The Dragon’s Teeth (5 page)

“Can you guarantee that?” said Beau. “Kerrie, I've got a confession to make.”

“This seems to be Aching Hearts night!”

“I'm a heel.”

“Mister
Queen! Thanks for the warning.”

“I mean I'm a phony. I'm not an extra. I'm not in Hollywood looking for a job. I'm here for only one purpose—to find you.”

She was puzzled. “To find
me?”

“I'm a private detective.”

She said: “Oh.”

“The Queen agency was employed by your uncle before (his death. Our job was to find his heirs when he died.”

“His … heirs? You mean he died and left—me—money?”

“That's the size of it, Kerrie.”

Kerrie gripped the table. “Did he think he could buy me off—pay me conscience-money for having killed my mother?”

“I know how you feel.” Beau put one of his paws over her icy hands, and squeezed. “But don't do anything foolish. What's done is done. He's dead, and he's left a lot of money—to you and to a cousin of yours, Margo Cole, your uncle Huntley's daughter, if she can be found. That money belongs to the two of you.”

She was silent.

“Part of the money should have been your mother's while she was alive, anyway. Then what's wrong in taking it now? You can't bring her back, but you can enjoy your own life. Do you like Hollywood?”

“I hate it,” she said in a low voice. “Because this is a place where only talent counts, and I haven't any. I might work my way up to talking bits, but I'm not an actress. I'm not kidding myself. I face a life like Vi's—cheap boarding houses, a starvation diet, mending the runs in my stockings because I can't afford new ones.…” She shivered.

“Do you want to hear more?” asked Beau.

She smiled all at once and withdrew her hand. “All right, Dick Tracy—shoot the works.”

“Kerrie, your uncle Cadmus died a multimillionaire.”

“A—what?” she shrieked.

“Didn't you know how rich he was?”

“Well, but I thought—”

“His estate is estimated at fifty million dollars.”

“Fifty mil—” Her tongue and lips grew stiff.

It was like watching a kid open a Christmas box. Her breath was coming in quick little gusts.

“Take another drink. Waiter! Rye, or Scotch?”

“Oh, Scotch, and lots of it! Tell me more. Did I hear you say fifty
million?
That's not a slip of the tongue? You don't mean fifty thousand? Fifty
MILLION
?”

“Whoa! Let's go easy. You're not getting any fifty million dollars.”

“But I thought you said—Oh, I don't care! Nobody could spend that much money, anyway. How much
is
it?”

“Let's figure it out.” Beau began scribbling on the cloth. “The estate comes to about fifty millions. Your uncle didn't use the cute dodges by which rich men usually cheat the constituted authorities of their death-shares. So inheritance taxes are going to eat up about thirty-five millions.”

Kerrie closed her eyes. “Go on. What do I care how I spend money?”

“Fees and expenses will probably come to a half-million. That leaves fourteen million and a half. Invested in safe securities at, say, four percent—that makes an income annually of five hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”

“What?” said Kerrie, opening her eyes.

“You don't get the principal. I'll explain why later. Now, there are two of you sharing this income—your cousin Margo and you.”

“How do you do, Margo,” said Kerrie with a wriggle of delight. “Will you buy a gold-lined tub with me?”

“You mean—? But sure, you never even saw her. Anyway, your half-share annually comes to two hundred and ninety thousand. Income taxes should take a hundred and sixty thousand of that, so you'll have a hundred and thirty thousand a year.”

“How much does that come to per week?” murmured Kerrie. “That's the figure I want. I was always rotten in arithmetic.”

“It comes,” said Beau, scribbling the last figure, “to twenty-five hundred smackers a week.”

“Twenty-five hun—Every week? Week in, week out?”

“Yes.”

“Why, that's better than being a star!” cried Kerrie. “Twenty-five hundred a week clear! I suppose I'm dreaming. It's a mean one, all right. Pinch me and wake me up.”

“It's true. But—”

“Oh,” said Kerrie lightly. Then she sighed. “There's a catch in it.”

“Well … certain conditions. By the way, I'm empowered to finance you—all you want—until you reach New York. Sort of drawing account against that twenty-five hundred per. That is, if you accept the conditions.”

