Go Home, Stranger

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.”

He heard the telephone drop into the cradle, and she appeared in the doorway. Her eyes avoided his.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Reno,” she said awkwardly, “but I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“But Mac’s reports—”

“I’ve changed my mind. It was foolish to think I could let anyone read them.”

“But you can’t do that! I’ve got to see them.”

“Please,” she said, almost tearfully, her voice beginning to be a little wild. “Will you go? I—I can’t talk about it any more.”

He stood up. He was beginning to understand now. “So he called you again?”

She made no answer, but her eyes begged him to get out. He thought bitterly of the two reports lying there on the table, but there was nothing he could do now.

“All right,” he said, then paused with his hand on the door. “But there are a couple of things I’ve got to tell you. One of them is that your friend on the phone sounds like a bad check to me, and you’d better take a good look at anything he sells you.

“The other one is that I’m still looking for the joker in this deal. And if I find it, things are going to get rugged.”

He was still burning with anger and disappointment as he went down in the elevator. In another five minutes he’d have learned what Mac had found out. Well, it couldn’t be helped now. The man who had called her had warned her to talk to no one; that was obvious. And he’d told her where to meet him.

He was crossing the lobby when the idea struck him. He stopped and considered it, his eyes growing hard, and turned and headed for the telephone booths. The caller claimed to know something about Conway. Maybe, then, if Mrs. Conway would lead the way out there . . .

He looked up U-Drive agencies in the book and hurried over to the nearest one. After he had rented a car and secured a road map, he had to circle the block five or six times before a parking place opened up where he could watch the hotel entrance. He slid into it, put a nickel in the meter, and settled down to wait. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter of five.

Sunlight tilted brazenly into the street, and the glare hurt his eyes. Fifteen minutes dragged by. Maybe he had missed her. He got the road map out of the glove compartment and studied it between glances at the hotel doors. Counsel Bayou was about thirty-five miles to the southeast, one of the myriad waterways intersecting the main ship channel on its meandering way to the Gulf.

He glanced up suddenly. A car was pulling into the hotel loading zone, a gray Cadillac with California license plates. That would be Conway’s car. He saw the white-coated garage attendant get out, and Mrs. Conway came out of the hotel.

He slid in behind the big car as it pulled out of the zone. Keeping well closed up, he followed her through the downtown traffic, and when they were on the open highway he fell back about a quarter mile, allowing two or three cars to get between them. The sun was setting now, and shadows were thickening in the moss-hung labyrinths of the live oaks on both sides of the road. Farmhouses were farther apart as they wound on into the bayou country.

As he watched the cars ahead he wondered suddenly and angrily if all this had anything to do with Vickie. Maybe he was just wasting time. But why, in the name of heaven, would a man who was trying to disappear announce where he was going, write a letter every day until he got there, and leave his car on the street to be picked up by the police?

He shook his head impatiently. The whole thing was crazy. What about the trailer hitch? If it hadn’t been a trailer Conway was pulling when he got here, it had to be a boat. But why? Was he going fishing? That was stupid; there were hundreds of places all over this bayou country that rented boats to fishermen. Not even an idiot would spend from three to five hundred dollars for a boat-and-trailer rig and go dragging it across the continent for a couple of days’ fishing when he could rent one.

And, he thought angrily, as he kept his distance behind the big car ahead, whoever had killed Mac had been no idiot. He had covered himself too beautifully; and Mac was nobody’s pushover, to begin with. He slowed abruptly. Up ahead in the gathering dusk the Cadillac had swung off the highway onto a shell-surfaced road leading south through the trees. Then he noticed with surprise that one of the cars between them was turning also. Was somebody else following her? Probably just a coincidence, he thought; if he was tailing her too, he’d be back here jockeying for third place with me.

He remembered, from his study of the road map, that the ship channel should be somewhere ahead in the direction they were going now. The highway roughly paralleled it, on the north side. Suddenly they were upon it. He came around a turn in the road and found the other two cars stopped at the approach to a big steel bridge showing ghostly in the twilight. The span was lifting, and a deep-laden tanker was easing slowly down the channel, its running lights glowing brightly against the dark walls of timber.

He stopped, grateful for the car between them. The tanker passed, a muted rumble of Diesels coming up through the ventilators, and the span started swinging down. About a mile farther along the middle car turned off onto a dirt road. And then she switched on her lights. It was going to be difficult from here on. In another few minutes at most he’d have to turn on his own, and she couldn’t help knowing there was a car behind her.

