The Dragon’s Teeth

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 elegantiarum, 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 lapping ’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 her in 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 château 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 Americanus 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 Rummellian 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?”

Beau said: “He’s hiding something. Like hell.”

Ellery sprang from the chair. “But the other thing! His pesky, unreasonable curiosity. Why should he be so anxious to find out what I think he’s hiring me for?”

“He’s a nut, I tell you.”

Ellery perched on the desk and stared out at Times Square’s crenellated skyline. Suddenly he grimaced; he had sat down on something long and hard. He turned round.

“He forgot his fountain-pen.”

“Then we’re in that much, anyway.” Beau scowled at his chocolated fingers and began to lick them clean, like a cat.

Ellery examined the pen. Beau lit a cigaret. After a while he said indifferently: “What ho!”

“What do you make of this, Beau?” Ellery brought the pen to the sofa.

Beau squinted at it curiously through the smoke. It was a large fat pen, its cap considerably scratched and nicked in a sort of arced pattern. Some of the dents were deep, and the whole pen had a look of age and hard use.

Beau glanced at Ellery’s face, puzzled. Then he unscrewed the cap and examined the gold nib.

“I make out an old-fashioned black gold-trimmed fountain-pen that’s seen plenty of use by somebody that likes a smooth, broad stroke. It’s exactly like millions of other pens.”

“I have an idea,” said Ellery, “that it’s exactly like no other pen in the world.”

Beau stared at him.

“Well, no doubt all these little mysteries will clarify in time. Meanwhile, Beau, I suggest you take microphotographs of the thing. From every angle and position. I want exact measurements, too. Then we’ll send the pen back to the Argonaut by messenger... I wish I were sure,” he mumbled.

“Sure?”

“That the check’s good.”

“Amen!”

A glorious morrow it proved to be. The sun beamed; their messenger reported that the previous evening he had delivered the pen to the yacht, in its berth in the Hudson, and had not been arrested as a suspicious character; and Miss Hecuba Penny appeared late for work but triumphant with the announcement that the bank on which the fifteen thousand dollar check was drawn had authenticated, promptly and beyond any doubt whatever, the signature of Cadmus Cole.

That left only the possibility that Mr. Cole had been playful and meant to stop the check.

They waited three days. The check cleared.

Beau salaamed thrice to the agency bankbook and sallied forth to drown the fatted calf.

II. Last Voyage of the Argonaut

The mortality rate among sixty-six-year-old millionaires who make out sudden wills and engage detectives for undisclosed reasons is bound to be high.

Mr. Cadmus Cole died.

Mr. Ellery Queen expected Mr. Cadmus Cole to die; to die, that is, under suspicious circumstances. He did not foresee that he himself would come perilously near to preceding his client through the pearly gates.

The blow fell the afternoon of the day the check cleared. Mr. Queen had taken up his telephone to call Lloyd Goossens, the attorney, for a conference of mutual enlightenment. Just as Goossens’s secretary told him that the lawyer had left the previous night for London on an emergency business trip, Mr. Queen experienced a pang.

He set down the telephone. The pain stabbed deeply. He said: “Everything happens to me,” and rang weakly for Miss Penny.

Within ninety minutes Mr. Queen lay on an operating table unaware that a famous surgeon was removing an appendix which had treacherously burst. Afterwards, the surgeon looked grave. Peritonitis.

Inspector Queen and Beau paced the corridor outside Ellery’s room all night, silent. They could hear the Queen voice raised in a querulous delirium. He was haranguing an invisible entity, demanding the answer to various secrets. The words “Cole” and “fountain-pen” ran through his monologue, accompanied by mutterings, groans, and occasional wild laughter.

With the sun emerged the surgeon, and the House Physician, and various others. Mr. Queen, it appeared, had a chance. There was something on his mind, said the surgeon, and it was making the patient cling, perversely, to his life. It had something to do with a fountain-pen and a person named Cole.

“How,” said Beau hoarsely, “can you kill a guy like that?”

Mr. Queen merely lingered in this vale of tears, swinging recklessly on the pearly gate, sometimes in, sometimes out. But when the news came that Cadmus Cole had died, he stopped teetering and set about the business of recuperation with such a grimness that even the doctors were awed.

“Beau, for heaven’s sake,” implored the patient, “talk!”

Beau talked. The yacht Argonaut, Captain Herrold Angus, master, had cleared New York Harbor the night of the day Cole had visited Ellery Queen, Inc. She carried her owner, his friend and companion Edmund De Carlos, her master, and a crew of twelve.

“Nobody else?” asked Mr. Queen instantly.

“That’s all we know about.”

On 13 June the Argonaut anchored in the Gulf of Paria, off Port of Spain, and, taking on fresh water and fuel, then sailed north and west into the Caribbean.

On 21 June she spoke a passing cruise liner 100 miles northwest of Port Gallinas. Captain Angus exchanged the usual courtesies of the sea with the liner’s master.

At eight bells on the night of 30 June, during a squall, the Argonaut’s wireless sputtered a general distress call directed to any vessel carrying a medical officer. The message stated that Cadmus Cole had suffered a severe heart-attack and that while Captain Angus had medical equipment in his locker and was capable of administering simple treatment, he felt the serious condition of his owner demanded immediate professional advice.

