September 15, 2010

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(7)

“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?

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(7)

“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.
Go Home, Stranger — 141
“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 outboard 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 she 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.”
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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 way 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 outguessing
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.
He opened the knife, and ran the blade along the crack until he felt
it strike the hasp. Marking it with a finger, he began whittling. It was
impossible to see anything at all. There was no way to tell whether he
was even cutting in the same place half the time. He hacked his
fingers. The knife blade broke off at the point. He kept on, sweating in
the heat, and hurrying.
Once the boat appeared to come up against a dock for a few
minutes, but the engine continued to idle and they could not be sure
whether Griffin was still aboard. Then they were moving again.
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They lost all track of time. That blade of the knife finally snapped off
altogether, and he switched to the small one. It lasted only a few
minutes, and when it broke off next to the handle he wanted to put his
head down in his hands. He sat still then.
After a while the engine throttled down until they had bare
steerageway, and ran that way for a long time. Once or twice Reno
thought he heard branches scrape along the hull. They must be up in
the bayous, far off the ship channel.
Then, finally, the engine stopped. They bumped gently against
something, and he heard footsteps over their heads. Griffin was tying
up. They heard him moving around aft for a while; then there was
silence except for the sound of frogs and once or twice an owl
hooting. Reno held Patricia in his arms and waited out the hours until
daylight. Once she slept for a while, fitfully, making little whimpering
sounds that stirred the hatred inside him.
* * *
He sat up, listening. Griffin was unsnapping the padlock. The door
swung open and he motioned with the gun. It was dawn now, and
light was pouring into the engine compartment.
Griffin chuckled. “Say, you’re a rugged-looking character, with that
blood all over your head. I’d borrow your face for Halloween, if you
were still going to be around.” Reno looked hungrily at the gun. “One
of us won’t be.”
“Pal, you’re so right. Now, let’s get aft, shall we?” They went single
file back to the cockpit, Reno hobbling as best he could, Patricia
white-faced and ignoring Griffin with icy contempt, and the latter
bringing up the rear with the gun and humming under his breath.
Reno looked around, blinking at the light. It was a lovely setting. The
cruiser was tied up at a rotting old dock on a narrow arm of the
bayou. Big trees hung out over the water except at the landward end
of the dock itself. There had been a building there at one time, but it
had burned down and nothing remained except the chimney and
fireplace. Beyond it lay an open field of several acres, brown with
dead grass.
“Robert Counsel’s so-called fishing lodge, or what’s left of it,”
Griffin said behind them: “Now. Sit down, both of you.”
He sat down himself on the leather seat across the cockpit from
them, stretched out his legs, and lit a cigarette. The gun lay carelessly
in his lap; but his eyes watched Reno. He grinned at them, and
Go Home, Stranger — 144
nodded his head toward the after end of the cockpit. “Beauties, eh?”
he asked.
The steel cable and mesh bags had been thrown away, and the two
lead watermelons lay side by side. The mud had been washed from
them and they had a smooth, fat, and somehow deadly look in the
early light. They’re a little like bombs without fins, Reno thought.
Then he turned to look at Griffin.
“They’ve killed four men,” he said softly.
“Right.” Griffin took a drag on the cigarette. “That is, if you count
McHugh. He was more or less a by-product.”
The yearning to kill was very strong inside him now. He could feel
the crazy foaming of it, and tried to reason with himself. The thing to
do was wait, and play it out. There’d always be that one desperate
lunge at the end, if everything else failed.
“What’s in them?” he asked, his face showing nothing.
Patricia was leaning forward, staring with fascination, while they
waited for Griffin to answer. Reno was conscious of the same
