The Last Drive by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

Wortley, who was to sit up with the dead. He had been in the garden over two hours. A glance showed him that all the windows on that side were dark.
    He turned toward the house, but before he had taken two steps he saw something that caused him to draw back hastily into the shadow of the laca bush. Someone was moving on the piazza, and this someone suddenly leaped over the rail onto the driveway and stood there in the moonlight glancing furtively about him in every direction. It was the furtiveness in that look that caused the detective to draw back.
    Suddenly the man turned and moved swiftly down the driveway. Rankin thought it looked like one of the Adams boys. He waited till there was a hundred yards between them, then followed, being careful to keep on the soft turf at the edge of the drive. The man ahead moved so swiftly that he was forced to trot to keep up. Down the length of the driveway he was led, until finally the great entrance gate was reached; there the man turned to the right without hesitation and continued on down the road. A moment later Rankin emerged from the gateway and, seeking the shadow of the trees along the opposite side, followed warily. The man ahead kept to the center of the road, full in the moonlight, pounding along at a rapid walk.
    They had gone perhaps two hundred yards from the gate when the detective, happening to glance back over his shoulder, saw the figure of still another man emerge from the entrance of Greenlawn and turn up the road toward him.
    He, too, was being followed!
    CHAPTER IV

    A s Rankin turned he saw the man in the rear dodge hastily into the shadow of a tree. With a mental shrug of the shoulders the detective turned again and strode on. His chief concern was with the man in front; if the other came along, so much the better.
    In the bright moonlight the straight macadam road stretched ahead like a pale silver ribbon, embroidered at more or less regular intervals with the bunchy shadows of bordering trees; and so still was the nocturnal countryside that the footsteps of the man two hundred yards in front rang sharply out, staccato. Rankin, keeping to the turf at the edge of the macadam, followed noiselessly. An automobile passed, honk-honking at the man in the road, its lamps piercing the moonlight with two cones of yellow fire; and they had gone perhaps a mile when a dog came out from a gate and ran barking after the pedestrian. Rankin crossed to the other side of the road to escape the dog’s observation, and got safely by.
    At the crossings, a little further on, the man turned to the east. This, Rankin knew, was the detour to Brockton, three miles away. He kept straining his eyes ahead in an effort to guess the identity of the man he was following, but all he could certainly discern was that the youthfulness of his figure and gait made it probable that it was one of the Adams boys, if anyone who belonged at Greenlawn.

    A mile beyond the crossing a quick glance over the detective’s shoulder showed him the man in the rear trudging doggedly along. Thus the queer procession wound its way along the country road. Now and then, even at that late hour, an automobile whizzed by in one direction or the other; in the tonneau of a big touring car Rankin fancied that he recognized Harrison Matlin, president of the Corona Country Club, which was not improbable. Finally lights shone ahead, and the houses began to come closer together; they were entering the village of Brockton.
    Rankin quickened his step and drew a little closer to the man in front, who kept straight ahead as one who knew where he was going and wanted to get there. Reaching the main street of the town, he turned swiftly to the right and went on past a block of business buildings to the next corner, where stood an old three-story frame hotel, the only one in the place. It was past midnight now, and save for one or two stragglers the street was deserted, with the bright moonlight over everything, like sunshine