The Last Drive

by Rex Stout

  The second surprised individual was Mr. Garrett Linwood. Having temporarily given up gin fizzes for fear of their effect on his golf score, he had taken a pitcher of lemonade and an interesting book to the billiard room at Greenhedge, and had reached chapter XIV a little before eleven o’clock, when he heard his host’s automobile outside. Chapter XIV being mostly description of scenery, which he detested, he threw down the novel and strolled idly down the hall to the door, and, arrived there, stopped short and opened and closed his eyes two or three times as if to wake himself up. For this thing that he saw surely could not be: Fred Canby crossing the threshold with a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl by his side! Or was it a witch, or a fairy? Linwood blinked harder, and he heard his friend address someone as Nella and tell her that this was Mr. Linwood, his guest.

  Linwood bowed mechanically, still wondering when he would wake up, and stood by in stupor while he heard Canby send for his housekeeper and say to her:

  “This is Miss Somi, Mrs. Wheeler, the young lady I spoke about this evening. She is going to live with us. I suppose her room is ready? Then you will show her, please. I’ll take you over your new home tomorrow, Nella. Bedtime now. I’ll send your things up immediately. Good night.”

  Later, in the library, Linwood sat and listened to his friend’s wondrous tale; and though he was a fairly skeptical man he did not smile overmuch during the recital. When it was over he said calmly:

  “Canby, you’re a fool!”

  “I wasn’t aware I had asked for your opinion,” the other retorted.

  “True enough; you didn’t. But remember I’m as much beyond fifty as you are beyond forty, and besides, having had a wife of my own for a total of twenty-one years—bless her memory!—I’ve studied the creature on its native soil. Nothing against Miss—What’s her name? Thanks!—Nothing against Miss Somi; I don’t know her at all, and I don’t intend to offer any advice or begin any argument. I merely make the observation: Canby, you’re a fool; but the thing’s done. You have sworn that you have no personal intentions in the matter, matrimonial or otherwise, and you’re a sincere and honest man. May you never have any regrets; and that sentiment should be sanctified in burgundy.”

  Whereupon Canby rang a bell and the burgundy was brought.

  The following morning, up early and out of doors, Canby found Linwood in a corner of the lawn near the garage lustily swinging his driver at a parachute ball. They had barely exchanged greetings when they heard footsteps and, glancing up, saw Nella Somi coming down the path. She was bareheaded, without a parasol, and the glow of health and youth was all about her like a radiance.

  “Good morning!” Canby called, and she crossed over.

  As she nodded to them on her approach, turning her vivid blue eyes from one to the other, Canby simply stood and looked at her as though there were nothing else in the world worth doing.

  “Sleep well?” he asked.

  She laughed a little. “To tell the truth, I did,” she confessed. “Comme une marmotte. When I went to bed I was so excited I was sure I wouldn’t sleep at all—and I don’t know what happened!”

  When they were alone again a little later Linwood looked at his host and said:

  “By Jove, Canby, now I know you’re a fool. A rare wind-flower. What does Pope say: ‘Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.’ She has done so.”

  After breakfast Linwood went off to the golf links, and Canby showed Nella about her new home. Compared with magnificent Roselawn, Greenhedge was quite unpretentious. The house was of brick and stone, high and old-fashioned, set in the midst of a grove of ancient elms, with terraced lawns sloping toward a small pond on one side and the driveway and gardens on the other. Completely surrounding the whole was a broad and high hedge, trimmed square; in the rear, beside the garage, there were kennels with a dozen Irish wolf-dogs, and a disused tennis court lay between there and the house. Nella displayed an eager childish interest in everything; she patted the dogs and picked a bouquet in the garden, and it was decided that the tennis court should be put in commission without delay.

  When they returned for a tour of the house they were joined by Mrs. Wheeler, and Canby observed that Nella was already in the good graces of the old housekeeper. Everything pleased her, giving Canby delight in her pleasure; and when they reached the room where the portraits of past Canbys were hung she examined each of them critically, listening meanwhile to the other’s not too sympathetic remarks on the various virtues and vices of his ancestors. In the billiard room he taught her how to hold a cue and make a carrom; she was enchanted.

