The Dragon's Teeth Read online

  The Dragon’s Teeth

  Ellery Queen

  PART ONE

  Chapter I. The Vanishing American

  Meet Beau Rummell.

  No, not Beau Brummell; he was a London gentleman of fashion born in the year 1778 . . . Beau Rummell. Beau Rummell was born in Cherry Street, New York City, in the year 1914.

  Never think that Beau took his name meekly. From boyhood he was ready to fight the human race, one wit at a time, in defense of his self-respect. He even tried subterfuge. He would change his name to Buck, or Butch, or something equally manly. But it was no use.

  “Rummell? Rummell? Say, ya know what? Your first name oughta be Beau. Beau Rummell. Haw, haw, haw!”

  Beau’s personality was moulded in the crucible of that bitter name. At the age of twelve, learning by investigation that his namesake had been London’s arbiter ele-gantiarum, first fop of his time, Beau became a passionate sartorial rebel; and to this day, if you meet a large young man with scarred knuckles who looks as if he had slept in all his clothing for two months consecutively, you may be sure he is no hungry derelict, but Beau Rummell.

  To the despair of his father, Inspector Johnny Rummell of the Narcotic Squad, Beau was always running away. He ran away from the intelligent humorists of Columbia Law School three times—first to shovel sand in a river-tunnel operation, only to be driven back into the arms of Contracts when a brawny Lithuanian sand-hog discovered the secret of his shame; then to become press-agent for a third-rate circus, an episode terminating in a bloody brawl with Bongo the Strong Man, who thought he could lick any one named Beau and discovered on being revived that he had been laboring, as the phrase goes, under a misapprehension; the third time to sling rivets high above Sixth Avenue. That was the time he almost fell forty stories scrambling angrily after a tormentor; thereafter he chose refuges nearer Mother Earth.

  He fled during his summer vacations, too—once to Hollywood, once to Alaska, once to the beckoning southern spheres by way of a freighter Rio-bound. This last was a bad mistake of judgment, for the supercargo was an educated man who delightedly passed the good word around to the crew, so that it became necessary for young Mr. Rummell to punish aspersions upon his Christian name with a whole ocean as his battleground, and no escape except by swimming.

  * * *

  MR. ELLERY QUEEN heard of him when Inspector Johnny died.

  Inspector Queen took the death of his old friend hardly; he wanted to do something for the son.

  “The boy’s at loose ends,” the Inspector told Ellery. “Graduate lawyer, but he’s quit and, conditions being what they are, I can’t say I blame him. Besides, he wasn’t made to grow soft in a swivel-chair. He’s a restless sprout, tough as hardtack. Done everything—been to sea, slung rivets, bummed his way around the country, picked oranges in California, dug ditches on WPA projects . . . everything, that is, except find himself. And now, with John gone, he’s worse off than ever. Cocky sonofagun, Beau is; thinks he knows everything. Darned near does, too.”

  “What did you say the name was?” asked Ellery.

  The Inspector said: “Beau.”

  “Beau Rummell?” Ellery began to smile.

  “I knew you would. Everybody does. That’s Beau’s cross. Only don’t make fun of it to his face—he goes berserk.”

  “Why don’t you make a cop of him?”

  “He’d make a good one at that, except for his blamed restlessness. Matter of fact, he’s got a notion he’d like to open a detective agency.” The Inspector grinned. “I guess he’s been reading some of your terrible detective stories.”

  “This Peregrine Pickle of yours,” said Mr. Queen hastily, “interests me. Let’s hunt him up.”

  They found Mr. Rummell consuming corned-beef sandwiches in Louie’s Grill, two blocks west of Centre Street.

  “Hello, Beau,” said the Inspector.

  “ ‘Lo, pop. How’s crime?”

  “Still with us. Beau, I’d like to have you meet my son, Ellery.”

  “Hi, Beau,” said Mr. Queen.

  The young man set down his sandwich and examined Mr. Queen with minute attention, concentrating on the eyes and mouth, as suspicious as a hound on the scratch for fleas. But when he found no trace of mirth, but only grave amiability, Beau extended his strife-scarred paw, and bellowed for the bartender, and after a while the Inspector went away smiling—sensibly—in the concealing thicket of his mustache.

  That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. For Mr. Queen found himself drawn irresistibly to this vast, cynical-eyed young man with the air of self-confidence and the broad span of shoulder draped in wrinkled cloth.

  Later, when Ellery Queen, Inc., Confidential Investigations was born, Mr. Queen often wondered exactly how it had come to pass. The conversation in Louie’s Grill involved the rotten state of the universe, man’s inhumanity to man, Beau’s personal ambitions, and suddenly, by a sort of magic, they were talking over an enterprise.

  Mr. Queen was astonished to discover that he was about to become Mr. Rummell’s partner in a detective agency.

  “I’ve got a few thousand dollars,” said Beau, “left by my old man, and I’m iapping ‘em up. They’d be better invested in my future.”

  “I know, but—”

  Oh, but he was young, willing, and able. He had legal training, physical courage, the ability to use firearms, a knowledge of the sinkholes of New York and of police methods.

  “After all,” he grinned, “you can’t be a cop’s son without getting all that. You ought to know!”—and so, how about it?”

  “But why me?” asked Mr. Queen in dismay.

  “Because you’ve got a rep. Everybody knows the name of Queen in this town. It’s synonymous with detective. I want to cash in on your rep.”

  “Oh, you do?” asked Mr. Queen feebly.

  “Look, Ellery, you won’t have to do a lick of work. I’ll do it all. I’ll run my legs off. I’ll work twenty hours a day. I’ll sink all my dough. Hell, there’s nothing to this detective racket!”

  “No?” asked Mr. Queen.

  “All I want’s your name on the door—I’ll do the rest!”

  Mr. Queen found himself saying he would think about it.

  The next day Mr. Rummell called up and invited him to visit a certain suite in a Times Square office-building.

  When Mr. Queen got there he saw his name already gilt-lettered on the front door.

  Mr. Rummell, freshly shaved for the occasion, bowed him into a three-room suite. “Some stuff, huh? Meet our new secretary!” And he presented an aged virgin named Miss Hecuba Penny who already, after only an hour’s association, was regarding Mr. Beau Rummell with a furtive, prim, but powerful passion.

  Mr. Queen surrendered, feeling a little as if he had run several miles. But he liked the feeling, too.

  * * *

  ONE bright day in May Beau telephoned Ellery, demanding his partner’s presence immediately. There was such excitement in his voice that even the unemotional Mr. Queen was stirred.

  He found Beau rearranging office furniture with one hand and with the other adjusting his disreputable necktie, so he knew that an event of unusual importance had occurred.

  “What d’ye think?” Beau roared. “No divorce. No find-our-dear-runaway-Nellie. No insurance fraud. It’s a real case this time, my friend!”

  “What kind of case?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? He wouldn’t say. But it’s bound to be something big, because he’s got all the money there is!”

  “Who’s ‘he’?”

  “The Man Nobody Knows. The Ghost of Wall Street. The Vanishing American. Cadmus Cole—in person!”

  The great man himself, it appeared, had telephoned for an appointment. He had specifically asked for Mr. Queen—Mr. Queen, and no other. Mr. Rummell had promised to produce Mr. Queen; he would have promised to produce the equestrian statue of General Grant. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” said Beau, jubilantly.

  What a break! Now keep me out of it. He insisted on you. What d’ye know about him? I buzzed Tom Creevich of the Herald and he dug some dope on Cole out of the morgue for me.”

  They put their heads together. Cole had been born in Windsor, Vermont, in 1873, eldest son in a moderately prosperous family. He had inherited his father’s ironworks. He was married in 1901, there had been a scandal involving his wife’s fidelity, and he had divorced herin 1903. She married four times more before being shot to death in Italy by a stickler of a husband some years later.

  Cole expanded his ironworks. In 1912 he went into South American nitrates. When the World War broke out, he began manufacturing munitions. He made millions. After the War he quadrupled his fortune in Wall Street. It was at this time that he sold out all his holdings and bought the colossal chateau at Tarrytown on the Hudson which he rarely used.

  In 1921 the multimillionaire retired and, with his confidential agent, Edmund De Carlos, who had represented him for many years, took to the sea. He had lived aboard his yacht Argonaut ever since.

  “The Argonaut rarely visits the big ports,” said Beau. “Puts in only for refueling, supplies, and cash. And when the yacht does drop anchor, Cole sulks in his cabin and this fellow De Carlos—he’s still with Cole—manages everything.”

  “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 America-nus 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 Rum-mellian 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?”