White Lady, lying some 200 miles northeast, promptly responded. Her chief medical officer radioed for details of pulse, respiration, blood-pressure, and superficial symptoms. This information was supplied him via wireless.

White Lady’s physician then advised digitalis injections, applications of ice, and other emergency measures. Captain Angus kept him informed by five-minute radio exchanges of the sick man’s condition. Meanwhile, the liner steamed towards the Argonaut at full speed.

But she was too late. An hour and fifty minutes after the original distress call, a radio message signed by Captain Angus and Edmund De Carlos announced that Cadmus Cole had passed away. The message concluded with thanks for White Lady’s assistance and the information that the millionaire’s last wish before expiring had been to be buried at sea.

“No, no!” shrieked Mr. Queen. “Stop them!”

“Whoa, Silver,” said Beau soothingly. “Cole’s been lying at the bottom of the Caribbean in a canvas shroud for a week.”

“A whole week!” groaned Ellery. “Is it July already?”

“Wednesday, July fifth.”

“Then we’ve got to speak to De Carlos, to Angus, to the radio operator, the crew! Where are they now?”

“The Argonaut showed up at Santiago de Cuba two days after Cole kicked in — that was last Sunday. By Monday Captain Angus and the crew were paid off and discharged.”

“De Carlos?” asked Ellery after a profound silence.

“Yeah. De Carlos then put the Argonaut in drydock down there, shipping Cole’s personal effects to the States, and hopped a plane. He ought to be here tonight or tomorrow morning.”

Mr. Queen was ominously quiet. Then he said: “Fee fi-fo-fum.”

“What?”

“A heart-attack in the middle of the Caribbean during a convenient storm, death before a certified medical officer can examine the dying man, sea-burial before an autopsy can be performed — and now the Captain and crew dispersed before they can be questioned!”

“Look at it this way, Master-Mind,” said Beau, “because this is the way it’s going to be looked at by John Q. Public. Cole’s ticker gave out? He was sixty-six. Died at sea? Funny if he hadn’t, since he spent his last eighteen years aboard a yacht. Buried fathoms deep? Natural request of a dying man who loved the sea.”

“And De Carlos’s discharging Captain Angus and the crew in Cuba?” asked Mr. Queen dryly.

“Sure, he could have had them sail the Argonaut back north. But a plane is faster, and it would be natural for De Carlos to want to get back to New York as quickly as possible. No, son, the set-up is as smooth as a baby’s—”

“Don’t like it,” said Ellery irritably. “Cole makes out a will, hires us, acts mysterious, dies — some people would use a nasty word, Beau... murder!”

“There’s an ol’ debbil in de law,” said Beau dryly, “and his name is corpus delicti. I’ll be squashed if I see how we’d do it, but suppose we could prove murder. We’d have to produce a body, wouldn’t we? And where’s the body? Making fish-food at the bottom of the Caribbean. No, sir, all we can have is suspicions, and they don’t pay off on those in this racket.”

“Just the same,” muttered Mr. Queen, “we’ve got fifteen thousand dollars of Cole’s money that say somebody’s not going to get away with Cole’s murder!”

“We’ve got it, but not for long. I meant to save the bad news till you were well enough to stand the shock. El, we’ve got to pay that dough back to the Cole estate.”

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Queen. “Why?”

“Because Cole hired you, and you won’t be able to investigate whatever it is he wanted you to investigate. The doc tells me you’ve got to go away for at least six weeks.”

“Don’t be an ass,” snapped Ellery. “You’re Ellery Queen, Inc., not I. You’ll investigate.”

“No can do.” Beau was glum. “Cole hired you personally, and you accepted. That constitutes a contract for personal services. A contract for personal services can’t be assigned. We’re out fifteen thousand bucks and the prospect of being filthy rich.”

“The hell you say,” scowled Mr. Queen, and he fell into an aggressive reverie. After a time he smiled diabolically. “Beau, whom did Cole say he was appointing executor-trustees of his estate?”

“Lloyd Goossens and this De Carlos.”

“Do they know you?”

“No, and the ignorance is mutual. So what?”

“They don’t know me either.” Ellery grinned. “You see?”

“Why, you two-timing pretzel, you!” shouted Beau. “Talk about confidence men!”

“When Goossens asks for Ellery Queen, you answer.”

“I stand in for you! And neither Goossens nor De Carlos will know the difference.” Beau pounced. “Let me shake the hand of a genius!”

“Please, my operation. Of course, you know we’re conspiring to commit a crime?”

“Are we?” Beau scratched his head. “Let’s see. Well, I guess we are, although I’ll be a frosted chocolate if I know what the crime is. And what’s more, I don’t give a rooty-toot. Adios, Mr. Queen!” said Mr. Rummell.

“Vaya con Dios, Mr. Queen!” said Mr. Queen.

Lloyd Goossens telephoned the next morning.

Mr. Rummell, alias Mr. Queen, made the subway journey downtown to Park Row in record time.

Goossens was a big, pleasant man in his late thirties, dressed as for the salon. He had a gray and sleepless look. Beau, who read Winchell, knew that Goossens alternated socially between Park Avenue and 52nd Street, with and without his society wife, as suited the occasion. As they shook hands, Beau sighed; it must be swell to belch, he thought.

