by Rex Stout
“It’s because I haven’t played for so long,” he was saying to himself. “It’s because—but I must keep my eye on the ball—I haven’t played—but I must—for so long—”
He swung savagely. To Fraser’s eye it appeared to be the same old Jellie swing, stiff, ungraceful, jerky, ill-timed; and his astonishment was therefore the greater when he saw the ball sailing true and straight far down the course. Midway in its flight it appeared to gain new momentum, lifting gently upward, and in direction it was absolutely dead.
“Some drive,” said Fraser, encouragingly, as the two men started down the fairway.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Jellie, who was intensely surprised. But what he was surprised at was the fact that he was not surprised. It was unquestionably the longest and straightest drive he had ever made. Two weeks ago that shot would have left him electrified with astonishment, and now he actually seemed inclined to take it as a matter of course.
“Well,” he thought, “it’s been ten days since I’ve played. Wait till I flub a couple.”
The first hole at Grassview is 475 yards. The fairway is narrow, with hazards on one side and out of bounds on the other, and just in front of the green is a deep sand pit. On his second Fraser took a driving mashie and played a little short of the sand pit. Mr. Jellie, who had outdriven him by thirty yards, used a brassie and carried over the hazard to the green.
“By Jove, you’re putting it up to me,” said Fraser, in some surprise.
Mr. Jellie nodded. His face was a little flushed. Never before had he been on that green in two; more often he had made the sand pit on his third or fourth. He felt vaguely that something was the matter, and the curious thing about it was that he experienced no surprise. He had taken the brassie for the purpose of making the green, and as he addressed the ball he had felt absurdly confident that it would go there.
Fraser, who had played short, had only an easy mashie pitch left. He played it perfectly; the ball dropped on the edge of the green, rolled over the smooth turf straight for the pin and stopped six inches away, dead for a four. Mr. Jellie was twenty feet from the hole. He took his putter from the caddie, walked up to the ball and tapped it. It started straight, seemed to waver for an instant, then went on and dropped in the cup with a gentle thud.
“Three,” said Mr. Jellie in a voice that trembled.
“Your hole,” observed Fraser. “Good Lord, Jellie, what’s the matter with you? Two under par! Some three! I got one under myself.”
“Oh, I’ve sunk twenty-footers before,” replied Mr. Jellie, with an effort at calmness. But the flush on his face deepened and there was a queer look in his eye.
On the second, a hole for a long and short shot, they got good drives and were on in two. Fraser’s putt was strong by four feet, but he holed it coming back. Jellie’s thirty-footer hung on the lip of the cup. It was a half in four.
The third is 320 yards. Mr. Jellie, retaining the honor, made his first poor shot from the tee. It was a long ball, but a bad slice carried it into the rough, in the midst of thick underbrush. “Ah,” Fraser smiled to himself, “old Jellie’s getting back on his game;” and, swinging easily, he got a straight one well out of trouble.
Mr. Jellie, kicking through the underbrush with his caddie, suffered from mingled emotions. Was it possible that he was going to return so soon to his eights and nines? This slice looked like it. At length the ball was found, buried in deep grass, with bushes and trees on every side; it was all but unplayable. One hundred yards away the green glimmered in the sunshine.
“Better play off to one side and make sure of getting out,” counseled Fraser.
Without replying, Mr. Jellie took his niblick and planted his feet firmly in the grass. His eyes glittered and his jaw was clamped tight. The heavy iron swung back and came down with tremendous force, plowing through the grass and weeds like a young hurricane. Up came the ball, literally torn out by the brutal force of the blow, up through the underbrush it sailed, up over the tops of the trees, farther, still farther, and dropped squarely in the middle of the green a hundred yards away.
“My God!” said Fraser.
“Nice recovery, sir,” said the caddie, in a tone of awe.
Mr. Jellie was smiling, but his face was pale and his hands trembled. He knew very well that he had made a wonderful shot. But what was this strange feeling that was growing stronger within him every minute, this feeling of absolute assurance that he could make a hundred such shots if necessary? He tried to reply to his companion’s appreciative remarks, but his voice wouldn’t work. He made his way out of the underbrush like a man dazed.
Fraser approached nicely and took two putts, but Mr. Jellie, whose ball was stopped eight feet from the pin, holed out for a three. The fourth, a little over 500 yards, was halved in five. By this time Fraser was beginning to wobble a little, unnerved by pure astonishment. Was this Jellie, the dub, the duffer, the clod? Was this thing possible? Can eyes be believed? Aloysius Jellie one under 4s! No wonder Fraser was upset with amazement.
The fifth is a short hole over a lake. Mr. Jellie stood on the tee, mashie in hand. He remembered how many hundreds of balls he had caused to hop feebly over the grass and dribble into that lake. Again his jaw set tight. Would the marvel continue? It did. He swung his mashie. The ball rose true and fair over the water and dropped on the green. Fraser, completely unnerved, got too far under his ball. It barely cleared the hazard, falling far short, and he lost the hole.