The country was changing now. They were running out of the timber into a flat marshland covered with cattails and high grass and crisscrossed with canals. He saw her lights swing sharply in a right-angled turn, and they were running directly into the fading afterglow of the sunset. It was a forbidding landscape. The dark plain swept away toward the horizon to the south and west as far as the eye could reach, the monotonous marsh growth shadowy and inhospitable in the gathering night. No habitation was visible anywhere, nothing but the road running ahead.

The warning began to sound suddenly in his mind. If this was actually where her caller had told her to come, it was beginning to smell.

He thought swiftly. He could speed up and pass her, force her to stop. Maybe he could talk her out of it. But, hell, he thought angrily, that would ruin everything. He’s down here somewhere, and if I make her turn back I may never find him or get another chance. I’m not her mother; she’s old enough to know what she’s doing.

It was ho good, and he knew it. He couldn’t let her do it. He cursed, flipped on the headlights, and hit the throttle. Then he saw the lights ahead of him swing sharp left as the road turned south again, deeper into the vast solitude.

The walls of grass flew back toward him and disappeared into the darkness behind. Wooden bridge boards clattered. He reached the turn, and when he was around it, skidding and throwing shell, he saw she was farther ahead. He swore again. She had seen his lights come on, and she was trying to run away from him. He ground on the throttle again. And then he saw it happen. It was sickening.

Her headlights slued crazily and then swung, tilted against the sky, as the car went out of control, skidded, and went over. For one terrible part of a second they were at right angles to the road, shattering light against the wall of grass, then they disappeared as if the car had been swallowed, instantly and entirely, by some huge monster of the swamp. There was no sound at all, not yet; nothing but the awful evidence of the lights and then the end of them, as he hit the brakes with pure reflex and began fighting his speed down just inside the margin of control. There was no time to wonder what had happened, until the sound did reach him, and then he knew. In the second before he heard the crash, he heard the other thing. It was a gun.

His car was skidding now. The rear wheels were yawing toward the ditch. He eased the brake and fought it back onto the crown of the road, and when he straightened out again he was almost on the spot. There was no Cadillac in his lights. He could see the road, and it wasn’t there. There was a canal, and a wooden bridge with one railing, and that was all he saw before he slashed down with one hand at the light switch, set the hand brake, arid was out and running even before the car had shuddered to a stop.

Darkness swallowed him. He ran bent over to keep from silhouetting himself against the-sky, and he could see nothing except the faintly luminous shell of the road. Then he felt the bridge flooring under his feet, and stopped. There was dead silence now except the pounding of his heart and the suck and slap of water as the wave the Cadillac had set up died away in the pads and grass farther along the bank of the canal. It was the left-hand railing that had been ripped off, and even as he jumped he could make out the dark shape of something that could be part of the car sticking out of the water.

The water came up to his shoulders, and he could feel mud suck at his feet as he threshed his way forward, groping for the car. It couldn’t make any difference, he thought bitterly; she’s dead anyway. Then his hand hit something. It was a tire. He raised his head and could make out all four of them, just sticking above the surface. The car was lying on its top. He went under, groping frenziedly along the side. His arm brushed broken glass, and he felt the pain of a bad cut. The door handle had to be just above that glass somewhere. Then he felt it. He pulled. It was jammed.

The other door, he thought furiously. God, how long had it been now? As he floundered around the end of the car and down on the other side, some part of his mind was still trying to guess what the man with the gun was doing. Where was he now?

The water was deeper here. He took a quick breath and went under. It took only a second to locate the door handle. He unlatched it and pulled, feeling the terrible need to hurry run through him like physical pain. It was stuck. He set his feet against the side and heaved, fighting it. The door moved a scant inch and stopped. He pulled himself down to his knees and felt along the doorframe, and then he knew what it was. The top of the car had settled so far into the mud that the only way the door could be opened would be to dig enough of the muck from in front of it to allow it to swing. And long before he could do that she would be dead, if she weren’t already.

Then he felt a surge of hope. The window was rolled down. There was opening enough for him to slide through by keeping his stomach flat against the mud. He was pulling himself down when he felt the car shift a little and settle again. He fought down the whisperings of panic. Was it worth it, for a woman who was probably already dead? If the car rolled now, or sank a little deeper into the mud, he’d never get out.

Then, for the first time, he became conscious of the sound. It was a spasmodic thumping somewhere inside, a sound that could be made by the unconscious and futile threshings of someone drowning. There was no help for it. He had to try.

He was halfway in now. For the first time he realized he should have returned to the surface for another breath before attempting it. How long had he been under now? Twenty seconds? Thirty? His lungs were beginning to hurt. Soft mud sucked at him, while the window frame brushed ominously against his back. He felt the car slip again. He threw his arms about wildly, felt his hand touch something, and grabbed.

