The Dragon’s Teeth (14 page)

Kerrie leaned on Beau's shoulder and touched the lobe of his ear with her lips. He grunted something.

“Give the gal a break, Mister,” said Vi suddenly from the back seat. “You owe her
something
for making her lose that twenty-five hundred per.”

“Vi!” said Kerrie angrily.

But Beau did not take his eyes from the unwinding tape of the road, and both women fell silent, and no other word was spoken until they crossed from Port Chester into Connecticut.

Kerrie burst out at last: “If you'd rather forget the whole thing, this is the time to say so!”

He started at that, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Kerrie! What makes you say a fool thing like that?”

“You don't seem very happy over the prospect of marrying me,” retorted Kerrie in a small voice.

“Oh.” He looked straight ahead again. “Maybe it's because I know what it means to you, Kerrie. What have I got to offer you to take the place of all that dough?”

“If you feel that way about it, then you don't know what getting married means to me!”

“I'm seven different kinds of heel,” he said quietly.

“You're marrying me to keep me from being killed!” cried Kerrie. “Oh, I see it all now! You're not in love with me. You never have been! That's what she was smiling—”

“She?”

Kerrie bit her lip. “Never mind.”

“Kerrie—”

“Oh, you're being fine and heroic!” said Kerrie scornfully. “Well, thanks, but I want a husband, not a lifeguard. Please turn the car around and take me back to Tarrytown.”

And she crouched in her corner, her face turned away.

He drove onto the grass shoulder beside the road, stopped the car, said over his shoulder to Vi, “This woman takes a lot of convincing. Excuse
us,”
and, seizing Kerrie by the waist, yanked her to him.

She gasped. After a moment she put her arms about him.

When he released her he said: “Any doubts now?”

Kerrie was breathing hard; her eyes were shining. She twisted about and said in confusion: “Never a dull moment, that's us. I think I
am
wacky. Oh, Vi, this is awful. Can you ever forgive us?”

But Vi was—or was pretending to be—asleep.

THEY pulled up in the yard of a disreputable clapboard house near Greenwich, on the sagging porch of which a mean sign announced:

MARRIAGES PERFORMED

JUSTICE OF THE PEACE

W
.
A
.
JOHNSTON

A board was missing from the second step of the wooden stairs leading to the front porch, the plot before the house was a miniature wilderness of weeds and rubbish, and the once-white walls were encrusted with the dirt of decades.

“Cheerful little place to tie the knot,” remarked Vi. “So elegant, so refined! What is this, Queen—a haunted house?”

“Johnston isn't very strong on soap and water. Ready, Miss Shawn?”

“Y-yes,” said Kerrie.

“She's a little gun-shy,” said Vi. “Buck up, darlin'. This is one form of execution that isn't permanent. You can rise from the grave any time you like, if you know the right judge.”

“You're—you're sure you've got the license, Ellery?” stammered Kerrie, ignoring Vi's prattle.

“Right in my pocket.”

“It's all right? I mean, I always thought the woman had to sign on the license, too, when it's taken out. But—”

“Pull,” grinned Beau. “After all, my old man's a somebody in New York, isn't he?”

“Oh, Inspector Queen. And I haven't even
met
him!” Kerrie looked anxious. “But this is Connecticut, darling, not New York!”

“You find more things to worry about,” grunted Beau, and he scooped Kerrie from the walk and carried her over the broken step, and Kerrie giggled something about Isn't that premature? and Beau set her down and set off a bell that jangled rustily.

A tall gaunt man wearing thick glasses and an ancient morning coat peered out through the dirty pane at the side of the front door. When he saw Beau his thin features cracked into smiles and he hastened to admit them.

“Come in!” he said heartily. “All ready for you, sir!”

“Mr. Johnston—Miss Shawn—Miss Day.”

“So this is the blushing bride.” The man beamed down on Kerrie. “This way, please!”

There was something fantastic about the thin, stooped figure that made Kerrie suppress another giggle. What a way to be married, in what a place, by what an agent of the State! The Justice had a head of bristly gray hair, and he wore a mustache of the untrimmed, thicket variety; he looked like a vaudeville comedian. And the house! The front hall was bare, and the parlor he led them into was a cold, dark, sparsely furnished room so full of dust that Kerrie began to sneeze.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Vi's nose wrinkle with disgust, and laughed aloud. Then Vi laughed, too, and they began to whisper together.

