Go Home, Stranger

Five

He never did know how long he fought for her life there on the canal bank in the darkness. Water ran out of her clothes and mosquitoes buzzed about her face in ravenous swarms. He crouched astride her as she lay with her face slightly downhill and went on alternately pushing in against her ribs and letting them swell outward, hoping in an agony of suspense for some sign of life.

It might have been three minutes, or it might have been twenty, before he felt her quiver and heard a shuddering intake of breath as she caught the rhythm of it and her lungs began functioning again. She retched, and was sick.

In a moment she was able to sit up very weakly in his arms, and he picked her up and hurried back to the car. He put her in the front seat and climbed in behind the wheel. Their sodden clothing leaked onto the floor mat and the upholstery. He seesawed savagely back and forth across the road, turning around; then he was gunning the car in second gear to pick up speed back the way they had come. I don’t even know whether she’s been shot, he thought. But it wouldn’t do any good to waste time trying to find out. The thing to do was to get her to a doctor.

He found one, in a combined office and residence, as they were coming into the outskirts of the city. Lifting her out, he carried her across the lawn and punched imperiously at the bell. Shoving past the startled physician, who had been interrupted at dinner, he put her down on the table in the consultation room.

“Wreck,” he said shortly. “She went into a canal with her car.”

She was trying to sit up now. “I’m all right,” she said shakily. She was very pale, and the dark hair was plastered wetly about her face.

Reno gently shoved her back. “Take it easy,” he said. “You’ve had enough.” Then he looked down at the leaking ruin of his clothing and the cut on his arm, which was dripping onto the rug. “Which way’s the bathroom?”

The reaction began to catch up with him and he was weak and trembling. It had been too long now since he had slept, and he was going on nerve alone. He took off his clothes and wrung the water out of them into the bathtub, and wrapped a towel around the cut on his arm. In a few minutes the doctor knocked on the door and handed him a terry-cloth robe and a small glass of whisky.

“You can come out in a minute and I’ll fix that arm of yours,” he said. “You’re probably hurt worse than she is.”

“How is she?” Reno asked, feeling the sudden release from tension. There’d been no gunshot wound.

“A little weak. Some shock, of course. She had a bad blow on the head, but no concussion, apparently. She’ll be all right.”

“Is she able, to travel?”

“Possibly, but I wouldn’t advise it. Does she have to? Tonight?”

“Yeah,” Reno said laconically. “Tonight.”

He downed the whisky with a gulp and went out into the front hall to the telephone. He called the railroad station, found there was a westbound train in a little over two hours, and tried to reserve a bedroom. There was none available, but he managed to get a roomette. Then he dialed the hotel.

“Hello,” he said. “Mrs. Conway, in Room Twelve-o-six, has had an accident. Car went in the canal. And she has to catch a train in two hours. So listen. Make out her bill, send a boy up to get her luggage, and shoot him out here in a cab with it. Just a minute and I’ll give you the address.” He called in to the physician, and repeated it over the telephone. “And rush it, will you?”

He went back into the office. She was sitting up with a sheet wrapped around her. Her face was deathly white and he could see she had been crying. The doctor took three stitches in his arm and bandaged it, and after Reno had explained about the clothes coming from the hotel, he went back into the dining room to finish his dinner.

As soon as he was out the door she looked up and whispered shakily, “I’ll never be able to thank you.”

The doctor had left some cigarettes on a table. Reno lit two of them and gave her one. “Forget it,” he said. “You’re just lucky he missed you with that rifle. But you’ve got to get out of this country. As soon as you can change clothes I’ll take you to the train. And get this: Don’t come back here. He still thinks he got us both, but he’ll know better as soon as they fish that car out.”

Her eyes were sick with horror. “But why? Why?” she asked piteously. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know.” Everything said it had to be Conway, but how could he tell her that her own husband had tried to murder her? Or did he need to? Wasn’t that what she was thinking herself?

“If all your money was in your purse”” he went on, “I’ll lend you enough to get to San Francisco. You can mail it back.”

She shook her head. “Thank you, but I have some traveler’s checks in one of my bags.”

He swung around toward her. ‘Those reports of Mac’s. Were they in the car?”

“No. They’re in one of the bags too.”

“Well?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “It’s the least I can do.”

The luggage came. She paid the hotel bill and the taxi and went into another room to dress. Reno put his damp clothes back on and paid the doctor. When she returned, smartly turned out again except for the wet hair, which she had covered with a scarf, Reno looked at the clock in the office and saw they still had an hour to catch the train.

They went out and got in the car. He drove two or three blocks and pulled to a stop under a street light. She had the two envelopes in her lap.

Wordlessly she handed him the first one. His big hands were awkward and shaking a little with excitement as he slid the papers out of the envelope.

Dear Mrs. Conway:

As you have no doubt gathered from my telegram, I have located Mr. Conway’s automobile. Notwithstanding your reluctance to appeal to the police, I went to them almost the first thing after checking in at the hotel, since—as I told you in San Francisco—I believe this could be serious enough to warrant it. And I think you will agree with me when I tell you that the automobile has been impounded by the Traffic Detail in their garage since the twenty-second of July, only two days after the date of Mr. Conway’s last letter. It was picked up at that time in a tow-away zone.

In reference to my telegram, one of the first things I noticed about the car after picking it up was that there was an apparently newly installed trailer hitch on it. Since it might or might not be a significant lead, I wired you to learn whether it had been on there when the car left San Francisco. And since you say it was not, obviously Mr. Conway had it put on somewhere between there and here, which of course made it highly significant. Whatever he was towing when he arrived in this area might be still around somewhere, and if I could find out what kind of trailer it was I could give the police a description of it and get their assistance in running it down. With that idea in mind I started backtracking along the highway, stopping at all service stations to make inquiries. I kept at it until midnight and then on the following day, covering almost a hundred miles before I located a man who remembered the car. His general description of the driver checked closely with that of Mr. Conway. He also stated there was only one person in the car.

Reno grunted. Mac had the same hunch I did, he thought. And probably she had it too, though she wouldn’t admit it. But if Conway was meeting somebody, she hadn’t shown up. He went on reading.

Questioned about the type of trailer, the service-station attendant insisted that what Mr. Conway had been towing was not a trailer at all, but a boat. He was quite definite on this point and was even able to give me a rather good description of it, since, fortunately, he was a fisherman and interested enough to examine it. It appeared to be the usual rig, rather common in this country, consisting of a pipe-frame-and-axle trailer with the boat cradled between the wheels. The boat itself, he said, had apparently been bought at a sporting-goods store, since it was a lightweight skiff of about ten feet and was varnished rather than painted.

Needless to say, I would be inclined to doubt the whole thing if it were not for the finality of the man’s identification of the car, and the fact that it does have a trailer hitch installed. There seems to be no logical reason why Mr. Conway would need a boat if he were coming to Waynesport on business, and if, on the other hand, he were going fishing, there are hundreds of boats for rent all along the ship channel and the bayous of this area.

I So far I have had no success in tracing his movements beyond this point, but tomorrow I shall take the car and start covering the area south of the city, the forty miles or so of ship channel and bayou between here and the Gulf, for which he must obviously have been heading if he were towing a boat.

Very truly yours,

WALTER L. MCHUGH

Reno slipped the report back inside its envelope and looked around at Mrs. Conway. She shook her head with utter hopelessness.

“I have no idea what- on earth he would have wanted with a boat,” she said.

It’s crazy, Reno thought. The whole thing’s insane. He took the other report and spread it open.

Dear Mrs. Conway:

I am writing this in the early morning to try to catch today’s air mail with it. Two days of search since my first report have turned up a few facts and conclusions, which I shall pass on to you before continuing. The first of these is that it is quite definite now that your husband was not headed for Waynesport at all—that is, not for the city itself—but for the, country around Counsel Bayou, some thirty-five miles southwest of here on the ship channel. He apparently drove right through the city, stopping just long enough, to mail the letter to you. The service-station attendant referred to in the previous report believes it was around three-thirty P.M. When he stopped there for gasoline. That was nearly a hundred miles north of Waynesport, a good two hours drive for anyone pulling a boat. And the only other person who can remember seeing him states that just at dusk he was thirty-five miles down the ship channel below the city. Since we already know he did not register at any Waynesport hotel on that night, this appears likely.

The witness, a girl living at a tourist camp and fishing resort on Counsel Bayou, states that she saw the boat and car parked momentarily just across the highway from a roadhouse named the Counselor about a quarter mile from her cabin. She says there was one man in the car and that he was apparently doing nothing except sitting there looking at the front of the inn. After she had driven past she happened to glance into the rear-view mirror and see him start up. He followed her a short distance down the highway and turned off onto an old dirt road leading into the timber as if he were going camping or fishing. To this date I have found no one who saw him after that time.

Along the other line of search, I have turned up nothing at all. I mean, of course, the attempt to find someone who knew Mr. Conway and what the business was that brought him down here. In spite of the fact that it was your impression that he is from this area and that his family has lived here for a long time, no one recalls any member of the four Conway families living in the county who in any way answers his description. I have talked to nearly all of them personally, visited the police and some of the county officers, and questioned a number of men who served on county draft boards during the war, and so far have had no success at all. This is extremely odd in view of the general background he obviously had from your description of him as a man of considerable education and culture and who must necessarily have come from a family of some means, if not prominence. If it were not for the fact that he was obviously quite familiar with this section, I would say that you had probably been mistaken in believing he came from here.

I am going back down the channel today to make more inquiries around and beyond Counsel Bayou, and will advise you of further developments.

Very truly yours,

WALTER L. MCHUGH

Reno looked up from the last page and she was watching him anxiously. “What do you think?” she asked.

“That it’s a little funny Mac didn’t have a picture of him,” he said. “How come?”

“I didn’t have one.”

