The Dragon’s Teeth (7 page)

That was when Kerrie decided they were born foes.

“Licking her chops,” whispered Vi, pressing Kerrie's arm. “The flashy type. Don't let her step on you, hon. She'll try.”

Margo Cole was a tall, strongly built woman—one of those splendid females who contrive to look vigorous even when they are lolling in a sun-chair. She was beautiful in a cold, majestic way, and she walked with a slow strutting poise that showed off her tightly draped hips.

“Either did a strip-tease or modeled,” said Vi. “I don't like her. Do you?”

“No,” said Kerrie.

“She's thirty, if she's a day.”

“Thirty-two,” said Kerrie, who had been absorbing a little family history.

“Look at the so-called men goggle! You'd think they never saw a hip before. It's disgusting!”

They murmured politely when Lloyd Goossens introduced them.

Then Margo slipped her arm through Beau's. “So you're the man who was supposed to find me. How nice he is, Mr. Goossens! If I had known, I should have ignored Mr. Queen's advertisements in the French papers and waited for him to come find me.”

“I imagine,” grinned Beau, “it would have been fun at that.”

“Shall we go to my office?” asked Goossens. “Miss Cole, there are certain formalities—naturally you'll put up at a hotel until we've—ah—checked your proofs of identity. Of course, if you'd rather—”

“No, no. Let's have the dismal scene,” said Margo. “Mr. Queen, you'll come?”

“How could I resist a smile like that?”

“Cynic! And—oh, of course,
you,
dear Kerrie! I should feel lost without you. After all, though I was born here, I've lived all my life in France—”

“That was France's hard luck,” mumbled Vi.

Kerrie smiled. “I'd be charmed to shield you from the shocks of this rude, new world.”

“Ah, no, no,” said Edmund De Carlos. “That shall be my special province, ladies.” And he bowed first to Kerrie, and then to Margo, licking his bearded lips, meanwhile with the tip of his red tongue.

The cutter plowed up the bay.

KERRIE developed a headache on shore. She excused herself politely and drove off with Vi in her new roadster.

Margo waved gaily, watching with her cold Egyptian eyes.

Lloyd Goossens examined Margo Cole very sharply when they reached his office, but there could be no doubt of the validity of her proofs of identity.

She accepted a cigaret from the lawyer and a flame from De Carlos. “It seems odd to be called Miss Cole, or even Margo. You see, I've been calling myself Ann Strange ever since 1925.”

“How is that?” asked Goossens, filling his pipe.

“Mother died that year. I don't recall my father, of course; we never ran across any one mother'd known in America; she hadn't even a family. We used to travel about from town to town in France—Dijon, Lyon, a few years in Montpellier in the South, buckets of places—while mother taught English to French children and earned enough to keep me in the convent schools.

“I knew nothing about my family; mother never talked about them. But when she died I found letters, a diary, little mementoes, and they told me all about my Cole heritage. Especially,” she laughed, “about dear Uncle Cadmus and how helpful he'd been when mother, father, and I had been starving in a Parisian garret. You know, one letter of Uncle Cadmus's drove my father to suicide. So I decided to change my name—wash out everything connected with the past.”

“You've brought those letters and things, Miss Cole?”

She produced them from an alligator shopping bag. The handwriting of the diary checked with the handwriting of Nadine Malloy Cole, a sample of which Goossens had from Mrs. Cole's letter to Cadmus Cole in 1909, found among his effects.

There were also some faded old photographs of Huntley Cole and his wife, and one, dated Paris 1910, in which Margo was a chubby three-year-old with blonde hair and staring, frightened light eyes.

And there was Cole's typewritten letter to his sister-in-law, dated 1909, in which he refused financial aid. Goossens and Beau compared it with the typed letter Cole had sent his sister Monica in 1918, preserved by Kerrie. The style and tenor were much the same, and Cole had initialed both in his bold, simple, block-letter script.

“Of course, we'll have everything checked by experts, Miss Cole,” said Goossens. “You understand—such a large estate. Matter of form—”

“I don't know what else I can say or do to prove I'm Margo Cole, but if you want to hear the story of my life—”

“We'd like to very much,” said the lawyer politely; but he glanced at Beau, and Beau's left eyelid drooped. In Goossens's desk there was the copy of a compendious report submitted by the French agency Beau had engaged weeks before.