“Let's have them,” said Kerrie crisply. “I may as well know the worst.”

“First,” said Beau, “have you ever been married?”

“No, but I'm eligible. Were you considering snaring an heiress this season? What's the point?”

“Never mind me.” Beau reddened. “Is there any chance of your being married in the near future? That is, are you engaged, or have you a boy-friend?”

“I'm free, white, and just twenty-one.”

“Then you've merely to accept your uncle's conditions and at least half the estate is yours. Now, for the conditions. The first is this: that you agree to live with the other heiress—we're sure now, from the evidence available, that there are only two of you—in your uncle's Tarrytown mansion on the Hudson. The house will be maintained by the estate for one year. You must live there exclusively for that year; after that you're free to live anywhere you like.”

“Wow,” said Kerrie. “I was really worried. Why, that's not a condition—it's a blessing! Beautiful house, cars, all the clothes in the world, a maid to do my hair, three squares a day and a couple of cooks to prepare them … Mister, that's heaven. Bring on your other condition!”

Beau fished a paper out of his pocket. “Let me read you,” he said slowly, “a copy of a paragraph from your uncle's will.” He read:

“In imposing this second condition upon my heirs, I feel it necessary to warn them against that insidious, degrading, and fatal institution in human relations known as marriage. I was married, and I know. At its best, it is a dull, confining prison. At its worst, it is hell. Since my divorce, I have lived, and I shall die, a bachelor. My only friend, Edmund De Carlos, to whom I have in this testament willed one million dollars and a home for life if he so wishes, is now and has always been a bachelor. We have discussed the subject many times and agree that most of the ills of the world can be traced to marriage, or rather to its effect upon individuals. It has caused men and women to become greedy, it has inspired horrible crimes, it has, historically, bred wars and international treacheries. I am an old man; my heirs, if they still live, will be young. I feel I must impose my experience of life upon them. They are free to reject my advice, of course, but only at the expense of the worldly goods I am in a position to bestow upon them.…”

Beau put the paper back in his pocket. “There's more of the same. But I think you get the idea.”

Kerrie looked astonished. “He was mad!”

“No,” said Beau dryly, “he was perfectly sane—in the legal sense, and we have reason to believe in the medical, too. He was just abnormally bitter and intense on this one subject. I suppose it all dates from the dirty deal his wife gave him 'way back in 1902 or so. Anyway, he felt so strongly about marriage that upon it depends your inheritance.”

“I don't quite—”

“The will stipulates that the income payable to any heir shall cease automatically, and that heir from then on forfeits all claim to her share of the estate,
if and when she marries.”

“You mean,” cried Kerrie, “if I accept this legacy I shan't ever be able to get married?”

“Not if you want to keep pocketing twenty-five hundred a week.”

“And if I turn the whole thing down now, or accept and then marry?”

“Your cousin Margo, if she's eligible, would become the sole heiress. Your share would go to her. Or if you both became ineligible, the will provides that the income from the estate be donated by the trustees to such organized charities as they may see fit to select, and they continue to be trustees for the estate. Or if the heirs remain eligible, then at the death of one the income goes to the survivor. At the death of the survivor, the income goes to the charities. You see, your uncle Cadmus considered death and marriage practically the same thing.”

Kerrie was silent for a long time. The orchestra was playing, and people were dancing under colored lights; her face lay in trombone shadows.

Beau waited for her decision with a curious eagerness. She couldn't turn it down. She wouldn't be human if she did. She was human, all right—he could testify to that, because he had held her in his arms when they danced.

Cole's conditions might have been easy for another girl. But Kerrie wasn't the sort who could take, and give, love except the right way. With her it would be one or the other—the money or her happiness.

He knew what she was thinking. She wasn't in love with any one now. Perhaps she'd never been in love. With her figure, with her face, there must have been men, though—plenty of men, and all the wrong kind. She would be a little cynical about men. So what was she throwing away? Something that didn't exist, probably, for something that you could turn instantly into the delicious good things of life, which she had never had.

Kerrie laughed—a funny, quaking little laugh. “All right, Uncle Cadmus, you win. I die a virgin. Other women have. Maybe I'll become a saint. Wouldn't that be a scream, Ellery? Saint Kerrie. And all the other virgins would put up candles for me, and pray at my shrine!”

Beau was silent.

Kerrie said fiercely: “I can't turn all that money down. I can't! No one could. Could you?”

“It wouldn't be a problem with me,” said Beau gruffly.

She looked him in the eye. “It won't be with me, either. But I think we're talking about different things.”

“Congratulations,” said Beau.

It had to be. And of course she was right. He knew what it meant to go hungry, to be pushed around, to peer up at life from under the eight-ball.

Kerrie smiled and got out of her chair suddenly and came round the table. She leaned over him, so close he smelled her skin. It smelled like clover—Beau had smelled a clover once.

“Mind if I kiss you for being such a swell Santa?”

She kissed his lips. Lightly, in the shadows. He kept his lips deliberately tight, cold, hard.

But his voice was thick. “You shouldn't have done that, Kerrie. Damn it, you shouldn't!”

“Oh, then you're the keeper of my conscience, too?” She kissed him again, laughing. “Don't worry, grandpa. I shan't fall in love with you!”

Beau got up from the chair so suddenly it fell over with a clatter and Kerrie stared at him with startled eyes.

“Come on, Miss Millionbucks,” he growled. “Let's go tell the good news to your girl friend. I bet she'll die.”

IV.
Goodbye to All That

Kerrie and Vi wound their arms about each other in the dingy bedroom and cried and cried and cried, while Beau sat gloomily in the one good chair and helped himself freely to the contents of a brandy bottle he had thought to buy on the way home.

Kerrie acted like a hysterical child. She threw her wardrobe, one poor dress at a time, all over the room as if they were confetti. Several times she ran over and kissed Beau, and he grinned back at her and offered her a drink.

But she refused. “I'm drunk on good luck. Vi, I'm rich!”

The landlady came up to investigate the noise, but Kerrie poured out the news in a burst, rattling on like a machine-gun, and a cunning look came into the landlady's faded eyes.

“Imagine that!” she said, smacking her lips. “Imagine that—a real heiress! My!”

Beau got rid of her.

“She'll have every reporter in town here by morning,” he said. “Kerrie, pipe down. They'll tear you to pieces.”

“Let 'em! I love 'em all! I love the whole world!”

“Wet blanket!” shrieked Vi. “Kerrie, he's just jealous!”

“Ellery, you aren't!”

“I guess I am,” said Beau. “That's it—jealous. Of the income on half of fifteen million simoleons.”

“Oh, darling, don't be! You'll always be Santa Claus to me—isn't he a handsome Santa, Vi? Darling, I won't forget what you've—”

“Damn it,” snarled Beau, “don't patronize me!”

“But I'm
not.
It's just that I want everybody to share my wonderful luck!”

That sobered Violet. “Kerrie, you're not going to be a fool? Queen, she'll just throw it away, I know she will. She'll be the softest touch in the universe. Every dead-beat in Hollywood—”

“I'll see her through the first pains,” said Beau shortly. “It's my job to get her safely back to New York.”

“Aren't you the darling?” Kerrie stretched. “Oh, I feel so
swell!
And, Vi, the first thing we're going to do is take your name off the list at Central Casting. No more extra work for you! You're coming East with me, as my—as my
companion.
That's what you're going to do—”

“Kerrie! No!”

“You
are.
At a salary of—of—no salary at all! You'll just share everything with me!”

“Oh, Kerrie.” And the blonde laid her head on Kerrie's breast, and wept, and that started Kerrie off, too, and Beau disgustedly finished what was left in the bottle.

It was a mad night, and Kerrie was drunk with the wonderful madness of it. Surveying the disordered room as the sun came up and touched the faces of the two girls, exhaustedly asleep in each other's arms, Beau wondered just how Miss Kerrie Shawn, heiress to the Cole fortune, recipient of twenty-five hundred dollars a week just so long as she remained unmarried, would react to the inevitable hangover.