The Last Drive by Rex Stout

strained through a silver cloth. In front of the hotel stood a racy-looking roadster. Rankin was on the heels of his man as he sprang up the steps of the hotel porch and entered the door; but there the detective stopped and tiptoed to a window a little distance to the right, through which he could observe the interior.
    The man was indeed one of the Adams brothers: Harry, the younger. He advanced a few steps into the room, a typical country hotel office, with wooden chairs and a fly-specked cigar case, then stopped and turned at sound of a voice.
    â€œHarry! Thank God!”
    Rankin, too, heard the voice from his vantage-point outside the window. It came from a man who had been seated in one of the chairs by the windows at the front of the room, and who now sprang forward toward young Adams with an eager and anxious countenance. He was a young fellow about Harry’s age, but of a very different mould. The quick, shifty eyes, the whitish cheeks, already too often shaven, the nervous oiliness of his manner even in his excitement, were all quite familiar features to one who had had opportunity to observe a certain type of young man who infests Wall Street.

    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.
    â€œHave you got it?” came from his eager lips before the other had time to return his greeting.
    Harry Adams shook his head.
    â€œNo, I haven’t. I—”
    â€œYou haven’t! But, man, you must have! You promised! Why, I came—my God! You promised, Harry!”
    Young Adams took him by the arm. His voice was commanding:
    â€œDon’t shout so. I’ll explain. I don’t want to talk in here. It was risky your sitting in here where everybody could see you from the street. Come outside.”
    As they turned toward the door the detective retreated hastily from the window and dropped noiselessly over the porch railing onto the grass below. As he crouched there in the shadow he heard their feet descending the steps and saw their shadows on the lawn. The unknown’s voice came:
    â€œI’ve got my roadster. Shall we—”
    â€œNo,” came Harry’s reply. “We’ll walk a little.”
    He continued in a lower tone, and Rankin, straining his ear, couldn’t catch the words. The two young men turned down the sidewalk to the left. Rankin prepared to follow. As he straightened up he caught sight of a form disappearing in a doorway a little down the street. “Probably the man that followed us from Greenlawn,” thought the detective. “Who the devil can he be and what is he up to? Well, we’ll attend to him later.”
    The two young men continued on down the street, talking earnestly in low tones; their voices came, but not the words. Rankin stepped cautiously after them at a distance. If only he could hear what they were saying! He drew a little closer; the sidewalk here, flanked by trees, was in heavy shadow, which made it less risky; but though he got within thirty feet of them he could only catch a meaningless word now and then. Otherwise, the silence of the night was almost unbroken; the call of insects sounded occasionally, the hoot of an owl came from the woods toward the river, and the horn of a motor car tooted faintly somewhere far down the road. Subconsciously the detective noted the curious resemblance between the two latter sounds, as if one were answering to the other.
    At length the two young men halted and, half turning, stood still talking. The detective crept closer. The nearest street lamp was a block away, and the moonlight tried in vain to penetrate the thick foliage of the trees. Rankin moved cautiously and silently from one protecting trunk to another; he was quite close now. One more advance—his foot bent a twig, but it was unheard—and he stood behind a tree so close that he could almost have put out his hand and