  “By the way, about your own room,” Canby observed as they wandered on to the piazza after lunch, “you may do as you please about it, you know. Those hangings have been up I don’t know how long and will have to come down anyway; you shall have it decorated to suit yourself.”

  “You are too good to me, Mr. Canby,” she replied simply.

  They strolled out under the trees and sat down in a garden swing.

  “I was talking to Mrs. Wheeler about it this morning,” Canby resumed, “and we thought it would be a good idea to fit out that room next to yours as a dressing-room. They’re connected, you know. There’s so much extra space, we might as well make use of all we can.”

  “A dressing-room for me!” exclaimed Nella.

  He nodded; and then, so quickly that he was scarcely aware it had begun before it was over, he felt warm arms about his neck and cool lips on his cheek, and he heard her voice in his ear:

  “There, you’re so good I couldn’t help it!”

  Canby looked into her blue eyes, feeling himself tremble as the blood raced through his veins. He had to control himself, and it required an effort, an effort so pronounced that his head swam. Decidedly, this was dangerous, and must be stopped.

  “You mustn’t do that, Nella,” he said at last, managing a steady voice somehow.

  The blue eyes opened a little in wonder.

  “Why not?”

  He discovered suddenly that he had no reply. To be sure, why not? He couldn’t very well say to this girl: “Because you awake my passion.” He had assumed toward her the attitude of guardian, of parent; what plausible objection, then, to a filial kiss? But what should he reply?

  “Well, you are really somewhat of a young lady,” he stammered finally.

  “Mais, mon Dieu,” she retorted, “I’m to live with you! And you’re so old! And when I love anybody and they’re nice to me, I kiss them!”

  He found a mixture of bitter and sweet in that. He looked at her, and saw the feminine in her eyes, a fleeting first hint of the universal lure, the endless invitations; of course, he told himself, all unconscious. After all, she was nearly twenty. . . .

  “Last night,” Nella continued artlessly, “I was thinking of what good times we’ll have, if you’re really fond of me, like you said. I know—” she hesitated—“I know I’m awfully ignorant; like the other day when Mrs. Haskins introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Lodge, and I shook hands with him, and he looked so funny, and you told me afterwards I shouldn’t. There are lots of things like that I don’t know, and I thought that of evenings we could come out here together or on the porch, and I’d sit on your lap while you told me all about such things. But if you don’t want me to kiss you, I guess, you’re not really so fond of me . . .”

  “Good heavens!” Canby exploded. “Of course I want you to kiss me!”

  “All right, then I will,” she returned calmly. After a moment she added thoughtfully: “I think I know what the trouble was, Mr. Canby. You were afraid I’d expect you to kiss me back, and of course you don’t like to kiss anybody; that’s why you never got married. But I won’t ask you to.” An instant’s pause, and her eyes danced roguishly. “Except on my birthday,” she added. “Then you’ll have to give me three kisses for a present. One here—” she tapped her right cheek with a dainty figure—“one here—” a tap on the
other cheek—“and one here.” And she pressed the tips of her fingers against her lips.

  This was rather too much. Artless or no, it could not be expected of a man to sit cold against the fascination of it. Canby rose abruptly to his feet and proposed a drive. Instantly she was for it, and together they went to the garage and got out the roadster. He broke all the speed laws in Dutchess and Putnam counties that afternoon.

  Returning about six o’clock, just thirty minutes before the Greenhedge dinner hour, as they turned the last corner of the driveway they caught sight of Garrett Linwood, back from the golf links, seated on a canvas chair in a shady corner of the lawn; and, standing in front of him, talking with considerable rapidity and animation, was a young man with wavy brown hair dressed in a suit of summer silk and swinging a heavy black walking-stick.

  “Oh, somebody’s here!” said Nella, touching Canby’s arm.