“De Carlos just got in on the Florida plane,” said the lawyer, waving his fuming pipe towards an inner office. I suppose you know who he is, Mr. Queen?”

“Mr. Queen” looked around to see where Mr. Queen was, but then, realizing that he was Mr. Queen, said: “Lord Chamberlain, wasn’t he? By the way, why all the mystery, Goossens?”

Goossens frowned. “Mystery?”

“Cole wouldn’t disclose the nature of the case. He made quite a secret of it.”

“I don’t see why,” said the lawyer, puzzled. “His registered letter to me, in which he outlined the terms of your employment, made it perfectly clear. And then it’s down in his will in black and white.”

“You mean there’s nothing sensational about it?”

Goossens grinned. “It has its points. Come in and meet the Grand Vizier, and we’ll go over the whole business.”

A moment later Beau was shaking hands with a medium-sized man browned by years of exposure to salt wind and windy sun. De Carlos’s hair was a wavy black fur, and he wore a piratical-looking black beard. The eyes behind his silver-rimmed spectacles were widely open, naive — much too naive, Beau thought.

Beau was preoccupied when he left the two executors. At the hospital he told Ellery, who was in a fever of impatience, exactly what had happened, and all about De Carlos.

“He looks like a pirate. Just off the Spanish Main, too!”

“Yes, yes. But how about the case?”

“Oh, the case.” Beau stared out the window. “That mysterious case we were all hopped up about. Well, prepare for a shock. Either old man Cole was as nutty as a chocolate bar, or we’re up against a real baffler.”

“What’s the assignment, you aggravating sea-lawyer?”

“Merely to find a couple of missing heirs!”

“Oh, no,” groaned Ellery. “That’s too much. It can’t be. How about the will itself? Did you see it?”

“Yes, and it has its screwy angles.” Beau explained Cole’s will to Ellery.

“But how is it that Cole didn’t know where his heirs were?” demanded Ellery when Beau had finished.

Beau shrugged. Cadmus Cole’s unfortunate marital experience in Windsor at the turn of the century had embittered him against the whole institution of marriage. He had had a younger brother, Huntley, whom he had sent to New York to study art. In 1906, in New York, Huntley Cole secretly married his model, a woman named Nadine Malloy. In 1907 a child, Margo, was born; and Cadmus, for the first time learning of his younger brother’s marriage, became enraged at what he considered Huntley’s ingratitude.

Cadmus stopped sending Huntley money and swore he should never speak to his brother again. Huntley took his wife and infant daughter to Paris, where he painted futilely for two years, living in poverty, his only means of support his wife’s meager earnings as a model.

“This Huntley,” Beau explained, “was too proud to write to his rich brother. But his wife wasn’t, because her brat was starving, and so she wrote to Cadmus pleading for help. Cadmus replied — that’s how we know about the Parisian episode of the Huntley branch — saying that his brother had made his bed, and so on — the usual sanctimonious tripe.

“Anyway, Cadmus turned his sister-in-law down cold. Huntley found out about it, apparently, because right after Cadmus’s letter arrived he committed suicide. There’s absolutely no record of what happened to Nadine and little Margo. So one of our jobs is to pick up that thirty-year-old trail.”

“That makes Margo Cole one heiress — if she’s found and if she qualifies under the will. How about the other?”

“Well, Cadmus and Huntley had a younger sister, Monica. Reading between the lines it seems that, hearing about Huntley’s suicide in Paris, Monica blamed Cadmus for it and just upped and quit her sourpuss brother cold. Walked out on Cadmus and the Windsor ancestral mansion and disappeared. That was not long after Huntley’s death in 1909.

“We know sketchily what happened to her, too, after leaving Vermont. She had a lot of tough luck supporting herself until 1911, when she met a man named Shawn, an accountant or something, in Chicago. Shawn married her. A daughter, Kerrie, was born to Monica in 1918 — just about the time her husband died of spinal meningitis in a Chicago hospital.

“Monica was left without a cent. Desperate, she wrote to her brother Cadmus, explaining what had happened and asking for help, just as Huntley’s wife had written nine years before. Well, Monica received practically the same answer: she’d put herself outside the reservation by marrying, and she could go take a flying jump at the moon. That’s the last record Cadmus had of his sister’s — and little Kerrie’s — whereabouts. Monica’s letter was postmarked Chicago, September eighth, 1918.”

“Nothing for Monica, eh?” mused Mr. Queen.

“Not a jit. Of course, she may be dead. Cole left the bulk of his estate, as I said, to his two nieces, Margo Cole and Kerrie Shawn... when, as, and if.”

“How about insanity?” asked Mr. Queen hopefully.

“No dice. Goossens has already consulted psychiatrists. From the picture, they agree Cole was medically sane. Legally, of course, he had a right to put any cockeyed conditions he pleased on the passing of his estate. De Carlos, who’s in the best position to know, pooh-poohs the whole idea, of course. He ought to, since Cole’s left him a million bucks in cash and a home for life if he wants it in the Tarrytown mansion!”

