.
He handed her a cigarette and lit it. She had turned a little on the
seat and was facing him. “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.
Instead of answering his question, she asked quietly, “Mr. McHugh
was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” he said. Something told him that everything had to be out in
the open between him and this girl now and from this time onward.
“He was the best friend I ever had. And Vickie Shane’s my sister.”
She nodded. “I should have guessed it before, I suppose. This
morning, when you—”
“I’m sorry about that,” he interrupted. “But, you see, it was an act. I
was fishing. I thought you might be the girl, but I still wasn’t sure.”
“Yes. I sensed that somehow, but it hit home anyway, because I
deserved it. I know it’s a little late now to tell you this, but the only
thing I can say in my defense is that I had no intention at all of leaving
the country until I had gone, to the District Attorney and told him. But
I was praying for time. I was desperate for just a few more days.”
“You don’t have to explain,” Reno said grimly. “I know what you
mean. As soon as word got out that you were connected with McHugh
in any way, or even knew him, time would be something you might
run out of in a hurry.”
Her face was unhappy. “That’s it. Mr. McHugh believed—and I did,
too—that there was some strange connection between the
disappearances, some terrible thing we hadn’t even guessed—”
“Wait,” Reno broke in, his head jerking erect at her use of the
plural. “You mean there was another one? Besides Conway?”
“Yes.” She took a puff on the cigarette and turned to look out across
the blasted trees and the ship channel. “There was another one.”
There was an infinite weariness in her tone.
Then she appeared to gather herself up, and went on, “But I’m
trying to show you why I kept putting off going to the District
Attorney. I was terrified. Suppose there was some connection, that it
was all part of something terrible that we didn’t know about? He’d
been killed, and if I went to the police it might get in the papers. I’d
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be exposed, with no place to hide; and even if the same man didn’t kill
me, I’d never find out what I was trying to. Don’t you see, Mr. Reno?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I see, all right. And, incidentally, my name is
Pete.” Then he added, “But you did go to the police today. Why?”
“I don’t know, actually. I guess I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I
mean, knowing what Miss Shane was going through there all alone
and that I was withholding the little help I could give her.”
“I don’t know whether you sit up nights worrying about my
opinion,” he said. “But you’re all right, in my book.” Then he asked,
“What happened? Today, I mean.”
“I went to the police first,” she said. “And talked to Lieutenant
Wayland. He took me in to see the District Attorney. I told them about
calling Mr. McHugh at his hotel that night and how he had met me in
the lobby. I had something to tell him, so we walked around for a
while, and then we sat on a bench over in the park for about an hour,
talking about it—”
“Just a minute,” Reno interrupted. “What was it you told McHugh?”
“That I’d just come from the library, from looking up something in
the back copies of the paper, and that I’d found out the ship this man
Conway came back from Italy on had gone up the channel—”
“Just before Griffin’s boat blew up,” Reno finished softly.
She looked at him, startled. “How did you know?”
“I looked it up too. There’s one thing about all this mess—sooner or
later you always get back to Counsel. But never mind that,” he went
on quickly. “What did the District Attorney say? Maybe this will
change their tune.”
She shook her head with regret. “I’m sorry, Pete. I’m not sure they
even believed me.”
“Didn’t believe you?” he asked angrily. “Don’t they know you’ll
make the same statement on the stand? And that if Vickie knew who
you were and why you were there, what they call a motive is nothing
but eyewash?”
“Yes, I know, Pete. But consider the way they’re looking at it. They
have only my word for it. And they can still claim Miss Shane didn’t
know who I was or didn’t believe it when she was told. And there’s all
the other evidence. The only thing I really hoped was that they’d start
looking into it from the angle of Conway’s—or Counsel’s—
disappearance, before it’s too late, but I don’t know . . .” Her voice
trailed off hopelessly.
Go Home, Stranger — 99
She’s right, he thought bitterly. It might raise a reasonable doubt,
at the trial itself, but the only way I’ll ever clear Vickie for good is to
find the man who did it.
He turned away from his bleak contemplation of the ship channel
and looked at her. “Let’s forget my troubles for the moment, Pat,” he
said. “You were going to tell me how you got mixed up in this. And
who is this other man who disappeared?”
“Two other men,” she corrected.
“Two?” he asked incredulously. “Who were they? And when?”
She crushed out her cigarette in the ash tray. “One of them was my
brother.”
“When?” he asked again, very softly, but he was afraid he already
knew.
“The last word I ever received from him was a post card mailed
from Waynesport on May ninth.”
