Go Home, Stranger

Eight

He climbed back into the boat and dressed, and stared coldly out across the bayou as he thought of Patricia Lasater. So she’d just happened to come along, the way she’d just happened to be with Mac the night he was killed. He cursed, and sculled the boat over against the bank to find the tracks where it had been pulled out. Then he sat and stared. There weren’t any.

The old tracks were still there, but after he’d covered a hundred yards in each direction he knew the trailer had not been pulled up on the bank. It had been moved by boat. But how? None of the skiffs at the camp would support it, even the submerged weight of it. And when he stopped to think of it, how could she have moved it anyway? It would have taken a powerful man to lift that trailer far enough off the bottom to tow it. Well, she knew a powerful man, didn’t she? She was with him right now.

Back at the camp he took a shower, changed into white slacks and a T shirt, and drove back to Waynesport. Howell Gage was prowling the office, dictating to a pretty brunette. When they were finished, Reno went in and sat down.

“Who’s Robert Counsel?” he asked abruptly.

“An atavism,” Gage said. “Feudal aristocrat washed up on the shore of Twentieth Century democracy. Why?”

“You remember Mac was looking for somebody?”

Gage sat down on the corner of his desk and tapped a cigarette against his thumbnail. “Joker by the name of Conway, as I recall. Vickie told me. So you think it was Counsel?”

Reno nodded. “I know it was. What I’m trying to find out is why.” Briefly, he told of Mrs. Conway’s narrow escape and of Mac’s reports.

“How about the description?” Gage interrupted.

“Tall. Gray eyed. Erect way of walking. Cultured sort of voice, with only a trace of southern accent. Very assured, English-public-school manner, fluent Italian—”

“Counsel,” Gage interrupted, his eyes thoughtful. “But he couldn’t have been around here all this time without being recognized.”

“I realize that,” Reno said impatiently. “But the fact remains. McHugh found out it was Counsel he was after. The telephone call to Mrs. Conway clinches that. He wanted to know those other two things, and when she verified them he was certain. Then Mac was killed. Somebody got Mrs. Conway down here and she was almost killed. So when you add all that up, what do you get?”

“Counsel’s well hidden. Or he’s dead.”

“Right. And either way, somebody’s trying to cover his tracks.” He told of finding the trailer, and of its disappearance after the girl had caught him poking at it with the rod.

“Same girl who was with McHugh that night,” Reno added.

“We’ll have her picked up.”

“No.” Reno shook his head. “Sure, Vickie can identify her, if she is the same one. But just suppose it’s not, or that she refuses to talk? It’s just Vickie’s word against hers as to what she and Mac were doing together. And if she’d wanted to clear anything up, she’s had ten days already.”

“I see what you mean.” Gage nodded, deep in thought. “But I’d better warn you. You can get yourself in a jam. First, you didn’t report the attack on Mrs. Conway. And now you’re harboring a fugitive. That girl is still wanted—”

“And I still want the guy who killed Mac,” Reno said curtly. “I tried to sell the police this Conway deal and they weren’t having any. I’m telling you so you’ll have this much to go on just in case the guy gets behind me the way he did Mac. What I’ve got to find out is why Counsel came back here.”

“That’s not going to be easy. If he’s alive, you’re up against one of the damnedest minds I’ve ever run into. And if he’s dead, he won’t tell you much.”

“I know. But look, here’s one other thing. It was something in the paper, the Waynesport Express of July twelfth, that brought him down here. Mrs. Conway’s positive of it. Can you get hold of a copy, from the paper itself or from the library?”

Gage thought a minute. “That’s easy.” He pressed the buzzer on the intercom. When the brunette came in, he tossed her the keys to his car. “Drive out to my mother’s house, Miss Crews, and ask her to let you have the July twelfth Express.” He looked at Reno and grinned. “Tell her I’ll take good care of it.”

When the girl had gone, he added, for Reno’s benefit, “My mother hasn’t thrown anything away since her bridal bouquet. She keeps the papers for six months and sells them to the junkman.”

“Good,” Reno said. Then he went on, “Did you know Counsel?”

“As well as anyone, I guess. My grandfather used to have a place out near the Bayou, and I saw quite a bit of him when he was home. He and his mother spent a lot of time in Italy.”

“Can you think of any reason he’d come easing in here dragging a boat? After being gone that long?”