“Did you question De Carlos about the circumstances of Cole’s death?”

Beau nodded. “But he’s a cool customer, and he stuck to his yarn. I bawled him out for not holding on to Captain Angus and the radio operator when he scattered the crew of the yacht all over creation.”

“What’s the point?”

“The witnesses who attested the validity of Cole’s signature at the bottom of the will were Angus, the radio operator, and De Carlos.”

“What of that?”

“Before a will may be probated, two of the subscribing witnesses must be produced and examined, if they’re within the State and are competent and able to testify. In the absence of any witness, the Surrogate at his discretion may dispense with his testimony and admit the will to probate on the testimony of the other. So that in the absence of Captain Angus and the radio operator, we’ll have to rely completely on the testimony of De Carlos.”

Mr. Queen frowned. “I don’t care for that.”

“Well, we’ll have a check-up, because the Surrogate undoubtedly will insist on better proof of signature than the mere word of a single witness. He’ll want proof of the testator’s handwriting, and of Angus’s, and so on. There must be hundreds of Cole’s autographs extant, and they’ll all be examined.”

“And I have to go to the mountains!” groaned Mr. Queen. “Blast my vermiform appendix!”

Beau armed two operatives with the names and descriptions of Captain Angus and the Argonaut’s crew and sent them down to Santiago de Cuba to begin a discreet inquiry. He also set a reliable French agency on the trail of Nadine and Margo Cole, advertised extensively in the French and American papers, and then set off on the Kerrie Shawn trail.

Wrathfully, Mr. Queen departed for the Adirondacks. From this Elba he followed the fortunes of Mr. Edmund De Carlos through the New York gossip columnists and society tattlers. De Carlos, as co-executor of the Cole estate and co-trustee-to-be, had granted permission to himself, as beneficiary, to take up residence at the Tarrytown mansion even before probate of the will.

The house and grounds had been under the supervision of a caretaker until the man died early in 1937. Apparently Cole had never quite got round to hiring another, for the place had been left boarded up and untended. Now De Carlos moved in, hired decorators and servants, and established himself in lone grandeur as lord of the manor.

He promptly set off on a fierce hunt for pleasure. The man’s bearded face, menacing teeth, and bushy hair began to appear in newspaper photographs with regularity. Overnight he became New York’s premier bon vivant, leading benefactor of various lonely ladies of the chorus, lavish spender and frequenter of notorious night clubs and gambling rooms.

“If he keeps up this pace,” thought Mr. Queen grimly, “that million-dollar legacy will collapse under the weight of its own mortgages!”

Edmund De Carlos was the son of a Brazilian father and an English mother, born in the Brazilian interior on a coffee plantation in the year 1889. That made him fifty years old, ruminated Mr. Queen from his lofty exile; in his pictures the pirate seemed younger.

Mr. Queen decided suddenly that Mr. De Carlos would bear watching.

Meanwhile, Beau was scampering along a cold spoor.

Beginning with a clue twenty-one years old — the knowledge that Monica Cole Shawn’s husband had died in a Chicago hospital — Beau followed a trail that led to a Chicago tenement, then to a secretarial school, where, apparently, the young widow had enrolled to learn a practical means of sustaining her life and her daughter’s when Cadmus Cole refused financial assistance.

St. Louis, Minneapolis, New York — cheap rooming houses, small apartments, a draughty theatrical hotel, a dancing and “dramatic” school for children. Eagerly Beau haunted Broadway. Finally, in the curling files of a theatrical agency, he unearthed an old photograph of a beautiful girl-child named Kerrie Shawn. But then he lost the trail.

During his New York investigation Beau learned from Lloyd Goossens that the Surrogate had been satisfied with the proofs of Cadmus Cole’s testamentary signature. There were plentiful examples of Cole’s handwriting for comparison purposes — on checks, on legal documents, on records in foreign and American banks dating back almost twenty years. Captain Angus’s signature was likewise authenticated through the Argonaut’s log (in which. Mr. Rummell was interested to learn, the details of Cole’s last illness and death were meticulously recorded, agreeing to the letter with the verbal account given by De Carlos).

“Almost ready,” Goossens told Beau. “Assets, for the size of the estate, are in a very fluid condition. The fourth citation is to be published in a few days, Queen — so where do you stand with the hunt for those two girls?”

Beau dug in again. He found a new clue which led westward. But in Cincinnati he came up against a dead end.

“I can’t understand why this femme Kerrie Shawn hasn’t answered the personals I’ve published,” Beau complained to Ellery over the long-distance telephone. “Unless she’s left the United States, or is dead. As far as that’s concerned, there’s been enough newspaper publicity to call her back from Africa, or from the dead.”

Mr. Queen pondered. “There’s a clear record that Monica Shawn was giving her child dancing and dramatic lessons, isn’t there? So, working from the professional angle—”

“Listen, Big Brain,” snarled Beau, “I’ve badgered agents and managers in New York so much they’re threatening to have me pinched if I so much as show my pan again. That theatrical lead is strictly from hunger, I tell you!”

“Where,” inquired Mr. Queen mildly, “does every aspiring American mama with a beautiful child of real or fancied talent eventually, and inevitably, wind up?”