The report carried Margo Cole's history from infancy in Paris through the year 1925, where—they had been puzzled by this—the trail ended. But now the two men realized what had happened. Margo Cole's change of name in that year to Ann Strange had brought the French operatives up against the back wall of a blind alley.

Margo described her life in detail from the time her mother took her from Paris as a baby until her mother's death. After that she had drifted back to Paris and become a mannequin.

Margo looked demure. “I earned enough, and had sufficiently kind and rich friends,” she murmured, “to enable me to … retire, so to speak, in '32. Since then I've been drifting about—the Riviera, Cannes, Deauville, Monte Carlo, Capri, the usual dull places in Europe. It hasn't been too exciting.”

“Then somebody missed a bet,” said Beau. “Ever been married, Miss Cole?”

“Oh, no! It's so much more fun having your freedom, don't you agree, Mr. Queen?”

“Mr. Queen” grinned, and Goossens said: “Glad you think so, Miss Cole, because your uncle's will … Of course, to complete the check-up, we'll have to cable our French friends to verify your movements since 1925—make sure about your state of single blessedness …”

In two weeks everything was complete. The French agency reported that Margo Cole's account of her activities since 1925, under the name of Ann Strange, was true in every detail. She had never been married. The French report also went into corollary matters concerning Miss Strange-Cole's career in “the usual dull places in Europe,” but Goossens discreetly ignored them; he was responsible for facts, not morals.

Miss Cole, upon hearing the conditions of her uncle's will, did not hesitate. She accepted, and to the accompaniment of an admiring press and public curiosity moved regally into the mansion at Tarrytown.

“Now that your work is done,” she murmured to Beau, “you won't desert poor little me? I feel so lost in this strange, big country. You'll come to see me—often?”

And she squeezed his hand ever so lightly.

They were in one of the formal gardens on the estate. No one was about, but Beau had caught the flicker of a curtain in a window of Kerrie's Shawn's bedroom.

He took the smiling woman in his arms suddenly and kissed her, She was still smiling when he released her.

“And what makes you think, Mr. Queen,” said Margo, “that I wanted you to do that?”

“I'm psychic,” said Beau. He watched the curtain. It fluttered violently and then was still.

“You clever man,” murmured Kerrie's cousin. “And the dear little thing is
so
jealous. Do come again—soon.”

In the office of
Ellery Queen, Inc., Confidential Investigations,
Mr. Ellery Queen surveyed his partner sympathetically. Back from the Adirondacks, Mr. Queen, while leaner than usual, was browned and fit; but his partner was haggard, and two creases, like quotation marks, separated his gloomy eyes.

“I always knew you were mercenary,” said Mr. Queen, “but I didn't think you were a quitter.”

“It isn't the dough, I tell you! All right, it wasn't much of a job, and Goossens and De Carlos insist Cole's retainer of fifteen grand, plus expenses, was ample to cover it—”

“Princely,” agreed Mr. Queen.

“But the job's over! Our agreement was that we'd find the two women. That's what we were hired to do, we've done it, and we're through. What more do you want?”

“I want,” replied Mr. Queen calmly, “to know why Cadmus Cole was so mysterious about the nature of our assignment. I want to know why he didn't tell us the simple truth. I want to know what was at the back of his head.”

“Go see a medium!”

“Did he expect to be murdered? Was he murdered? And if so, who murdered him? And why? Cole may have hired us primarily to answer these questions, and for some obscure reason chose not to say so. But if that's the case, we're
not
through—”

“And fifteen grand doesn't begin to pay for the job,” growled Beau, “and try to get more out of Goossens and De Carlos. You feeling like John D. these days?”

Mr. Queen said abruptly: “Beau, this isn't like you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“There's a reason for your unwillingness to go on with this investigation, and I
don't
think it's money. What is it?”

Beau glared at him. “All right, Master-Mind. There's a reason, and it's not money, it's a dame. So what?”

“Ah,” said Mr. Queen. “Miss Shawn?”

“I'm not saying!” shouted Beau. “Anyway, I think she—sort of took a shine to me, and I can't hang around and ball up her life, that's all! She—this girl can't afford to fall in love!”

