“But you met him in Italy. So he must have had a passport.”
“I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere.”
Reno stared thoughtfully through the windshield. “In that case, he either destroyed it or took it with him. And if he took it, he must be leaving the country.”
“Yes,” she said wretchedly. “I’ve thought of that.”
Suddenly she hunched forward with her hands over her face, shaking as if with a violent chill. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in a moment, her voice taut with horror. “It keeps coming back. The gun—and the glass breaking—and the car turning over.”
Reno waited until she had recovered. “Now, about that telephone call from Mac,” he reminded gently.
“Oh.” She took the cigarette he offered and held it mechanically between her fingers, forgetting it. “It was the same day he wrote the second report. In the afternoon. Of course, I hadn’t received the report at that time, but he told me what was in it and asked me some questions. They were rather odd, the things he asked, but he didn’t explain except to say he wanted to be sure about something and that he would write me that night or the next day. And, of course, he never did, because that night he was killed.”
“What did he ask?”
“First, whether Mr. Conway had ever mentioned being in Italy with the Army during the Second World War. And whether he had a little scar, like an old burn, along the side of his left wrist. And last, whether he ever addressed people as ‘old boy’—you know, the way some of the English do.”
“And the answers?” Reno prompted.
“Yes. To all of them.”
Well, there it is, he thought bitterly. Mac ran it down at last. And he was killed before he could tell anybody else. Maybe we’ll never know.
“Mr. Reno,” she asked at last, her face full of bottomless misery, “what do you think it all means?”
He hated to do it, because he liked her. But, hell, he thought, she must know it herself. “I don’t know,” he said. “Except one thing that telegraphs itself all over the place.”
“What is that?”
“It’s simple enough. Your husband’s name wasn’t Conway.”
He started the car in a minute and drove to the railroad station. Neither of them said anything until he parked on a street near the entrance. The train was coming.
“Now listen,” he said, “I’m not going in with you. I’ll be behind you all the time, but you’ll have to carry your own bags until you get a redcap. Pick up your ticket and get aboard the train as fast as you can. I don’t think there’s a chance in the world he’ll be around here, but I’ve quit trusting anybody. And I don’t want him to find out who I am or what I look like.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be around here, but I’ve quit advertising it. Now, if I were you, I’d get out of San Francisco. And don’t leave a forwarding address. It’s always possible whoever it was might go out there after you. But let me know where you are. Write me care of General Delivery here. I think that’s about it, except that next time somebody says he has some information for you, tell him to meet you at a police station or just write you a letter.”
He saw her get aboard, a lonely figure going slowly up the steps. Then he drove the car back to the U-Drive agency and took a cab to the hotel. He was numb with weariness, but he changed clothes and called the police station.
The Lieutenant had gone off duty. There was only one Wayland in the telephone book, however, so he caught another taxi and went out to his home. A pleasant-faced woman admitted him and left the two of them alone in the comfortable living room. Wayland was pasting stamps in an album.
“Sit down,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “What’s on your mind?”
Reno remained standing. “I don’t know whether you bring your job home with you or not, but I’ve got some news that wouldn’t keep. It proves she didn’t do it, and you can turn her loose. The man that killed McHugh is still doing business.”
The tough brown eyes expressed no emotion whatever. “What makes you think so?’
“He just tried to kill Mrs. Conway.”
“Mrs. Conway?” Then the name registered. “Oh, I remember. What happened?”
Reno told him. When he had finished Wayland stared at him thoughtfully. “Where is she now?”
“I put her on a train for California.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Reno repeated. “You want another corpse on your hands? Whoever it was will try again.”
“We might be able to protect her. Did that ever occur to you?”
“And what,” Reno asked harshly, “would give me a stupid idea like that?”
‘Look, Reno,” Wayland said coldly. “I’m glad you were able to save her. And probably she is too. But you’re going to get yourself in a jam if you don’t watch your step. If somebody did try to kill that woman, you should have notified the sheriff and had her taken to a hospital. It’s outside our jurisdiction, and we can’t do anything about it except to notify the county people. And as far as its having anything to do with McHugh’s murder, that’s only your guess. So what if Conway was a foul ball? You don’t even know he was, and it wouldn’t prove anything if you did. And if you’re trying to get your sister out on bail, you’re talking to the wrong man. I haven’t anything to do with that.”
“I’m not trying to get her out on bail,” Reno said curtly. “I don’t want her out on bail. I want her turned loose.”
“Well, this won’t get it.”
They stared at each other. “Listen,” Reno said, the gray eyes hard, “the man who tried to kill Mrs. Conway is the one who killed McHugh. And I want him. Do you?”
“Yes. If there is such a man.”
“There is. I just told you.” Reno started for the door, and looked back. “And if you do want him, you’d better start looking. Because if I find him first he’s going to be secondhand when you get him.”
Six
He was out on his feet, but sleep would not come. An endless horde of questions chased themselves through his mind. Who was Conway, and what had he been trying to do? And why, in the name of God, had he needed a boat? Where was the one little thing that tied it all together? Mac’s death, Counsel Bayou, the girl with the dimple in her chin, Mrs. Conway’s long-distance telephone call and the attempt on her life—they were all parts of the same thing; there was no longer any doubt of that, but what was it?
He sat on the side of the bed smoking cigarettes and pawing wearily through this senseless jumble of evidence. Counsel Bayou, he thought; you always come back to that. It was the last place anybody had ever seen Conway; it was where Mac had gone to ask questions that last day before he was killed. He stopped and jerked his head upright. The thing Vickie had said—that the only word she heard in the mumbled conversation between Mac and the killer there in the hotel room was something that sounded like “counsel.” That figured, he thought; but what did it prove?
The thing that was so terrible was that it was just beyond the tips of his outstretched fingers. Mac had known who Conway was. He found out definitely. The telephone call to Mrs. Conway proved that. He shook his head and groaned. If only Mac had had a chance to tell somebody . . .
At last, in desperation, he put through a call to Carstairs’ residence in San Francisco. “Dick,” he said, “this is Pete again.”
“Sure, Pete,” Carstairs replied. “Anything new?”
“A little,” Reno said. He told briefly what had happened to Mrs. Conway and added that he had finally read Mac’s reports. “The answer to this thing is down around that Bayou somewhere. But look. What I called about—I’m grabbing at straws. Mac found out something after he wrote that last report. He learned who the guy really was. And you gathered up his gear here at the hotel. There wasn’t anything in it that would give us a lead? No unfinished report? No notes of any kind?”