Go home, stranger - By Charles Williams Page 0,5

When’d you go into the keyhole and dictaphone business?”

“We didn’t. This was a sort of special deal. You see, she knew Mac had been in the FBI and was a trained bloodhound, and she insisted. We’d done quite a bit of legal work for her and hoped to do more in the future, and as I say, she’s well to do. You just don’t brush off that kind when you’re trying to build up a legal practice.”

“Why didn’t she go to the police?”

“Well, there could be a number of reasons for that. A desire to avoid publicity and embarrassment, for one thing. She’s a shy type. Maybe she just didn’t want to face them, and the inference they would draw—that her husband was running out on her.”

“You think that’s all?” Reno asked, conscious of bitter disappointment.

“Actually, I couldn’t say. You see, Mac handled the whole thing. But wouldn’t that be your guess?”

“I suppose so,” Reno said wearily. “But listen, Dick. I’ve got to have something to start with. I’ll go off my rocker, just sitting around here, and Conway’s the only thing I’ve got. So will you get hold of her and see what you can find out? I mean, any reports Mac might have sent her . . .”

“She wouldn’t go for that,” Carstairs protested. “I mean, the thing was confidential, or she wouldn’t have come to us in the first place.”

“But for God’s sake, Dick, will you try?” Reno said desperately. “Ask her. Get a description. Find out why Mac was looking in Waynesport, of all places, Find out anything you can. And any way you can. Tell her I’ll try to find Conway for her.”

“All right, Pete, I’ll try. But I can’t promise anything.”

“Good. Now you’re talking. Call back in an hour. Boardman Hotel.”

“Roger.”

It was the longest hour of his life, sitting there staring at the telephone, and when it did ring at last he looked at his watch and noted, without believing it, that it hadn’t been an hour at all. It had been twenty minutes.

“San Francisco is calling,” the operator said. “Go ahead, please.”

“Yes,” he said, prodded with impatience. “Yes. Dick? Is that you?”

“Carstairs here,” the voice said on the other end of the line. “Pete, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you.”

“What’s that?” Reno barked.

“Mrs. Conway. She’s disappeared.”

“What!”

“She’s left town. And the manager of the apartment house says she didn’t leave any word as to where she was going or how long she’d be gone.”

He could feel the hope ooze out of him. He sat down on the side of the bed. “Oh, no,” he said.

After he had hung up he sat for a long time staring dumbly out the window. They’d had one thin lead to work on, and now that was gone. The police hadn’t been able to find that girl in ten days, and now the only other person in the world who apparently knew anything about Conway had evaporated along with her. It was like chasing ghosts.

When he couldn’t stand the room any longer, he went out and wandered aimlessly through sun-blasted streets and then sat for an indefinite period of time he couldn’t even remember in the inviting dimness of a bar over a Scotch he forgot to drink. He was seized with a helplessness he had never known before. If there were only something he could get his hands on. All his life he had gone at everything by frontal assault, but there was nothing to attack here, no place even to start. It was terrifying. The only thing between Vickie and disaster was a fantastic story a prosecutor would tear to shreds.

He shoved back the untouched drink and stalked over to the telephone booth.

* * *

Howell Gage, of Durand and Gage, was a rail-thin young man in his early thirties, abrupt, bony-faced, and full of an explosive nervous energy that defied the heat. His blue eyes reflected the quick and lunging intelligence that sometimes outran his tongue.

“Get it, Reno,” he burst out, shoving up from his chair behind the big desk to go striding across the office. “There’s self-defense. There’s temporary insanity. There’s the outright accident—’I didn’t intend to do it, I didn’t know the gun was loaded.’ There’s the struggle for the gun. Good God, man, there’s everything, the world’s full of ‘em, of ways we could get the charge reduced, or get a light sentence, or get an acquittal. But listen.” He whirled, jerked a hand through the bristling red hair, and jabbed it