“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.