He snorted, half-turned away. Beau caught his arm, and the man cried out.
“You’re Cadmus Cole,” said Beau softly, “—nose for nose, eyes for eyes, mouth for mouth, chin for chin; in fact, feature for feature. And we can prove it!”
“Prove it?” The man licked his lips.
“If you’ll be kind enough to remove your beard, your wig, your glasses, and your false teeth, Queen and I will make a formal identification of you as Cadmus Cole.”
“Ridiculous! Never heard such nonsense. Inspector, you can’t — Mr. District Attorney, I stand on my rights as—”
“One moment,” snapped the Inspector. He conferred with District Attorney Sampson inaudibly. Then he came forward and said abruptly to Beau: “You claim this man is really Cole, and that you and Ellery can identify him as such?”
“That’s our story,” said Beau, “and he’s stuck with it.”
The Inspector glanced at Ellery, who nodded slowly.
“Then I’m sorry, Mr. De Carlos, or Mr. Cole, or whoever you are,” said Inspector Queen in a grim voice, “but you’ll have to submit to an identification test.”
He reached up himself and pulled at the man’s hair, and was obviously flabbergasted when the hair came off the man’s head in one piece. Goossens sat open-mouthed, completely and genuinely astonished. Kerrie and Vi were gaping, too.
“Take out your teeth!”
Sullenly, the man complied.
“Now your glasses.”
The man did so, and remained blinking and squinting in the harsh glare of the office lights.
“How about this beard?” demanded the Inspector of Beau. “Is that a phony, too?”
“No, it’s on the level,” replied Beau with a grin. “He must have grown it between the time he visited us and the time he showed up in New York again after that dramatic little business of his own ‘death at sea.’”
“Got a razor?” snapped Inspector Queen.
“Better. A barber.” And Beau went into the laboratory. He emerged with the stranger who was carrying the kit. “Okay, Dominick,” said Beau, smiling broadly. “Once over — but good! Kapeesh?”
The detective who accompanied Kerrie came forward on a sign from the Inspector; but the bearded man sat down voluntarily in his chair and folded his arms, blinking and squinting furiously.
The barber shaved him, and his audience watched the operation with a fascinated expectancy, Beau tense behind the chair, as if he expected the bearded man to leap from the chair and try to escape. But the man sat quietly.
During the shaving of the beard, Mr. Queen went into the reception room, shutting the communicating door carefully. After a moment he returned and took Beau aside.
“They’re here,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“Captain Angus and the Coast man.”
“Oh, baby! Keep ’em out there, El, till I find the psychological moment. Then — socko!”
When the beard was gone and the barber dismissed, Beau and Ellery surveyed that denuded, working face in silence. The sunken cheeks, the squinty eyes, the bald head...
“Well?” said Inspector Queen. “Is this the same man who called on you here three months ago?”
“That’s Cadmus Cole,” said Beau.
“Ellery?”
“The same man,” nodded Mr. Queen.
“Frame-up!” mumbled the shaven man, drooling. “It’s a frame-up! I’m De Carlos! I’m De Carlos!”
“Why, the bug even talks the same way,” grinned Beau. “Now that his plate’s missing. Doesn’t he, Ellery?”
“Identically.”
“Of course,” said District Attorney Sampson, “again we have only the word of you gentlemen.”
“Not at all,” retorted Beau. “The day Cole called on us in this office I listened in on the conversation from my office next door. We’ve developed a system in this agency, Your Worship. We like to keep complete records of our wackier clients. That’s why we photographed the pen. That’s why,” he said, taking a large photograph from his pocket, “I took a candid-camera shot of our friend here through a little convenient arrangement in the wall, and later enlarged it. How’s this?”
They crowded around the enlargement, staring from the photograph to the man in the chair.
“No doubt about it,” snapped the Inspector. “Except for that fringe of gray on his skull now, it’s the same man. I guess your game’s up, Cole!”
“I’m not Cole!” screamed the man. “I’m Edmund De Carlos! I can furnish a hundred proofs I’m Edmund De Carlos!”
“Yeah?” drawled Beau. He waved at Ellery. “I now retire in favor of my eminent colleague, that noted orator, Mr. Ellery Queen.”
Mr. Queen stepped forward. “We’ve proved you’re Cole in three ways,” he said to the bald man. “By your possession of Cole’s identified fountain-pen, by our personal identification of you as the man who called on us three months ago, and — for legal evidence — by this candid-camera photograph.
“We’re in a position to present a fourth proof so damning, Mr. Cole, you may pass judgment on it yourself.”
“The name,” spat the bald man, “is De Carlos!”
Mr. Queen shrugged and took a photostat from the desk. “This photostat shows the cancelled voucher of a check for fifteen thousand dollars written out by Cadmus Cole in this office the afternoon he engaged our services. It’s gone through the Clearing House, as you see.
“Now how can we be sure the signature on this check,” he continued, “is genuinely that of Cadmus Cole? There are three ways to authenticate it. First, he wrote it out himself under the eyes of Mr. Rummell and me. Second, and much more conclusive, Cole’s bank authenticated on demand, and later honored, the check exhibiting this signature. Third, we may compare the signature on this check with the signature on Cadmus Cole’s will — the will-signature, incidentally, which was subjected to the most searching scrutiny by the Surrogate, who ultimately probated the will. Mr. Goossens, have you brought the photostat of the Cole will-signature, as I requested?”
The attorney hastily removed a photostat from his brief-case and handed it to Ellery.
“Yes,” said Mr. Queen with satisfaction, “the similarity even to a layman’s eye is unmistakable. Will you satisfy yourselves?”
The District Attorney and Inspector Queen compared the check-signature with the will-signature.
The Inspector nodded, and Sampson said: “We’d have to have expert opinion, of course, but I admit they look identical.”
“And in the face of the other evidence, we may take the assumption to be a fact. In other words, the man who wrote out this check in our office three months ago must have been Cadmus Cole. Do you agree?”
They nodded.
Mr. Queen laid down the Cole check-photostat and picked up two other photostats. “These are of a twenty-five thousand dollar check written out the other night, also in this office, also before our eyes, by this gentleman who has been calling himself Edmund De Carlos. I have the original in my possession; it has not been deposited for, at the moment, immaterial reasons.” Mr. Queen handed one of the De Carlos-check photostats to the sunburnt man. “Do you deny the signature on this check to be yours?”
“I’m neither denying nor affirming,” mumbled the man.
“No matter; Rummell and I will swear to it, and there must be hundreds of specimens of your handwriting extant since you took up residence in the Tarrytown estate of Cadmus Cole.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” continued Mr. Queen, taking back the photostat, “there exists a strange and exhilarating kinship between the names Cadmus Cole and Edmund De Carlos. Purely a coincidence, of course, but it makes for an attractive little demonstration.