The Dragon’s Teeth (28 page)

“Hold!” said Beau. “Hold. There's another thing. This monkey tried to buy us off. Offered us twenty-five grand to quit poking our noses into the case. Why?”

“Excellent question,” agreed Mr. Queen. “Why?” De Carlos squirmed. “Then I'll tell
you.
Because you'd lost most of Cole's legacy by gambling, ill-advised market speculation, night-clubbing, the cutey route, general all-around helling—it didn't take you long to run through what was left of the million after taxes were deducted, did it, De Carlos? And so there you were, almost broke, and the golden goose lying fathoms under. You conceived another brilliant idea.”

“You're the devil himself,” said De Carlos thickly.

“Please,” protested Mr. Queen. “Is that fair to the Old 'Bub? With the woman who posed as Margo Cole dead, and with Kerrie Shawn, the other heiress, arrested and—you fervently hoped—slated for conviction and execution, that left the huge principal of the Cole estate free of heirs and completely in the hands of its trustees. And who were they? Goossens and your worthy self! Does that suggest anything, Mr. De Carlos?”

Beau stared. “Don't tell me Mr. Smart was going to make another deal to milk the estate—with Goossens, this time!”

“The firm of
Ellery Queen, Inc.
being out of the picture,” murmured Mr. Queen, “I daresay that was the general idea. And I've no doubt whatever but that Mr. Goossens is as ignorant this moment, De Carlos, of your second plan as the good Captain here was of your first.”

De Carlos struggled to his feet. “You've been very clever, Mis—Mis'er Queen—”

“Incidentally,” remarked Mis'er Queen, “let me congratulate you on your forbearance. Of course you knew from the very first that Beau Rummell wasn't Ellery Queen, because you met us both three months, ago in our proper identities, when
you
were pretending to be Cole. But you couldn't unmask us without revealing how you came to know, so you maintained a discreet silence. Truly a Chestertonian situation!”

“What you go—going to do about it?” demanded Mr. De Carlos, leering. “Huh, Mis'er Queen?”

“For the present, nothing.”

“Thought sh—so!” said De Carlos contemptuously. “Jus' a lot o' wind. Farewell, gen'l'men. C'm'up an' see me shome—some time!”

He staggered to the door and disappeared.

“I think,” said Captain Angus with a certain grimness, “I'll accept his invitation right now. Help you keep an eye on him. I've nothing better to do, anyway.”

“That would be fine, Captain,” said Mr. Queen heartily. “We can't have him leaving on a sudden jaunt to Indo-China, can we?”

The Captain chuckled, snatched his coat and hat, and hurried after De Carlos.

“Now that we're back where we started from, what are we going to do?” Beau hurled a paper-knife at the opposite wall. It stuck, quivering.

“Good shot,” said Mr. Queen abstractedly. “Oh, we're doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Sitting here engaged in a furious cerebration. At least I am, and I suggest you buckle down, too. We haven't much time. We promised dad a prisoner in twenty-four hours, and that gives us only until late tomorrow morning.”

“Quit clowning,” growled Beau. He flung himself at the leather sofa and scowled at the ceiling. “Poor Kerrie.”

“I'm
not
clowning.”

Beau swung his legs to the floor. “You mean you really think there's a chance to crack this hazel-nut?”

“I do.”

“But it's more of a mess now than before!”

“Darkest before the dawn, every cloud has a silver lining, and so on,” murmured Mr. Queen. “There are heaps of new facts. Heaps. Selection is what we need, Beau—selection, arrangement, and synthesis. Everything's here. I feel it. Don't you?”

“No, I don't,” said Mr. Rummell rudely. “The only thing I feel is sore. If there were only some one I could punch in the nose! And with Kerrie back in the can, eating her heart out …” He seized the bottle of Scotch and said with a glower: “Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and think!”

XXI.
The Fruits of Cerebration

Mr. Queen made certain preparations for his engagement with ratiocination.

He opened a fresh package of cigarets and lined the twenty white tubules up on the desk before him, so that they resembled the rails of a picket fence. He filled a water goblet with what was left of the Scotch and set it conveniently at his elbow. Mr. Rummell, sizing up the situation, vanished. He returned ten minutes later bearing another quart of Scotch and a tall carton of coffee.