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Thirteen
He said nothing for a moment as he sat looking at the neat and wellordered
and utterly terrible beauty of the way the pieces could fit
together. The two men in the cruiser almost had to be strangers in
this area—nobody here had ever turned up missing. But, still, he
thought, there could be a hundred other explanations.
“Look, Pat,” he said. “It’s probably just a coincidence. Maybe he
went on somewhere else. And just hasn’t written yet.” Yet, he
thought. It had been three months.
“No,” she said quietly. She looked at him and her face was calm,
perfectly controlled, but he could see the infinite unhappiness in the
eyes. “There’s more. There’s no way to escape it. But the awful thing
is why? Why? There’s no reason he should have come here. He’d
never been here before in his life. Why should he take Griffin’s boat?
Why did it explode? What were they trying to do out there?”
“Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” he said gently. “What
makes you so sure he was on board?”
She stared directly at him. “Something I overheard them say. A
word I’m beginning to hate.”
“What word?”
“Robert.”
“I must be slowing up,” he said wearily. “I should have guessed that
one.”
Go Home, Stranger — 101
“Yes. How on earth could just one person—” She stopped and
looked at him hopelessly. “What is it, Pete? Where is he? Is he dead?
Is he still here?”
“I don’t know. The thing that puzzles me most, though, is how there
could have been only one Robert Counsel. He must have been triplets,
at least.” He shook his head. “But go ahead.”
“To begin with,” she said, “my name isn’t Lasater. It’s Devers.
Patricia Devers. And I’m not from Ohio. I’m from Chicago. My
brother’s name was Carl, and the man who was killed with him was
Charles Morton, but Carl always referred to him as Chappie.”
“Was he an old friend of your brother?” Reno asked.
“Not exactly. He was somebody he knew in the Army during the
war. He was from New York.”
“I see,” Reno said thoughtfully. “But how did they happen to come
down here?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute, Pete. But first, when Carl came back
from the Army in 1946, he was changed somehow. I don’t know
exactly how to put it, but his attitude toward everything, and
especially his job, seemed to be different. He lost that job, and I don’t
know how many more, and when I would try to talk to him about it all
I’d ever get was an impression he was just waiting for some big deal
or that he considered work a stupid pastime for suckers. I don’t like to
say all this, Pete, but it’s part of it and I can’t leave it out. Six years is
a long time to readjust to civilian life.
“And then in April of this year he received a letter from Italy. I think
it was from a girl he knew when he was there with the Army. Anyway,
it was addressed in a girl’s handwriting.”
Reno stared thoughtfully. “He was in Italy during the war?”
“Yes, Africa, and then over there. Anyway, a day or two after this
letter from Italy, he received one from this Charles Morton in New
York. Carl became strangely excited, and for two or three weeks he
wrote a lot of letters. He got another one, air mail, from the girl in
Italy, and several from Morton.
“It was around the third or fourth of May when Morton arrived from
New York to see Carl. He stayed over night with us. There was a great
deal of talk in Carl’s room, and that’s when I heard them mention the
name Robert.
“The next day,” she went on, “Carl asked to borrow my car for a trip
down to the Gulf Coast. They were going fishing, he said. He’d quit
his job too. I let him have the car anyway. There was no point in
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arguing about it; it was so like him to quit a job for the slightest
reason.
“They left that night. I received a couple of post cards from him
from various places on the way down, and one last one from
Waynesport. Two weeks went by before Mother began to be really
worried about him. I still didn’t think anything was wrong, but to
soothe her I wrote to the police at Waynesport and several other cities
along the coast, giving them the information on the car and
descriptions of Carl and Charles Morton.
“They all answered promptly and tried to be of help in any way they
could, but there was absolutely no trace of the men or the car. They’d
just vanished. Mother began to be frantic, and I had to have the
doctor for her. It was about this time I began to have that awful
feeling about it myself. I don’t know what it was exactly, except that I
knew somehow they hadn’t been going fishing at all and that
something terrible had happened to them. I began to think about
those letters, but when I went through Carl’s room they weren’t there
—any of them. That was odd, in itself, for he always just threw letters
in a drawer of his desk. And there was another thing. A gun, an Italian
pistol he had brought back as a souvenir, was gone too.
“I had read about the odd explosion on a fishing boat somewhere
down here on the Gulf, but at the time it happened, on the tenth, I
hadn’t received Carl’s card and didn’t even know they were down
here. There’d only been a few lines about it in our paper, anyway.
“Then one night while I was lying awake and worrying it just hit me,
all at once. I almost went crazy between then and daylight, trying to
remember exactly where the explosion had been, and when. I didn’t
have a class that morning, so I went to the public library and looked it
up. When I found it, I was scared—more scared than I’d ever been in
my life.
“I didn’t tell Mother. I called the Waynesport police from a pay
phone and asked if the two men had ever been identified. They said
no, and wanted to know who I was. I told them they had the
information on the car in their files, and asked them to check on it.
They came back and said it couldn’t be Carl and Morton because no
such car had ever been picked up or even seen. And naturally, if they
had been killed in the explosion the car would still be there wherever
they’d left it to get aboard the boat. I didn’t press it any further, but I
did see there was one flaw in that.”
“Yes,” Reno said. “There’s one, anyway.”
Go Home, Stranger — 103
“That’s right,” she went on. “The car could have been stolen when
they didn’t come back. We never heard any more. After school was
out I came down here. I didn’t use my own name or say what I was
looking for because by then I was convinced that there was something
terrible behind all this.”
“I began to hear about Robert Counsel, because this country is
saturated with him and his family. There was a horrible fascination in
the names. Try it. Counsel Bayou, where the boat exploded. Robert,
the man they were talking about. Robert Counsel. Then early this
month I met Mr. McHugh. He came by the camp asking questions
about a man named Conway. Rupert Conway. You see? Names again
—but I’ll get to that in a minute.
“Conway was supposed to be driving a Cadillac with California
license plates and towing a boat. I’d seen him. I told Mr. McHugh
about it, how the man had turned off into the timber just beyond the
camp one evening at dusk. We talked about it for a long time, and the
more he told me about the man the more he sounded like all the
things I’d heard about Robert Counsel.
“We were both excited about it. Mr. McHugh made more inquiries
and came to the conclusion they were the same man. But that brought
us up against something else, something that didn’t fit. Why the
assumed name? Counsel wasn’t a criminal. And that wasn’t all the
puzzle. Assuming he did want to change his name for some reason we
couldn’t even guess, why would a man as brilliant as they say he was
fall into the same error as a lot of the more stupid type of criminals?
Mr. McHugh pointed it out. You see? The same initials, the same four
syllables altogether, and even the same accent, or beat. Try them
aloud. Mr. McHugh had a theory about the initials.”
“Yes,” Reno said musingly. “That’s an old story. Monogrammed
possessions he’d have had to throw away otherwise.” But that wasn’t
all of it. He was thinking of something else, of a boy who liked to cut
the fuses short. It was a game, playing with danger.
He turned, and the fine brown eyes were regarding him with an
unhappiness in which there was no longer very much hope. “What do
you think it all means, Pete?” she asked. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But has it occurred to you that
one of the craziest things about the whole mess is the way we’re
obsessed with this Counsel guy? Just take a look at it. There isn’t any
evidence at all that he had anything to do with killing Mac, and I don’t
see how on earth he could have had any connection with that boat
explosion, even if it was certain your brother was aboard. But what do
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we do? We look for Counsel, we try to guess what he was doing, why
he came back here, where he is now, whether he’s dead or not, why
he changed his name . . . What for? What is there about it?”
“Just the fact,” she said slowly, “that we both know he’s at the
bottom of it somewhere. Mr. McHugh felt it too. He said that if we
ever really understood Robert Counsel we’d see the answer to it.”
“Yes. I know that,” Reno said. “But why? Let’s look at it objectively.
He couldn’t be here unless he’s dead, because he’s too well known.
And if he’s dead, he couldn’t have shot Mac, or set off those
explosions we heard today, or chased us out of there with a rifle, or
moved that trailer—” He stopped, suddenly conscious he had
forgotten about that.
“Trailer?” she asked, puzzled.
“Yes. Don’t you remember when you came up in your boat while I
was peeking at something with the rod, with my head under water?”
“Yes. But what?”
“That was a boat trailer. And it almost had to be the one Counsel
was pulling. But when I went back the next morning to pull it out, it
was gone.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened with comprehension. “I see it now. You
thought I knew what you’d found and moved it, or told somebody
about it.”
“Frankly, yes. It was the obvious guess. But you didn’t even mention
it to anybody? I mean, that you saw me there.”
“No,” she said.
She was telling the truth. There was no doubt of that. “Then
somebody else saw me,” he said.
She turned suddenly, and her eyes were full of excitement. “Max
Easter!”
“What!”
“He was right around that next bend. I remember now. I hadn’t
heard his motor start.”
“What was he doing up there?” Reno demanded swiftly.
“Fishing. I was sketching him, until the light failed. He must have
been still there.”
“All right,” Reno said. He went on, talking fast, his eyes growing
hard. “So Easter has to be our boy. Counsel disappeared off the earth
at that spot, so far as we know.
Go Home, Stranger — 105
But Easter doesn’t know that anybody ever trailed him that far. The
only thing he could see was that I was about to uncover the trailer
and stumble on the fact that Counsel had been there. So he moved it,
to cover up the evidence. Counsel was dead, but he didn’t want
anybody to find out. You can see what that adds up to. And I suppose
you know about Counsel and Easter’s wife.”
“Yes” she said. “I’ve heard that. They still talk about it around here.
But, Pete, you’re looking for the man who killed Mr. McHugh, and I
don’t think it was Easter.”
“Why?”
“Because Mr. McHugh was shot right at one o’clock in the morning,
according to the papers. It was about twenty after one when I got
back to the camp, and I saw Max Easter’s pickup truck come out onto
the highway just as I turned in. So he couldn’t possibly have been in
town at one. I’m sorry, Pete.”
He felt the whole thing come crashing down on him again. For
almost a minute he’d been certain he was very close to the answer.
“You’re sure it was Easter?” he said wearily.
“I’m positive it was his truck. I’ve seen it lots of times.”
“But you didn’t actually see who was driving it?”
“No. It was too dark. But it’s not likely anybody else would be.”
He sighed. “All right. But how do we get away from the fact that it
almost had to be Easter who moved that trailer?”
“We can’t. That’s the terrible part of this whole thing. As soon as
you learn something you turn up another fact that denies it. I’ve
studied Easter a long time. He has posed for me, and I’ve had him
guide me a lot. He tolerates me, but I think he hates women, or is
contemptuous of them, probably because of his wife’s leaving him.
He’s intelligent, self-educated, radical, and very bitter, and I believe
that if he were convinced Robert Counsel had wronged him, he’d kill
him with no regret. But I don’t believe he’d try to hide it. He’d do it
openly, with nothing but contempt for the consequences.
“Sometimes I’ve been so afraid of him I get cold all over, knowing
what he’d do if he had an idea I was spying on him. I’ve seen him
staring at me with those cold, utterly emotionless eyes of his, and
wondered what he was thinking—” She shivered.
“Not any more,” Reno said flatly. “You don’t go anywhere with him
alone again. We’re in this together now, and you can’t take any more
chances like that.”
Go Home, Stranger — 106
She faced him quietly. “I’m glad we are, Pete. I don’t feel so alone
now.”
It was strange, but he knew what she meant. He felt it himself. It
was as if he’d never been conscious of being alone in all his selfsufficient
existence until this moment had called it to his attention.
“Did you have any particular reason to think Easter was mixed up in
that boat explosion?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Except that explosives had been his trade. And
those theories Hutch Griffin told you about. But I’ve never had
anything to go on. I’ve just been groping blindly.”
He nodded. “The same as I have. And that’s the reason you followed
me?”
“Yes. I was beginning to have an idea of what you were up to, but I
wasn’t sure. And when I saw where you were heading, I began to
wonder if you knew something I hadn’t found out yet. You see, I think
Robert Counsel is up there somewhere.”
“What!”
“If he really vanished, as you say, I don’t think it was down there
where the trailer was. He was up there where we were today. That’s
where I found this.”
“Found what?” He stared. She was fumbling in her purse now.
“Here,” she said.
He took it, and felt the skin prickle along the back of his neck. It
was a silver cigarette lighter with the initials “R.C.” engraved on one
side. He was conscious of an eerie feeling that at last he had put out a
hand and touched the elusive and mysterious figure he had sought so
long.
“Where’d you get this, Pat?” he demanded.
“I found it. Just beyond where you swam the bayou.”
“When?”
“Three days ago. I was up there with Max Easter.”
“Does he know you found the lighter?”
“No. I don’t think he saw me pick it up. He was ahead of me when I
saw it lying off to one side, near the water. I wouldn’t have noticed it
except a sunlight happened to hit it.”
“But you didn’t get a chance to look around? For anything else? I
mean, you were with Easter—” His voice was tight with excitement.
Go Home, Stranger — 107
“Not then,” she said. “But I went back the next day. Alone. I looked
around, but there wasn’t any indication there’d ever been any people
up there, except somebody had cut down a tree, about a hundred
yards away, back from the water.”
“A tree?” he asked. “Was it cut up?”
She tried to remember., “Just partly, I think. Why, Pete?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, his eyes thoughtful. “It just seems an odd
place to cut wood. It’d have to be hauled out in a boat. There wasn’t a
road of any kind, was there?”
“No.”
“And it was right near where the explosions were?”
“That’s right. Just beyond where you came out of the water.”
“Where you pulled me out of the water,” he corrected gently. Then
he went on. “I’ve got to have a look at that place. I’ll do it tomorrow
when I go after that boat.”
“I’ll go with you. We can take my boat with the motor.”
He shook his head. “You’d better stay. I’m suspicious of that
country.”
Her voice was firm. “I’m suspicious of it too. That’s the reason I’m
going.” Then she added, “I’d have to show you where I found the
lighter, anyway.”
He saw the futility of argument. After all, he’d said they were in this
thing together. The thought of possible danger faded as he became
conscious of a wild impatience to get back up there. He had no idea of
what he might find, if he found anything at all, but there was a chance
the answer to everything might be there on that desolate arm of the
bayou. They had to wait until tomorrow. It was no place to blunder
around in at night.
* * *
They had dinner at the Counselor and drove down to the Gulf. Where
the ship channel met the sea, long jetties ran out from the beach, and
a lighthouse swung its probing beam against the offshore darkness.
He parked the car and they talked for a long time through the rushing
monotone of the surf beyond them while the sea wind blew against
their faces.
Once her voice broke as she was speaking of her brother, and he
knew she was crying quietly in the darkness. He held her in his arms
as if she were someone he had known for years, and when the crying
Go Home, Stranger — 108
had ceased he kissed her. She came willingly to him, with a warmth
and soft fragrance that made his breath catch suddenly in his throat;
then she gently disengaged herself and moved back. Afterward, for a
while, there was an awkward sort of awareness between them that
made them formally polite.
When they came back to the camp he walked up on the porch of her
cabin and held her hand for a moment as they said good night. In a
moment of sour rebellion against the way she was beginning to
dominate his thoughts he merely said, “Keep your door locked,” and
turned away.
He went down to the float, reluctant even to attempt sleep with his
mind pulled this way and that by a mysterious and disappearing
phantom called Robert Counsel and a brown-eyed girl he couldn’t
keep in her proper perspective. He had just put flame to a cigarette
and dropped the match into the water when he heard someone
coming down the path. He whirled, instantly alert.
“That you, Reno?” a voice asked. It had the soft, yet somehow
vicious monotone of Skeeter’s drawl.
“Yeah,” Reno replied. The match had blinded him momentarily and
he could only guess where the other man was. “What is it?”
“I didn’t see your boat here tonight. You lose it?”
“Let’s say I left it,” Reno answered. “I had a little accident. Going
back after it in the morning.”
“Where?” Skeeter asked.
“Up the bayou a little way.” Reno’s eyes were becoming accustomed
to the darkness again and he could see him, the hard, thin slat of a
figure at the foot of the trail.
“How far’s a little way? And what you mean, an accident?”
“Look, Malone,” Reno said, feeling irritation. “I left your boat up
there. I’m going after it. If I don’t find it, I’ll pay you for it. Does that
clear it up?”
“Mebbe.” Malone’s voice was utterly without emotion. “But I’m not
worried much about the boat. If I was you, I’d stay out of that country
up there.”
Reno grew tense in the darkness. “Why?”
“You might get lost.”
“I’m pretty good at finding my way around.”
“So was some of the people they never found. I’d think it over.
There’s plenty of bass down here.”
Go Home, Stranger — 109
Advice? Or warning? Reno wondered about it later, after he had
gone in the cabin and undressed for bed. He lay on the hard mattress
trying to guess what had been behind the words.
Sleep was a long time coming. I didn’t have enough parts of this, he
thought, and now I’ve got too many. Where was the pattern of it?
What connection could there be between Mac’s death and two men
who had disappeared off the face of the earth here one night in May,
a boat that had blown up for no reason at all, a man named Counsel
who was everywhere and nowhere, and explosions on a lost reach of
bayou? And the last person he thought of before he finally went to
sleep was Patricia Lasater.
No, Devers, he thought. Patricia Devers. He could hear the surf and
see the upturned face so near to his, the eyes immense and still
faintly misted with tears.
Tomorrow, they’d go up there together. He dropped off to sleep
with a strange feeling that something was going to happen tomorrow.
Go Home, Stranger — 110
Fourteen
Their plans were interrupted.
He was waiting when she emerged from her cabin early the next
morning clad in white slacks and a long-sleeved blouse. They ate
breakfast together in the restaurant under the cold eye of Delia, and
walked down to the float. Mildred Talley was climbing from the water.
She regarded them with an arch smile. “Going to gang up on the
poor bass, are we?”
“Something like that,” Reno answered briefly.
“But haven’t you forgotten your tackle?” she asked innocently.
He was about to make some curt reply and turn away to the job of
bailing out the boat when he looked up suddenly, catching the sound
of a motor. It was not an outboard. He looked down toward the bend
below them, where the bayou ran up from the highway bridge and the
ship channel, and at that moment it came into view, a trim cabin
cruiser dazzling in the sunlight with new white paint. Off the float it
backed down with a growl of power, coming to rest in mid-channel.
The man who had been at the wheel was Hutch Griffin, in white
shirt and slacks, the reckless face grinning at them from under the
rakish slant of a yachting cap. “Hi, men,” he called. “Let’s go for a
ride.”
Reno was conscious of quick irritation. He had forgotten about the
trial run in the new cruiser, but there was no way they could get out
of it now without some explanation. He shot a quick glance at Patricia
and saw her look of dismay.
Go Home, Stranger — 111
As if he had been reading their thoughts, Griffin called across to
them. “Only be two or three hours. I’m running down to the bar to
take off a pilot, and we’ll be back by eleven.”
There was nothing to do but make the best of it. “We’ll be right with
you,” Reno said.
“I can’t come alongside,” Griffin explained. “Not enough water
there. Pull out in one of those skiffs. You can give it a shove back, and
Mildred can tie it up. How about it, baby?” This last was addressed to
Mildred Talley. “Or can you go too?”
“No,” she replied, pouting. “I’ve got to work.”
Reno caught the sidelong, icy look at Patricia, and was conscious
that at last he understood the answer to something in this country.
Mildred was jealous. She had her eye on Griffin, which accounted for
the catty remarks about the dark-haired girl. Then, unaccountably, he
was jealous himself. He angrily shrugged it off. What did he care?
He pulled the skiff alongside and Griffin helped her step up into the
cockpit of the cruiser. He climbed aboard himself and shoved the skiff
back toward the landing. He and Patricia sat down on leather-covered
seats running along opposite sides of the cockpit, while Griffin
pressed the starter.
Reno noted with surprise they did not turn around. The cruiser
gathered speed, straight ahead up the channel. In a few minutes they
had rounded the first turn and had passed the arm of the bayou that
ran north, where he had gone yesterday.
Then he remembered the second highway bridge. “Can you get back
to the ship channel up this way?” he asked Griffin.
“Yeah. About a mile up here. Bayou goes back across the highway.”
“Hutch, I like your boat,” Patricia said. “It’s lovely.”
“Handles like a dream,” Griffin said, glancing back over his
shoulder and grinning. “When we get out to the ship channel you can
take over.”
Her eyes were excited as she glanced across at Reno. “Do you think
a landlubber could handle it all right?”
“Sure,” Griffin said easily. “Just like driving a car.”
In a few more minutes they had passed the old campground on their
left, where he had discovered the trailer. Thinking of it reminded
Reno that by now they would have been on their way up the bayou,
and for a moment he was irritated and impatient. But whatever was
up there could wait another few hours.
Go Home, Stranger — 112
They swung left now and were headed south. As soon as they
straightened out Reno could see the steel highway bridge up ahead.
Whoever towed that trailer away, he thought, could have come right
through here and dumped it in thirty-five feet of water in the ship
channel itself.
Griffin looked around at them as they approached the steel span
and said something Reno didn’t catch above the noise of the engine.
He and Patricia got up and went over to stand beside him at the
instrument panel, looking out ahead.
“I say there used to be a wooden bridge here years ago,” Griffin
repeated. “Had a lot of piling under it, spans not over twelve feet
apart, and Robert Counsel used to shoot it in those speedboats of his.”
At mention of the name, Reno and Patricia looked at each other.
“Reckless, eh?” Reno said, hoping he would go on.
“Reckless? Mother, dear!” Griffin said, and whistled softly. “A lot of
people used to have the idea Robert was kind of a mamma’s boy—I
mean, all that money, private tutors, that kind of stuff—but they just
didn’t know him. I was with him one day when he came through here
in a souped-up job that could really get up and fly. There was a girl in
front with him, and another in the back seat with me—we were all
about sixteen, I guess—and when his girl saw that bridge ahead and
the clearance we had to get through between the pilings she fainted.
She fell right over onto Robert, and he took it through with one hand,
trying to get her off him with the other. You could have reached out a
hand and touched a piling on either side, and he was clocking around
fifty-five miles an hour.”
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, Hutch,” Patricia said, “your friend
Robert just doesn’t sound very bright to me.”
Griffin shook his head and grinned. “That’s the hell of it though. He
was. Brilliant son-of-a-gun. But he was just easily bored.
