The Dragon’s Teeth by Ellery Queen Page B

examined her briefly, tossed her aside, and traveled on to De Carlos and Beau. De Carlos’s bearded cheeks and toothy grin she greeted with a smile; but her blue eyes, slant, almost Egyptian, narrowed when they came to Beau, and then swept over him from unkempt head to disreputable toe with an astounding relish.
    That was when Kerrie decided they were born foes.
    â€œLicking her chops,” whispered Vi, pressing Kerrie’s arm. “The flashy type. Don’t let her step on you, hon. She’ll try.”
    Margo Cole was a tall, strongly built woman—one of those splendid females who contrive to look vigorous even when they are lolling in a sun-chair. She was beautiful in a cold, majestic way, and she walked with a slow strutting poise that showed off her tightly draped hips.
    â€œEither did a strip-tease or modeled,” said Vi. “I don’t like her. Do you?”
    â€œNo,” said Kerrie.
    â€œShe’s thirty, if she’s a day.”
    â€œThirty-two,” said Kerrie, who had been absorbing a little family history.
    â€œLook at the so-called men goggle! You’d think they never saw a hip before. It’s disgusting!”
    They murmured politely when Lloyd Goossens introduced them.
    Then Margo slipped her arm through Beau’s. “So you’re the man who was supposed to find me. How nice he is, Mr. Goossens! If I had known, I should have ignored Mr. Queen’s advertisements in the French papers and waited for him to come find me.”
    â€œI imagine,” grinned Beau, “it would have been fun at that.”
    â€œShall we go to my office?” asked Goossens. “Miss Cole, there are certain formalities—naturally you’ll put up at a hotel until we’ve—ah—checked your proofs of identity. Of course, if you’d rather—”
    â€œNo, no. Let’s have the dismal scene,” said Margo. “Mr. Queen, you’ll come?”
    â€œHow could I resist a smile like that?”
    â€œCynic! And—oh, of course, you, dear Kerrie! I should feel lost without you. After all, though I was born here, I’ve lived all my life in France—”
    â€œThat was France’s hard luck,” mumbled Vi.
    Kerrie smiled. “I’d be charmed to shield you from the shocks of this rude, new world.”
    â€œAh, no, no,” said Edmund De Carlos. “That shall be my special province, ladies.” And he bowed first to Kerrie, and then to Margo, licking his bearded lips, meanwhile with the tip of his red tongue.
    The cutter plowed up the bay.
    KERRIE developed a headache on shore. She excused herself politely and drove off with Vi in her new roadster.
    Margo waved gaily, watching with her cold Egyptian eyes.
    Lloyd Goossens examined Margo Cole very sharply when they reached his office, but there could be no doubt of the validity of her proofs of identity.
    She accepted a cigaret from the lawyer and a flame from De Carlos. “It seems odd to be called Miss Cole, or even Margo. You see, I’ve been calling myself Ann Strange ever since 1925.”
    â€œHow is that?” asked Goossens, filling his pipe.
    â€œMother died that year. I don’t recall my father, of course; we never ran across any one mother’d known in America; she hadn’t even a family. We used to travel about from town to town in France—Dijon, Lyon, a few years in Montpellier in the South, buckets of places—while mother taught English to French children and earned enough to keep me in the convent schools.
    â€œI knew nothing about my family; mother never talked about them. But when she died I found letters, a diary, little mementoes, and they told me all about my Cole heritage. Especially,” she laughed, “about dear Uncle Cadmus and how helpful he’d been when mother, father, and I had been starving in a Parisian garret. You know, one letter of Uncle Cadmus’s drove my father to suicide. So I