suspense. Here was the thing they had trailed so long; the thing that
had killed Mac, and had set off this chain reaction of death and
disaster. And in the end it was two fat, lead-sheathed, watermelonshaped
objects lying harmlessly in the cockpit of a boat.
Griffin pushed the white cap back on his head and shrugged.
“Somewhere around a quarter million dollars and/or enough high
explosive to blow us all to hell and halfway back.”
Reno slowly expelled his breath. “Quarter million dollars worth of
what?”
“Heroin. The pure McCoy. Uncut. And not grains, or ounces, but
pounds of it. Sweet, huh?”
Reno leaned back against his seat. “So that’s why they never could
find out what he did with the money? Counsel, I mean. When they
court-martialed him.”
Griffin eyed him speculatively. “So you found out about that?” Then
he went on. “That’s right. Robert was buying dope and stashing it
away in a hiding place he had. Packed it in cans and evacuated the
air. He had a vacuum pump. We weren’t sure how long it’d be before
we could come back after it, or how much it deteriorated with age.”
“But why dope?”
Griffin shook his head, grinning. “Robert. You have to understand
him. He was a genius, with a nasty sense of humor, and a flair for
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embroidering a theme. He took a dim view of any kind of authority,
and resented being shoved into the military. So what could be better
than stealing from the U.S. Army and using their money to buy dope
to smuggle in? The Army was financing his operations against the
Narcotics Bureau. And then there was the money, too. Tremendous
profit this way.”
“But none of the rest of you knew where he had it hidden?”
“Yes. We did. But he moved it on us. The night before he was
arrested. There’d been an argument with Morton and Devers, and. He
thought they had squealed on him, or were about to.”
Reno nodded, his eyes harsh. “So when Counsel got out of prison
and went back to Italy after the stuff, Morton and Devers went out to
pick it up out of the channel but you didn’t go. Why?”
Griffin smiled. “Little matter of understanding friend Robert. I
began to smell a rat. You see, we didn’t tell them. After all, why split
it four ways? But the night the Silver Cape arrived off the bar, they
showed up in my office down there on the dock. They’d found out all
about it.
“At first they were going to rough me up for double-crossing them,
but they cooled down after a while and I managed to find out now
they’d got wind of it. That’s when I wised up. It seems Robert had run
into an old girl friend of Carl Devers in Italy and had started shooting
off his mouth, and she had written Carl all about it. And the funny
thing was, he also ran into an old flame of Chappie Morton, and told
her, too. Just chummy, you see.” Griffin broke off and grinned at
them. “You begin to get it now?”
Reno felt a chill along his back. So that was the kind of mind they’d
been up against. He nodded.
“Well, it was simple, then,” Griffin went on. “Just elementary stuff. I
played it real yokel and let them throw down on me with that silly
Italian gun they had. They tied me up and locked me in the office, and
shoved off with the boat. And in just about an hour I heard it let go,
like a refinery blowing up, and knew I’d been right. So I untied myself
and called the Sheriff and Coast Guard and reported the boat stolen.
Then I warmed up one of the tugs and pulled their car off into the
channel.”
Reno glanced sidewise at Patricia. She was pale, and her eyes were
sick with horror. He reached for her hand and held it. There was
nothing else he could do.
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Griffin smiled. “So now you see the enchanting prospect. There are
two of these lead pigs, and either one of them is big enough to hold
the stuff. Or isn’t it? Can’t you just hear the bastard laughing? He was
going to get all three of us with that other one, but just in case he
didn’t— Catch on, pal?”
“Right,” Reno said coldly. “But how do you think you’re going to
make me open them?”
Griffin smiled again.. “That’s easy. Your lady friend here. You’ll have
one of the pigs, and we’ll have one. If you don’t open yours within ten
minutes, we’ll dig into the other. A quarter million’s a lot of money,
and nobody lives forever.” He broke off and winked at “Patricia.
“We’re not chicken, are we, honey?”
Go Home, Stranger — 147
Nineteen
Griffin stopped talking. He picked up the gun from his lap and threw
the cigarette overboard. “All right, Reno,” he said. “Hustle those two
pigs up on the bank.”
Patricia Devers stood up. Her face was white, but she stood very tall
