Charles Williams - Go Home, Stranger

“Found what?” He stared. She was fumbling in her purse now.

“Here,” she said.

He took it, and felt the skin prickle along the back of his neck. It was a silver cigarette lighter with the initials “R.C.” engraved on one side. He was conscious of an eerie feeling that at last he had put out a hand and touched the elusive and mysterious figure he had sought so long.

“Where’d you get this, Pat?” he demanded.

“I found it. Just beyond where you swam the bayou.”

“When?”

“Three days ago. I was up there with Max Easter.”

“Does he know you found the lighter?”

“No. I don’t think he saw me pick it up. He was ahead of me when I saw it lying off to one side, near the water. I wouldn’t have noticed it except a sunlight happened to hit it.”

“But you didn’t get a chance to look around? For anything else? I mean, you were with Easter—” His voice was tight with excitement.

“Not then,” she said. “But I went back the next day. Alone. I looked around, but there wasn’t any indication there’d ever been any people up there, except somebody had cut down a tree, about a hundred yards away, back from the water.”

“A tree?” he asked. “Was it cut up?”

She tried to remember., “Just partly, I think. Why, Pete?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, his eyes thoughtful. “It just seems an odd place to cut wood. It’d have to be hauled out in a boat. There wasn’t a road of any kind, was there?”

“No.”

“And it was right near where the explosions were?”

“That’s right. Just beyond where you came out of the water.”

“Where you pulled me out of the water,” he corrected gently. Then he went on. “I’ve got to have a look at that place. I’ll do it tomorrow when I go after that boat.”

“I’ll go with you. We can take my boat with the motor.”

He shook his head. “You’d better stay. I’m suspicious of that country.”

Her voice was firm. “I’m suspicious of it too. That’s the reason I’m going.” Then she added, “I’d have to show you where I found the lighter, anyway.”

He saw the futility of argument. After all, he’d said they were in this thing together. The thought of possible danger faded as he became conscious of a wild impatience to get back up there. He had no idea of what he might find, if he found anything at all, but there was a chance the answer to everything might be there on that desolate arm of the bayou. They had to wait until tomorrow. It was no place to blunder around in at night.

* * *

They had dinner at the Counselor and drove down to the Gulf. Where the ship channel met the sea, long jetties ran out from the beach, and a lighthouse swung its probing beam against the offshore darkness. He parked the car and they talked for a long time through the rushing monotone of the surf beyond them while the sea wind blew against their faces.

Once her voice broke as she was speaking of her brother, and he knew she was crying quietly in the darkness. He held her in his arms as if she were someone he had known for years, and when the crying had ceased he kissed her. She came willingly to him, with a warmth and soft fragrance that made his breath catch suddenly in his throat; then she gently disengaged herself and moved back. Afterward, for a while, there was an awkward sort of awareness between them that made them formally polite.

When they came back to the camp he walked up on the porch of her cabin and held her hand for a moment as they said good night. In a moment of sour rebellion against the way she was beginning to dominate his thoughts he merely said, “Keep your door locked,” and turned away.

He went down to the float, reluctant even to attempt sleep with his mind pulled this way and that by a mysterious and disappearing phantom called Robert Counsel and a brown-eyed girl he couldn’t keep in her proper perspective. He had just put flame to a cigarette and dropped the match into the water when he heard someone coming down the path. He whirled, instantly alert.

“That you, Reno?” a voice asked. It had the soft, yet somehow vicious monotone of Skeeter’s drawl.

“Yeah,” Reno replied. The match had blinded him momentarily and he could only guess where the other man was. “What is it?”

“I didn’t see your boat here tonight. You lose it?”

“Let’s say I left it,” Reno answered. “I had a little accident. Going back after it in the morning.”

“Where?” Skeeter asked.

“Up the bayou a little way.” Reno’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness again and he could see him, the hard, thin slat of a figure at the foot of the trail.

“How far’s a little way? And what you mean, an accident?”

“Look, Malone,” Reno said, feeling irritation. “I left your boat up there. I’m going after it. If I don’t find it, I’ll pay you for it. Does that clear it up?”

“Mebbe.” Malone’s voice was utterly without emotion. “But I’m not worried much about the boat. If I was you, I’d stay out of that country up there.”

Reno grew tense in the darkness. “Why?”

“You might get lost.”

“I’m pretty good at finding my way around.”

“So was some of the people they never found. I’d think it over. There’s plenty of bass down here.”

Advice? Or warning? Reno wondered about it later, after he had gone in the cabin and undressed for bed. He lay on the hard mattress trying to guess what had been behind the words.

Sleep was a long time coming. I didn’t have enough parts of this, he thought, and now I’ve got too many. Where was the pattern of it? What connection could there be between Mac’s death and two men who had disappeared off the face of the earth here one night in May, a boat that had blown up for no reason at all, a man named Counsel who was everywhere and nowhere, and explosions on a lost reach of bayou? And the last person he thought of before he finally went to sleep was Patricia Lasater.

No, Devers, he thought. Patricia Devers. He could hear the surf and see the upturned face so near to his, the eyes immense and still faintly misted with tears.

Tomorrow, they’d go up there together. He dropped off to sleep with a strange feeling that something was going to happen tomorrow.

Fourteen

Their plans were interrupted.

He was waiting when she emerged from her cabin early the next morning clad in white slacks and a long-sleeved blouse. They ate breakfast together in the restaurant under the cold eye of Delia, and walked down to the float. Mildred Talley was climbing from the water.

She regarded them with an arch smile. “Going to gang up on the poor bass, are we?”

“Something like that,” Reno answered briefly.

“But haven’t you forgotten your tackle?” she asked innocently.

He was about to make some curt reply and turn away to the job of bailing out the boat when he looked up suddenly, catching the sound of a motor. It was not an outboard. He looked down toward the bend below them, where the bayou ran up from the highway bridge and the ship channel, and at that moment it came into view, a trim cabin cruiser dazzling in the sunlight with new white paint. Off the float it backed down with a growl of power, coming to rest in mid-channel.

The man who had been at the wheel was Hutch Griffin, in white shirt and slacks, the reckless face grinning at them from under the rakish slant of a yachting cap. “Hi, men,” he called. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Reno was conscious of quick irritation. He had forgotten about the trial run in the new cruiser, but there was no way they could get out of it now without some explanation. He shot a quick glance at Patricia and saw her look of dismay.

As if he had been reading their thoughts, Griffin called across to them. “Only be two or three hours. I’m running down to the bar to take off a pilot, and we’ll be back by eleven.”