“Am I a dope!” roared Beau. “Goodbye!”

Ten days later Ellery received a wire from Hollywood:

III. Mr. Santa Claus

At the central casting Bureau in Hollywood Beau had found no Shawns, but three Kerries. He examined their portraits. Kerrie Acres was a Negro. Kerrie St. Alban was an aged character actress. Kerrie Land was a young girl.

Her face was nice. Light-colored eyes looked straight at him; they fizzed, like champagne. A chin-cleft, a turned-up nose, soft dark rolls of hair... nice, nice.

Beau compared Kerrie Land’s face with the photograph in his possession of Kerrie Shawn as a child. There was an unmistakable resemblance. But he had to be sure.

He wormed an Argyle Avenue address and telephone number out of a Bureau attendant and called the number.

A woman answered. He identified himself in a raspy voice as “Central Casting” and asked for Kerrie Land. The woman said Kerrie Land had been on location somewhere for two months, and how come? She was expected back within a few days. She slammed the receiver.

Beau returned to his hotel, looked himself over, decided his clothes were shabby enough to lull the suspicions of even a Hollywood landlady, checked out and, carrying one ragged handbag, walked to the Argyle Avenue address.

It was a stucco rooming house which had long since burst its seams — discolored, down at the heel, one of? row of similar dreary, dowdy dwellings.

Beau began to feel like Santa Claus.

He rang the front doorbell and was admitted by a shapeless woman wearing an ancient dinner-gown and carpet-slippers.

“I want a room,” he said.

“Extra?” She looked him over without friendliness.

“I’m looking for a job in the movies,” Beau admitted.

“Six dollars in advance. Your own soap and towels.” The landlady did not stir until he let her inspect the bulging interior of his wallet. “Oh, new in town. Well, I’ll show you what I got. Throw parties?”

“I don’t know anyone in Hollywood,” said Beau.

“With that roll, you’ll know plenty soon enough.”

“I’m respectable, if that’s what you mean, beautiful,” grinned Beau.

“See you don’t forget it. I run a decent house. Name?”

“Queen. Ellery Queen.”

She shrugged and shuffled upstairs. Beau was very critical of the rooms she indifferently displayed. He watched the little cardboard name-plates on the doors. When he saw one that said: KERRIE LAND — VIOLET DAY, he chose the nearest room on the same floor, paid a week’s rent in advance, and then settled down to await the return of Cadmus Cole’s niece.

That night he stole into the dark bedroom shared by Kerrie “Land” and Violet Day and callously explored it.

It was a mean room, like his own: a rickety dressing table covered by a cheap linen runner smeared in one corner with lipstick and powder; an open closet hung with a faded calico curtain, and inside dozens of flimsy wire hangers; a lame bureau; walls hung with unframed 8 x 10 “still” photographs of Kerrie and a grim blonde with long shanks and an air of world-weariness; two low, lumpy, iron beds.

One bed exhaled strong perfume: Violet Day, Beau decided unchivalrously. The other gave out a sweet, clean odor — obviously Kerrie’s.

Poor kid.

Beau mumbled angrily to himself. Getting soft about a perky little brunette with delusions of stardom and come-hither eyes! Why, she stood in line for more dough than he’d see in his whole lifetime!

And he began to look forward to his first sight of Kerrie Shawn with a fierce, insatiable excitement.

He saw her four days later. He heard a taxi pull up outside, a merry voice, light footsteps. Instantly he was out of his room and at the head of the stairs, his heart racing.

The tall grim blonde appeared downstairs, handling two huge pieces of luggage like a stevedore. She was followed by the brunette, who was laughing as she lugged a suitcase. And suddenly there was warmth and happiness in those dingy halls.

“Come on, Vi!” cried Kerrie, flying up the stairs.

At the top there was Beau, staring.

“Oh,” said Kerrie, bumping into him in the semi-darkness. “Hello!”

“Yourself.”

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely reborn!”

“What? Vi, it’s a funny man! My name’s Kerrie Sh — I mean, Kerrie Land. This is my roomie, Violet Day.”

“Do. Queen. Ellery Queen.” Beau stared and stared.

“It talks,” said the blonde, peering at him. “Next thing you know it’ll touch you for five bucks. Kerrie, come on. My feet are yelling bloody murder.”

“It’s nice, though,” said Kerrie, smiling at him. “What lovely hair, Vi! Looks like Bob Taylor, don’t you think?” And they left Beau grinning in the gloom.

Ten minutes later he rapped on their door.

“Come in!” called Kerrie.

She was in a house-coat. Red flowers and a zipper. Her small feet were bare. Tousled hair — nice. The suitcase lay open on the bed — the sweet-smelling bed, Beau noted with an obscure satisfaction — and she was stowing black panties away in a bureau drawer.

“It’s in again,” said Violet Day, asprawl on the perfumed bed, her naked toes wiggling with ecstasy. “Kerrie, have you no shame? Giving away all your girlish secrets.”

“Hi,” said Beau, still grinning. He felt good, he didn’t know why. As if he had had five drinks.

“Go away,” said the blonde. “This gal here was born with the soul of a Girl Scout, and I was placed on earth just to protect her from hungry-looking hombres who think they look like the Taylor man.”