and straight and her eyes were blazing. “No!” she said. “You can’t
make him do it. You coldblooded murderer, if you’re so brave, we’ll
open them. You and I—” Reno saw her sway a little. She was very
near the breaking point.
Griffin smiled tightly. “Better keep your lady friend quiet, before
she gets a mouthful of gun. He gestured with the Luger. “Now wrestle
those pigs.”
It took ten minutes or more, hobbling on his sprained ankle. He
lifted them onto the dock one at a time and rolled them to the bank.
Near the ashes where the lodge had been stood a large oak, and
beyond it lay the open field. A shallow foxhole had been scooped in
the ground under the tree, the dirt thrown up at the end toward the
field. Across the mound of earth lay a telescope on a short-legged
tripod. Reno looked at it. Smart, he thought.
The two lead containers lay side by side near the foxhole. Reno
knelt in front of them. Griffin stood ten feet away with the gun. Never
any nearer, Reno observed coldly; he’s watching me every minute.
“That’s a thirty-power spotting scope,” Griffin said. “I went back
and got it last night. It’s trained on that big stump out there in the
field, the one straight ahead about fifty yards. Take your pig out there
and put it on the stump, and open it, facing this way. I’ll be able to see
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every move you make, as if you were about five feet away. If it blows,
I’ll know what not to do when I open this.”
“The heroic Mr. Griffin,” Patricia said contemptuously.
“Shut up,” Griffin said idly.
She’s trying to get him to swing at her with that gun, Reno thought,
to give me a chance to take him. But he knows it.
Griffin went on, speaking to Reno. “You can’t run, with that ankle. If
you try, I’ll shoot you. You’ll have ten minutes, from the time you get
the pig on the stump. Ready?”
“You in a hurry?” Reno asked thinly.
“I said you could have your choice of pigs.” The redhead grinned,
his eyes shining wickedly. “If you can tell one from the other, take a
good, long look.”
Patricia was standing by the tree, silently watching. Reno stared
down at the lead containers. Wasn’t it better to stand up and walk to
Griffin, taking the whole clip if he had to in order to get his hands on
him? Maybe he could live long enough to do it. Patricia would live.
And Vickie could go free. Then he knew it wouldn’t work; Griffin was
too cool for that. At least one of the shots would be through the head,
or the heart, and he’d never reach him. He returned to his study of
the containers. How did you understand Counsel? Could you? Could
anybody? There were three ways it could be, and two of them meant
instant death. There could be heroin in both of them; there could be
heroin in one and explosive in the other; or there could be both in
each one. The detonating triggers would be right under the surface,
set to blow at the slightest disturbance of the lead sheath; only
Counsel would know how to disarm it, and he was dead. He thought of
Carl Devers and Morton, out there in the ship channel at night,
holding a flashlight perhaps, slicing into the lead eagerly. . . .
It was deadly silent now. He thought of something that even Griffin
did not know. All the time Counsel had been in San Francisco he had
bought the Waynesport paper every day, watching it for something.
Just for a notice about the dredge? Or had he been checking to be
sure Griffin hadn’t found these things? If he had, it meant he’d know
the instant they were found and opened; that they, were both loaded
with explosive in addition to the dope.
There was one thing, however, that maybe neither Counsel nor
Griffin had thought of. It was a long chance, but it was better than
none at all. He continued to examine the objects before him. Minutes
ticked by, and he felt the sun warming his back. He leaned forward,
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running his finger along the surface and the seams like a near-sighted
man reading. He turned first one and then the other, examining every
inch. At last he selected one.
He straightened up on his knees. “Pitch me your knife,” he said, his
voice sounding far away and strange in the silence. “I’m ready.”
Patricia ran across and “fell to her knees in front of him. Her arms
were about his neck, and he saw the brown eyes were wet with tears.
“No!” she begged. “No, Pete! Don’t.”
“There’s no other way,” he said. He brought his hands up and
placed one on each side of her face, just looking at her.
“I can’t stand it,” she whispered.
Slowly he bent his face down and kissed her, his love for her tearing
at him, and wanting to hold her like that forever. Then he gently
