The Last Drive

by Rex Stout

  That night Canby Rankin was explaining the mechanism of the driver to Doctor Wortley.

  “Devilishly ingenious, Doctor. The spring concealed in the shaft was so arranged that it could be released only by the impact of the ivory inset in the face of the club against the ball; and the force of the released spring ejected the needle from the upper end of the shaft. Of course at the moment of impact the butt end of the shaft was aiming at the Colonel’s stomach, upwards, and the needle found its mark.”

  “Then why didn’t it happen at the first tee?” demanded the doctor.

  “Because he was using his brassie. Harry told us that yesterday. He took out the driver for the first time at the fifth tee. Mawson of course had contrived this thing as an exact replica of the Colonel’s own driver and substituted it in his bag. Staying here at Greenlawn, he wouldn’t lack an opportunity for that.”

  The doctor was silent, examining the tiny hole in the butt of the shaft with speculative eyes.

  “I don’t see how you ever got onto it,” he observed finally.

  “Nor I,” admitted the detective. When I saw Fred swinging that iron the idea simply struck me from nowhere.” He smiled a little as he added:

  “Perhaps it was curious dilettantism.”

  Afterword

  The Last Drive revolves around the killing of a well-respected figure on a golf course. Before identifying the murderer, the detective must first identify the murder weapon itself. It turns out to be a poison dart that entered the victim’s chest while he was golfing.

  Anyone familiar with the Nero Wolfe novels will recognize this as the same murder method used in Fer-de-Lance, Stout’s first book featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, written and published in 1934. There is no evidence that anyone made the connection, however—any more than anyone remembered how Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were dimly prefigured by Simon Culp and his office boy in Justice Ends at Home. As Professor Ross Davies has observed, “there is a pleasing symmetry in the fact that publishing history suggests that the primary literary inspiration for Stout’s greatest characters (Wolfe and Goodwin) was his own earlier story, Justice Ends at Home, and that the primary literary inspiration for the plot of his first great detective story (Fer-de-Lance) was his own earlier story, The Last Drive. Stout was, in other words, demonstrably his own best source of inspiration.”

  The Last Drive seems to have been completely forgotten by 1934. It was certainly forgotten by the 1970s, when McAleer wrote Stout’s biography. The two men never discussed The Last Drive or Golfers Magazine. But although McAleer knew nothing of The Last Drive, he did speculate that elements of Fer-de-Lance might have been inspired by earlier works of mystery fiction. Perhaps, he suggested, Stout might have drawn the idea of a golf-course killing from Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Links (1923), or Ronald Knox’s Murder at the Viaduct (1926). Now we know it was not so. Stout came up with the idea himself, used it once, and consciously or otherwise, memory-­banked it to use again two decades later. The second time was the charm.

  The Paisley

  This short romance story, one of Stout’s first, features three main charac­ters: a lonely man, a lonely woman, and a paisley dog who helps bring man and woman together, at least to the point of sharing tea at the Plaza. The story appeared in Young’s Magazine, a general-fiction pulp magazine aimed primarily at a female audience.

  Sammis Thrawn was lonely. Anyone who knew Thrawn would have declared this to be impossible; but it was true. As he sauntered aimlessly along an unknown path in Central Park he made a lazy mental survey of the possibilities of an amusing afternoon, and heaved a deep sigh at the hopelessness of it all.

  It was four o’clock of one of those days which June holds up to the remainder of the calendar with an air of serene superiority. By its witchery the clanging of street cars is made musical and the smoke from automobiles becomes fragrant. Everything is as it should be.

  But still, Sammis Thrawn was lonely. It is all very well to have a host of friends and a disgracefully large income, but there are times—

  Thrawn heaved another sigh, glared angrily at a robin perched on an overhanging branch, and, I am ashamed to say, even went so far as to strike at it with his walking stick. Of course, he was careful to miss; and the robin, retreating hurriedly to a little grassy mound, barely removed from the path, turned her back on poor Thrawn, every feather on her plump, round body expressive of resentment.