“Isn’t that a little odd? No picture at all?” She nodded. “I asked him a number of times to have some photographs made and he always said he would. But he kept putting it off. And there were no snapshots because neither of us owned a camera.”

“But you met him in Italy. So he must have had a passport.”

“I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere.”

Reno stared thoughtfully through the windshield. “In that case, he either destroyed it or took it with him. And if he took it, he must be leaving the country.”

“Yes,” she said wretchedly. “I’ve thought of that.”

Suddenly she hunched forward with her hands over her face, shaking as if with a violent chill. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in a moment, her voice taut with horror. “It keeps coming back. The gun—and the glass breaking—and the car turning over.”

Reno waited until she had recovered. “Now, about that telephone call from Mac,” he reminded gently.

“Oh.” She took the cigarette he offered and held it mechanically between her fingers, forgetting it. “It was the same day he wrote the second report. In the afternoon. Of course, I hadn’t received the report at that time, but he told me what was in it and asked me some questions. They were rather odd, the things he asked, but he didn’t explain except to say he wanted to be sure about something and that he would write me that night or the next day. And, of course, he never did, because that night he was killed.”

“What did he ask?”

“First, whether Mr. Conway had ever mentioned being in Italy with the Army during the Second World War. And whether he had a little scar, like an old burn, along the side of his left wrist. And last, whether he ever addressed people as ‘old boy’—you know, the way some of the English do.”

“And the answers?” Reno prompted.

“Yes. To all of them.”

Well, there it is, he thought bitterly. Mac ran it down at last. And he was killed before he could tell anybody else. Maybe we’ll never know.

“Mr. Reno,” she asked at last, her face full of bottomless misery, “what do you think it all means?”

He hated to do it, because he liked her. But, hell, he thought, she must know it herself. “I don’t know,” he said. “Except one thing that telegraphs itself all over the place.”

“What is that?”

“It’s simple enough. Your husband’s name wasn’t Conway.”

He started the car in a minute and drove to the railroad station. Neither of them said anything until he parked on a street near the entrance. The train was coming.

“Now listen,” he said, “I’m not going in with you. I’ll be behind you all the time, but you’ll have to carry your own bags until you get a redcap. Pick up your ticket and get aboard the train as fast as you can. I don’t think there’s a chance in the world he’ll be around here, but I’ve quit trusting anybody. And I don’t want him to find out who I am or what I look like.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll be around here, but I’ve quit advertising it. Now, if I were you, I’d get out of San Francisco. And don’t leave a forwarding address. It’s always possible whoever it was might go out there after you. But let me know where you are. Write me care of General Delivery here. I think that’s about it, except that next time somebody says he has some information for you, tell him to meet you at a police station or just write you a letter.”

He saw her get aboard, a lonely figure going slowly up the steps. Then he drove the car back to the U-Drive agency and took a cab to the hotel. He was numb with weariness, but he changed clothes and called the police station.

The Lieutenant had gone off duty. There was only one Wayland in the telephone book, however, so he caught another taxi and went out to his home. A pleasant-faced woman admitted him and left the two of them alone in the comfortable living room. Wayland was pasting stamps in an album.

“Sit down,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “What’s on your mind?”

Reno remained standing. “I don’t know whether you bring your job home with you or not, but I’ve got some news that wouldn’t keep. It proves she didn’t do it, and you can turn her loose. The man that killed McHugh is still doing business.”

The tough brown eyes expressed no emotion whatever. “What makes you think so?’

“He just tried to kill Mrs. Conway.”

“Mrs. Conway?” Then the name registered. “Oh, I remember. What happened?”

Reno told him. When he had finished Wayland stared at him thoughtfully. “Where is she now?”

“I put her on a train for California.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Reno repeated. “You want another corpse on your hands? Whoever it was will try again.”

“We might be able to protect her. Did that ever occur to you?”

“And what,” Reno asked harshly, “would give me a stupid idea like that?”

‘Look, Reno,” Wayland said coldly. “I’m glad you were able to save her. And probably she is too. But you’re going to get yourself in a jam if you don’t watch your step. If somebody did try to kill that woman, you should have notified the sheriff and had her taken to a hospital. It’s outside our jurisdiction, and we can’t do anything about it except to notify the county people. And as far as its having anything to do with McHugh’s murder, that’s only your guess. So what if Conway was a foul ball? You don’t even know he was, and it wouldn’t prove anything if you did. And if you’re trying to get your sister out on bail, you’re talking to the wrong man. I haven’t anything to do with that.”

“I’m not trying to get her out on bail,” Reno said curtly. “I don’t want her out on bail. I want her turned loose.”

“Well, this won’t get it.”

They stared at each other. “Listen,” Reno said, the gray eyes hard, “the man who tried to kill Mrs. Conway is the one who killed McHugh. And I want him. Do you?”

“Yes. If there is such a man.”

“There is. I just told you.” Reno started for the door, and looked back. “And if you do want him, you’d better start looking. Because if I find him first he’s going to be secondhand when you get him.”