At the turn Mr. Jellie was six up. The cards were as follows:
Jellie . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4 3 5 3 3 5 4 4—34
Fraser . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 4 5 4 6 5 7 7—46
From there on it was a farce. Mr. Jellie, it is true, appeared to be laboring under a great strain. His face was pale as death and his hands trembled nervously as he reached for his driver or knelt to tee up his ball. But his shots went straight and far, and his putts found the cup. He made a recovery from a sand pit on the eleventh that was only less marvelous than the one from the underbrush on the third. Fraser was shot to pieces, and the match ended on the eleventh green.
“I’m going to play it out,” said Mr. Jellie in a husky voice, “and see if I can break 70.”
Fraser could only stare at him speechlessly.
“All right,” he managed finally to utter.
Very few men find in a lifetime the ineffable sweetness, the poignant, intense delight that the following days held for Mr. Aloysius Jellie. For one awful, sleepless night he feared a fluke. He had made a 69. Great gods, could it have been a fluke? He sweated and tossed and slept not. As soon as dawn broke he took his clubs and flew to the first tee. A 240-yard drive, straight as an arrow—ah, thank heaven!
He made the first nine holes in 36, and, drunk with happiness, returned to the club house for breakfast.
Tom Innes arrived on the nine o’clock train, and Mr. Jellie took him out and beat him 6 and 5 in the morning and 8 and 7 in the afternoon. On the following day Silas Penfield was the victim, also for two matches. By that time Mac Donaldson had heard of the miracle that was taking place on the fashionable links of the Grassview Country Club, and Friday morning he took Mr. Jellie on for a match, and was badly beaten.
On Saturday nothing was heard at Grassview but talk of Jellie. His caddie had acquired an air of insolent arrogance. Mac Donaldson spoke of him in low, mysterious tones. But for the most part there was doubt, especially on the part of those men who had been winning innumerable boxes of balls from him for the past three years with ridiculous ease.
“Yes,” said Marsfield, the Egyptologist, employing a formula of golf wit that is older than St. Andrews; “yes, Jellie might make a 69—for nine holes.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” retorted Mr. Jellie, turning on him. “I’ll take you and Rogers and Huntington and play your best ball for five hundred dollars a side.”
There ensued a c
lamor of discussion. Fraser took Marsfield to one side and advised him strongly to “stay off.” Rogers was scornful, but cautious. Huntington, a good sport, decided it by declaring that it would be worth the price to see old Jellie do it.
Old Jellie did it, but not without a tussle. News of the match had spread over the links and through the club house, and by the time they reached the turn they were trailed by a gallery of some fifty persons. Mr. Jellie gave them all they were looking for. He went around 3 under par and won by 4 and 3. They forced him to make a speech in the dining room that evening, and in a toast he was referred to as “our next club champion.”
And this Aloysius Jellie, who had been the sucker, the easy thing, the object of much amused contempt, became the glory and pride of Grassview. The months of June and July were one continuous succession of triumphs. Middleton, who had met Francis Ouimet in the semi-finals at Ekwanok the year before, was the only member of the club who dared to play him on even terms, and Middleton suffered ignominious defeat. The greatest day of all occurred in mid-July. Tom McNamara and Mike Brady had appeared at Grassview on a visit to their old friend Donaldson, and about the first thing Mac had spoken of was Jellie and his miraculous reversal of form. The two visitors expressed a desire to see the marvel in action.
And Mr. Jellie took on McNamara, Brady and Donaldson and beat them one up, playing their best ball.
He played exhibition matches with various visiting amateurs and pros, and suffered no defeats. On July 28 he won the New Jersey, and on July 12 the Metropolitan amateur championship. He lowered the course records from one to four strokes at Englewood, Baltusrol, Garden City, Wykagyl, Piping Rock and Upper Montclair. The whole golfing world was ablaze with his fame, and countless duffers tried to imitate his ungainly, bizarre swing, with disastrous results. The newspapers ran columns about him, and the sport writers unanimously predicted that with Jellie to lead the attack the next American assault on Vardon, Taylor and Braid would bring England’s cup across the water. There was printed again and again the amusing tale of the dog Nibbie, and the story of his untimely death.
Mr. Jellie himself was far from forgetting Nibbie. Often, when at Grassview, he would stand for some time in his room gazing at a small bronze urn which occupied the place of honor on the mantel. It was inscribed:
Herein Repose the Ashes of
NIBBIE,
Faithful Companion and Critic of
Aloysius Jellie.
He Died on the 17th Day of May, 19—,
A Martyr to
The Angry Passion of His Master.
Mr. Jellie would stand and gaze at this urn, not in sorrowful memory of the past, but in perplexed and painful consideration of the present. Mr. Jellie was not a superstitious man. But what had happened could be accounted for only by admitting the supernatural, and one miracle is as likely to happen as another. Was it Aloysius Jellie who had astounded the golfing world by averaging under 4s for 342 consecutive holes? Or was it in fact, in some mysterious manner—was it Nibbie?
But it was another query, a corollary of this, that caused the frequent frown of worried perplexity on Mr. Jellie’s brow. Finally, one evening in early August, he got Marsfield, the Orientalist, into a corner and asked him point-blank:
“How long does a dog’s soul stay on earth?”
