Charles Williams - Go Home, Stranger

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.