  Thrawn eyed the robin with severe disapproval, clenched his stick more tightly—and then, sighing once more, continued on his way down the path.

  “What the devil!” he mused. “I am bored! Actually bored!” He poked his stick lazily toward a little blue terrier that had stationed itself directly in his way and stood blinking up at him in the sunlight.

  Thrawn suddenly turned and surveyed the path to the rear, then to the front. No one was in sight. He stooped deliberately, took the terrier in his arms, and hanging the stick over his wrist, proceeded down the path with an almost eager step.

  As he turned a rounding corner in the path, and saw a girl seated on a park bench some dozen paces ahead, the idea that had been dimly revolving in his brain crystallized into a definite intention.

  The girl’s face, shaded from the sun by a large, filmy, lacy hat and a still more lacy parasol above that, was turned directly toward him. Its creamy whiteness was half hidden by a coat of tan that reached clear to that delightful curve where the top of the lacy collar appeared as a jealous shield; and the effect was one of which Thrawn thoroughly approved.

  As he approached nearer and read on her face the expression of a mood that exactly matched his own, Thrawn hesitated. Then, with a reflection that sympathy would perhaps serve as well as gayety, he stopped directly in front of her, bowed politely, and smiled sadly.

  “Is this your dog?” he asked.

  The girl regarded the terrier with an impersonal curiosity, and then looked up at Thrawn.

  “Yes,” she answered, “it is. Where did you find him?”

  Thrawn sat down on the bench at her side, still holding the terrier. This was rather more than he had bargained for. He had expected the dog to serve as an introduction, but he had not expected to find a claimant in this charming brown and white nymph. He looked first at the girl, then at the terrier, perplexed. They certainly did not seem suited to each other.

  “Are you sure he is yours?”

  The girl looked slightly amused. “Do you doubt it?” she asked. “See!”

  She held out her arms, and the terrier leaped into them and nestled cozily in her lap. That, of course, was convincing.

  “He will soil your dress,” said Thrawn, indifferently.

  The girl was silent, running her slender white fingers through the terrier’s silky hair.

  “What—what sort of a dog is he?” asked Thrawn.

  “A—a—Paisley,” answered the girl. “English. You must forgive me,” she continued after a pause, “if I don’t thank you for finding him for me. The truth is, I am not thankful.”

  Thrawn looked uncomfortable.

  “Don’t do that,” said the girl abruptly. “That’s the way I feel.”

  “Good Heavens!” exclaimed Thrawn. “So do I.”

  They smiled at each other sympathetically. Then, as a flush slowly appeared under the coat of tan, the girl turned her face away.

  “That,” said Thrawn almost cheerfully, “was what I needed. I suppose I should go now. What would you do,” he continued, “if I should insist on sitting here and talking to you?”

  “That depends,” answered the girl. “Are you ever amusing? You see,” she went on, without giving him time to answer, “that is the only thing that matters. For you are evidently quite harmless.”

  At this Thrawn was almost indignant. To be called harmless by a pretty girl is anything but comforting.

  “I’m not a pirate,” he sa
id, “if that’s what you mean. Nor a murderer. But there are times—” He hesitated.

  “There are just two kinds of men,” said the girl, speaking to the terrier, “that are dangerous. First, the impossible kind.”

  “Well?” asked Thrawn.

  “Oh, one merely calls a policeman. Of course,” regarding him critically, “you are not impossible.”

  “Thank you,” said Thrawn gravely.

  “Then,” the girl continued, “there is the masterful kind. Like the heroes of novels. There are such men, you know.”

  “And I, of course, am not one of them,” said Thrawn foolishly.

  The girl laughed. “Never!” she declared. “Can you imagine such a man walking in Central Park with a fuzzy terrier in his arms, at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon in June?”

  “It was your terrier,” said Thrawn, with just resentment.

