Free The Dragon’s Teeth by Ellery Queen Page A

the peaceful seething of crickets. There was an occasional river sound: a splash of oars, the stutter of an outboard motor, once the faint shouts of people being borne upstream by a Hudson River excursion boat.
    It was quite late. Kerrie had heard Margo and Beau drive up two hours earlier, laughing intimately over some incident of their evening in town together. She had heard Margo invite Beau to stay the night, and Beau’s booming acceptance. They had settled down on the terrace below Kerrie’s windows with a portable bar, and after a clink of glasses there had been a silence.
    Kerrie would have preferred noise. She had actually slipped out of bed and shut the windows to keep out that silence. But later, when she opened them again—it was so stuffy, she said to herself—and just happened to look down, the terrace was empty again.
    Then she had heard De Carlos come home, lurching on the gravel driveway and cursing his chauffeur in a thick, liquorish voice. That was when she had got out of bed the third time and locked the door which led to the corridor.
    But the house had settled into quiet since and Kerrie, intent upon the poet’s verse, almost forgot she was unhappy. Her lids began to droop; the lines swam. She yawned, saw that it was past three by her bed clock, flung the book aside, and turned off the bed-lamp.
    And instantly things changed. Instantly.
    Instantly she quivered with wakefulness.
    It was as if the light had been a thick bright gate, and that turning it off had opened the gate to something that had lain in wait outside, in the thicker darkness.
    Kerrie lay motionless, straining her ears. But there was nothing to be heard, unless it were the shrilling of the tireless crickets or that slight recurrent creak—like the creak of a slowly swinging shutter. The shutter! Of course.
    But there was no wind. Not even a breeze.
    Kerrie told herself indignantly she was a fool. She turned over on her right side, drawing her knees up to her chest and pulling the silk quilt up so that her nose and eyes were covered.
    That creak.
    Abruptly she sat upright in bed. In the darkness she concentrated all her forces of vision on the windows. The darkness was thin and soupy, as if it had been strained through a sieve. She could just make out the curtains.
    They were stirring! … No. They were not.
    There! Again!
    This is ridiculous, she thought in panic. It’s a sudden breeze that’s sprung up on the river. It’s a breeze moving the curtains. A breeze …
    Well, there was a simple way to find out. Just get out of bed and march across the floor to the window, and poke your head out. That’s all. Very simple. Then you would know it was a breeze, and that you’d been imagining things like a tot frightened by the dark, and you could go back to bed and sleep.
    She slid under the quilt and curled up in a taut ball again, almost smothered.
    She could hear her heart clamoring, as if it had slipped out of her chest and taken up a position just above her ear. Oh, this is childish! And she found her legs and arms shaking.
    What should she do? Jump out of bed, race across the room to the door that led across the boudoir and into Vi’s room …
    Her heart stopped clamoring. It seemed to stop altogether.
    There was something — something — in the room.
    Kerrie knew it. She knew it. This wasn’t imagination. This was knowledge.
    She followed the steps that could not be heard with ears that could not hear … from the window, across the patch of hardwood floor to the edge of the hooked rug, on the rug … toward her bed, toward her, where she was lying in a ball under the quilt.…
    Roll over.
    She rolled over and off the bed. In the same instant something struck the bed where she had been lying. There was a hissing sound, like the sound of a snake.
    Scream.
    Kerrie screamed. Screamed and screamed.
    HER nightgown crumpled, her eyes still red from sleep, Vi met Kerrie in