  Canby too had seen the young man.

  “It’s Tom,” he replied. “Tom Linwood; Mr. Linwood’s nephew. Probably run down from Newport to make a touch.”

  “A touch? What’s that?”

  “To ask for some money.”

  When, a minute later, they joined the two on the lawn, this surmise was at once corroborated by the young man himself. He greeted Canby respectfully and hastened to assure him that there was no occasion to fear the inconvenience of an unbidden guest, as he had merely come on a flying visit to his uncle on a pressing matter of personal finance.

  “Always glad to see you, my boy,” Canby declared, shaking hands. “As for your finances, let me give you a tip: show your uncle how to lower his golf score ten strokes, and you can have his entire fortune. … Nella, this is Mr. Tom Linwood. Miss Somi, my ward, Tom.”

  The young man turned his dark eyes on Nella for the first time, meeting her blue ones, vivid and startling under the heavy lashes. She half extended her hand, then, with a flush and a quick look at Canby, hastily dropped it. The young society man all at once lost his air of easy good manners; his gaze was developing into a stare.

  “I’ll just let Mrs. Wheeler know you’re here,” Canby was saying, as he started for the house.

  “Wait a minute!” came from the elder Linwood. “Tom isn’t going to stay.”

  “What! Of course he is.”

  “No.” Linwood’s voice had a touch of grimness. “He’s going back to New York on the six-thirty-five, and he’s going to be at his office tomorrow morning at nine. There’s been enough of this Newport foolishness for one summer.”

  “What about it, Tom?” asked Canby, laughing. “You’ll stay to dinner? There’s a later train.”

  The young man glanced at this host, at his uncle, and back at Nella.

  “Why yes, thanks; I’ll stay if you don’t mind,” he replied.

  On his way to the house, Canby debated in his mind what to do with Nella, feeling that it would be unfair to expect her to preside at her first dinner at Greenhedge with guests. However, since she had had the advantage of observing his sister in the performance of that duty for two weeks, he decided to risk it.

  With a critical, though sympathetic, eye on her throughout dinner, he was amused and astonished to observe how thoroughly she had taken advantage of her opportunity at Roselawn, and that, too, without having had at the time any idea that she would so soon have use for that knowledge. The phrases that she used in indicating their seats to her guests were copied verbatim from Janet; when she served a ragout from casserole there was a reproduction of Janet’s every moment. She was clever, Canby observed inwardly, amazed; though he was far from beginning to believe in what he considered his sister’s spiteful estimate of her. The dinner, though informal, was a somewhat complicated affair for a nineteen-year-old girl who two weeks previously had been sorting candy in a Manhattan factory and living in an east-side tenement; but she reached the end with complete success, without a single false step.

  Afterwards they went out to sit on the lawn, and, the two elder men engaging in a controversy on the war, young Linwood proposed a walk to Miss Somi. An hour later they returned, and, just before the time came for him to go to the station, whither his uncle was to drive him, the young man managed to get a word alone with Canby.

  “Is it possible, sir, what Miss Somi tells me about herself—candy factory and all that rot?” he demanded. “I can’t believe it.”

  Canby gave him an affirmative.

  The youth whistled. “Well, believe me,” he observed softly to himself as the other moved away, “Uncle Garry is dead right about Newport foolishness. Nothing to it; nobody up there can touch her. In the future my vacations are going to be spent on the classic east side of little old New York.”

  IV

  For some time after that, Garrett Linwood made his daily pilgrimage to the Wanakahnda golf links alone. Canby’s days were full, what with tennis with Nella, and motoring with Nella, and walking and talking with Nella, and improving Nella’s mind, and trying not to make an old fool of himself with Nella.

  The last became more difficult every hour, as her charm completely enveloped and permeated him. There was always a new gesture, a new expression, a new tone, to be watched for; of all the interests that he had ever had in life she became the strongest. He had many an argument with himself, but they ended always in the same decision: wait and see; which of course was no decision at all, and that was not like Fred Canby.