  “That only makes it worse,” declared the girl. “No; you are too safe to be interesting.”

  “You are taking an unfair advantage,” Thrawn asserted hotly.

  The girl smiled sweetly. “Do you know,” she said thoughtfully, “you ought to be a school teacher. You talk just like one. Are you?”

  Thrawn turned and faced her squarely, and saw the teasing smile, the roguish tilt of the head, the dainty whiteness of her hands resting half hidden in the terrier’s coat.

  “For the first time in four months,” he said evenly, “I am thoroughly angry. The last time was—but that doesn’t matter. What I wanted to say was that since I am safe, it naturally follows that anything I do is proper.”

  He bent his head swiftly over the terrier in her lap, and on one of those hands imprinted a well-directed and unmistakable kiss.

  The girl remained motionless and silent. “Of course,” she said, finally, “I can’t very well be angry, since it was my own fault. But it is really too bad, for now you must go.”

  “You know perfectly well,” protested Thrawn, “that within five minutes from the time I leave you will be frightfully bored. And so will I.”

  The girl was silent. Thrawn rose from the bench and beckoned with his stick to a taxicab that was passing on Central Park West. The taxi circled back to the park entrance and stopped on the drive some twenty feet from the path.

  “Of course,” said Thrawn,” you are probably right. Discretion is the better part of valor. Like all sensible people, you realize that it is wiser to avoid danger than to overcome it. It is rather curious that you should have been so mistaken when you first saw me. Only one other girl was ever unfortunate enough to tell me I was harmless.”

  “I suppose,” said the girl scornfully, “that she died of a broken heart.”

  “No,” said Thrawn, with a reminiscent sadness, “she is still living. You see,” he continued, “there is no good in your feeling mortified, because your asking me to leave is a confession of weakness. It’s universal. Not, of course, that I am irresistible.”

  “But you think you are,” declared the girl. “You have more conceit with less reason than any man I know. Where are you going?”

  Thrawn hesitated. “To the Plaza, for tea,” he hazarded.

  “I’m not surprised,” the girl declared. “The palm room at the Plaza is exactly suited to you.”

  “Should I carry the parasol?” asked Thrawn.

  “No. You may take the dog.”

  Thrawn took the terrier in his arms and led the way across the lawn to the taxi.

  “What was it,” he asked, as the taxi swept through the park, “that first made you like me?”

  “Your hat,” said the girl, after a careful scrutiny. “Yes, it must have been your hat. It is so flat and ugly.”

  “Thank you,” said Thrawn.

  As they were passing into the tea-room from the outer corridor at the hotel the girl halted suddenly.

  “Where’s the dog?” she asked.

  Thrawn stopped and gazed at her blankly.

  “Lost,” he said simply.

  For ten minutes they tramped through corridors and ante-rooms—all in vain. The little Paisley had completely disappeared. Thrawn had lifted it from the taxi, turned to pay the chauffeur, and forgotten all about it.

  “It was extremely thoughtless of me,” said he, as they sat down on a divan to rest. “I am dreadfully sorry.”

  The girl was silent.

  “You see,” continued Thrawn presently, “its all your own fault. If you hadn’t said I was harmless we would be sitting in the park in the sunshine talking about Browning or something, instead of running after a confounded dog.”

  “It isn’t,” the girl contradicted. “It isn’t a—a—that kind of dog.” She was either laughing or crying.

  “Beside,” Thrawn continued, “how could I help forgetting? You should have known that a creamy white face with a coat of tan, a little nose and funny twinkly eyes is to me the most beautiful sight in the world. The dog demanded too much attention. I’m glad I forgot him. I’m glad he’s gone.”

  The girl put up her handkerchief to catch a tear that was just ready to fall. I have said that she was either laughing or crying. Thrawn saw the tear, and gasped.

  “Did you love him so well?” he asked.

  The girl nodded, and again pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

  “Was he—did you have him long?”