Mr. Queen barely acknowledged this thoughtfulness. He removed his jacket, laid it neatly on a chair, loosened his necktie, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves.

Then, with the goblet in one hand and a cigaret in the other, he seated himself in the swivel-chair, set his feet upon the desk, and began.

Beau lay down on the sofa and thought desperately.

At one-thirty a.m. the silence was riven by a peculiar series of noises. Mr. Queen started out of deep thought. But it was only Mr. Rummell, on the sofa, snoring.

“Beau.”

The snores persisted. Mr. Queen rose, filled a glass with coffee, went to the sofa, and nudged Mr. Rummell.

“Huh? What? Well, I was listening—” began Mr. Rummell contentiously, his eyes struggling to open.

“Strange,” croaked Mr. Queen. “I wasn't saying anything. Here, drink this coffee.”

Beau rumpled his hair, yawning. “Ought to be ashamed of myself. I
am
ashamed of myself. How's it coming?” He drank.

“There are one or two points,” observed Mr. Queen, “that still elude me. Otherwise,
on marche.
I beg your pardon. I always break out in a foreign language at this time of the night. Do you think you can keep awake long enough to answer a few questions?”

“Shoot.”

“It's an odd situation,” said Mr. Queen, beginning a circumambient patrol of the office. “First time in my experience I've had to rely completely on the senses of another person. Complicates matters. You were in this from the beginning, and I was on the outside trying to look in. I've the feeling that the master-key to this case is hidden in an out-of-the-way place—a chance remark, some innocuous event …”

“I'll help all I can,” said Beau dispiritedly. “I fell asleep when my limited brain couldn't hold any more. I've shot my bolt, kid. It's up to you now.”

Mr. Queen sighed. “I'm duly impressed by the responsibility. Now I'm going over the case from the start. At every point where I omit something that actually happened, or where something occurred which you forgot to mention, sing out. Supply the missing link. I don't care how trivial it is. In fact, the more trivial the better.”

“Go ahead.”

The inquisition began. Mr. Queen kept it up mercilessly, until Beau's lids drooped again and he had to fight with himself to keep awake.

SUDDENLY Mr. Queen displayed a ferocious exultancy. He waved Beau back to the sofa and began to race up and down, mumbling to himself excitedly.

“That's it. That's it!” He scurried around the desk and sat down. Seizing a pencil, he began to scribble feverishly, setting down facts in order, like a mathematician working out a problem in calculus. Beau lay, exhausted, on the sofa.

“Beau!”

“Well?” Beau sat up.

“I've got it.” And Mr. Queen, having delivered this epic intelligence with the utmost calm, the stranger for its having been preceded by such fury, set the pencil down and began to tear up his notes. He tore them into tiny fragments, heaped them in an ashtray, and set fire to the heap. He did not speak again until the scraps were ashes.

Beau searched his partner's face anxiously. What he saw there seemed to satisfy him, for he jumped off the sofa and exclaimed: “Damned if I don't think you have! When do I go to work?”

“Instantly.” Mr. Queen sat back beaming. “We have a chance, Beau, an excellent chance. You've got to work fast, though. And cautiously.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I know who killed the Bloomer woman. Logically it can be only one person. I've ironed out all the discrepancies, and there can't be the least doubt of the guilt of the person I have in mind.”

“Who is it?” asked Beau grimly.

“Wait, wait; don't begrudge me my brief hour of triumph.” And Mr. Queen said in a dreamful voice: “Our friend made two mistakes, one of which, I'm afraid, will prove fatal. We can capitalize those mistakes if we jump right in. Any way I look at it—and I've looked at it every way—there are three pieces of evidence which we should be able to produce to make the guilt of Ann Bloomer's murderer stand up in court.”

“Three pieces of evidence?” Beau shook his head. “Either I'm a moron and you're a genius, or I'm normally intelligent and you're talking through your hat.”

Mr. Queen chuckled. “Two of them are waiting for us—all we have to do is extend our hands at the proper time and they're ours. The third …” He rose abruptly. “The third is tough. It's the vital proof, and the hardest to find.”

“What's it look like and where is it?”

“I know what it looks like—roughly,” said Mr. Queen with a faint smile. “As for where it is, however, I haven't the foggiest notion.”