“Vi, shut up,” said Kerrie. “Come in, Queen — we won’t bite you! Got any Scotch?”

“No, but I know where to find some,” said Beau.

“Make mine apple. Say! I take it all back,” said Vi, sitting up in bed. “Where?”

“I’m sort of new in Hollywood,” said Beau. “You know. Lonesome.”

“It’s lonesome!” giggled the blonde. “But it knows where the Scotch is. Kerrie, it does look like Taylor, you know that?”

Beau ignored her. “Miss Land, how about joining me in a little supper with that Scotch?”

Vi hugged her knees. “Lonesome — supper — Scotch! What is this, The Merry Widow? I bet he’ll have you feeling his muscle before the night’s over, Kerrie.”

“We’d love to,” said Kerrie, stressing the “we” the least bit. “I know just how you feel, Queen. It’s a date! — the three of us.”

“The three of us?” said “Mr. Queen” damply.

“But we pay our own way.”

“Utsnay! What do you take me for?”

“Dutch, or you eat by yourself,” said Kerrie positively. “Your bankroll won’t last forever — Ellery, was it? — and we’ve just had two months of steady extra work being Hawaiians. Wasn’t it Hawaiians, Vi?”

“I dunno,” said Vi.

“So give us a half-hour to shower and change,” said Kerrie, and as she said it a dimple appeared from nowhere and transfixed Mr. Rummell like an arrow, “and we’re your gals, Ellery.” And she came and stood close to him at the door, smiling.

Something happened to him. As if he had a sudden heart-attack. What the hell? He found himself in the dark hall leaning against the wall.

He stood there for several minutes, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Whew! Then he ran downstairs to the pay-telephone and sent the telegram to Mr. Queen which ended with EXCLAMATION POINT.

They dined — at Mr. “Queen’s” expense — in the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador.

Beau took turns dancing with Kerrie and Vi. Vi just danced. Kerrie floated. She made herself part of him. He actually enjoyed dancing for the first time in his life.

Suddenly Violet Day developed a headache and, over Kerrie’s protests, left them.

Kerrie laughed. “You’re accepted, Mister. Did you know that?”

“How come?”

“Vi turns her headaches on and off like a faucet. Since she left me to your mercies, it’s because she thinks you’re a regular guy.”

“How about you?” Beau leaned forward hungrily.

“I’m not so naive. You’re a nice-looking cover, but what’s in the book? I’ll know better when you take me home.”

Beau looked disappointed. “Tell me about yourself.”

“There isn’t much to tell.”

“Have you and Vi been friends long?”

“I met her in Hollywood.”, Kerrie turned the glass of vermouth slowly in her long fingers. “Vi took me under her wing when my mother died last year. Just like a hen. And I guess I was a pretty hopeless sort of egg.”

“Say, I’m sorry. Your mother, huh?”

“She died of pleurisy-pneumonia. No resistance. She burned herself out trying to make a Garbo out of a cluck.” Kerrie said abruptly: “Let’s talk about something else.”

“You seem to have led a pretty tough life.”

“It hasn’t been all honey-and-almond cream. Monica—”

“Monica?”

“My mother. Monica Cole Shawn. My real name’s Shawn. Monica slaved all her life to see me become somebody, and I’m a little bitter about... How did we ever get on this subject, anyway? You see, I have an uncle who’s a first-class rat. He’s really responsible for my mother’s suffering and hardships. But I don’t see why you—”

“Monica Cole Shawn,” said Beau. “You know, that’s funny. Was your uncle’s name Cole?”

“Yes, Cadmus Cole. Why?”

“His name’s been in the papers. So you’re his niece!”

“Papers? I haven’t seen a paper in two months. What’s he done now — turned a machine-gun on the Marriage License Bureau?”

Beau looked straight at her. “Then you didn’t know your uncle just died?”

She was silent for some time, a little paler. “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, of course, but he treated my mother abominably, and I’m afraid I can’t shed any tears. I never even saw him.” She frowned. “How did he die?”

“Heart-attack on a Caribbean cruise. He was buried at sea. His own yacht, you know.”

“Yes, I’d read about him occasionally. He was supposed to be a rich man.” Kerrie’s lip curled. “And all the while he was spending his money on yachts and mansions, my mother was slaving to death, living in hall bedrooms, cooking Sunday breakfasts over gas-burners — if there was anything to cook... I took a job when I was sixteen because I couldn’t bear seeing her work her life away for me. But she did, just the same, and when she died last year at fifty-two she was an old woman. Dear Uncle Cadmus could have saved her all that — if he hadn’t been a lunatic on the subject of marriage. When mother married, and my father died, she wrote Cadmus — and I still have his reply.” Kerrie’s mouth quivered. “Now, look here, Mr. Snoop, that’s quite enough. I’ll be crying on your shoulder, next thing I know.”

“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:

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.

But it was destined to be a long debauch.

The landlady, true to Beau’s prediction, did her joyous work. On the heels of daylight came a rush of reporters and photographers that engulfed the shabby little stucco house like a Pacific tidal wave. They yanked their copy out of Violet Day’s arms and, scarcely permitting her to rub the sleep out of her eyes, overwhelmed her. In five minutes the floor was treacherous with blackened bulbs. Beau, roused by the bedlam, had to fight his way through an excited mass of roomers. He spent a busy half-hour then, careful to keep the press from photographing him, evicting them one at a time.