It was an arm. He slid his hands along it and caught her shoulders. She was struggling weakly, and one of her hands fastened itself in his clothing. He began inching backward, pulling her down toward the window. The car shuddered and settled another fraction of an inch and he fought back panic. His lungs were tortured; he had only a few seconds more. Then he was outside, pulling her body through the window. He put his feet against the muddy bottom of the canal and pushed upward, still holding her by the shoulders. Their heads came clear of the surface with a little swirling and splashing of water, and almost instantly the night erupted with the wicked crash of the gun.

He felt rather than heard the impact as lead slammed into the water a few feet off to his left. It was too dark now to see anything at all; the man was shooting at the noise they had made in surfacing. Standing perfectly still, up to his chin in water, Reno heard the metallic clack, clack as he operated the bolt and knew the man was shooting a rifle. The gun crashed again and lead ricocheted off the surface of the water to go screaming into the night. Reno sucked in a deep breath and was just going under when a brilliant shaft of light suddenly burst out across the surface of the canal.

His mind was clear now, and he was full of a cold and terrible rage. He was down on the mud at the bottom of the canal, against the side of the car, holding the inert figure of the woman in his left arm. She had ceased struggling, and every passing second robbed her of a little more of her dwindling chance for life. He had to get her out of there within a minute or two and start applying artificial respiration to save her, even if she hadn’t been hit by that first shot that had made her lose control of the car. Aside from the natural desire to save her if he could, he knew now that Conway was somehow the answer to the whole question and that if she died he might never know what it was. His only lead would be gone forever.

He coldly assayed their chances as he pulled his way around the end of the car. The man probably hadn’t seen them. The first stab of light had hit a little farther up the canal and had started sweeping toward them just as he went under. Could he make it to the bridge before he had to surface? He was around the car now, kicking along the bottom. But which way was the bridge? When he lost contact with the car all sense of direction was gone.

His lungs were beginning to sting again. Any second now he had to come up. Then he felt grass stems raking along his face, and the slimy stems of pads. If the light’s over here; he thought, we’re dead. He’ll see them moving. The bottom shelved upward against his shoulder, and he felt his face break out into the air. He was against one of the banks of the canal.

He opened his eyes, and through the tangled screen of grass about his face he could see the light. It was playing steadily on the upturned running gear of the car, and it was coming from this same side of the canal. The man was standing some fifteen yards away in the tall reeds along the bank.

Reno lay on his left side, completely submerged except for the upper part of his face, with Mrs. Conway in his arms in front of him. He wondered desperately if there was still any hope.

Moving with infinite caution, so as not to disturb the surface of the water, he slid a hand upward and touched the fingers against her throat. He could feel the pulse. It was pitifully weak and faltering, but her heart was beating. She was dying of oxygen starvation, but her life could still be saved. If only they could get out of the water! He stared at the light with an implacable hatred. He thought of Mac, and of Vickie, and of Mrs. Conway now, and wanted to stand up and charge straight into that beam of light and get his hands on the man who held it.

Yeah, straight into the meat-chopper, he thought coldly, getting hold of himself. That flashlight was being held along the underside of a rifle barrel, and He would be dead before he could sit up. He jerked his eyes a little, without moving his head. The light was moving now. It swept slowly along the opposite bank of the canal, searching every inch of the vegetation. It went beyond, out of range of his eyes as he held his face rigidly still. It would be probing the dark recesses under the bridge behind them. Then it would come back, along this side.

It was full on them. He was staring straight into the blinding intensity of it, not moving, not daring even to close his eyelids or breathe, his fingers still against the throat and the weakening pulse of the woman in his arm. It was all the staring eyes in the world suddenly concentrated into one, probing into him, literally burning him out of hiding. An age seemed to pass while he waited for the sound of the shot, knowing he would never hear it if it came. Then suddenly the light was gone.

It jerked around and the rifle cracked, all at once. It was the car that drew it. Reno watched,, fascinated. It was turning. The wheels swung up and over and the whole thing sank out of sight as it settled into the deeper water in the middle of the canal. Two or three big air bubbles came up and burst on the surface and a few drops of gasoline spread a sheen of expanding color. The light remained fixed for what seemed like an eternity as the man watched the surface. Reno heard him laugh softly.

Then he was going away. He was pushing through the reeds and cattails, swinging the light ahead of him. Reno waited, fighting down the yearning to go after him. There’ll be another time, he thought coldly. He made himself lie still. In another minute he heard the sound of the man’s stepping into a boat and the popping roar of an outboard motor. He was headed away from them.

Reno pushed himself up and rose unsteadily from the water, listening to the dying sound of the boat. This is one time, pal, he thought, when you should have checked your figures.