The Last Drive by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online

the light of the window. “So this is what did it,” he breathed slowly. “A little thing like that to bring a man like Carson Phillips to the ground! You found it beneath that spot on the abdomen?”
    The Doctor nodded. “Straight in, buried half an inch beneath the skin, but pointing a little upward toward the breast bone. It must have entered at that angle, for there was nothing to deflect its course. Its velocity was not very high, or a sharp pointed needle like that would have penetrated much deeper.”
    â€œYou say it pointed upwards ? Are you sure of that?”
    â€œAbsolutely. An angle of about twenty degrees from the horizontal.”
    The detective seated himself and thoughtfully turned the needle over and over in his hand. During a long silence his brow was wrinkled and his eyes half closed in speculation.
    â€œIt is incomprehensible that it should have been pointing upwards,” he said at last, turning to the Doctor.
    Admitting that it was difficult to understand, the other maintained that such was the fact. “To tell the truth,” he added, “it takes a load from my mind. In spite of my conviction to the contrary, I have been forced to confess inwardly that it might have been suicide. This removes that possibility. That needle was shot from a gun of some kind—possibly a blow-gun—it must have been noiseless—”
    â€œUndoubtedly. A report would have been heard. But that doesn’t explain—” The detective got up from his chair. “See. You stand there. I here. Now how would it be possible, with any kind of a gun, for me to fire that needle at you so it would enter your breast pointing upwards?”
    â€œIf you were on the ground, and a little closer—” the Doctor suggested.
    â€œBut I’m not. Remember, concealment was out of the question. There was no place for it.”
    â€œIt might have been deflected by something—a button on his shirt, for instance.”
    â€œA bullet, yes. But hardly a thin sharp needle like this. The deuce of it is, we can’t know the exact moment it happened. It’s evident that the Colonel didn’t feel the thing at all when it struck him. You say it would take from five to fifteen minutes for the poison to work. Then it might have been anywhere from the fourth green to where he took his second on the fifth. What I can’t understand is how it could possibly have been done without one of those men seeing it—or one of the other two, if one of the three is the murderer.”
    Again the detective thoughtfully turned the needle over in his fingers, as though he would extract the stubborn secret somehow from the slender piece of steel. There was a long silence. Doctor Wortley, wandering to the closed fireplace, found himself regarding the Colonel’s golf bag, left standing there by Harry Adams on their arrival at Greenlawn. The Doctor took out the driver and passed his hand slowly up and down the shaft. “Poor old Carson, he’s had his last drive,” he breathed. At that moment the dinner bell rang.

    â€œYou found it beneath that spot on the abdomen?” The Doctor nodded.
    At the table the subject of Fred’s visit to the Mortons was brought into the conversation by a remark of Harry’s and the elder of the two young men defended himself by explaining that he had had an engagement to play tennis with Dora Morton that afternoon, and had driven over merely to break it. Furthermore, he announced his intention of remaining away from her for a time, out of respect for his uncle’s memory. Fraser Mawson and Doctor Wortley signified their approval of this. Nobody ate much, and the conversation was by fits and starts. Fred, grave and thoughtful, seemed a different person from the young man who had so gaily chaffed his two elders only that morning; Harry seemed to be irritable and nervous, to an extent that caused the old doctor to turn a solicitous