The Dragon’s Teeth (2 page)

“Sort of plutocratic marine hobo,” remarked Ellery. “What's the matter with him?”

“He's wacky as hell,” said Beau happily.

“If what you say is true, this must be his first personal appearance in New York City in eighteen years.”

“I'm honored,” said Beau. “Yes, sir, I'm sorry I didn't put on my other suit!”

SINCE
millionairus Americanus
is a rare and fine species, it is important to study Mr. Cadmus Cole while we have the opportunity. For Mr. Cole is doomed to an early extinction … perhaps earlier than he thinks.

Observe, ladies and gentlemen, that his first act in entering the inner office of
Ellery Queen, Inc.
is to bump into the door-jamb. A curious fact, which it will be instructive to bear in mind. No, he is not drunk.

He then advances to the focus of the beige rug, and pauses. His gait is not so much a walk as a stumping lurch, each foot raised deliberately from the floor and planted wide, as if feeling its way on an insubstantial terrain.

He stares at Messrs. Queen and Rummell with an oddly squinty sharpness. The squint, enmeshed in radial wrinkles, has surely been caused by years of gazing upon the shifting planes of sunstruck seas; but the sharpness, let us suspect, has a deeper root.

The ancient mariner's complexion is redbrown. The shallow pale plinths of pupil visible behind his squint are clear and youthful, if intently focussed. His face is a mask, smooth, hollowy, and mummiferous. He is paunch' less, erect.

His cranium is innocent of hair; it bulges broadly, a brown and naked bone. And, his pale lips being parted a little, we see that he is as toothless as an embryo.

Clad in a blue, brass-buttoned yachting suit of great age, the millionaire squints from Mr. Rummell to Mr. Queen and back again with all the animation of a tailor's dummy.

“Great pleasure, great pleasure,” said Mr. Queen hastily. “Won't you have a chair, Mr. Cole?”

“You Queen?” demanded the great man. He spoke in a strangulated mumble that was difficult to make out. His lack of teeth also caused him to drool and spit slightly when he spoke.

Mr. Queen closed his eyes. “I am.”

“Talk to you alone,” said Mr. Cole testily.

Beau kowtowed and vanished. Mr. Queen knew he was listening, observing, and engaging in other Rummellian activities from a peephole in the combination laboratory and darkroom adjoining the office.

“Not much time,” announced the great man. “Sailing tonight. West Indies. Want to clear up this business. I've just come from Lloyd Goossens's law-office. Know young Goossens?”

“By reputation only, Mr. Cole. His father died about five years ago and he heads the firm now. It's an old, respectable outfit specializing in the liquidation and trusteeship of large estates. Are you—er—liquidating your estate, Mr. Cole?”

“No, no. Just left Goossens my sealed will. Used to know his father. Good man. But since his father's dead, I've appointed Goossens co-executor and co-trustee of my estate.”

“Co-?” asked Mr. Queen politely.

“My friend Edmund De Carlos will share the administrative duties with Goossens. Can't say this concerns you at all!”

“Naturally not,” Mr. Queen assured the nabob.

“Come to you on a confidential matter. Understand you know your business, Queen. Want your promise to handle this case personally. No assistants!”

“What case, if you please?” asked Mr. Queen.

“Shan't tell you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Shan't tell you. The case hasn't happened yet.”

Mr. Queen looked indulgent. “But, my dear sir, you can't expect me to investigate a case of which I know nothing! I'm a detective, not a clairvoyant.”

“Don't expect you to,” mumbled the great man. “Engaging your future services. You'll know what it's about when the proper time comes.”

“I can't refrain from asking,” observed Mr. Queen, “why, if that is the case, Mr. Cole, you don't engage me at the proper time.”

It seemed to him that a certain slyness crept over the brown mask of the millionaire. “You're a detective. You tell
me.”

“There's only one reason that comes directly to mind,” murmured Mr. Queen, rising to the challenge, “but it seems so indelicate I hesitate to mention it.”

“The devil! What's the reason?” And Mr. Cole's nostrils betrayed an oscillant curiosity.

“If you didn't decide to do the normal thing, which would have been to hire an investigator at the time an investigation became necessary, then it must be because you don't expect to be
able
to hire an investigator at that time, Mr. Cole.”

“Fiddle-faddle! Talk sense.”

“Simply that you think you may be dead.”

The great man sucked in a long, snorkly breath. “Ah!” he said. “Well, well!” as if he had not heard anything so astounding in all his sixty-six years.

“Then you do expect an attack on your life?” asked Mr. Queen, leaning forward. “You have an active enemy? Perhaps some one has tried to kill you already?”

Mr. Cadmus Cole was silent. His lids slid closed, like the segmented roof of an observatory. Then he opened his eyes and said: “Money's no object. Always buy the best. Don't haggle. Will you take the case, Queen?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Queen promptly.

“I'll send a registered letter to Goossens as soon as I get back to the boat, with an enclosure to be filed with my will in Goossens's possession. It will specify that I've retained you to perform certain services at the stipulated fee. Which is?”

Mr. Queen could sense the mental vibrations of Mr. Beau Rummell imploring him to name an astronomical number. “Since I don't know what or how much work is involved, I can scarcely set a fee, Mr. Cole. I'll set it when, as you say, the time comes. Meanwhile, may I suggest a retainer?”

“How much?” Cole reached into his breast-pocket.

“Shall we say,” Mr. Queen hesitated, but only for an instant, “ten thousand dollars?”

“Make it fifteen,” said the great man, and he drew out a checkbook and a fountain-pen. “Expenses to be paid. Let me sit down there, young man.”

The millionaire heeled round the desk like a clipper in a squall, dropped into Mr. Queen's chair and, sucking in his cheeks, rapidly wrote out a check.

“I'll give you a receipt, Mr. Cole—”

“Not necessary. I've marked it ‘retainer against future services.' Good day.”

And, rising, the old gentleman set his yachting cap firmly on his naked dome and staggered towards the office door. Mr. Queen hurried forward, just too late to steer his extraordinary client clear of the jamb. Mr. Cole bumped. There was an absent look on his face, almost a majestically absent look, as if he could not be bothered about mere doorways when there were so many important things to think about.

He bounced off the jamb and chuckled: “By the way, just what d'ye suppose I
am
hiring you for, Queen?”

Mr. Queen searched his brain for a reply. The question made no sense. No sense whatever.

But Mr. Cadmus Cole mumbled: “Never mind,” and trundled across the reception room and out of Mr. Queen's life.

WHEN Mr. Queen returned, the check was missing from the desk. Rubbing his eyes, he said: “Abracadabra!” but Beau came running in from the laboratory with the slip of paper and Said: “I made a photostat of it—just in case. No hairless monkey's passing me a phony check for fifteen grand and getting away with it!”

“You don't seem pleased,” said Mr. Queen, alarmed. He sat down at the desk and quickly endorsed the check, as if he expected it to fly away.

“He's either an escaped lunatic,” said Beau with disgust, “or else he's one of those eccentric tycoons you read about who like to play. This is a joke. Wait and see. Screwball will stop the check.”

The mere possibility agonized Mr. Queen. He rang. “Miss Penny, do you see this scrap of paper?”

“I do,” said Hecuba, gazing with love at Mr. Rummell.

“Take it down to the bank on which it's drawn first thing in the morning; too late today. If the signature's authentic, deposit the check in our bank.”

“Optimist,” growled Beau.

Miss Penny made off with the precious cargo of paper. Beau flung himself on the leather sofa and began angrily to chew on a mashed chocolate bar.

“What did you make of friend Cole?” asked Ellery with a remote look. “Didn't anything about him seem—well, peculiar?”

Beau said: “He's hiding something. Like hell.”

Ellery sprang from the chair. “But the other thing! His pesky, unreasonable
curiosity.
Why should he be so anxious to find out what
I
think he's hiring me for?”

“He's a nut, I tell you.”

Ellery perched on the desk and stared out at Times Square's crenellated skyline. Suddenly he grimaced; he had sat down on something long and hard. He turned round.

“He forgot his fountain-pen.”

“Then we're in that much, anyway.” Beau scowled at his chocolated fingers and began to lick them clean, like a cat.

Ellery examined the pen. Beau lit a cigaret. After a while he said indifferently: “What ho!”

“What do you make of this, Beau?” Ellery brought the pen to the sofa.

Beau squinted at it curiously through the smoke. It was a large fat pen, its cap considerably scratched and nicked in a sort of arced pattern. Some of the dents were deep, and the whole pen had a look of age and hard use.

Beau glanced at Ellery's face, puzzled. Then he unscrewed the cap and examined the gold nib.

“I make out an old-fashioned black gold-trimmed fountain-pen that's seen plenty of use by somebody that likes a smooth, broad stroke. It's exactly like millions of other pens.”

“I have an idea,” said Ellery, “that it's exactly like no other pen in the world.”

Beau stared at him.

“Well, no doubt all these little mysteries will clarify in time. Meanwhile, Beau, I suggest you take microphotographs of the thing. From every angle and position. I want exact measurements, too. Then we'll send the pen back to the
Argonaut
by messenger.… I wish I were sure,” he mumbled.

“Sure?”

“That the check's good.”

“Amen!”

A glorious morrow it proved to be. The sun beamed; their messenger reported that the previous evening he had delivered the pen to the yacht, in its berth in the Hudson, and had not been arrested as a suspicious character; and Miss Hecuba Penny appeared late for work but triumphant with the announcement that the bank on which the fifteen thousand dollar check was drawn had authenticated, promptly and beyond any doubt whatever, the signature of Cadmus Cole.

That left only the possibility that Mr. Cole had been playful and meant to stop the check.

They waited three days. The check cleared.

Beau salaamed thrice to the agency bankbook and sallied forth to drown the fatted calf.

II.
Last Voyage of the
Argonaut

The mortality rate among sixty-six-year-old millionaires who make out sudden wills and engage detectives for undisclosed reasons is bound to be high.

Mr. Cadmus Cole died.

Mr. Ellery Queen expected Mr. Cadmus Cole to die; to die, that is, under suspicious circumstances. He did not foresee that he himself would come perilously near to preceding his client through the pearly gates.

The blow fell the afternoon of the day the check cleared. Mr. Queen had taken up his telephone to call Lloyd Goossens, the attorney, for a conference of mutual enlightenment. Just as Goossens's secretary told him that the lawyer had left the previous night for London on an emergency business trip, Mr. Queen experienced a pang.

He set down the telephone. The pain stabbed deeply. He said: “Everything happens to me,” and rang weakly for Miss Penny.

Within ninety minutes Mr. Queen lay on an operating table unaware that a famous surgeon was removing an appendix which had treacherously burst. Afterwards, the surgeon looked grave. Peritonitis.

Inspector Queen and Beau paced the corridor outside Ellery's room all night, silent. They could hear the Queen voice raised in a querulous delirium. He was haranguing an invisible entity, demanding the answer to various secrets. The words “Cole” and “fountain-pen” ran through his monologue, accompanied by mutterings, groans, and occasional wild laughter.

With the sun emerged the surgeon, and the House Physician, and various others. Mr. Queen, it appeared, had a chance. There was something on his mind, said the surgeon, and it was making the patient cling, perversely, to his life. It had something to do with a fountain-pen and a person named Cole.

“How,” said Beau hoarsely, “can you kill a guy like that?”

MR. QUEEN merely lingered in this vale of tears, swinging recklessly on the pearly gate, sometimes in, sometimes out. But when the news came that Cadmus Cole had died, he stopped teetering and set about the business of recuperation with such a grimness that even the doctors were awed.

“Beau, for heaven's sake,” implored the patient, “talk!”

Beau talked. The yacht
Argonaut,
Captain Herrold Angus, master, had cleared New York Harbor the night of the day Cole had visited
Ellery Queen, Inc.
She carried her owner, his friend and companion Edmund De Carlos, her master, and a crew of twelve.

“Nobody else?” asked Mr. Queen instantly.

“That's all we know about.”

On 13 June the
Argonaut
anchored in the Gulf of Paria, off Port of Spain, and, taking on fresh water and fuel, then sailed north and west into the Caribbean.

On 21 June she spoke a passing cruise liner 100 miles northwest of Port Gallinas. Captain Angus exchanged the usual courtesies of the sea with the liner's master.

At eight bells on the night of 30 June, during a squall, the
Argonaut's
wireless sputtered a general distress call directed to any vessel carrying a medical officer. The message stated that Cadmus Cole had suffered a severe heart-attack and that while Captain Angus had medical equipment in his locker and was capable of administering simple treatment, he felt the serious condition of his owner demanded immediate professional advice.