“Then how did you figure out its existence in the first place?” demanded Beau, exasperated.

“Very simply. It
must
exist. Every consideration of logic cries out its existence. Every fact in the case demands that it exist. It's your job to locate it, and you have until noon tomorrow to do it!”

“I don't know what the devil you're jawing about,” said Beau with impatience, “but tell me what it is, and I'm off.”

Mr. Queen told him. And as he spoke, Mr. Rummell's black eyes glittered with wonder.

“Holy smoke!” he breathed. “Holy smoke.”

Mr. Queen basked in this eloquent atmosphere of admiration.

“Though how in the world you figured it out—”

“Nothing up my sleeve,” said Mr. Queen airily. “The little gray cells, as M. Poirot is wont to remark. At any rate, there's no time for explanations now. You've got to burn up the wires, rouse people from their beds—what time is it? three o'clock!—cut through several miles of red tape, grease a number of dry and itching palms, gather a crew of assistants … in short, get that evidence by noon!”

Beau grabbed the telephone.

As for Mr. Queen, he stretched out on the sofa with a grunt of pure sensuality and was fast asleep before Beau had finished dialing the first number.

MR. QUEEN awoke to find the sun poking at his eyelids and, to judge from its taste, a piece of old flannel mouldering in his mouth.

He groaned and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The office was empty; the litter of glasses and ashes had been cleaned away; and by his wrist-watch it was nine o'clock, so he made the elementary deduction that Miss Hecuba Penny had reported for the day.

He staggered to the door and peered into the reception room. Miss Penny, as deduced, sat primly at her desk knitting the one hundred and fifteenth hexagon of wool which was to go into her third afghan since becoming an employee of
Ellery Queen, Inc.

“Morning,” croaked Mr. Queen. “See anything of Mr. Rummell?”

“No, but I found this note for you, Mr. Queen. Can I get you your breakfast?”

“The only thing I crave at the moment is a bath, 'Cuba, and I fear I'll have to attend to that myself.”

The note, in Beau's powerful scrawl, said: “Do you snore! I'm hot on the track. I'll make the noon deadline or bust. How's the bank account? It's taking an awful shellacking, because this thing is costing a pile of jack! Beau. P.S.—What bank account? B.”

Mr. Queen grinned and retired to the laboratory for a wash. With his face freshly scrubbed, he felt better. He also experienced a gentle thrill of anticipation as he sat down to the telephone.

“Inspector Richard Queen? This is an old friend.”

“Oh, it's you,” said the Inspector's grumpy voice. “Where were you all night?”

“Carousing with the Muses,” replied Mr. Queen grandiloquently. “Just an intellectual lecher.… Disappointed, eh? Well, I wasn't giving you a chance to crow.”

“I'm laughing with tears in my eyes! Sampson and I have been talking the case over all night and—Never mind.” The Inspector paused. “What's on your celebrated mind?”

“I sense authoritarian confusion,” murmured Mr. Queen, still in the lush vein. “Despite all the fireworks last night—those cerebral Roman candles—you and Sampson can't be so positive now that Kerrie Shawn lied to you. Poor Authority! Well, that's life. How would you like to attend a lecture this morning, dad?”

“What, another? I've no time for lectures!”

“I believe,” said his son, “you'll find time for this one. The speaker gave a poor performance last night, I'm told, but he guarantees to lay 'em in the aisles today.”

“Oh.” And the Inspector was silent again. Then he demanded suspiciously: “What have you got this time? Another resurrection from the dead?”

“If you're referring to the late Cadmus Cole, the answer is no. But I should appreciate your coöperation in a reinvestigation of Ann Bloomer's murder on the scene.”

“You mean in the
Villanoy?
In 1724?” The Inspector was puzzled. “More phony melodrama?”

“I said the scene,” said Ellery gently. “That includes Room 1726, father. Don't ever forget that.”

“All right, including 1726! But both the suite and the single room were gone over with a finecomb. You can't make me believe there's still something there we've overlooked!”

Mr. Queen laughed. “Now look, dad, don't be obstreperous. Are you going to play ball with
Ellery Queen, Inc.,
or do I have to appeal directly to the Commissioner?”