The Dragon’s Teeth (25 page)

Kerrie was there in charge of a detective and a matron. She and Violet Day sat in a corner. Vi was nervous. Every few moments Kerrie had to lean over and reassure her. At other times Kerrie kept her eyes on Beau with a faith patient, secret, and maternal.

Inspector Queen was there, looking worried; District Attorney Sampson, looking skeptical; Edmund De Carlos, looking the worse for drink; Goossens, representing the estate and looking unhappy. A stranger with a kit waited in Beau's laboratory-darkroom.

Beau was jumpy. Mr. Queen took him aside. “You're skittering. Look confident, you big ape. You're acting more like an expectant father than anything else of a human nature.”

“It's the look in Kerrie's eye,” groaned Beau: “You suppose it's going to turn out okay? You're sure you got that message straight?”

“Captain Angus and the Coast operative landed at Newark Airport all right, I tell you,” said Ellery impatiently. “They're coming here under police escort and all the trimmings. Get going, will you?”

“I'm all atwitter,” said Beau with a feeble grin.

“And you show it! The whole secret of this business is to act Jovian. You're Messiah. You know it all. A temblor couldn't shake your confidence. Go ahead!”

Beau breathed hard. He stepped forward, and Mr. Queen retired to lean against the door to the reception room.

Beau described in rapid detail the circumstances of Cadmus Cole's visit to that very office three months before, of how the multimillionaire had engaged Ellery's services in an investigation which “turned out to be the search for Cole's heirs after he should die.” He described Cole—his baldness, his clean-shaven, sunburnt cheeks, his toothless mouth, the way he had bumped into the door-jamb, the way he had squinted: “He seemed, both to Mr. Queen and myself, very nearsighted.”

Beau went on to relate how Cole had left his fountain-pen behind—the pen with which he had sat at that very desk and written out a check for fifteen thousand dollars.

“We sent the pen back to his yacht,
Argonaut,”
said Beau, “but before doing so, we took microphotographs of some very unusual markings towards the end of the cap.” He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to the Headquarters expert seated by the apparatus at the desk. “Dr. Jolliffe, here are those microphotographs. Will you examine them?”

The expert accepted the envelope. “Of course, I've only your word for it—whatever your purpose is, Mr. Rummell—that these photographs are of that pen.”

“We can do better than that,” put in Mr. Queen suddenly.

“We certainly can,” drawled Beau. “We can produce the pen itself!”

And he stepped before Edmund De Carlos, whipped back the man's coat, plucked a fountain-pen from his vest-pocket—the pen which De Carlos had employed to write out the check for twenty-five thousand dollars and tendered
Ellery Queen, Inc.
as a bribe—and handed the fat black gold-trimmed pen to the expert with an air of triumph.

De Carlos was startled. “I don't see—”

“Dr. Jolliffe,” said Beau, “will you please examine this pen under the 'scope and compare its markings with those on the microphotographs?”

The expert went to work. When he looked up he said: “The markings on this pen and the markings on these photographs are identical.”

“Then you'd say the microphotographs,” demanded Beau, “are of this pen?”

“Unquestionably.”

“I'm afraid, Mr. Rummell,” remarked the District Attorney, “that I don't get the point.”

“You will, Oscar,” said Beau grimly. “Just bear in mind that this man De Carlos had in his possession, when he entered this office tonight, a fountain-pen which was in the possession of Cadmus Cole three months ago.”

District Attorney Sampson looked bewildered. “I still—”

Beau stood squarely before De Carlos. “What did you say your name was?”

De Carlos stared at him. “Why—Edmund De Carlos, of course. Of all the ridiculous questions—”

“You're a cock-eyed liar,” said Beau.
“Your name is Cadmus Cole!”

THE bearded man leaped to his feet. “You're insane!”

He snorted, half-turned away. Beau caught his arm, and the man cried out.

“You're Cadmus Cole,” said Beau softly, “—nose for nose, eyes for eyes, mouth for mouth, chin for chin; in fact, feature for feature. And we can prove it!”

“Prove it?” The man licked his lips.

“If you'll be kind enough to remove your beard, your wig, your glasses, and your false teeth, Queen and I will make a formal identification of you as Cadmus Cole.”

“Ridiculous! Never heard such nonsense. Inspector, you can't—Mr. District Attorney, I stand on my rights as—”

“One moment,” snapped the Inspector. He conferred with District Attorney Sampson inaudibly. Then he came forward and said abruptly to Beau: “You claim this man is really Cole, and that you and Ellery can identify him as such?”

“That's our story,” said Beau, “and he's stuck with it.”

The Inspector glanced at Ellery, who nodded slowly.

“Then I'm sorry, Mr. De Carlos, or Mr. Cole, or whoever you are,” said Inspector Queen in a grim voice, “but you'll have to submit to an identification test.”

He reached up himself and pulled at the man's hair, and was obviously flabbergasted when the hair came off the man's head in one piece. Goossens sat open-mouthed, completely and genuinely astonished. Kerrie and Vi were gaping, too.

“Take out your teeth!”

Sullenly, the man complied.

“Now your glasses.”

The man did so, and remained blinking and squinting in the harsh glare of the office lights.

“How about this beard?” demanded the Inspector of Beau. “Is that a phony, too?”

“No, it's on the level,” replied Beau with a grin. “He must have grown it between the time he visited us and the time he showed up in New York again after that dramatic little business of his own ‘death at sea.'”

“Got a razor?” snapped Inspector Queen.

“Better. A barber.” And Beau went into the laboratory. He emerged with the stranger who was carrying the kit. “Okay, Dominick,” said Beau, smiling broadly. “Once over—but good!
Kapeesh?”

The detective who accompanied Kerrie came forward on a sign from the Inspector; but the bearded man sat down voluntarily in his chair and folded his arms, blinking and squinting furiously.

The barber shaved him, and his audience watched the operation with a fascinated expectancy, Beau tense behind the chair, as if he expected the bearded man to leap from the chair and try to escape. But the man sat quietly.

During the shaving of the beard, Mr. Queen went into the reception room, shutting the communicating door carefully. After a moment he returned and took Beau aside.

“They're here,” he whispered.

“Who?”

“Captain Angus and the Coast man.”

“Oh, baby! Keep 'em out there, El, till I find the psychological moment. Then—socko!”

When the beard was gone and the barber dismissed, Beau and Ellery surveyed that denuded, working face in silence. The sunken cheeks, the squinty eyes, the bald head …

“Well?” said Inspector Queen. “Is this the same man who called on you here three months ago?”

“That's Cadmus Cole,” said Beau.

“Ellery?”

“The same man,” nodded Mr. Queen.

“Frame-up!” mumbled the shaven man, drooling. “It's a frame-up! I'm De Carlos! I'm De Carlos!”

“Why, the bug even talks the same way,” grinned Beau. “Now that his plate's missing. Doesn't he, Ellery?”

“Identically.”

“Of course,” said District Attorney Sampson, “again we have only the word of you gentlemen.”

“Not at all,” retorted Beau. “The day Cole called on us in this office I listened in on the conversation from my office next door. We've developed a system in this agency, Your Worship. We like to keep complete records of our wackier clients. That's why we photographed the pen. That's why,” he said, taking a large photograph from his pocket, “I took a candid-camera shot of our friend here through a little convenient arrangement in the wall, and later enlarged it. How's this?”

They crowded around the enlargement, staring from the photograph to the man in the chair.

“No doubt about it,” snapped the Inspector. “Except for that fringe of gray on his skull now, it's the same man. I guess your game's up, Cole!”

“I'm
not
Cole!” screamed the man. “I'm Edmund De Carlos! I can furnish a hundred proofs I'm Edmund De Carlos!”

“Yeah?” drawled Beau. He waved at Ellery. “I now retire in favor of my eminent colleague, that noted orator, Mr. Ellery Queen.”

Mr. Queen stepped forward. “We've proved you're Cole in three ways,” he said to the bald man. “By your possession of Cole's identified fountain-pen, by our personal identification of you as the man who called on us three months ago, and—for legal evidence—by this candid-camera photograph.

“We're in a position to present a fourth proof so damning, Mr. Cole, you may pass judgment on it yourself.”

“The name,” spat the bald man, “is De Carlos!”

Mr. Queen shrugged and took a photostat from the desk. “This photostat shows the cancelled voucher of a check for fifteen thousand dollars written out by Cadmus Cole in this office the afternoon he engaged our services. It's gone through the Clearing House, as you see.

“Now how can we be sure the signature on this check,” he continued, “is genuinely that of Cadmus Cole? There are three ways to authenticate it. First, he wrote it out himself under the eyes of Mr. Rummell and me. Second, and much more conclusive,
Cole's bank authenticated on demand, and later honored, the check exhibiting this signature.
Third, we may compare the signature on this check with the signature on Cadmus Cole's will—the will-signature, incidentally, which was subjected to the most searching scrutiny by the Surrogate, who ultimately probated the will. Mr. Goossens, have you brought the photostat of the Cole will-signature, as I requested?”

The attorney hastily removed a photostat from his brief-case and handed it to Ellery.

“Yes,” said Mr. Queen with satisfaction, “the similarity even to a layman's eye is unmistakable. Will you satisfy yourselves?”

The District Attorney and Inspector Queen compared the check-signature with the will-signature.

The Inspector nodded, and Sampson said: “We'd have to have expert opinion, of course, but I admit they look identical.”

“And in the face of the other evidence, we may take the assumption to be a fact. In other words, the man who wrote out this check in our office three months ago must have been Cadmus Cole. Do you agree?”

They nodded.

Mr. Queen laid down the Cole check-photostat and picked up two other photostats. “These are of a twenty-five thousand dollar check written out the other night, also in this office, also before our eyes, by this gentleman who has been calling himself Edmund De Carlos. I have the original in my possession; it has not been deposited for, at the moment, immaterial reasons.” Mr. Queen handed one of the De Carlos-check photostats to the sunburnt man. “Do you deny the signature on this check to be yours?”

“I'm neither denying nor affirming,” mumbled the man.

“No matter; Rummell and I will swear to it, and there must be hundreds of specimens of your handwriting extant since you took up residence in the Tarrytown estate of Cadmus Cole.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” continued Mr. Queen, taking back the photostat, “there exists a strange and exhilarating kinship between the names Cadmus Cole and Edmund De Carlos. Purely a coincidence, of course, but it makes for an attractive little demonstration.

“Note that in the name ‘Edmund De Carlos' we have every letter of the alphabet which occurs in the name ‘Cadmus Cole' and which would be required in a reconstruction of the name ‘Cadmus Cole'! Even, observe, to the capital or initial—C. This makes it possible for us to perform an educational experiment.

“I'm going to take these two photostats of the check written out by Mr. De Carlos, which contains his full signature in his own handwriting, and cut up the De Carlos signature into its components.

“Then I shall rearrange these and paste them down on another sheet of paper, in such an order that they will spell out the name ‘Cadmus Cole.' In this way we'll have the name ‘Cadmus Cole' written in Edmund De Carlos's handwriting.”

WITH scissors and pastepot Mr. Queen went to work.

When he was finished he observed: “We are now in a position to cap our little climax. Here is Cadmus Cole's authentic signature, taken from the cancelled check-voucher:

Here is Edmund De Carlos's authentic signature, taken from the original check he wrote out to the order of
Ellery Queen, Inc.: