Then his heart leaped eagerly as he heard her answer with a sleepy voice. It wasn’t until then that he realized it was only a little after eight on the Coast and that he’d got her out of bed.
“Oh,” she said quickly, when she learned who it was. “Have, you—I mean, is there anything new?”
“No. Not yet.” He was sorry for her. She knew her husband had married her under an alias, and that he was either dead or he had tried to kill her, but still she couldn’t quit hoping. “I wanted to ask something,” he went on. “Do you remember the date Mr. Conway arrived in Waynesport when he came back from Italy?”
“Why, yes,” she said slowly. “It was around the first week in May, I think.”
“But you don’t know the exact day?”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t think he ever said—”
“How about the name of the ship?”
“Yes, I know that, if I can just think of it. Wait . . .” He could tell she was trying to concentrate. She was still dull from sleep. “It was the Silver something. Silver, ah Silver Cape. That’s it. Why, Mr. Reno?”
“Just a wild idea,” he said. “I’m still grabbing at straws.”
“You’ll let me know, won’t you? I’ll be at Carmel.” She gave him the address.
“Yes,” he said. “The first thing.”
The public library was a small ivy-covered building on a quiet street asleep under its trees. He asked for and received the bound copies of the Waynesport Express for May, and sat down alone at a table. Beginning at the first, he began skipping through the pages, skipping over to the back of each paper where the shipping news was carried. By the time he had progressed as far as May seventh without success he was growing tense.
The ship did not arrive on the eighth, or ninth, and as he opened the paper for May tenth, hope was dying. He hurriedly scanned the ship arrivals, and sat back in defeat. There was no mention of the Silver Cape.
Another hare-brained idea shot to hell, he thought. There wasn’t any connection. Robert Counsel was still at sea when the explosion took place. Automatically, and without interest, he went on to the following paper. And there it was.
The SS Silver Cape, inbound from Genoa, Marseilles, and Barcelona, had berthed at Weaver Terminal at 1:30 A.M. So what? He wearily asked himself. That was May eleventh, the day after the explosion. No. He sat up, suddenly alert. Griffin had said the tenth, but it was after midnight. He flipped eagerly back to the front page. There was no need to look for it; the headline shouted! “Mysterious Blast Demolishes Boat.”
He hurriedly skimmed through the story and the follow-up news in subsequent papers. It was essentially as Griffin had told it. Experts said the explosion had come from inside the boat. There was no clue as to the cause. Two men were believed to have been aboard, but their identities were a complete mystery. Griffin was quoted as having no idea who had stolen the craft.
He quietly closed the binder and sat there for a moment in the hush of the reading room, his face showing none of his furious intensity of thought. The whole thing could be a coincidence. It almost had to be. How could Counsel have caused the blast? He was on the ship, and he couldn’t have got off until after he had been through customs later in the morning, long after the explosion. But still the ship had gone up the channel just before the boat blew up.
It’s there somewhere, he thought, feeling the goadings of helpless anger. This whole rotten mess fits together like a prefabricated birdhouse, if I just had the key. Mac had it, and they killed him. For just a few minutes, or maybe less, he had the answer to all of it, and then they got him because he’d found out too much. Why can’t I see it if he did?
And, he wondered coldly, would he have any more warning than Mac had, if he did find it? He started over to Gage’s office.
He was approaching the entrance to one of the banks when he slowed abruptly. Patricia Lasater had just emerged from the doorway. She did not see him, and now she stood in the center of the sidewalk looking uncertainly about her. Then she turned as if she had found what she sought, and started walking away from him. She stopped at a pickup truck that had pulled to the curb. The door opened, and a big man climbed out. It was Max Easter, dressed in khaki trousers and a cotton undershirt.
They were no more than fifteen yards away. Reno leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette, watching them speculatively. She took something from her handbag and handed it to Easter. Reno could see it quite plainly—it was money. For moving a trailer, he wondered coldly, or for shaking down my cabin and slugging me with a sap? Or is he putting the squeeze on her?
Easter took the bills, shoved them carelessly into his pocket, and made a gesture with his other hand that was part acknowledgement and partly a farewell chopped off with curt insolence as he turned abruptly away from her and started up the sidewalk toward Reno. When Easter came abreast, Reno turned and looked squarely at him. It was the first time he had seen him at close range, and he marked the well-shaped head, the short, iron-gray hair, and the cold, deep-set pale eyes.
As he went past, Easter turned his head and their eyes met. There was no recognition in them, but Reno could feel the hair tingle at the back of his neck. This could be the man. He could be the one who had killed Mac, who had shot at him and Mrs. Conway with the rifle . . . Then he was gone.
Howell Gage looked up from the brief he was reading and waved toward a chair. “Anything new?” he asked.
“Nothing any good. I walked in on somebody going through my gear, and got sapped.” He related the story briefly.
Gage’s eyes were thoughtful. “He may know who you are. If he does, you’re a bum risk.”
Reno shrugged. “I don’t think he’s sure yet. There wasn’t anything to prevent him from finishing the job then.”
“He might be waiting.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. But you’re taking chances.”
“Never mind that.” Reno jerked an impatient hand. “Tell me what you know about Max Easter.”
“Uh-uh.” Gage shook his head slowly. “I think you’re on the wrong track. Easter’s as big as a horse, and he dresses like a tramp. He couldn’t have got in and out of the Boardman without being noticed by somebody.”
“I know,” Reno agreed reluctantly. “But then it wouldn’t have been easy for anybody, and we know somebody did. What do you know about him?”
“Not too much. Except that he’s a bad one to fool with. Has a reputation for being radical and a troublemaker, but keeps pretty much to himself. Don’t think he works any more. Lives out there on the bayou in a houseboat. Guides duck hunters in winter, and probably does a little commercial fishing.”
“What about this scuttlebutt that Counsel ran off with his wife?”
Gage lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, staring thoughtfully at the lighter. “I see what you’re driving at. But it may be only a rumor; nobody ever knew for sure. Easter’s not the confidential type.”
“When was it?”
“Just before Counsel was drafted, in forty-two. He’d have been oh, twenty-three, I think. Easter was working at the Mid-Gulf refinery then, as I remember, and hadn’t been married more than a year or so. I never met his wife, but saw her once or twice. Nice-looking kid with big, serious eyes, but a lot younger than Easter. He must have been around forty, even then. Anyway, Mrs.Easter disappeared, along in June, I think it was. And Counsel was gone, too. There was talk they’d been seen together here and there, and then of course there was the inevitable story that somebody ran across them in New Orleans or Miami at some hotel. You’ve probably heard of Counsel’s reputation with the women. He was smooth, and he had a way with them.