The Last Drive and Other Stories
- Автор: Стаут Рекс Тодхантер
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
- ISBN: 978-1-5040-1134-1
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Last Drive and Other Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
He looked steadily at Sackerville for a moment, patted Melissa on the shoulder, then went and took his wife by the arm and led her into the hall, closing the door behind them.
There was silence in the room — absolute silence, save for the soft rustling of the wind in the trees, through the open window. And the breeze entered, and there was a faint movement among the folds of lace on the bridal dress... Sackerville saw it...
Suddenly he spoke.
“Gowanton’s gone,” he said. “So there’s no hurry now. I don’t know what I’ve done, Melissa, and I don’t care. When a man wants something as I want you he will do anything. I want you to marry me now, but I’ll wait if you say so. You must decide. They are waiting for us.”
He took a step toward her. She looked up and met his eyes questioningly.
“I have loved you ten years,” he said. “I have waited that long. I will love you all my life. Melissa— Will you—”
And then, still with her eyes on his, she nodded.
He was close to her now, and he bent his head and touched his lips to her hair, the hair that he had felt on his face one night in the wilderness.
“I never thought—” he said, “I never dreamed—”
But that could not have been strictly true. There was that license in his pocket!
It Happened Last Night
This story appeared in The Black Cat in January 1917; it was reprinted in The Canadian Magazine in 1936. John McAleer knew of the 1936 publication but not that the story had first appeared nineteen years earlier. Discussing the story in his biography of Rex Stout, McAleer describes it as a “slick romance” that “reads like apprentice work.” In this, McAleer was prescient: it wasapprentice work, in the same sense that all of Stout’s early stories were. In any event, the story presents itself as a rather typical Stout romance, but closes with an unexpected twist — and not the expected sort of unexpected twist.
I knew that she was inaccessible to me. When I first found the thought of her whirling about in my mind, the sensible thing would have been to go to the corner café for a drink and drown the fancy like a man. She belonged to another world, and anything I might do would be like a dog baying at the moon. I knew that; but I entertained the thought and caressed it, encouraged it. I was intoxicated.
I had seen her once or twice before, but from that afternoon on Fifth Avenue dated my obsession. I had come downtown in the subway and stopped off at Forty-second Street on some errand or other, when suddenly she swept into sight. I already knew her by name and reputation, much as you know a famous prima donna or a royal princess. I stopped and stared like a fool, and then, half-unconsciously, drawn by an irresistible attraction, turned and followed her. She was dressed fashionably, but in faultless taste; her large dark eyes looked out from under the modish rim of a Doquet straw and her pale oval countenance and curved red lips, contradicting each other, imparted a piquant distinction to her appearance. Men turned to look at her. Knowing that I was making a fool of myself, I nevertheless followed her up the avenue. Every now and then she stopped to look at a window display while I stood a few yards away gazing at her from the corner of my eye. It was a senseless performance; I certainly had no thought of accosting her on the street, but I was impelled by an overpowering fascination.
After that the thought of her was constantly in my mind. Wherever I found myself, at the office in the morning, at home at night, on the subway, there was always before me that pale oval face with the red lips, to my torment. I dreamed of our meeting, of addressing her, of those red lips smiling at me in welcome, of the friendly pressure of her hand, and I thought of what I should say and how she would answer me. I composed a thousand speeches and turned each one over and over in my brain to perfect it and make it worthy of her. I was mad.
All that, knowing she was inaccessible, immeasurably above me. Humble as I was and of the poorest connections, the conventional channels were closed to me with insurmountable barriers. But I could not forget her. Heaven knows I tried; but in the end I gave it up, and one evening, gritting my teeth, I said to myself, as I was going home on the elevated:
“Very well, I’ll meet her, somehow, and take my chance. Anything will be better than this ceaseless yearning.”
My heart felt lighter after this resolution, but by the time I got home I was lost in contemplation of a hundred wild schemes that darted into my mind; so much so that I forgot to kiss my wife as I entered the flat. We had been married only about a year and honeymoon days had scarcely waned. Five minutes later, as I sat in the front room reading the paper, I suddenly remembered and jumped up and hurried to the kitchen, uneasy. My wife stood stirring something on the stove and I stopped and kissed her on the cheek before I noticed that anything was wrong.
She turned around quickly, and I saw tears in her eyes.
In the scene that followed, I was certainly not myself. It was not only that I had forgotten the kiss that evening. My wife had said not a word during the previous weeks about my preoccupation and brooding, but I learned now that nothing had escaped her notice. She accused me of neglecting her, of ceasing to love her, of being indifferent to her. I confess I acted a perfect ass. I should have told her everything, and she, sensible little woman that she is, would have seen the thing as I did and have done all in her power to help me out of my trouble. But the vanity and stupidity of man are boundless. I hesitated and evaded.
“It’s only business, dear,” I declared. “I’m worried, that’s all.”
As a matter of fact, things were very well at the office; but it could not be denied that I was worried. In the end, it was patched over somehow, though that was the most uncomfortable dinner since our marriage.
In the days that followed, I continued revolving in my mind schemes for meeting her — wild, impossible schemes — conceiving and rejecting them in endless succession. Nothing else seemed to matter but her, only her! If I could only speak to her! Only hear her voice and see her smile! Only hear the words that I imagined on her lips! One morning, at my desk in the office, I sat with these thoughts in my brain — they were never absent — quite unconsciously writing her name, over and over, on a sheet of paper, until it was filled. I was lost in my dreams, when suddenly I heard a voice at my elbow:
“What’s that for?”
I looked up to find my partner, Harris, gazing in bewilderment at her name scribbled all over the paper. I jerked myself up in my chair and hastily turned the sheet upside down, while I felt the blood rush into my face or out of it, I don’t know which.
“What’s that for?” he repeated.
Then he saw the expression on my face and his look of puzzlement changed slowly to one of incredulous understanding as he stood and stared at me. I said nothing and he stared in silence for a long while.
“You’re a damned fool,” he said at length, calmly.
“It can be,” I retorted and seizing my hat, I jumped up and left the office.
I wandered about the streets for hours, and though I had several appointments for that day I kept none of them. I was wandering in the light of a glorious vision and was blinded by it. Of course Harris was right: I was a damned fool. But I couldn’t help it. I walked at random, not knowing or caring where I went, with her face always before me.
Suddenly I saw her.
It was on Broadway, somewhere in the Thirties, about five o’clock in the afternoon. She was walking uptown, unhurried, with an assured, leisurely step that was, in fact, deceiving; for when I turned and followed her I found that she carried herself along faster than one would think. I threw caution to the winds and marched along almost at her heels. A happy chance came presently to my assistance, or I believe I should have been ass enough to accost her on the street and thereby have utterly ruined myself in her sight.