It certainly is a “different” sort of wedding! thought Kerrie as Beau conferred with the Justice at a desk in a corner over the marriage license. He
would
pick a place like this, and a funny man like that to marry them! Always doing the unexpected. “Never a dull moment,” she had said to Vi in the car. No, there never would be with him. Perhaps that was why she loved him so much. It would be like being married to a ball of lightning.

Vi whispered: “Scared?”

“I should say not.”

“How does it feel to be taking the fatal step, liar?”

“S-simply s-swell.”

“No—regrets, Kerrie?”

Kerrie squeezed her friend's hand. “Not even a little one, Vi.”

Then the two men came back, and the Justice took up a position in a certain formal way and cleared his throat importantly, and Kerrie was so surprised she said: “But aren't we supposed to have two witnesses, Mr. Johnston?”

“Of course, my dear,” said the Justice hastily. “I was about to explain that Mrs. Johnston is unfortunately in Greenwich at the moment, and if you'd care to wait—”

“Miss Day is one,” said Beau. “And I don't think we'd like to wait. How about it, funny-face?”

“Certainly not,” said Kerrie firmly.

“Naturally, naturally!” said Mr. Johnston. “This occurs occasionally, of course. If you have no objection, Miss Shawn, the only other thing we can do. is—er—flag a witness outside, so to speak.”

“Pick somebody interesting,” giggled Kerrie.

And the tall man hurried out, and they heard him shouting at passing cars, and finally he returned in triumph, like Pompey, towing an inebriated traveller who leered at Kerrie and at Vi and even at Beau, and Beau had to hold him up during the ceremony to avert the total collapse of his rubbery legs.

That was the last straw, and Kerrie was so busy trying to keep a straight face that she scarcely heard one mumbly word of the service. She was actually astonished when Vi giggled: “Wake up! You're a married woman!”

“I'm—Oh, Vi!” And she threw herself into Vi's arms while Beau helped the stranger to a rocker, and paid the Justice, and then approached to claim his bride.

He was actually pale.

“It was the nicest wedding,” said Kerrie with a wavery smile. “Darling—aren't you even going to kiss Mrs. Queen?”

He took her in his arms without a word.

XI.
Villainy at the
Villanoy

“Up to now,” said Vi when they got back in the car, “I've been chief mourner. But now that the funeral's over, chickadees, take me to the New Haven and then be gone with the wind—and my blessing.”

“No,” protested Kerrie. “Ellery, don't you do it!”

“Wouldn't think of it,” said Beau. “Where you bound, blondie?”

“New York.”

“Then we'll take you there.”

“But that's out of your way!”

“Who told you?” chuckled Beau. “We're headed for the city, too.”

“You mean—a honeymoon in New York?” gasped Kerrie.

“Sure. That's the one place the smart boys won't think of looking for us.”

“Oh,” said Kerrie. Then she said valiantly: “I think that's a gorgeous idea, don't you, Vi?”

“Yes, indeed,” murmured Vi. “And just think of all the fun you'll have—a wedding dinner at the Chink's, and you can go roaming the primeval wilderness in Central Park, and all. Such a romantic place to honeymoon!”

“Well, it is!” said Kerrie.

“Sure it is, hon. Anyway, it's your honeymoon—and your husband, thank goodness!”

Kerrie and Vi argued all the way into New York. Kerrie wanted Vi to spend the rest of the evening with them, and Vi insisted she was tired and sleepy and had to get settled and all.… Beau urged Vi to stick with them, too. Kerrie resented that—just a little. Then she felt ashamed of herself. But she was relieved when Vi remained adamant.

They dropped Vi at a genteel ladies' hotel in the East Sixties. The two women parted with tears and embraces.

“You'll keep in touch with me, Vi?” cried Kerrie.

“Of course, kid.”

“Tomorrow—I'll ring you tomorrow.”

Then Vi's tall figure was gone, and Kerrie was alone with her silent husband.

He was kept busy driving through the midtown traffic, and Kerrie managed to occupy herself for a long time with her lipstick and powder-puff. But even the most careful make-up duty ends at last, and then there was nothing to do but stare straight ahead, feeling hot fires in her cheeks.

“You smell nice,” he said in a growly voice.

She laid her head on his shoulder in a spasm of tenderness.

“Where are we stopping?” she whispered.

“The
Villanoy.
Right off Times Square. They won't find us there in a million years.”

“Wherever you say, darling.”

At the
Villanoy
a doorman took charge of the car, and two bellboys commandeered the luggage—Kerrie flushed when she noticed the initials
K S
on her bags—and Beau registered at the desk, writing “Mr. and Mrs. Ellery Queen” in a firm hand, and the desk-clerk didn't even blink.

Then there was the long ascent in the elevator under the scrutiny of a couple with remarkably inquisitive eyes. The woman whispered something to her escort, laughing, and Kerrie was sure they were whispering about newly-weds, but finally that ordeal was over, and they and their bags and the bellboy were marching down a long corridor to a door marked 1724, and they went in, and the bellboy set down the bags and threw up the shades of the sitting room and opened the windows wide, so that New York flowed into the room in a nice, quiet, above-it-all way.

The boy repeated the chore in the bedroom. Twin beds, Kerrie noticed, recalling that downstairs her husband—husband!—had asked for twin beds. But then she supposed it was because he was accustomed to … The bellboy left noiselessly, pocketing a half-dollar with no surprise whatever, and they were alone at last.

“It's a darling suite,” said Kerrie in the strained silence. She went to inspect the closets, glorying in the first official impulse of her housewifely existence.

Beau was planted in the center of the sitting room, his hat still on his curly hair, a cigaret forgotten in his fingers—looking rather silly, Kerrie thought with secret amusements as she poked in the closets.

“Aren't you going to stay a while, Mr. Queen?” she called.

“Kerrie.” Something in his tone made her come out of the bedroom closet, take off her hat, put it on die bed, strip off her gloves, all slowly. There was that pain again, in her chest. It was a pain she felt through no one but … him.

“Yes?” She managed to keep her tone casual. But whatever he was about to say would be—catastrophic. She knew that. It had been coming all afternoon. “Yes, dear?” said Kerrie again in a light tone.

He kept staring at the tip of his cigaret. Kerrie's eyes burned on him. Oh, darling, darling, what is there between us? That comes up even at a time like this? Then he looked up and she was smiling.

“I've got something to do, Kerrie.”

“Now?”

“Now. Hungry?”

“Not a bit. What do you have to do?” That was wrong; she shouldn't have asked that. It would make him hate her.

“Business. In all the hurry—” She deserved that. Business! It was almost funny. “I'll send something up for you.”

“Don't bother. If I want anything, I'll call Room Service.” Kerrie turned her back toward him, stooping over one of her bags. “Will you be gone long?”

“Here, let me do that,” he said. He took the bag from her, carried it into the bedroom, returned for the other bags, carried them into the bedroom. She followed slowly. He hadn't answered her question. “While you're waiting, you can unpack—you'd have to unpack, anyway, and you may as well do it now instead of …”

“Darling.” She ran to him and put her arms about his neck. “Is anything wrong?” She couldn't help it. She couldn't.

He looked blustery, and she knew she had failed. “Wrong? Look, Kerrie. I've just got to go out—”

“Then you've got to,” said Kerrie brightly, releasing him. “Don't make such funny faces! Any one would think you were about to leave me forever. You wouldn't desert your bride of an hour, would you, Mr. Queen?”

“Don't be a goop.” He kissed first the tip of her nose, then the dimple in her chin, and finally the bow of her lips. “Be seeing you, funny-face.” He strode out.

“Ellery! Come—”

She heard the slam of the front door.

Kerrie sat slowly down on one of the beds. Her brain ached. Blank. Void. Nothing. No thinking. Just sit. Or get up and do something. But don't think—

Flowers.

Of course! That's what had been bothering him! He'd forgotten to buy her flowers. He'd felt ashamed of himself. That made him act uncomfortable, and his uneasiness had communicated itself to her, and all the rest was her own imagining.… He'd gone downstairs to buy her some. He'd probably be back with boxes of flowers and buckets of champagne, and they'd have a
tête-à-tête
supper high over the city.… Mr. and Mrs. Ellery Queen, in love and sitting on top of the world!