When the room was clear he said: “Well, Cinderella, how do you like it?”

“I’m... a little scared,” said Kerrie, “but — I think I do!”

“Well, I’ll have to tear you away. Get some sleep and then we’ll talk about going to New York.”

“Is there really a rush?” pleaded Kerrie. “There are so many things I’ve got to do! Clothes, hair, face—”

Vi winked at him, and he left. But only to nap for another hour, bathe, shave, dress, and sit down outside her locked door.

Vi awoke first. He had a long talk with her, in undertones. There were several things he must do. Establish credit through New York. Corral her proofs of identity, and so on. He would be back as soon as he could. Meanwhile, Vi was to guard Kerrie with her life.

Vi said fervently: “Thank heaven for a man! Queen, I had my doubts, but you’re okay. Hurry back, will you?”

He left the house with the brim of his hat far down over his eyes.

He had a long talk with Lloyd Goossens by telephone. Then he called Ellery in the Adirondacks.

“I’m glad it turned out all right,” said Ellery. “Get the girl back East, Beau, and go to work on Margo Cole.”

“Have a heart,” growled Beau. “The kid’s in a fever. Give her time. I’ll get her back as soon as I can.”

“Well, don’t bite my nose off,” said Ellery. “What’s the matter, Beau? You sound strange.”

“Who, me?” said Beau, and he hung up. By the time he got round to the bank, Goossens had established an account there for Kerrie Shawn in the name of Ellery Queen.

When he returned to Argyle Avenue the narrow little street was black with people. Beau looked gloomy. He knew what lay ahead.

The next week was the hardest of his life. He was bodyguard, lawyer, big brother, and nuisance-fender all in one. Hollywood was excited. An unknown extra, Cinderella in rags, turned into a wealthy heiress overnight! All the studios wanted her — to sing, to dance, to act; for epics, newsreels, anything... but sign here please, Miss Shawn! The newspaper syndicates offered fabulous sums for her life-story. An army of cameramen followed her wherever she went. Tradespeople sent representatives in all humility, offering their best for nothing — wouldn’t Miss Shawn do them the honor of shopping in their establishment? Anything, anything her heart desired. As a gift of the management. If Miss Shawn would only... She was offered contracts, silver foxes, imported automobiles; she was deluged with invitations to premières, to swanky parties, to the castles of Hollywood’s great.

In all this madness Beau and Vi moved quietly by her side, hemming her in, Vi practical and cool, Beau silent and with his hatbrim shading his face.

Kerrie moved through events with a vague smile, as if she were floating in a dream. At the party she insisted upon having, she walked among her friends like a shy and, happy child. Every one she knew in Hollywood was there, and they were all the poor, the strugglers, the fringe, the people of the frayed and starched clothes and the starved fixed smiles. But many of them wore new clothes that night, and looked well-fed, and their laughter was real.

“Isn’t she grand?” sighed Violet Day to Beau. “Just like Lady Bountiful. She told me today she thinks she ought to do something for Inez. Inez has the bugs, and Kerrie’s going to send her to Arizona. And Kerrie’s financing Lew Malone’s ulcer operation, and goodness knows what else!”

“She’s drunk,” smiled Beau.

“What? Say, Queen, I don’t think you like Kerrie very much!”

“Who, me?” said Beau.

Kerrie refused to move from Argyle Avenue. “I’m going to be in Hollywood just a little while longer,” she said firmly, “and I won’t have my friends think I’m putting on the dog. Nothing doing, Vi; we stay here.”

But they had to. take two rooms more to hold all the clothes and trunks she bought. The landlady actually beamed. She raised her rents from six to eight dollars a Week; but when Kerrie heard about it she threatened to move out, so back went the rents to six dollars.

It was like that for an incredible week — driving from shoppe to shoppe in the rented Isotta; exciting hours in the beauty emporia patronized by only the starriest of the stars; furs, evening gowns, sport clothes, wraps, jewels; the Brown Derby, the Clover Club, the Beverly-Wilshire; prevues and premières, until Kerrie’s conscience began to bother her.

“Aren’t we spending too much money?” she asked Beau.

“There’s more where that came from, kid.”

“It’s a wonderful dream! Like a fairy tale. Magic money. The more you spend, the more you have. Well, maybe not quite... Ellery, did I tell you I heard from Walter Ruell? He’s back home in Ohio and darned glad of it. Poor kid—”

“Kerrie, I’ve had three wires from Goossens.” Beau did not mention the four from Ellery. “He can’t understand what’s holding us up here. I tried to explain—”

“Oh, darling, so soon!”

“And don’t call me darling!”

“What?” Kerrie was surprised.

“It’s a bad habit,” muttered Beau. “For a gal who’s promised not to tangle with men.”

“Oh, but, Ellery, I don’t say ‘darling’ to any man but you! You wouldn’t sue me for breach of promise, would you?” Kerrie laughed.

“Why pick on me?” said Beau sullenly.