  Linwood, sour widower of two-and-fifty, at first ignored the new member of the household more or less completely, contenting himself with courtesy; at length, however, he gave way before her gay good nature and the buoyant charm of her.

  “By immortal time,” he declared one evening to his host, “since you won’t marry her, Canby, I’ll swear I’m tempted myself!” He even went so far as to invite her to Wanakahnda for a day on the links and an initiation into the mysteries of the ancient game; but the look of thankful relief that appeared on his face when she declined sent her into peals of laughter.

  Thus weeks passed.

  One day Mrs. Wheeler, the housekeeper, came to Canby and asked when he was going to New York.

  “I don’t know, perhaps next week,” he replied vaguely. “Why?”

  “It ought to be soon,” returned Mrs. Wheeler with emphasis. “It ain’t my business, and she don’t seem to mind, but I don’t see how the poor dear does it. When I asked her she said she come up here expecting to stay only two weeks, and she didn’t have any too much for that. Don’t you tell her I said anything, but I’m sure I don’t want to see the poor dear naked, and that’s what—”

  Canby stopped her.

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  Mrs. Wheeler became suddenly brief:

  “I’m talkin’ about clothes.”

  “Good Lord!”

  Canby leaped to his feet and started in search of Nella. In the past week he had begun to notice that she was wearing the same things rather often; but, never having been concerned in the condition of any woman’s wardrobe, it simply hadn’t occurred to him that he had any responsibility in the matter. Now he reproached himself; also, he should before this have arranged for his appointment as her legal guardian. There would be no difficulty about that; she was absolutely alone in the world, without any ties whatever.

  Early the following morning they started for New York in the roadster. It was the last day of August, and the pulse of summer was beginning to wane; on the foliage were the first faint signs of the season’s death; the air, though hot, was not oppressive, and when they got to the Albany road they found the breeze from the river cool and brisk. Nella was at the wheel; in the past two weeks she had become expert.

  Canby took advantage of the occasion to tell her certain things that he thought she ought to know.

  “I’m going to make application today for appointment as your legal guardian,” he informed her as they rolled along at thirty
miles an hour. “That means that I will be responsible for you just as a father would be. Before you agree to that you ought to know definitely what to expect. I have an income of something over twenty thousand a year. I own Greenhedge. There is no one else in the world dependent on me, and another thing I will do today is make you the sole beneficiary in my will—that is, you’ll get everything when I die. I’m not a wealthy man as New York goes nowadays, but I have enough.”

  When they arrived in New York he explained his plans for the day; and in accordance with them, at Forty-second Street he transferred Nella to a taxi-cab and handed her a well-filled purse. He had sufficient confidence in her taste to feel no anxiety for the propriety of her purchases; and besides, any advice from him on the subject would be worse than useless. So he left her, after appointing a rendezvous with her at one o’clock.

  Downtown, in the brokerage office in which he had an interest, on Cedar Street just off Broadway, his sudden appearance caused a degree of surprise. Matters of business kept him there for over an hour, after which he departed to keep an appointment arranged over the telephone with his attorney. More surprise here, profound and sustained, at his abrupt announcement of the acquisition of a ward; it ended with the lawyer’s assurance that the legal phase of the transaction would present no difficulties whatever; he would enter the application that day, and in a week or so the thing would be done. Then the alteration of the will was attended to, and it was half an hour after noon when Canby found himself again on the street.

  He crossed the sidewalk to the curb, opened the door of the roadster and was getting in when he heard his name called from behind:

  “Mr. Canby! It’s a wonder you wouldn’t look at a fellow! When’d you come in?”

  It was Tom Linwood, smiling as always, resplendent as to attire and assured as to countenance. They talked a little, the young man asking with mock solicitude concerning the state of his uncle’s golf score.

  “You see,” he explained, “I’m naturally interested, because if he ever gets a seventy-nine he’ll die of joy and I’ll be a rich man. … By the way, how is Miss Somi?”