“I began to hear about Robert Counsel, because this country is saturated with him and his family. There was a horrible fascination in the names. Try it. Counsel Bayou, where the boat exploded. Robert, the man they were talking about. Robert Counsel. Then early this month I met Mr. McHugh. He came by the camp asking questions about a man named Conway. Rupert Conway. You see? Names again—but I’ll get to that in a minute.
“Conway was supposed to be driving a Cadillac with California license plates and towing a boat. I’d seen him. I told Mr. McHugh about it, how the man had turned off into the timber just beyond the camp one evening at dusk. We talked about it for a long time, and the more he told me about the man the more he sounded like all the things I’d heard about Robert Counsel.
“We were both excited about it. Mr. McHugh made more inquiries and came to the conclusion they were the same man. But that brought us up against something else, something that didn’t fit. Why the assumed name? Counsel wasn’t a criminal. And that wasn’t all the puzzle. Assuming he did want to change his name for some reason we couldn’t even guess, why would a man as brilliant as they say he was fall into the same error as a lot of the more stupid type of criminals? Mr. McHugh pointed it out. You see? The same initials, the same four syllables altogether, and even the same accent, or beat. Try them aloud. Mr. McHugh had a theory about the initials.”
“Yes,” Reno said musingly. “That’s an old story. Monogrammed possessions he’d have had to throw away otherwise.” But that wasn’t all of it. He was thinking of something else, of a boy who liked to cut the fuses short. It was a game, playing with danger.
He turned, and the fine brown eyes were regarding him with an unhappiness in which there was no longer very much hope. “What do you think it all means, Pete?” she asked. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But has it occurred to you that one of the craziest things about the whole mess is the way we’re obsessed with this Counsel guy? Just take a look at it. There isn’t any evidence at all that he had anything to do with killing Mac, and I don’t see how on earth he could have had any connection with that boat explosion, even if it was certain your brother was aboard. But what do we do? We look for Counsel, we try to guess what he was doing, why he came back here, where he is now, whether he’s dead or not, why he changed his name . . . What for? What is there about it?”
“Just the fact,” she said slowly, “that we both know he’s at the bottom of it somewhere. Mr. McHugh felt it too. He said that if we ever really understood Robert Counsel we’d see the answer to it.”
“Yes. I know that,” Reno said. “But why? Let’s look at it objectively. He couldn’t be here unless he’s dead, because he’s too well known. And if he’s dead, he couldn’t have shot Mac, or set off those explosions we heard today, or chased us out of there with a rifle, or moved that trailer—” He stopped, suddenly conscious he had forgotten about that.
“Trailer?” she asked, puzzled.
“Yes. Don’t you remember when you came up in your boat while I was peeking at something with the rod, with my head under water?”
“Yes. But what?”
“That was a boat trailer. And it almost had to be the one Counsel was pulling. But when I went back the next morning to pull it out, it was gone.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened with comprehension. “I see it now. You thought I knew what you’d found and moved it, or told somebody about it.”
“Frankly, yes. It was the obvious guess. But you didn’t even mention it to anybody? I mean, that you saw me there.”
“No,” she said.
She was telling the truth. There was no doubt of that. “Then somebody else saw me,” he said.
She turned suddenly, and her eyes were full of excitement. “Max Easter!”
“What!”
“He was right around that next bend. I remember now. I hadn’t heard his motor start.”
“What was he doing up there?” Reno demanded swiftly.
“Fishing. I was sketching him, until the light failed. He must have been still there.”
“All right,” Reno said. He went on, talking fast, his eyes growing hard. “So Easter has to be our boy. Counsel disappeared off the earth at that spot, so far as we know.
But Easter doesn’t know that anybody ever trailed him that far. The only thing he could see was that I was about to uncover the trailer and stumble on the fact that Counsel had been there. So he moved it, to cover up the evidence. Counsel was dead, but he didn’t want anybody to find out. You can see what that adds up to. And I suppose you know about Counsel and Easter’s wife.”
“Yes” she said. “I’ve heard that. They still talk about it around here. But, Pete, you’re looking for the man who killed Mr. McHugh, and I don’t think it was Easter.”
“Why?”
“Because Mr. McHugh was shot right at one o’clock in the morning, according to the papers. It was about twenty after one when I got back to the camp, and I saw Max Easter’s pickup truck come out onto the highway just as I turned in. So he couldn’t possibly have been in town at one. I’m sorry, Pete.”
He felt the whole thing come crashing down on him again. For almost a minute he’d been certain he was very close to the answer. “You’re sure it was Easter?” he said wearily.
“I’m positive it was his truck. I’ve seen it lots of times.”
“But you didn’t actually see who was driving it?”
“No. It was too dark. But it’s not likely anybody else would be.”
He sighed. “All right. But how do we get away from the fact that it almost had to be Easter who moved that trailer?”
“We can’t. That’s the terrible part of this whole thing. As soon as you learn something you turn up another fact that denies it. I’ve studied Easter a long time. He has posed for me, and I’ve had him guide me a lot. He tolerates me, but I think he hates women, or is contemptuous of them, probably because of his wife’s leaving him. He’s intelligent, self-educated, radical, and very bitter, and I believe that if he were convinced Robert Counsel had wronged him, he’d kill him with no regret. But I don’t believe he’d try to hide it. He’d do it openly, with nothing but contempt for the consequences.
“Sometimes I’ve been so afraid of him I get cold all over, knowing what he’d do if he had an idea I was spying on him. I’ve seen him staring at me with those cold, utterly emotionless eyes of his, and wondered what he was thinking—” She shivered.
“Not any more,” Reno said flatly. “You don’t go anywhere with him alone again. We’re in this together now, and you can’t take any more chances like that.”
She faced him quietly. “I’m glad we are, Pete. I don’t feel so alone now.”
It was strange, but he knew what she meant. He felt it himself. It was as if he’d never been conscious of being alone in all his self-sufficient existence until this moment had called it to his attention.
“Did you have any particular reason to think Easter was mixed up in that boat explosion?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Except that explosives had been his trade. And those theories Hutch Griffin told you about. But I’ve never had anything to go on. I’ve just been groping blindly.”
He nodded. “The same as I have. And that’s the reason you followed me?”
“Yes. I was beginning to have an idea of what you were up to, but I wasn’t sure. And when I saw where you were heading, I began to wonder if you knew something I hadn’t found out yet. You see, I think Robert Counsel is up there somewhere.”
“What!”
“If he really vanished, as you say, I don’t think it was down there where the trailer was. He was up there where we were today. That’s where I found this.”