Charles Williams - Go Home, Stranger

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.”

Nine

But what about the trailer? The girl had told somebody she’d found him poking at it with the rod, and the man she’d told had moved it. But did they suspect who he was? Or did they merely think he’d stumbled on it by accident, and had moved it before he could learn what it was? It made a lot of difference. He was playing a dangerous game with somebody in the dark, and if it developed the other man could see, his chances of finding out anything—or even of staying alive—were approaching the vanishing point.

Where did Patricia Lasater fit in? And how could she have any connection with this ugly business, whatever it was? She wasn’t even from this part of the country, judging from her automobile license plates. And how did you tie in those brown eyes and that delightful smile with murder? He grunted, and angrily flipped the cigarette out into the darkness. Brown eyes, hell! She was in this up to her neck.

He got up and went inside the cabin. Switching on the light, he sat down on the bed and spread the newspaper open again. I’m Counsel, he thought doggedly; what do I see? Why do I have to go back to Counsel Bayou with a boat? Everything’s sold, I’ve been away for years. . . . Moths flickered and danced around the light bulb and a mosquito buzzed near his ear. The old sense of futility seized him. He wasn’t Counsel, he didn’t even know Counsel; how could he know what the man had seen?

Why not walk over to the Counselor, and have a drink? Maybe a little rest would freshen his mind so he could see some pattern in all this senseless jumble. Before he went out he put the newspaper and the copy of Mac’s letter in one of the suitcases and locked it.

* * *

The neon sign was a blaze of garish light, and there were a few cars parked in the shell driveway. The front door opened into a short hall, which had been made into a hat check stand. Through an archway on the left he could see the snowy tablecloths of the dining room, while the bar was beyond a smaller door on the right. It was air-conditioned and almost cold after the hot summer night. He sat down on a red leather stool and glanced around in the dimness. Two men in white suits rattled a dice cup against the smooth mahogany at the other end of the bar, and a tall blonde in an abbreviated pirate costume carried a tray of drinks back to the row of leather-upholstered booths. Somebody had spent a lot of money here. A little overripe for the fishing-camp trade, he reflected; there must be gambling upstairs.

“Martini,” he said, when the barman came over.

The drink was good and very cold. He was still sipping it and about to order another when the girl came in. He had been idly watching the door in the dark mirror behind the bar, and at first he didn’t recognize her. Both times he’d seen her before she had been dressed in slacks, but now she was very cool and lovely in a white skirt, white shoes, and a tawny wide-sleeved blouse. She went on past and sat down at one of the booths. Wonder if she gets paid overtime for snooping after five o’clock, he thought.

On sudden impulse Reno got up and walked back to her booth.

“Hello,” he said.

“Oh.” She looked up and smiled.

“Mind if I sit down?”’

“Not at all. You’ll have to pay for your own drink, though. I’m a schoolteacher.”

“I’ll buy you one, if you’ll let me. I’m a patron of the arts.”

When the drinks came, he said, “My name’s Reno. Pete Reno. I already know yours. I asked.”

“Thank you. That’s quite flattering. What do you do, Mr. Reno, when you aren’t being a patron of the arts?” She paused, and smiled charmingly. “Or fishing with your head under water?”

She’s a cool one, he thought. Or didn’t she know he had gone back and found the trailer moved? “I’m a construction stiff,” he answered. “Dams—things like that. You name it, we build it.”

“It sounds interesting.”

“So does painting. Tell me about it. Do you sell them?”

She nodded. “A few. I ruin a lot more than I finish, though.”

“Landscapes?”

“Mostly.”

“How’d you happen to pick this country. I notice from your car that you’re from Ohio.”

She leaned back in the booth. The brown eyes were thoughtful, and a little moody. “It’s hard to explain, exactly, I’d seen it once before, and it interested me. It’s picturesque, but there’s more to it than that. A feeling, you might say.”

“What kind?”

“Peace? No. That’s only partly it. Deceptive peace, with violence just under the surface. I think that’s it. It’s a hard thing to capture, because the violence is only felt. But I’m probably boring you.”

“No,” he protested. “On the contrary.” He held out cigarettes and lit one for her.

“Probably most of it, of course, comes from the bayous themselves,” she went on. “The water is so quiet and dark, and yet you have a feeling of all sorts of things you can’t see, just below the surface.”

Like trailers, he thought. It was a good line, though, and she did it convincingly.

He glanced around at the bar. “Odd place,” he commented. “I understand it used to be a residence.”

She nodded, and he thought he saw a brief shadow of pity cross her face. “The fall of the House of Counsel, I suppose you’d call it. It’s a strange story, and a little tragic. Do you know it?”

“No. Only that they were a wealthy family and owned this part of the country at one time.”

“You might call it from family portraits to neon in three generations. And, incidentally, the portraits are very good. They’re all by the same man, an Italian, dead now, but who used to get very high prices for his commissions. The people who bought the house left them right where they were, and I come over here for dinner two or three times a week so I can look at them.”

“Speaking of dinner,” he said, “I’d like to see them too. How about having it with me, and pointing them out?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Why, yes. Thank you.”

Probably just what she was hoping for, he thought cynically. It should be an enjoyable meal with each of them trying to pump the other. He paid for the drinks and they went into the dining room.

There were three of the portraits. One was a tough-eyed older man somewhere in his fifties or sixties, the second was a handsome youth in the uniform of a flier in the First World War, but it was the third that caught the eye. It was obviously a young mother and her son, and in it the artist had been fortunate or skillful enough to capture something besides the golden good looks of the two. It was all in the mother’s face, in the way she was looking at the boy. There was adoration, and devotion, and an almost voracious possessiveness. The boy appeared to be about five, with blond curly hair and gray eyes, very much the young aristocrat.

“Robert. The last of the Counsels.”

“Grown up now, I suppose?” Reno asked politely.

She nodded. “He’d be—oh, thirty-three or thirty-four. That portrait was painted in 1923.”

“You didn’t know him, then?”

“Oh, no. Only some of the stories,” she replied. “They say he hasn’t been back here for years.”