“Because you’re my own special darling, my—” And Kerrie stopped short. Very short. Then she said in a subdued voice, not looking at him: “All right, Ellery. We’ll go whenever you say.”

Kerrie was unusually quiet after that. The vagueness went out of her smile; everything sharpened in her face; most of the time she wore a serious expression. Beau was quiet, too. He bought the tickets and arranged for the luggage and took Kerrie’s proofs of identity out of the bank vault and saw the bank manager and wired Goossens.

Then there was nothing to do but wait for the next day, which was to be Kerrie’s farewell to Hollywood.

But while Beau was busy with the arrangements for their departure Kerrie shut herself up in one of the rooms and refused to come out, even for Vi.

Vi said worriedly to Beau that last night: “I can’t understand her. She says she’s all right, but...”

“Maybe it’s the hangover.”

“I guess it’s the idea of leaving. After all, her mother’s buried here, this is about the only home she’s ever had, and now she faces a whole new world... I guess that’s it.”

“I guess.”

“Why don’t you take her out for a walk, or something? She’s been cooped up here all day.”

“I don’t think—” began Beau, flushing.

But Vi went into Kerrie’s room and remained there for a long time, while Beau fidgeted outside. Finally Kerrie came out dressed in black slacks covered by a long coat, and no hat, Hollywood fashion, and said with a rather pale smile: “Want to take me for a walk, Mister?”

“Okay,” said Beau.

They strolled in silence to the corner and turned into Hollywood Boulevard. At the corner of Vine Street they stopped to watch the swirling traffic.

“Busy, all right,” said Kerrie. “It’s — hard to leave.”

“Yeah,” said Beau. “Must be.”

They walked ahead into the forest of neon signs.

A little while later Beau said: “Nice night.”

Kerrie said: “Yes, isn’t it.”

Then they were silent again. They passed Grauman’s Chinese and soon were strolling through the darkness of the residential district beyond.

Kerrie paused finally and said: “My feet ache. Wouldn’t you think shoes costing twenty-two fifty would fit?”

“The curse of gold,” said Beau. “It has its advantages, too, though.”

“Let’s sit down for a while.”

“On the curb?”

“Why not?”

They sat down side by side. Occasionally a car flashed by; once a ribald voice shouted at them.

“I really haven’t thanked you,” said Kerrie in a muffled voice, “for having been so grand this week. You’ve been like a — like a brother.”

“Brother Rat,” said Beau. “That’s what they call me.”

“Please, Ellery. I—”

“I’m getting paid for it,” said Beau gruffly. “Fact, it’s your dough that’s paying. So don’t thank me.”

“Oh, money!” said Kerrie. “It isn’t everything—” She stopped, appalled by what she was saying.

“No?” jeered Beau. “There are a million fluffs who’d give their right arms to be in your shoes — ache and all — this minute.”

“I know, but... Oh, it’s nice being able to do things for people, and to buy and buy without thinking of the price when you’ve had to watch all your life for basement sales and to make over old dresses, but...”

“No buts. It is wonderful, and you’re a lucky squirt. Don’t spoil it by being — restless.”

“I’m not!” said Kerrie quickly. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about...” She stopped.

Beau laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been regretting that anti-marriage condition already!”

“Well... it might be awfully hard on a girl — under the circumstances — if she... fell in love.”

She screamed, grabbing him. Something wet and cold had touched the back of her neck. But it was only a friendly, night-prowling Schnauzer investigating her scent.

Beau’s arms tightened about her. She clung to him, her head falling back. Her lips were parted.

“Kerrie.” Beau failed to recognize his own voice. “Don’t leave Hollywood. Stay here. Give up the money.”

Their lips almost touched as they stared into each other’s eyes. He was going to propose. He was! He didn’t want her to go East! That could only be because the money stood between him and her. Oh, she didn’t care about it! She didn’t. She just wanted him. Never to let go. If that was love, she was in love. He was going to propose... Oh, ask me, ask me!

He let go of her and got up so suddenly that she cried out again and the Schnauzer whined in alarm and ran away.

“You’d” throw away twenty-five hundred bucks a week?”

“Maybe,” whispered Kerrie, “I would.”

“Then you’re an idiot!”

She closed her eyes, all jumpy and sick inside.

“If it happened to me,” he shouted, “do you think I’d give it up? Like hell I would! You ought to be examined by Freud!”

“But — but you asked me — told me—”

Beau glared down at her as she crouched, hugging her knees, staring up at him. He was furious with himself, and with her for having made him lose his head. The plea had slipped out under the pressure of her arms, the warmth of her breathing, the joyful yearning and hope in her eyes. He saw her hungry, tramping from studio to studio, one of the thousands of starched, frayed, and fixedly smiling Hollywood job-hunters...

So he sneered: “You dames are all alike. I thought maybe you were different. But you’re a pushover like the rest of ’em!”

Kerrie jumped up and ran away.

Just before they left the rooming house for the station the next day, Beau received two telegrams.

One was from Lloyd Goossens.

The other was from Mr. Ellery Queen, and it said:

Beau glanced at Kerrie Shawn, his eyes a little red, two deep lines running from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.

But Kerrie sailed past him with Vi as if he didn’t exist.

He grinned wryly.