Charles Williams: Go Home, Stranger

“Well, that does it,” Reno said, rising from his chair in his eagerness. “They’ll have to believe it.”

Gage sat down behind the desk again and shook his head. “I hate to tell you this, Reno,” he said, “but they won’t believe a word of it.”

“They have to!”

“I’m sorry. It’s conjecture, pure and simple. Courts deal in evidence, and there’s not the slightest bit of proof there was ever anybody except your sister in that room.”

He went back to the hotel at last because there wasn’t anywhere else to go, and as he approached the doors he noted absently that the airport limousine was discharging passengers under the marquee.

Two or three guests were checking in at the desk. He got his key and had started to turn away when something the clerk said arrested him with the suddenness of a gunshot. It was a name.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Conway. We have your reservation.”

He stopped dead still, and then took out a cigarette and carefully lighted it as he let his face swing back toward the desk. She was a very pretty woman in her early thirties, a little over average height and very smartly and expensively turned out in a suit that was out of place in this climate. San Francisco? He wondered. She had the look. But hell, the world was full of Conways.

She was reaching for the registration card the clerk had pushed across the desk. Reno walked slowly over to the sand-filled urn beyond her, dropped the match in it, and as he turned back let his gaze sweep across the card. Excitement whispered along his nerves.

“Mrs. Rupert Conway,” it said. “San Francisco.”

He stepped over to the newsstand adjoining the desk. Picking up a magazine, he started leafing idly through it while he strained his ears to catch the clerk’s voice. He heard the tinkle of the bell. And then it came.

“Mrs. Conway to Twelve-o-six.”

He heard the boy gathering up the bags and the sound of their footsteps retreating toward the elevators. Dropping a quarter on the glass to pay for the magazine, he turned and picked them out of the drifting throngs in the lobby. There was no one with her except the bellboy.

The boy came down in a few minutes and he strolled leisurely into the elevator, hiding his impatience. She’d be alone now. “Twelve,” he said. They went up, and when he got out and walked along the silent corridor looking at numbers, he was conscious of the excitement again and the feeling he was getting close to something. Why had she come? Was she still looking for Conway? Suppose she won’t talk? He thought. He wished he had Mac’s personality and gift of gab. He was too abrupt and blunt himself for anything requiring finesse.

He knocked at 1206, and wondered if he should try to get his foot in the door. He’d have to talk fast. He heard her moving around inside, and then the door opened a crack and he could see the big violet eyes, a little apprehensive as they peered out at him.

“Mrs. Conway?” he asked quickly. “I wonder if I could talk to you a minute. I’m—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish. To his amazement she pulled the door back. “Yes,” she said urgently. “Yes. Come in.”

When he was inside she closed the door and turned to face him, obviously under intense strain and trying to control herself. “How did you know I was here?” she asked. “I just this minute—”

“I was down at the desk when you checked in,” he said, puzzled. Who did she think he was? Getting in had been too easy.

“Please,” she said hurriedly, not even listening. “What do you know about my husband?”

Reno studied her face. The large eyes were imploring, and yet they were worried and frightened. She’s looking for something, he thought, that she’s afraid she’s not going to like when she finds it.

“I don’t know anything about your husband,” he said, as gently as he could. “That’s what I came here to ask you.”

She stepped back as if he had slapped her. “But—I don’t understand. You called me. Long-distance. You said—”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t call you. Maybe I’d better introduce myself. My name’s Reno.”

“Oh,” she said. The eyes were, full of confusion. “I thought you were somebody else. I don’t think I know anyone named Reno, do I?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I’m a friend of somebody you do know. A dead man by the name of McHugh.”

She stared at him almost without comprehension at first, and then he could see the fear and shock come into her face. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Then she sat down.

Three

For a moment neither of them said anything. The silence seemed to stretch out, and he could hear the faint hum of traffic far below. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She thanked him in a strained voice. He lit it, and another for himself, and looked about for a chair. The room, he noticed now for the first time, was the living room of a suite.

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.