The other gazed at him in astonishment.
“Why, bless me,” he responded, “I didn’t know a dog had any soul.”
“Of course not, of course not,” Mr. Jellie agreed hastily. “What I mean is, I remember once you spoke about some ancient belief—”
“Did I? Perhaps so. There are many interesting ancient ceremonies and beliefs connected with the canine family. The Moslems, like the old Hebrews, hold them to be unclean. They were worshipped by the Asgans, and the Egyptians honored them. The latter held a belief that the soul of a dog remains on earth after death, either to console or torment his master, according to the treatment he received in life.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Mr. Jellie, eagerly. “And how long does—did—how long did they think the soul stayed around?”
“Three moons. That is equivalent to three months, or more accurately, eighty-eight days in our calendar.” After a moment’s pause Marsfield added: “Still thinking of the lost Nibbie, eh, Jellie? By Jove, old man, I should think the past two months would have driven him out of your mind.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten him,” replied the other, thoughtfully. Then he shook himself. “Much obliged, Marsfield. Come on, let’s join the others.”
Late that evening, in his room, Mr. Jellie took a piece of paper and made a calculation. It appeared simple enough, though cryptic, consisting merely of a sum of four figures:
14
30
31
13
88
He sat gazing at the figures on the paper until the minutes dragged into hours.
Ever since Mr. Jellie’s startling leap into the sphere of the masters all Grassview, members, caddies and pros, had been looking forward to an event which was now drawing near. It was discussed in the locker room, the caddie house, the library and the nineteenth hole. The opinion in all these places was the same, though expressed differently. In the caddie house: “Gee, Mr. Jellie kin lick them guys with nothin’ but a putter.” In the library: “Jellie’ll win sure. Hurrah for Jellie!”
The approaching event was the annual tournament for the amateur golf championship of the United States, to be held on the Baltusrol links, August 8 to 13.
But though the opinion at Grassview was unanimous, elsewhere it was divided. The papers of the Middle West said that Chick Evans was due to win the great prize that should have been his long before. Down East could see no one but Ouimet. In the Metropolitan district some picked Travers, saying that despite Jellie’s brilliancy he would probably falter under the gruelling strain of the National; but others, who had seen Jellie in action, favored his chances.
Two or three days before the tournament was to begin a delegation of Grassview members called Mr. Jellie into council to register a solemn protest.
“Mr. Jellie,” said Clifford Huntington—he always called him simply Jellie, but this was a grave occasion—“Mr. Jellie, we have heard that you do not intend going to Baltusrol to familiarize yourself with the course by practise before the tournament. Without any desire to appear presumptuous, we must say that we question the wisdom of this. No champion thinks it beneath his dignity to study the ground on which he is to fight his battles. Mr. Evans arrived at Baltusrol yesterday. Mr. Travers and Mr. Ouimet will be there today. The perpetual honor and glory of yourself and Grassview are at stake. Mr. Jellie, we beg you to reconsider your decision.”
The speaker sat down amid applause, and Aloysius Jellie arose.
“Mr. Huntington and the rest of you fellows,” he said, “I appreciate your interest and kindness. But I see no necessity of reconsidering my decision. I don’t need any practise.”
And with those sublime words he sat down again, while cries arose on every side:
“But, Jellie, it’s absurd!”
“They all do it!”
“Man, we want you to win this championship !”
“For the Lord’s sake, Jellie—”
And Tom Innes put in:
“You know, you’ve only played Baltusrol once.”
“Yes,” replied Jellie calmly, “and I broke the course record by three strokes.”
So they gave it up, but there were shakings of the head and doleful mutterings. Later in the day Monty Fraser approached him and said anxiously:
“You know, Jellie, old man, I don’t want to seem officious about this, but we’ve got eight thousand dollars up on you. You really think you’ll win, don’t you?”
Jellie looked at him a moment and replied:
“Ask the Egyptians.”
Then he
strode off.
“Now what the devil—” muttered Fraser, gazing after him in bewilderment.
“‘Ask the Egyptians’! I’ve half a mind to hedge.”
On the morning of August 8 the golfing world gathered at Baltusrol. It was a busy and animated scene. Buses, taxis, and private cars were constantly arriving from all directions, especially from that of the Short Hills railway station. The broad piazza of the club house, overlooking the 18th green, was crowded with men and women of all ages and appearances, walking, talking and drinking, and there were even more on the lawns. Tents had been improvised to cater to the wants of the overflow of visitors. Gay expectancy was the keynote. Here and there you would see a face, usually with a permanent coat of tan, which wore the set, tense expression of a busy lawyer in his office or a statesman considering some delicate and difficult complication. That would be one of the contestants—one of the master golfers.
At five minutes past eight the first pair started off on the qualifying round. All day the wood and iron heads whistled and the putts rolled. The links, a bright green paradise in the Jersey hills, with clusters of trees here and there and occasionally a glimmering ribbon of water, stretched forth a lovely panorama for the eye. Some noticed and praised it, but for the most part the thousands of visitors were too busy following and applauding their chosen idols to pay any attention to the beauties of nature.
