The Dragon’s Teeth Read Free Page A

somebody that likes a smooth, broad stroke. It’s exactly like millions of other pens.”
    â€œI have an idea,” said Ellery, “that it’s exactly like no other pen in the world.”
    Beau stared at him.
    â€œWell, 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.
    â€œSure?”
    â€œThat the check’s good.”
    â€œAmen!”
    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.
    â€œHow,” 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.
    â€œBeau, 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.
    â€œNobody else?” asked Mr. Queen instantly.
    â€œThat’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