Read Online The Dragon’s Teeth by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online

decided to change my name—wash out everything connected with the past.”
    â€œYou’ve brought those letters and things, Miss Cole?”
    She produced them from an alligator shopping bag. The handwriting of the diary checked with the handwriting of Nadine Malloy Cole, a sample of which Goossens had from Mrs. Cole’s letter to Cadmus Cole in 1909, found among his effects.
    There were also some faded old photographs of Huntley Cole and his wife, and one, dated Paris 1910, in which Margo was a chubby three-year-old with blonde hair and staring, frightened light eyes.
    And there was Cole’s typewritten letter to his sister-in-law, dated 1909, in which he refused financial aid. Goossens and Beau compared it with the typed letter Cole had sent his sister Monica in 1918, preserved by Kerrie. The style and tenor were much the same, and Cole had initialed both in his bold, simple, block-letter script.
    â€œOf course, we’ll have everything checked by experts, Miss Cole,” said Goossens. “You understand—such a large estate. Matter of form—”
    â€œI don’t know what else I can say or do to prove I’m Margo Cole, but if you want to hear the story of my life—”
    â€œWe’d like to very much,” said the lawyer politely; but he glanced at Beau, and Beau’s left eyelid drooped. In Goossens’s desk there was the copy of a compendious report submitted by the French agency Beau had engaged weeks before.
    The report carried Margo Cole’s history from infancy in Paris through the year 1925, where—they had been puzzled by this—the trail ended. But now the two men realized what had happened. Margo Cole’s change of name in that year to Ann Strange had brought the French operatives up against the back wall of a blind alley.
    Margo described her life in detail from the time her mother took her from Paris as a baby until her mother’s death. After that she had drifted back to Paris and become a mannequin.
    Margo looked demure. “I earned enough, and had sufficiently kind and rich friends,” she murmured, “to enable me to … retire, so to speak, in ’32. Since then I’ve been drifting about—the Riviera, Cannes, Deauville, Monte Carlo, Capri, the usual dull places in Europe. It hasn’t been too exciting.”
    â€œThen somebody missed a bet,” said Beau. “Ever been married, Miss Cole?”
    â€œOh, no! It’s so much more fun having your freedom, don’t you agree, Mr. Queen?”
    â€œMr. Queen” grinned, and Goossens said: “Glad you think so, Miss Cole, because your uncle’s will … Of course, to complete the check-up, we’ll have to cable our French friends to verify your movements since 1925—make sure about your state of single blessedness …”
    In two weeks everything was complete. The French agency reported that Margo Cole’s account of her activities since 1925, under the name of Ann Strange, was true in every detail. She had never been married. The French report also went into corollary matters concerning Miss Strange-Cole’s career in “the usual dull places in Europe,” but Goossens discreetly ignored them; he was responsible for facts, not morals.
    Miss Cole, upon hearing the conditions of her uncle’s will, did not hesitate. She accepted, and to the accompaniment of an admiring press and public curiosity moved regally into the mansion at Tarrytown.
    â€œNow that your work is done,” she murmured to Beau, “you won’t desert poor little me? I feel so lost in this strange, big country. You’ll come to see me—often?”
    And she squeezed his hand ever so lightly.
    They were in one of the formal gardens on the estate. No one was about, but Beau had caught the flicker of a curtain in a window of Kerrie’s Shawn’s bedroom.
    He took the smiling woman in his arms suddenly and kissed her, She was