  Again the girl nodded. “That is the reason I care,” she said. “He could never be replaced. We all loved him so.”

  She gazed tearfully at the spots left on her gown by the terrier’s muddy feet. Thrawn followed her look commiseratingly.

  “Hello, Thrawn!” came a voice.

  Thrawn looked up, startled. Standing directly in front of them was Billy Du Mont, the ever-smiling and never-working, hat in one hand, and in the other—the lost Paisley, struggling for freedom.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Sargent,” said Billy to the girl. “Here’s your pup, Thrawn. Knew you must be around when I saw him.”

  Thrawn sat as one stricken dumb, while the girl moved over on the divan to make room for Billy.

  “Sorry,” declined Billy, “but I haven’t time. My revered mother is waiting for me at Suzanne’s. Besides, you two look so thoroughly chummy.”

  “Is—is that Mr. Thrawn’s dog?” asked the girl.

  “Sure,” answered Billy. “Don’t you think it looks like him?”

  When he had gone Thrawn looked at the girl and tried to laugh. She did not join him.

  “Your heard what he said,” said Thrawn timidly. “We’re chums.”

  “I suppose,” said Miss Sargent, icily, “you are speaking of yourself and your dog.”

  A long silence.

  “It seems to me,” Thrawn observed, “that I have as good a right to be angry with you for saying it was yours as you have to be angry with me for saying it wasn’t mine.”

  “You have. Go on and be angry.”

  “But I’m not angry. I feel friendly and charitable, and—and happy. This is the most wonderful day of my life. I would lie twice as often for an equal pleasure.”

  “Or, perhaps, with an equal pleasure,” suggested Miss Sargent.

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “I’m not surprised at your thinking so.”

  “Besides, it saved you from a most horrible attack of ennui.”

  “My only feeling is one of annoyance.”

  Thrawn colored hotly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, and bowing stiffly, disappeared down the corridor.

  He turned a corner to the left. Then he missed the terrier, and started to retrace his steps.

  And then—this Thrawn was anything but a fool—he turned back in the original direction, and shortly approached the divan where he had left Miss Sargent, from the opposite side to that of his departure.

  Miss Sargent was leaning forward, gazin
g intently down the corridor where he had disappeared. Held tightly in her arms was the Paisley.

  Thrawn coughed.

  “Oh!” cried the girl, and jumped to her feet. The terrier landed on the floor in a heap. “You—you forgot your dog!”

  “That is what I returned for,” said Thrawn, with never a smile. “I am sorry to have been forced to annoy you again.”

  He picked up the Paisley, and prepared to leave.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” the girl declared hastily—embarrassed. “You—you must forgive me.”

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Thrawn. “Forgive you!” He bent over and touched ever so lightly with his lips the hand she held out to him.

  “Let’s go in to tea,” he said.

  Billy Du Mont, Reporter

  A novice journalist gains a story, and perhaps a spouse, by a stratagem that Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin might have been proud of (if either of them had ever desired to gain a spouse). From Young’s Magazine.

  Billy Du Mont sat on the edge of the stenographer’s desk, swinging his legs in a crisscross fashion carefully copied after a young Frenchman he had met at Nice. Finding this monotonous, he added a few bizarre variations of his own.

  “Stop that,” commanded his father, gruffly.

  Billy thrust his hands in his pockets, and sliding down till his feet touched the floor, began drumming on it with his toes. The elder Du Mont eyed him with growing disapproval.

  “Well?” said Billy, encouragingly.

  His father grunted. “How long do you think it will last?” he demanded.

  Billy looked grieved. “There’s no use asking me questions like that,” he declared. “It’s very discouraging. You know very well I’ve decided to buckle down and work.”

  There was a silence, while Billy walked over to the mirror to smile approvingly at his carefully nurtured but scarcely perceptible moustache, and his father turned around in his chair the better to observe this modest proceeding.

  “Well,” said Du Mont, Senior, with a sigh, “go on down and report to Allen—God help him.”