removed his hands and straightened up. She remained on her knees,
her eyes closed and tears squeezing out from under the lashes. Her
lips moved without sound.
“Next week we’ll try East Lynne,” Griffin said. “Now if we’ll pull our
feet out of the schmaltz bucket and—”
Reno turned and stared at him. “The knife,” he said, his voice brittle
as ice.
Griffin tossed it. Reno picked it up, took the lead pig under his other
arm, and walked straight out across the field, contemptuously
ignoring the agony of his ankle. He placed his burden on the flat top
of the stump and went around behind it, facing back the way he had
come.
Griffin was behind the pile of earth, watching through the spotting
scope. Patricia remained where she had been, on her knees in the
open, her face slightly lifted.
“Get her down,” Reno said. “Or behind that tree.”
“I mentioned that,” Griffin called back, “but she says she’s praying.
Religious freedom, you know; dealer’s choice. But never mind her.
Get with it, chum.”
Then Patricia crumpled and lay flat. Reno looked away from her and
opened the knife. He turned the lead container slightly, placing it so
one of the seams ran directly along the top. He could feel the sun on
his head, turning hot now. Sweat ran down his face. The mockingbird
sang again somewhere in the trees beyond the field, and he heard the
buzz of a locust in the dry, still air.
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He forced everything else from his mind. The world narrowed to
this smooth, lead-covered object in front of him and he placed the
point of the knife near the seam and pressed. Slowly he drew it along,
parallel to the seam, from one end to the other. It left a shallow cut.
Wiping the sweat from his face, he moved the knife back to the
starting point and deepened the slash.
He made an identical cut along the other side of the seam. Then he
turned the knife and cut directly across the seam in the center, from
one slash to the other. He brought the knife back, ready to cut again.
This one will do it, he thought, pressing the knife deeper into the lead.
He was scarcely breathing now.
He felt the knife go through. Gently prying with the blade as a lever,
he opened the hole, watching tensely. He breathed again, letting air
escape with a long, shuddering sigh. All right, he thought; just keep
watching through your damned telescope and you’ll learn what not to
do.
Lead will tear if grooved deeply enough. Working very slowly now
and with infinite care, he pulled free and lifted the narrow strip
between the grooves he had cut. It came up inch by gradual inch, as
he held it pressed tightly with his left hand.
“You hit one of ‘em?” Griffin called.
Reno made no reply. He studied the situation for a moment; then,
slowly shifting his body around, he lay across the container so his left
arm pressed down on the strip he had just torn up and pushed back.
Holding it there, he began slowly cutting loose and lifting, in the same
manner, the other half of the strip beyond the center cut, watching
beneath it as he lifted. Then, the same distance from the center as the
other one, he made a quick movement with his hand, pressed the strip
down, and held it. He was immobilized now, lying across it and
pressing down in two places at once, his face set in harsh lines.
“What is it?” Griffin called out.
“Two of them. I’ve got ‘em, but I can’t move now.”
“What’s in it? Can you see?”
“It’s divided in the middle. Two canvas bags. One of ‘em feels like
little milk cans, and the other one’s sticks. Dynamite.”
Griffin stood up. He walked out a few steps. “Can you get at the
wires?”
Reno shook his head. Sweat ran down into his eyes and made them
sting. “Not yet. It’ll take another cut. What’s the matter? You afraid,
or doesn’t that quarter of a million look as big now?”
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Patricia had risen to her knees and was staring in horror. Griffin
walked toward the stump. He stopped ten feet away, still holding the
gun ready in his hand.
“Then they’re both booby-trapped,” he said. “Unless you’re lying.”
Reno stared at him coldly. “All right, maybe I’m lying. But don’t use
that gun, because if you shoot me I’ll fall off these triggers. You’re
close enough now to get it. And don’t try to move back, or I’ll let ‘em
go. Now, do you want to hold one of them so I can disarm it, or not?”
Griffin remained rooted, watching. “Nuts,” he said. “You wouldn’t
let ‘em go.”
Reno shifted uncomfortably, but kept his left forearm and right
hand pressed against the two points on the strips, leaning over a
little. “Pat,” he called out, raising his voice. “Get down on the ground.
And listen. If this thing blows now, Griffin goes with it. Leave the
other one right where it is, and go after the Sheriff. Warn ‘em they’ll
have to borrow a bomb-disposal man from the Navy to get it apart.
There’ll be enough evidence there to back up your story, so Vickie’ll
be in the clear—” He stopped, almost holding his breath in suspense.
Griffin had stepped forward.
Reno gestured with his head. “Right there. Put your hand down on.
The lead, near the outer end, and slide it on as I slide mine off.”
Griffin already had his left hand on the lead surface and was
beginning to slide it when his eyes suddenly widened. He cursed, and
started to bring the gun up. Reno let go the lead container with both
hands and grabbed him. He heard Patricia scream.
He had Griffin’s right arm with both hands. He twisted brutally, and
the gun fell. It hit the stump, bounced, and fell to the ground between
them. He caught the red head’s shirt collar with his left hand and
pulled him forward as he swung the right. It landed with a sickening
impact, and Griffin’s knees sagged.
The crazy, black desire to kill was driving him now. Mac was in his
mind, and Vickie, as he pulled himself across the stump and crashed
to the ground on top of the other man. The lead container rolled off
and came to rest beside them as he found Griffin’s throat with his
hands and began closing them, slowly, tighter and tighter. . . .
Her arms were around his face, smothering him, and she was
screaming. It seemed to take a long time for what she was saying to
penetrate to him through the roaring of the black wind that went on
and on, but at last he understood and released the still living man
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beneath him. He tried to sit up. She fell across him, with her arms
about his neck.
* * *
They were ready to go. Griffin, his hands and feet bound, had been
shoved into the small locker and the padlock snapped shut. The two
lead containers lay in the after part of the cockpit out of the way.
Reno and Patricia sat in the leather seat along one side, smoking a
cigarette before they cast off.
“I’m sorry, Pat,” he said gently. “About your brother, I mean. I kept
hoping there might be some other answer.”
“It’ll be all right,” she said. “I faced it a long time ago, and the
worst part is already over.” She was silent for a moment, staring
moodily out across the channel. Then she went on, “But let’s not think
about it any more. Think of Vickie, and how she’ll feel a few hours
from now. There won’t be any question at all now, will there?”
“No. Even if Griffin won’t talk, we’ve got enough evidence to get her
out of there tonight.”
She shuddered involuntarily and shook her head. “I’ll have
nightmares the rest of my life. How could you ever cut into that awful
thing?”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, and then grinned. “The one
I was working on was harmless enough,” he said. “And I think the
other one may be, too, but I’m not going to open it to see. The police
can take over, as far as I’m concerned.”
“But they were booby traps, weren’t they? I mean, one end filled
with those cans of heroin and the other with explosive?”
“That’s right. But there was something Griffin and Counsel both
forgot about.”
She raised her head and looked at him. “What was that?”
“Water pressure. It’s tough stuff to fool with after you get down
past thirty feet. And to build something that’ll stay water tight for
months at that depth, you’ve almost got to test it under pressure. It
turned out I was right. I knew it, as soon as I got the knife through it
the first time. Water oozed out: There was a tiny flaw in the seam, and
the thing was full of water before it had been down there a day.”
“And that killed the explosive?”
He shook his head. “Not the explosive. The detonating circuit. At
that pressure, water would seep into the battery in no time, and
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destroy it. Griffin knew it too, but he found out too late. He was
already within grabbing distance before he saw the water and knew
I’d been leaning over it that way to hide it from him.”
She stared at him admiringly. “You’re amazing.”
“And you’re very beautiful.”
She smiled. “Shall we go around again? Or get started?”
He looked out along the bayou leading back toward the south and
east where the highway and the camp should be, and Vickie, and then
San Francisco, and all the time ahead. Then he turned back to the
very large and very lovely brown eyes looking up at him adoringly.
He kissed her.
“You name it, Skipper,” he said.
THE END
Go Home, Stranger — 154

