Go Home, Stranger

Seventeen

“He did it to gain time” she said. “He knew your ankle was hurt. It’ll give him that much longer to run before we could report—” She stopped and gestured mutely toward the tangle of branches.

“Probably,” he agreed. “But we don’t know.”

“Wait, Pete,” she said quickly. “I’ve got it. That boat you left up here the other day— It’d still be along the shore somewhere. I could find it.”

He shook his head. “That’s what I meant. No motor, and only one oar. Take hours to paddle it back. He’d have plenty of time to get his rifle and wait for us.”

She stared. “You think he would?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know. But paddling down that channel in the open would be the hard way to find out. We stick to the timber.”

“It’s three miles,” she said doubtfully. “And we have to get across the bayou down there.”

“I know. But there’s no other way.”

She lit two cigarettes and handed him one. “You have to rest a minute before we start.”

“All right,” he said reluctantly. He was goaded with a wild impatience to be gone, but he was still weak. They could still get down to the ship channel by dark, he told himself. They had to.

She was watching him quietly, with something expectant in her eyes. “Pete, do you really know why Robert Counsel came back?”

He took a deep drag on the cigarette, dreading part of what he had to tell her. “Yes,” he said. “Counsel came back after something out there in the ship channel. Something he brought from Italy.”

She was kneeling in front of him. “What?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “We’ve got to find out. But I began to see it when Easter told me when and where he heard those shots. It’s all there now. In the first place, Counsel wouldn’t change his reservations and fly back from Italy with Mrs. Conway. She couldn’t understand that, but I think I do now. He was bringing back something that could only be brought in on a ship. Remember what that long-winded pilot said about those splashes he heard? He couldn’t remember the name of the ship, but it was the same line, the Silver Line, and it has to be the one Counsel was on.

“And then there’s the dredge. That’s the tip-off. It was something Counsel read in the Waynesport paper, remember, that made him come back. I’ve been going through the paper and beating my brains out for days, trying to figure out what it was. And now I’ve got it. It was that little blurb saying contracts had been let to begin dredging the channel. You see? Whatever he had thrown overboard was still there, and if he didn’t come back and get it the dredge would pick it up and carry it out to sea.”

“But,” she whispered, puzzled, “why did he wait so long? Why didn’t he come back and pick it up after the ship docked, assuming it was contraband he couldn’t take through customs?”

He hesitated, hating to tell her. “Remember what the pilot said, Pat? There were two of those splashes. And the second one was right there above the old Counsel landing, where the cabin cruiser exploded. And remember the explosion came from inside the boat. Right there’s where you run up against the cold-blooded genius of Robert Counsel. All the men who were in that thing with him were supposed to go pick up that second thing he threw overboard. And I think I’ve got it now. One of them was too smart, and didn’t. Counsel had to run.”

He could see the awful unhappiness in her face. But she’s suspected it all along, he thought, taking her hand in his. She knew it even if she didn’t want to admit it. Her brother and Morton were mixed up in those Army thefts along with Counsel.

“But,” she said softly, “who was the other one? The one who didn’t go out to pick it up?”

“Griffin,” he said simply. “It was Griffin who killed Counsel and then killed Mac.”

She gasped, and looked at him incredulously. “But—I don’t see, Pete . . . How do you know it’s Griffin?”

“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 them again and, eased it 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.”