Gage shook his head. “None at all. Except that nothing Robert Counsel did would ever surprise me.”

“Don’t be too sure. Maybe this will.” Reno pulled from his pocket the copy of the letter from McHugh’s friend in the FBI. He tossed it across the desk.

When Gage had read it, he shook his head and handed it back. “That’s Robert. Bored with the court-martial.”

“You’re not surprised he was caught stealing. Had he been in trouble before?”

“Not as far as I know. But let’s just say that it wasn’t out of any regard for what he’d consider middle-class morality. Probably he’d never had to steal before.”

Reno gestured with irritation. “He doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Gage crushed out his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “And the more you talk to people around here, the less he’s going to make. Too many contradictory factors.”

“Such as—” Reno prompted impatiently.

“Well, to begin with, Robert Counsel should have been a mamma’s boy, by all the rules. But he wasn’t. He was one of the coldest-nerved devils I ever saw. Mamma thought he was her little darling, all right, but she didn’t know the half of it. He had all the drive, audacity, and brilliance of one of those success-story characters who’s born on the wrong side of the tracks and winds up owning half the continent before he’s thirty-five—except that he was already rich when he was born and had nothing but contempt for all the peasant virtues like work. But there was a touch of genius about him in the things that did interest him, like poetry, architecture, the fine art of seduction, speedboat design, and explosives.”

“Explosives?” Reno asked, puzzled.

“Just one of the facets of a brilliant mind. I’m trying to show you what you’re up against in attempting to guess what it was he came back for. While the young princeling was being privately tutored, he was already branching out into one of the fields Mamma didn’t know anything about. In his spare time he was trailing around with another genius named Max Easter, learning to crimp dynamite caps and tamp powder charges to blast stumps out of fields. This Easter was a radical and a troublemaker, and an old-time powder monkey who could remove a stump right from alongside a house. Robert, I understand, could do the same thing, except that according to Max he had to watch him all the time to keep him from cutting the fuses too short just to relieve the tedium. The subconscious death wish, or only a screwball kid playing with dynamite? Take your choice.”

“Sounds more all the time like what Mac’s friend called him. A rare one.”

“He was. But if he’s really gone bad, God help everybody.”

“You say they were rich. And now the property’s all gone. What happened?”

“Nothing. Just attrition. Expensive tastes and no management after the grandfather died. They gradually sold everything. His mother died shortly after he was drafted.”

Reno sat deep in thought. “Well, that’s all we’ve got. He served his time in the military prison and then went back to Italy. When he returned to the States he came in through here on a ship. So in spite of what people think, he had been back once before he came down in the car. Something he saw in the paper made him come back, this time, bringing the boat. He and the boat both disappeared, and when Mac got too hot on the trail he was killed. What was he after?”

“That’s your question,” Gage said. “You answer it. I wouldn’t even guess.”

* * *

Some fifteen or twenty minutes later Miss Crews returned with the newspaper. They each took a section, and for an hour they studied the columns for a clue.

They traded, and tried again.

Trying to put himself in Counsel’s place, with the information he had gained so far, Reno first read all the local news items, a column at a time, but nothing clicked. What was there here that could have brought a man all the way from California? He ground his way doggedly through the obituaries, the want ads, the shipping news, and even the editorials. There were a half-dozen ads under the “Personals” heading in the classified section, but they were only the usual come-ons. The shipping news was routine: two loaded tankers had sailed, the government had let another contract for additional dredging of the channel, a Norwegian ship was discharging coffee from Santos. It occurred to him that he didn’t know the name of the ship on which Conway, or Counsel, had returned from Italy. He could call Mrs. Conway and find out, but what would it prove? He folded the paper at last, conscious of the futility of his search. How could he find a clue when he didn’t even know what he was looking for?

Gage did the same, and sighed. “Assuming Mrs. Conway was right,” he said, “whatever it was jumped right into Robert’s eye as soon as he looked at it. Only we’re not Robert.”

Reno stood up. “I’ll bring it back to you in a couple of days. It’s right here in front of us, and I’m going to keep trying until I stumble onto it.”

“How about it Vickie? You want to see her?”

Reno hesitated, feeling the desire pulling at him. Maybe he could cheer her up. . . . At last he shook his head. “The less we advertise who I am, the better chance I’ve got. Just tell her to hang on a few more days.”