“You take those speedboats and runabouts of his; he designed most
of the hulls and propellers himself. Did it by feel, or instinct, or
something, the way somebody else could write a symphony. There’s a
hell of a lot of mathematics to hull design, even for a garbage scow,
and when you start playing around with speed it gets rugged. Not that
he didn’t know the math—he did; but I think he felt the answers
instead of working them out.
“He had a nasty sense of humor, though,” Griffin went on. They
passed under the highway bridge and in a moment came out into the
ship channel. At this point it described a sweeping turn, leaving its
course roughly paralleling the highway and running south for half a
Go Home, Stranger — 113
mile between high walls of trees. The dredged channel itself was
marked by buoys.
“You want me to take it now, Hutch?” Patricia asked.
“In just a minute, honey,” Griffin replied. “As soon as we get past
that dredge. It’s working around the next bend.”
What was that about Counsel’s sense of humor?” Reno asked.
“Oh.” Griffin leaned forward over the wheel and swung his head
with soft laughter. “I wanted to tell you about that. Robert and I were
in prep school together for a couple of terms, and about this time
somebody started that goldfish-swallowing gag again. And there was
this big blowhard of a joker who’d been trying to give Robert a bad
time. Anyway, this joker was making a big name for himself
swallowing fish and throwing his weight around, when Robert showed
up from somewhere with one just a little bigger and bet him fifty
dollars he couldn't swallow it. The joker gulped it right down, like a
hungry pelican, and began hollering for his fifty. Robert gave it to
him, real deadpan, and asked how he felt. ‘Fine,’ the joker says.
‘Why?’ So then Robert told him. It was murder. ‘Nothing,’ he says.
‘Except I’d be careful about coughing. That goldfish had two dynamite
caps inside it.’”
“Good Lord,” Patricia said, horrified. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Griffin laughed again. “The joker just went limp and
passed out. They eased him over to the infirmary and went to work on
him with a stomach pump. They got the fish out.”
“But were there really two caps in it?”
“Nobody ever knew. The doctor and nurse wouldn’t say. But the
joker’s family took him out of school the next week, and Robert’s
mother took him to Europe. Personally, knowing Robert, I’d say there
were.”
They rounded the turn and passed the busy rumble of the dredge
just beyond. Some men on deck waved as they went past.
“What do they do with the mud?” Patricia asked. ‘”’I don’t see any
pipes.”
“Hopper dredge,” Griffin explained laconically. “Fills up and runs
back outside to dump the stuff offshore.”
“Does it work on the channel all the time?”
“No. They just started this section the first of the month. Going to
dredge from here up five miles.”
Go Home, Stranger — 114
They were past it now and the channel was clear. Griffin stepped
back from the wheel and sat down on one of the leather seats,
stretching out his legs and lighting a cigarette.
“Hey—” Patricia said, startled.
He grinned. “Honey, you’re driving now. Just keep to the right, and
watch out for traffic cops.” He looked across at Reno and winked.
Reno felt the stirrings of jealous anger, but let none of it show on
his face. Griffin was a likable guy, but there was just a little too much
easy familiarity in the way he spoke to Pat. But hell, maybe he talked
to all the girls that way.
A little over a mile below the dredge they passed a ferry and a small
shrimp-freezing plant. Griffin nodded, “My place over there,” he said,
indicating a dock at which two small diesel tugs were moored.
In a short while the heavy timber along the banks began to thin out
and they were running through flat salt marsh. Reno could see the
white tower of the lighthouse straight ahead. They ran on out
between the twin rock walls of the jetties and past the light.
“How far out do we go?” Patricia asked.
“Sea buoy,” Griffin said. “Last one out there, about a mile.” He got
up and opened the small door going forward, and the sound of the big
marine engine increased. “Just keep her on course, Skipper,” he
called back, grinning over his shoulder. In a moment he emerged with
a trolling rod and a big reel. He set them up, attached a white feather
jig to the leader, and began paying out line.
“All right,” he called, “who wants to catch the first mackerel?”
“Ladies first,” Reno said.
Griffin took the wheel and throttled the engine back to slow trolling
speed. Patricia settled into the seat at the rear of the cockpit and held
the rod. In a few minutes she had a strike, but lost the fish. She
landed the next one, a mackerel slightly over a foot long.
Reno enjoyed watching her. Any other time the cruise would have
been fun and he would have been reluctant to see it end, but now he
was conscious of a gnawing impatience to get back.
He took out cigarettes and offered Griffin one. “This pilot on his way
down on a ship now?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Griffin craned his neck, looking astern. Then he glanced at
his watch. “Should be showing any time now. Said he’d be down to
the bar around ten.”
