Go Home, Stranger

by Charles Williams

  He studied her as he sat down and tossed the match into a tray on the coffee table. Although tall, she was nevertheless graceful in all her movements, and had one of the most hauntingly lovely faces he had ever seen. With the long-lashed violet eyes and raven blackness of hair, it was an odd combination of bold coloration and contrastingly gentle, almost melancholy shyness of expression. As he glanced down at the hands in her lap endlessly pleating and unpleating a fold of her skirt, he was aware of the agitation she was trying not to show.

  “It was such a terrible thing about Mr. McHugh,” she said at last.

  “Yes,” he said. He leaned forward a little. “Mrs. Conway, why was Mac looking for your husband?”

  He knew instantly he had been too precipitate. She was shy and bewildered, and he had hit her too suddenly with it.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Reno, but it was confidential.”

  He drew a hand wearily across his face and got up to walk over and stand looking out the window. For a moment he was conscious of wondering whether he might not lose his mind in this frustrating chase after a phantom named Conway. Maybe he was already mad, and there wasn’t any Conway at all. When he turned back, he asked, “You know Dick Carstairs, don’t you?”

  “Why, yes,” she said, puzzled. “Why?”

  “Well, let me get him on the phone. I’ll pay for the call. He’ll tell you who I am, and he’ll vouch for the fact that I’m no gossipy windbag trying to pry into your affairs out of curiosity. McHugh was the best friend I ever had, and they’re trying to convict my sister of killing him.”

  “Your sister?” she interrupted, staring at him. “You mean Vickie Shane?”

  “Yes,” Reno said. “Do you know her?”

  “Not very well, though Mr. McHugh introduced us once. But I’m a great admirer of hers.”

  “I wish you’d tell me about it. I mean, why Mac was down here, and what he found out, if anything.”

  “But it couldn’t have had anything at all to do with his being killed,” she protested.

  “Maybe it didn’t, Mrs. Conway,” he said desperately. “But don’t you see, I have to start somewhere. I’m grabbing at anything I can see.”

  “All right,” she said quietly. “It can’t do any harm, and maybe I owe it to Mr. McHugh.”

  Reno came over and sat down across from her. “First,” he said, “you mentioned that someone called you by long-distance. Do you know who it was?”

  She shook her head. “He wouldn’t give his name.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just that if I’d come down here he could tell me something about my husband.”

  “Didn’t you think that was a little funny?”

  “Of course.” Then she added quietly, “I was desperate, Mr. Reno. I still am.”

  She’s taking a beating, he thought. He was beginning to like her. There was unmistakable sincerity in the concern she felt for Mac’s death and the jam Vickie was in.

  “All right,” he said. “Now, why was Mac looking for him? And in Waynesport?”

  “Because Mr. Conway had disappeared. And Waynesport is the last place I heard from him. It was a little over a month ago, around the middle of July. He had to come down here on business, he said, and he drove the car. I tried to get him to fly, as it would take less time, but he said he would need the car here.”

  “You say you heard from him? After he left San Francisco?”

  She nodded unhappily. “Yes. I received a letter from him every day until he reached here. He wrote me the night he arrived, just a short note saying he would write again the next morning.” She stopped suddenly, her voice breaking. Then she recovered herself, and went on. “That was the last word I ever received from him. He hadn’t given me any address, and I didn’t know what to do. When two weeks had gone by I was frantic. I flew down here.

  “It was terrifying. I was utterly helpless. Waynesport is a city of over a hundred thousand, and I had absolutely nowhere to start. I understood his family had lived here—that is, he and his mother—and that he still owned some property she had left him. There were several Conways in the telephone book and I visited them, but not one of them had ever heard of my husband. In three days I had to give up and go back. That was when I thought of Mr. McHugh. It took me some time to persuade him, but when he finally realized how frantic I was, he said he would help me.”

  Reno cat staring moodily at the cigarette in his hand. All right, he thought, so she doesn’t want to talk. She’s not lying—I doubt she’d know how—but she’s just not telling me. Looking in the phone book for a man who’s disappeared! And yet she’s terrified that something’s happened to him.

  He shook his head and looked directly into her eyes. “It doesn’t jell, Mrs. Conway. I know you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but you haven’t explained anything. Just why did you hire Mac instead of going to the police?”

  She started to take offense. He could see her drawing herself up, and then she broke completely. The utter helplessness of her crying wasn’t pleasant to hear. He waited uncomfortably, feeling sorry for her and regretting his bluntness. She’s nicer he thought. Yeah, and so was Mac.

  When the sobbing had subsided and she looked up at him, tear-streaked and forlorn, he leaned over and held out his handkerchief. She shook her head mutely and got up to disappear into the bedroom. In a few minutes she returned with her face repaired with new makeup.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, standing up.

  “It’s all right.” She sat down and took the cigarette he offered. “You were right, I suppose. I didn’t tell you all of it. But it was just that I didn’t think I could make you understand. It would be hard for a man to see.”