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(6)

“Well, we both get lined out on the ranges and we’re only about six
hundred yards apart and closing fast and the Old Man and I are
hanging over the port wing of the bridge trying to see enough of the
Go Home, Stranger — 117
tanker’s running-lights through the rain to tell whether we’re lined up
red-to-red or whether we’re about to run between ‘em, when right
here about a hundred yards south of this Number Fourteen buoy
there is the damnedest ker-splash you ever heard, right under us.
Sounds like at least two men have fallen overboard.
“So of course the same thought hits everybody right at the same
time. It’s them two chowder-headed messboys at it again.
“Well, Captain Wilbur starts to wave his arms and foam out orders
like a soda fire-extinguisher.
“ ‘Cap,’ I says, ‘if you think I’m going to lose steerage-way on this
bucket with a hundred and fifty thousand barrels of high-test gas
booming down on us just because your pot-wallopers are throwing
each other over the side, you’re as nutty as I am. Steady as she goes.’

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(5)

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?”

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(4)

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
Go Home, Stranger — 69
went to school. Private tutors, mostly English, at least until he was of
high-school age—”

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(3)

* * *
“Counselor,” the sign said, its twisted tubes of red and blue glass
blank and unlighted in the sun. A glaring shell driveway led off the
road to the left to swing up before the wide veranda of what had
obviously been a residence at one time, a large house with the
columned stateliness of another era. An expanse of lawn was now a
parking area, completely empty at this time of the afternoon.
Reno slowed, going past on the highway. This was where it was, he
thought. He was pulled off here at the side of the road with the car
and boat trailer, just looking at the place, when the girl went by and
saw him. Maybe he was waiting for somebody, or maybe, if he really
was Counsel, he was looking at the house he used to live in turned
into a joint with two tons of neon out in front. He glanced around at
the drowsy late-summer afternoon, the dark wall of moss-hung oaks
on both sides of the highway beyond the inn, and the steel bridge up
ahead shimmering in the sun, appraising the somnolent peacefulness
of it. And, on the other hand, he reflected, maybe his name was just
what he said it was and he was only running out on his wife like a
thousand other men and I’ve got rocks in my head.

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(2)

Four
He stared at her, incredulous and puzzled, and had just opened his
mouth to speak when the telephone rang in the bedroom. “Excuse
me,” she said, and arose.
He eyed the two envelopes hungrily, and then shrugged. He could
wait until she returned. Another minute or two wouldn’t make any
difference, and he had to be careful about rushing her. But what on
earth had she meant by saying it wasn’t a trailer? There was one
other ‘possibility, of course, but that didn’t make sense either.
Suddenly he was conscious that he could hear her in the other
room. “Yes. Yes. I understand,” she was saying in a low voice charged
with emotion. “Of course not, if you say so. No one. No one at all....
Where?... Counsel Bayou? And then turn— I’ll find it.”

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams 1954(1)

One
It took the message over a week to catch up with him because after
he had finished the job in the sierra he went over into the jungles of
the lower Ucayali to hunt jaguars. When he had read it he came up
out of South America traveling very fast, a big, hard-shouldered
young man in an ill-fitting suit, his face cooked dark by the sun and
his hair badly in need of cutting. He would have had time to get a
shave between planes in Miami, but he spent the time instead in a
stifling telephone booth making one long-distance call after another,
relentlessly shoving quarters into a slot and rasping questions over
thousands of miles of wire while the cold ball of fear grew heavier
inside him. On the third day after leaving the little town in the
Peruvian jungle he walked up the steps of the police station in
Waynesport, on the Gulf Coast of the United States.
It was a little after eight of a hot, breathless morning, and he
couldn’t remember when he had slept. It was the twenty-first of
August, and since the tenth of the month his sister, who was Vickie
Shane McHugh, the radio and television actress, had been in the
Waynesport jail, charged with the murder of her husband.
The Chief wouldn’t be in until around nine, the desk man said, but
he led him down a dim hallway to the office of Lieutenant Wayland.
The man behind the desk was big across the shoulders, with a heavy
neck and a graying shock of tough, wiry hair. Sharp brown eyes sized
him up as he came into the room.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn