The Dragon’s Teeth (24 page)

“You mean of beginning a search for Margo Cole all over again, now that the Bloomer woman has been exposed?”

“Yes.”

“We stand,” said Mr. Queen firmly, “upon our rights.”

Goossens laughed. “I don't believe you have any. However, it's probably a dead issue. Dead issue—very good!”

Mr. Queen politely laughed, too. “What's that?”

“I mean—Margo Cole is probably dead. She must be. So it's a tempest in a teapot.”

“Very possible,” admitted Mr. Queen.

“Well … I suppose, Inspector, you want to hang on to these records for a while?”

“Yes, leave them here.”

The lawyer nodded glumly and left.

“Bad case of cold feet,” remarked the Inspector. “Well, I suppose he
is
in a jam.” He sat down at his desk and began to finger his little figurine of Bertillon. “As I am. Beau, you and Kerrie are lucky this happened now. It smudges up our case, and the D.A.'s frankly sorry he advised such a quick arrest. And yesterday be wanted to arrest you, too!”

“On what charge?”

“Accessory to the murder.” The old man paused, then said quietly: “I talked him out of it. I know you didn't have anything to do with it—not because the facts aren't against it, but because of a lot of things the law won't recognize as evidence.”

“But Beau couldn't possibly have committed that murder,” protested Mr. Queen with an outraged chuckle.

“I'm not talking about the murder,” said his father shortly. “I said accessory.”

“Thanks, pop,” said Beau dryly.

“Just the same, my own hands aren't too clean. The Commissioner is thinking of taking me off the case. Now, with this new development …” He shook his head.

“It seems to me,” observed Mr. Queen, “that we're moving in concentric circles. Let's tackle this thing logically.”

The Inspector brightened visibly. “You see daylight?'”

“Brilliantly.”

“Then you don't believe Kerrie Shawn shot the Bloomer woman?”

“I do not.”

The Inspector sank back. “You're prejudiced!”

“Not a bit of it. I have reasons for thinking her innocent.”

“Reasons? What reasons? The Lord knows I'm a reasonable man. But if you can explain away the circumstances of this crime—except by some cock-and-bull story like the one Kerrie Shawn tells—I'll eat your hat in Madison Square Garden with catsup and mayonnaise!”

“I may take you up on that,” said Mr. Queen; and he rose and began to walk up and down, frowning at the floor. “We must begin from the new fact: that the woman who represented herself as Margo Cole, bearing genuine proofs of Margo-Cole identity, as it were, is a proved impostor named Ann Bloomer.

“Now, with this woman an impostor, the question arises: Where is the real niece of Cadmus Cole, the real daughter of Huntley Cole and Nadine Malloy Cole—the Margo Cole Ann Bloomer pretended to be?

“You'll admit there are two inclusive possibilities: that either the real Margo Cole is alive, today, or she is dead.

“Let's examine the case if she's alive. If she is, why hasn't she come forward to claim her share of her uncle's estate? We'd have to rule out the possibility that she doesn't know anything about her uncle's death and the will he left. This has been the most widely publicized will-case in modern legal history. Cole's death, the odd conditions of his will, have been announced by newspapers, periodical literature, and radio all over the world, not once but many times—in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, even Africa and the South Seas. And this publicity has been going on for several months—first the death, then the publication of the will, then the news of the discovery of the two heiresses, and since then a continuous drumfire of their activities.

“Don't you agree that if the real Margo were alive it's reasonable to assume she'd have heard of Cole's death and her own eligibility as an heiress by this time?”

“Do you mean by that,” asked the Inspector, “that because Margo Cole hasn't come forward you think she's dead?”

“Not yet,” said Ellery quickly. “I'm merely brushing in the background. I do say that the unusual publicity must have got to her eyes or ears if she's alive. Now, proceeding on this reasonable assumption—that if she's alive she knows—why hasn't she come forward?

“One possible, even probable, answer is that she knows she doesn't qualify under the terms of the will … that she is or has been married, for example—a state of affairs which would automatically cut her out of an inheritance.”

“I should think,” objected Beau, “that, even if she were or had been married, she'd show up and make a fight for that dough. That's only human.”

“But she hasn't; that's a fact. Let's not get involved in counter-theories; let's proceed along the straight line. If she's married, and since she's failed to show up, what then? She would fight, you say. Yes, I agree; she would. But how? By contesting the will? She hasn't done that. Could she fight in another way? Certainly—
if she got hold of a woman like Ann Bloomer and made a deal with her.”

Both men looked blank.

“A deal like this, for instance: a fifty-fifty split of the income after Ann Bloomer, armed with the proofs of identity furnished her by the real Margo, showed up, was accepted as the legitimate heiress, and began to collect her share. Ann Bloomer's qualifications, from Margo's standpoint, would merely have to be: that she was not and is not married, and that her history could be mortised into Margo's history somewhere along the line—as actually happened, in fact.”

“But that means,” said the Inspector excitedly, “that this partner Kerrie says the woman mentioned was—the real Margo! Why, if Ann doublecrossed Margo after Ann was accepted as the heiress, if Ann didn't fork over the split, that would be a motive for murder.…”

“So it would,” chuckled Ellery. “By the way, I thought you didn't believe Kerrie's story!”

“I don't,” said the old man, flushing. “I'm just—arguing. For the sake of argument.”

Both Beau and Ellery laughed. “At any rate,” said Ellery, “I'm not arguing to reach
that
sort of conclusion, even though it might be true. The only conclusion I wish to reach you've already accepted, dad—that, if the real Margo still lives, she probably hired Ann Bloomer to present herself, furnished Ann with the proofs of identity, and was Ann Bloomer's silent partner in a scheme to get hold of half of Cole's estate, to which she was not entitled. In other words, Ann Bloomer had—had to have—a partner.

“Now, take the other possibility—that the real Margo is dead. Then how did Ann Bloomer get possession of those proofs of identity? From the reports, the Bloomer woman had not the slightest connection with the Cole family, certainly not by a blood tie. Yet the proofs of identity must have been in the possession of some one close to the dead Margo—we're assuming now, remember, that the real Margo is dead. In whose possession? A blood relation? The real Margo's only living relatives by blood were Kerrie Shawn, her cousin, and Cadmus Cole, her paternal uncle. Neither has had the least contact, or could have had from the facts, with the real Margo Cole.

“Then who is left as a possible possessor of those proofs? Such a person as the real Margo Cole's surviving husband, let us say. A good possibility, although it may have been one of a number of differently related persons. In any event, for the Bloomer woman to have got her hands on those proofs of Margo Cole's identity, she must have got them from
some one
who had been close to Margo Cole; and for this person to have turned the proofs over to Ann Bloomer means again a deal, a partnership. So again the vital conclusion arises:
Ann Bloomer had a partner.”

The Inspector stirred. “Couldn't it have been like this? Margo Cole and Ann Bloomer were friends. Ann Bloomer murdered Margo, stole her proofs of identity, and showed up here to pose as Margo Cole. So there's no partner at all!”

“Two things against that theory,” replied Ellery, “which, of course, has occurred to me. One is that if Margo and Ann had been friends, why didn't the French police, who checked over every last detail of Margo Cole's movements from her birth until 1925, and of Ann Bloomer's movements from 1925 to date, run across any evidence of such a friendship? They did a careful job, as you know. The answer is: there was no such evidence to run across; there was no such friendship.

“Besides, that theory would indicate that Ann Bloomer was a lone—er—wolverene. Yet she told Kerrie a moment before she was murdered that
she had a partner.”

“We've only Kerrie Shawn's word for that,” said the Inspector stubbornly.

“And all sorts of confirmation in what El's just told us,” growled Beau. “Don't be pig-headed, pop!”

The Inspector waved Ellery on.

“Deductively, then,” said Ellery, “we've established the existence of a person hitherto unsuspected—Ann Bloomer's partner-in-crime, the person she referred to when she boasted that she
and some one else
had planned the attacks on Kerrie.

“Now Beau told Ann he was marrying Kerrie, that he was taking Kerrie to the
Villanoy;
he even promised Ann he would leave Kerrie alone for the night, as he did—although for reasons of his own.

“Ann Bloomer must have informed her partner; how else could this partner have known? So the partner went to the
Villanoy
soon after Beau and Kerrie checked in, found out what room they had engaged, and then sent the hotel a wire reserving Room 1726. I've investigated that wire, incidentally, and it was telephoned to Western Union from a pay-station—no doubt from a booth in or near the
Villanoy.
Of course, this covered the trail.

“Room 1726 being reserved, this mysterious partner then let himself in with a passkey of some sort, and awaited developments. The partner heard Ann's arrival, heard the entire conversation through the open windows, heard Ann's injudicious boast about the partnership of the attacks on Kerrie, and shot Ann before she could reveal the identity of her partner—himself. Then he tossed Kerrie's own revolver through the windows into 1724. Ann herself had said she and her partner had planned the attacks on Kerrie, so it's not strange that this partner had possession of Kerrie's stolen .22.”

The old man was silent.

“I imagine,” continued Ellery gravely, “that this partner had three motives for killing Ann Bloomer.

“Remember Ann's character, her unscrupulousness, her known record for loose living on the Continent, her self-incriminating confession of attempts to murder Kerrie. And think of the situation existing between her and her partner. With the proofs of identity presented by her and accepted by the executor-trustees of the estate and by the Surrogate, she found herself in the driver's seat.

“She no longer needed a partner—any partner; he had served his purpose by giving her the Margo-Cole proofs of identity. She could back down on her bargain with this partner without danger to herself—that is, she could refuse to share the profits with the partner who supplied her with the means of making those profits. And what could this partner do about it?—nothing. To expose the woman as an impostor meant exposing and incriminating himself.

“So the partner lost his share of the loot without a comeback. Natural motive on his part? Revenge.

“Second motive: Fear. Ann Bloomer, a woman with a police record, might be unmasked as an impostor at any time, through the merest mischance. If caught, she would certainly involve her silent and invisible partner. As a matter of fact, when Ann boasted to Kerrie in the hotel room that she and somebody else had planned the murderous attacks, and actually stated: ‘I and somebody else. I and—' … the partner shot her dead instantly. He couldn't afford to have her reveal his identity. Dead men don't bite. Nor, for that matter, do dead women.”

Ellery paused, and Beau said: “You said there were three motives. What's the third?”

“That,” replied Mr. Queen, “can wait. Aren't two sufficient?”

“Why couldn't
Kerrie
have been the Bloomer woman's partner?” demanded the Inspector. “Forgetting all this business of Room 1726 and Kerrie's story.”

“Come, come, dad, you're confused. Kerrie's the last person on earth who could have been Ann's partner-in-crime. If Kerrie originally possessed the proofs of Margo Cole's identity—a vast improbability by itself—whether the real Margo Cole were alive or dead, would Kerrie have engineered the imposture and thereby set up a
competing
heiress? For if the real Margo didn't come forward, Kerrie would have had the income from the entire estate, not half. No, dad, Kerrie didn't need a partner.”

Inspector Queen nibbled the end of his mustache. “Where's the proof of all this?”

“We're not ready to submit proof.”

“The circumstantial case against the girl is too strong, Ellery. Even if I were convinced, there's Sampson. The D.A. simply can't drop these charges without proof.”

Beau winked at Ellery and took him aside. They conferred
sotto voce
for some time.

Ellery looked worried. But he finally nodded and said to his father: “All right. You'll have your proof. I'm going to let Beau run this show, because it's fundamentally his inspiration.”

“Let me handle this,” said Beau eagerly, “and you'll have your killer in twenty-four hours—yes, and a whole lot more besides!”

“It shouldn't take more than twenty-four hours,” agreed Mr. Queen. “Yes, I think we can promise that.”

The Inspector hesitated. Then he threw up his hands. “All right. What do you want me to do?”

XIX.
The Cadmean Illusion

At nine o'clock that night the main office of
Ellery Queen, Inc.
was crowded. The shades had been drawn and all the lights were on. On the desk stood some apparatus. A Headquarters expert sat near the apparatus, looking puzzled.