“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Queen. “Deplorable situation. Well, then, make it plain you're not in love with her—or are you?”

“None of your business,” snapped Beau.

“Hmm. Well, sir, since you're in love with her, sooner or later you're going to crawl back, you know. So you may as well do it now.
I
can't take over, because you're supposed to be Queen, and exposing our little fraud would mean, for one thing, having to give back that fifteen thousand, for another possibly alarming some one who'd be better off unalarmed.”

“But what excuse would I have to keep going back there?” Beau looked sullen. “Goossens and De Carlos gave me the bum's rush yesterday, Kerrie's sore at me … Of course, there's Margo—”

“Of course there is,” said Mr. Queen. “A female who apparently enjoys your society. There's no law against a young man calling on a female for social reasons. Just keep your eyes open. Hang around. Watch. I have a compelling feeling,” said Mr. Queen reflectively, “that there's going to be trouble.”

“Trouble? There's plenty now! Say …” Beau looked alarmed. “What d'ye mean—trouble?”

Mr. Queen smiled. “Beau, has it occurred to you that this whole thing arose out of a man named Cadmus?”

Beau stared. “Cadmus? Cadmus Cole? So what?”

“Don't you remember the legend of Cadmus, or Kadmos, King of Sidon, who founded Thebes and brought the sixteen-letter alphabet to Greece?”

“No,” said Beau. “I don't.”

“Where were you educated?” sighed Mr. Queen. “At any rate, mythology tells us that Cadmus went on a quest—those old mythological boys were always going on quests—and suffered many hardships and perils, and one of the silly things he had to do was sow the dragon's teeth.”

“Look, friend,” said Beau. “I've gotta amble on up—”

“The dragon's teeth,” repeated Mr. Queen thoughtfully. “Quite. Quite. Cadmus sowed the dragon's teeth, and out of each tooth sprang—trouble. Trouble, Beau!”

“Oh,” said Mr. Rummell quietly.

“Our own Cadmus sowed a few dragon's teeth himself when he wrote that will,” said Mr. Queen. “So watch, Beau. Everybody—especially De Carlos.”

“De Carlos!” Beau grew angry. “Yeah, De Carlos. I don't like the way that baboon looks at Kerrie. And living in the same house.… Maybe you're right. Maybe I ought to stick around.”

Mr. Queen smiled. “And now that that's settled, what have you heard from Santiago de Cuba?”

“No progress so far. Angus and the
Argonaut's
crew have simply disappeared.… Excuse me,” said Beau, preoccupied. “I think I'll mosey on up to Tarrytown to see—Margo.”

“Send her my love,” murmured Mr. Queen.

THE fairy princess, alias Cinderella, was unhappy. That was against all the rules, and Violet Day told her so emphatically. Vi was a tower of strength and comfort these days. Kerrie didn't know what she would have done without her.

For one thing, there was Margo. Margo had begun to loom large in Kerrie's life. She tried to dominate the house, even that part of it which was exclusively Kerrie's. When she had her own suite redecorated in French provincial, she insisted the whole house be done over in the same style and period. Kerrie defended her maple and chintzes bitterly, challenging Margo's authority. Margo said something in French which sounded unladylike, and Kerrie's eyes flashed fire, and more than feelings would have been wounded had Beau not arrived at that critical moment. Of course, Kerrie instantly withdrew.

“Let her
try,”
said Kerrie passionately to Vi. “Just let her! I'll punch her in the nose.”

Then there was Beau, or “Ellery,” as he was known to that turbulent household. He seemed always to be there. Kerrie tried hard to be polite to him, but her good resolutions broke down and she turned frigid. For he seemed to have become completely infatuated with Margo; he was with her constantly, flattering her, fetching things like a puppy, taking her out.

And Margo's attitude, of course, was nearly impossible to endure. She was always glancing at Kerrie slyly, and then whispering to Beau, and the two of them would laugh as if they shared some secret, and Kerrie found them so hateful that when she saw Beau she would run away—to the stables for a furious canter, to swim in the big outdoor pool with Vi, to go sailing on the river in the little skiff she had bought, or for a tramp through the woods surrounding the estate.