Charles Williams - Go Home, Stranger

They were out in the ship channel now and he could see the lighted buoy winking on and off below them. Swinging wide, against the opposite shore, they slipped past in the impenetrable darkness beyond the range of its flashes. He rowed softly now, guarding against every sound.

When they were a hundred yards or more beyond the light he stopped pulling on the oars and held his breath to listen. There was no sound except an occasional faint rumble from the dredge working below them. The darkness of the water and of the sky seemed to run together, as if they were suspended in a black void and cut off from all contact with the world except the intermittent flashing of the buoy just visible out of the corner of his eye.

He felt cold and hollow inside. There was nothing here, no one at all. He’d been wrong, or they were too late. Griffin would have been here as soon as darkness fell, dragging for whatever it was that was so valuable and had cost so many lives. They had missed him. Or, he thought, there never was anything. I added it up wrong. It was a pipe dream.

The boat was swinging a little. They were drifting on the sluggish current, and the buoy light was coming around in front of his eyes. He started to swing his head to keep from looking at it; then he stopped, feeling the quick surge of excitement along his nerves.

Something had blocked the light. And there it was again. Somewhere between them and the buoy another boat was drifting, as silently as their own. He leaned forward and tapped Patricia on the knee, uttering no sound. Catching her hand, he gestured toward the buoy, and could feel her grow tense as she caught his meaning. He heard her sharp intake of breath. She had seen the boat too.

He dipped the oars, very softly, and stopped the boat’s swinging. They lay astern toward the buoy as he backed water on them again and, eased it up against the current. Below them, in salt water, the tide was ebbing and water was running slowly out of the channel. If the other boat was Griffin’s, he was letting it drift on the current as he dragged for what he sought.

Easy, he thought; take it easy. The slightest noise now would ruin it all. He pushed on the oars again. They were drawing nearer. He could see a pale blur ahead of them now and knew it was the cabin cruiser with its new white paint.

Then he stopped, listening. They were some fifteen yards from the larger boat now and he was conscious of a peculiar rasping sound and a trickle of water. It puzzled him for an instant; then he knew what it was. A line was being hauled in over the stern of the cruiser, coming up out of the water and dripping a little as it sawed across the transom. The sound stopped, and was replaced by another, a heavy thud as something was lifted and deposited in the bottom of the cockpit. Reno pushed hard at the oars. He knew Griffin had found what he was dragging for. In another instant he would press the starter and be gone.

They were closing—ten yards, five. Reno swung the skiff to come up alongside where he could reach the cockpit. His heart was hammering with excitement. He shipped the oars, quickly, silently, and prepared to grab as the cruiser loomed above them. Then haste was their undoing. He came up off the seat, forgetting the numb and useless ankle, and lost his balance. He fell to his knees in the bottom of the skiff, and the gun clattered against the wooden grating.

Glaring and pitiless light broke over them, and a jocular voice hailed them from behind it.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the stump-jumper navy,” the voice said. “Relax, boys and girls, and just hold that pose.”

Eighteen

Patricia gasped. Reno tried to sit up, his hand involuntarily reaching for the gun in front of him; then he froze. It was hopeless; he could see nothing at all except that malevolent light.

“Friends,” Griffin’s amused voice continued, “on your right you’re looking into the wrong end of a Luger, so let’s don’t have any old college try. Just maintain the attitude, Reno. And, honey, you can reach over and take that roscoe in your warm little hand and drop it over the side.”

She stared at Reno helplessly. “Go ahead,” he said quietly. She lifted it from the grating and let it fall into the water.

The end of a line fell across the boat. “Come alongside,” Griffin said. Reno stared wickedly at the light for an instant; then he thought of Patricia. He caught the line and pulled. The skiff bumped against the side of the cruiser.

“All right, get aboard,” Griffin said crisply. “We haven’t got all night.”

Patricia climbed onto the stern. Reno made it with difficulty, the ankle throbbing. They still stood in the glare of the light, which had retreated to the forward end of the cockpit.

“Now,” Griffin went on, the disembodied voice issuing from somewhere behind the light, “tip that skiff up. Let it fill with water, then turn it upside down.” The voice chuckled. “Let ‘em drag for you down here. It’ll keep ‘em happy.”

Reno turned and faced the light, his face savage. “Why the delay? Why not there in the skiff, the way you did Counsel? Or in the back of the head, like McHugh?”

Griffin laughed easily. “Friend Robert got a little trigger-happy. And he thought I wouldn’t shoot because I still didn’t know where the stuff was. Only time I ever knew Marse Bob to make a bum decision.” He paused, then went on briskly. “But get with it. Dump that boat. I picked you up because I can use you, but if you want to commit suicide your lady friend can do the job.”

Reno stared with cold deadliness; then he sat down on the stern. He pushed down on the edge of the skiff until it began to fill with water. When it was awash he caught the other edge and heaved it over.

He faced the light again. “What job?” he asked.

“Just a minute, pal. Got to get these running lights on.”

A switch clicked. In a moment the powerful light went out, but it was replaced at the same instant with a lesser one, still shining in Reno’s eyes.

“Don’t get any happy ideas,” Griffin warned. “The Luger’s still looking at you. And remember, if I have to kill you, Pat will do.”

“Do what?” she asked. Her voice was calm now. She sat down in the stern beside Reno. “I won’t do anything.”

“Come now, honey.” Griffin chuckled. “That’s an obstructionist attitude. Don’t puzzles fascinate you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked coldly.

“Look down at your feet.”

The light dipped a little and they looked down. In the desperate bitterness of defeat Reno had forgotten the thing Griffin had been dragging for, but now it came back to him and he stared, completely mystified. This was what had caused the death of Mac, and of Counsel and Pat’s brother and a man named Charles Morton—but what was it?

It lay on the flooring of the cockpit still wet and plastered here and there with the black silt of the channel bottom, and for an instant he could make nothing of it except a welter of very thin, flexible steel cable. Then he began to see what it was. There were two net pouches, or bags made of this flexible wire and they were tied together by a short length of it, possibly fifteen or twenty feet. But it was the two objects in their respective pouches that made his eyes narrow in wonder. They were about the size and shape of small watermelons, and had a metallic sheen as if they were covered with lead.

“What’s in those things?” Patricia asked defiantly.

“A very interesting question, honey,” Griffin replied. “And that’s exactly why I had to put on a larger staff. You ever hear the old wheeze about the electrician who told his helper to take hold of a wire? And when the poor joker did, he says, ‘All right. Mark it. But don’t touch the other one. It’s got 20,000 volts in it.’ You see, you just got to have help to figure out things like that.”