“Don’t the pilots have a boat of their own?” Reno asked curiously.
Go Home, Stranger — 115
“Yes, but it’s in for overhaul. When they go to the yard they give
most of the business to me. I usually use one of the tugs, but thought
I’d try this one today, since it’s smooth out here.”
In another twenty minutes the ship was in sight astern. Patricia
reeled in her line while Griffin advanced throttle and changed course
to intersect the ship’s course as it cleared the sea buoy. They came up
alongside and Reno could see the name. It was the SS Silver Bay. His
eyes narrowed reflectively. Wasn’t that the one—? No, he
remembered. The one Counsel had been on was the Silver Cape. It
must be the same line, however. Probably all named Silver something.
They bumped against the side. In a moment he heard the rattle of a
Jacob’s ladder and the pilot stepped down onto the foredeck of the
cruiser. He slid around the’ outside of the cabin and dropped into the
cockpit.
Griffin introduced them with a sweeping wave of the hand as he
advanced the throttle and spun the wheel to break contact with the
ship. “Breaking in a new crew, Cap,” he called over his shoulder.
Captain Shevlin was a salty little gamecock with a merry eye. He
regarded Patricia Devers appreciatively. “Smartest-looking deckhand
you ever had. I’m going to sign her on the pilot boat.”
It developed almost immediately he was a talker with an almost
unstoppable flow of awesome language. He sat down, pushed back
the battered felt hat with its turned-up brim, stuck a long cigar in his
mouth, and set sail on an enchanting voyage of reminiscence, which
ranged from typhoons in the Indian Ocean to water-front brawls in
Liverpool, and from torpedoings in the First World War to intrigues
with Oriental dancing girls, all of it delivered in highly pungent
language and with an incomparable gift for imagery.
It was interrupted only twice in fifteen miles. Once, as they passed
the Griffin dock, Hutch looked back over his shoulder and laughed.
“You see why they call him Silent Shevlin?” he asked Reno. Then he
broke in on the flow of words. “Say, Cap, I’m going all the way in to
town to have a couple of things on here looked at in the boat yard.
You want to stay aboard, or get off and catch the bus?”
“I’ll stay aboard,” Captain Shevlin waved an offhand paw. Then he
turned back to Patricia. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. So I says to the
Mate, ‘Go down there and tell . . .”
Reno forgot some of his impatience in listening. As they came up
past the dredge they met a small tug coming down towing two deepladen
oil barges. One of the barges was swinging, and Griffin had to
back down quickly and pull in behind the dredge to avoid collision.
Go Home, Stranger — 116
Captain Shevlin bounded up in the cockpit, cupped his hands, and
yelled across to the towboat captain. “Hey, Ernie, why don’t you keep
steerageway on that bedpan? You think you’re herding cows to
pasture, or something?”
The towman waved good-naturedly. “Relax, Cap. You’re flipping
your lid.”
They eased out from behind the dredge and proceeded around the
next bend of the channel, which opened into the half-mile reach below
the highway. “Always something,” Captain Shevlin complained
bitterly. “You know, a man that’d pilot on this channel for a living
when he could just as easy have been a pimp or a one-legged
panhandler must enjoy torturing himself.”
Patricia looked at Reno and laughed, and the Captain shook his
head with the unmistakable and dreamy expression that signaled
another story. “It reminds me, Hutch, of one night this spring, right in
this exact spot. I was bringing one of the Silver line ships up—and
that was a trip to land you in the Happy Ward.
“When I climbed aboard out on the bar I landed right in the middle
of a fight. Two of the stewards had got gassed up on paint-thinner or
compass alcohol or something and was trying to choke each other’s
eyeballs out in a tangle in the forward well deck and the poor Mate
was running around unscrambling ‘em.
“Well, they finally get things quieted down and we start up, and
everything is fine except the Old Man has to stay on the bridge and
has the Third Mate up there, and the Second Mate, and would have
had the Mate and bosun except they had brains enough to stay on the
fo’c’sle head where they belonged. And the helmsman was one of
them correspondence-school AB’s that didn’t know his foot from his
elbow, and every time I’d tell him to ease the helm he’d steady her up.
“It’s as black as the inside of a blind muley-cow, and just about the
time we make the swing right here and start readying her up on the
next range it starts to pour rain. Then I spot running lights poking out
from that next bend above here, and remembered there was a Mid-
Gulf tanker due to come down loaded about that time. You know how
they are, loaded, sway-bellied and dragging bottom all the way.
They’re drawing thirty feet by the time they get through filling
everything on board, and they need all the room they can get in this
channel.
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