  “You could try me,” he said. He could see a little of it already. She was very much in love with Conway and at the same time she was afraid there was something wrong about him. Maybe he was mixed up in something he shouldn’t be, but it didn’t make any difference. She wanted him back. And she was scared. What was it she was afraid she’d find? The police? Another woman? “Tell me,” he prompted. “Did Mac find out anything after he got down here?”

  “A little,” she said quietly. “And it scared me more.”

  “All right. Suppose you go back to the beginning and tell me everything.”

  “Very well,” she said. Her face was very still and she was looking past him at nothing. “I may not be able to make you understand, though. You may not know what it is to be terribly lonely, or afraid of something you can’t even name. Maybe you never had a dreadful feeling about a place.”

  “A place?”

  She nodded somberly. “I know it sounds silly. But it’s there. I can’t help it. It’s Waynesport. It’s an awful feeling there’s some connection between my husband and this place, something I can’t understand. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it was his forever poring over the newspaper from down here. He bought it at the newsstand every day—”

  “Just a minute,” Reno interrupted. “You say he bought the paper, or one of the papers, every day? Wasn’t it two or three days old by the time he got it?”

  “Yes. But that didn’t make any difference. He always read it, very thoroughly, as if he were looking for something. And when we first met—”

  “When was that?”

  “This spring. In Italy. In Naples, to be exact. We were attracted to each other from the start, partly because of a mutual interest in music and art, and partly because we both loved the country. He had lived in Italy for several years when he was a child, and later, after college, and of course he spoke the language fluently. He showed me a lot of the country I probably wouldn’t have seen or understood alone, and the night before he was supposed to sail for the States he asked me to marry him. I didn’t give him any definite answer, because it had been such a short time, but I did try to get him to delay his sailing and fly back from Paris with me a couple of weeks later. He had passage booked on some small freight-and-passenger ship sailing from Genoa for the
Gulf Coast.”

  Reno glanced up quickly. “Waynesport?”

  She nodded.

  “And he wouldn’t change his mind?”

  “No. That’s the reason I’m telling you this. I’m trying to explain that feeling. I pointed out that he would get back just as soon if he waited and flew, as it was a slow ship, but he insisted he had to go. At the time I thought perhaps he didn’t have much money, and couldn’t afford it. But, as it turned out, he must have had some other reason, for when he came on out to San Francisco and we continued seeing each other and later were married, in May, he apparently had no money worries.”

  “And you don’t know anything about his business at all?”

  “No. He never talked about money. I gathered from a few things he let drop that his mother had left him some property in the South, and I had the impression it was in Waynesport. But, Mr. Reno, nobody down here had ever heard of him!”

  “Well,” Reno said soothingly, “as you said, it’s a large place. But tell me—and this may be a little personal, but I wish you’d answer it anyway—when he left, you hadn’t had a quarrel?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “Heavens, no. In fact, I begged him to let me go too. But he said he’d be busy all the time, and that it was awfully hot down here in summer. We had never quarreled. He was a little moody and preoccupied that day, after he read the paper, but he was always very kind and considerate.”

  “You mean the Waynesport paper?”

  “Yes. The Express. He—”

  “Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt so much, Mrs. Conway. But it was after he read the paper that he told you he was coming down here?”

  “Yes. He had just come in from the street with it and was reading it in the living room. I was in another room and thought I heard him say something and went to the door to see if he had spoken to me. But he was so deeply engrossed in what he was reading he didn’t notice me. All the rest of the day he was very absent-minded, and that night he said he’d have to go to Waynesport.”

  “Do you still have the paper?”

  “No. I’m sorry. Mr. McHugh also asked for it, but it had been thrown away.”

  “Do you remember the date of it?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. But it must have been July twelfth. As you say, it was always two or three days old when he got it, and he left San Francisco the next morning, which was the sixteenth.”

  “And the last letter you received from him was mailed in Waynesport four or five days later?”

  “Yes. On the twentieth.”

  A little over a month ago, Reno thought. And for nearly all that time his car was in a police garage. Something either happened to him, or he was doing a deliberate runout on her. But why did he keep writing until he got here if he intended to fade? It didn’t make sense. He got up and prowled around restlessly.

  “All right, Mrs. Conway,” he said. “Can you tell me what you heard from McHugh from the time he got here?”

  “Just a minute, please.” She went out into the bedroom. In a minute she came back carrying two thick envelopes and a telegram. “This is all of it,” she said, “except one long-distance telephone call. The phone call was last, and the strangest of all, and it made me think that maybe he had found something.” She was quiet for a moment as she sat down and Reno could see she was trying not to break down and cry again. “But I’ll give them to you in order. The first was the telegram.”

  Reno reached for it and unfolded the yellow sheet. “Please advise if car had trailer hitch,” it said. “McHugh.”

  She shook her head at his questioning look. “I didn’t understand it either, at the time. If he thought he had located the car, he had the license number and motor number.”

  “No,” Reno said. “He wasn’t trying to identify the car. But was there a hitch on it?”

  “Not when it left San Francisco.”

  Reno nodded. “That was what Mac wanted to know. So there was one on it when he located it. Did he find the trailer?”

  “That was another strange thing,” she said. “It wasn’t a trailer.”

  Chapter 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.