‘I refer to his studies of the Scarlatti portfolios. Why, he put his shoulder to the wheel and was unrelentin’ on himself. I took great pride in his accomplishment. He was really takin’ our sessions seriously. Tryin’ so hard to understand the factor of diversification… Why, on his honeymoon he took along hundreds of the Scarlatti corporate reports.’
Elizabeth rose from her chair and walked slowly, deliberately toward the window overlooking the street, but her concentration was on the Southerner’s sudden, incredible revelation. As had happened so often in the past, she realized that her instincts—abstract, unclear—were leading her to the truth. It was there; she was near it. But it remained out of her grasp.
‘I assume you mean the statements—the breakdowns—of the Scarlatti Industries’ holdings?’
‘That, too, of course. But much, much more. He analyzed the trusts, both his and Chancellor’s—even your own, Madame Scarlatti. It was his hope to write a complete report with special emphasis on the growth factors. It was a mighty ambitious task and he never wavered…!
‘Far more than ambitious, Mr. Cartwright,’ interrupted Elizabeth. ‘Without training, I’d say impossible.’ She continued to look out on the street.
‘Actually, dear madame, we at the bank understood this. So we convinced him to limit his research to his own holdings. I felt it would be easier to explain and I certainly didn’t wish to dampen his enthusiasm, so I…’
Elizabeth turned from the window and stared at the banker. Her look caused him to stop speaking. She knew the truth was now within her grasp. ‘Please clarify. How did my son… research his holdings?’
‘From the securities in his trust fund. Primarily the bonds in his second trust—the investment fund—they’re far more stable commodities. He cataloged them and then matched them with alternate choices, which might have been made when they were originally purchased. If I may add, he was most impressed with the selections. He told me so.’
‘He… cataloged them? What precisely do you mean?’
‘He listed the securities separately. The amounts each represented and the years and months they were due. From the dates and the amounts he was able to compare with numerous other issues on the board.’
‘How did he do this?’
‘As I mentioned, from the bonds and debentures themselves. From the yearly portfolios.’
‘Where?’
‘The vaults, madame. The Scarlatti vaults.’
My God! thought Elizabeth.
The old woman put her hand—trembling—on the window-sill. She spoke calmly in spite of the fear enveloping her. ‘How long did my son… do his research?’
‘Why, for several months. Since his return from Europe to be exact.’
‘I see. Did anyone assist him? He was so inexperienced, I mean.’
Jefferson Cartwright returned Elizabeth’s look. He was not an utter fool. There was no necessity. Catalogin’ premature securities isn’t difficult. It’s a simple process of listin’ names, figures, and dates… And your son is… was a Scarlatti.’
‘Yes… He was.’ Elizabeth knew the banker was beginning to read her thoughts. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now but the truth.
The vaults.
‘Mr. Cartwright, I’ll be ready in ten minutes. I’ll call for my car and we’ll both return to your office.’
‘As you wish.’
The ride downtown was made in silence. The banker and the matriarch sat next to each other in the back seat, but neither spoke. Each was preoccupied with his own thoughts.
Elizabeth’s—the truth.
Cartwright’s—survival. For if what he had begun to suspect was correct, he’d be ruined. Waterman Trust might be ruined. And he was the appointed adviser to Ulster Stewart Scarlett.
The chauffeur opened the door as the Southerner stepped out onto the curb and held his hand for Elizabeth. He noted that she grasped his hand tightly, too tightly, as she climbed—with difficulty—out of the automobile. She stared down at nothing.
The banker led the old woman rapidly through the bank. Past the cages, past the tellers, past the office doors to the rear of the building. They took the elevator down to the huge Waterman cellars. Out of the elevator they turned to the left and approached the east wing.
The walls were gray, the surfaces smooth, and the thick cement encased both sides of the gleaming steel bars. Above the portal was a simple inscription.
EAST WING SCARLATTI
Elizabeth thought—once again—that the effect was tomb-like. Beyond the bars was a narrow hallway lit from the ceiling with bright bulbs encased in wire mesh. Except for the doorways, two on either side, the corridor looked like a passageway to some pharaoh’s final resting place in the center of an awesome pyramid. The door at the end led to the vault of the Scarlatti Industries itself.
Everything.
Giovanni.
The two doors on either side led to cubicles for the wife and the three children. Chancellor’s and Ulster’s were on the left. Elizabeth’s and Roland’s on the right. Elizabeth was next to Giovanni.
Elizabeth had never had Roland’s consolidated. She knew that ultimately the courts would take care of that. It was her one gesture of sentiment to her lost son. It was proper. Roland, too, was part of the empire.
The uniformed guard nodded—funereally—and opened the steel-barred door.
Elizabeth stood in front of the entrance to the first cubicle on the left. The nameplate on the center of the metal door read,
Ulster Stewart Scarlatti.
The guard opened this door and Elizabeth entered the small room. ‘You will relock the door and wait outside.’
‘Naturally.’
She was alone in the cell-like enclosure. She reflected that only once before had she been in Ulster’s cubicle. It had been with Giovanni. Years, histories ago… He had coaxed her downtown to the bank without telling her of his arrangements for the east wing vaults. He had been so proud. He had taken her through the five rooms as a guide might usher tourists through a museum. He had elaborated on the intricacies of the various trusts. She remembered how he slapped the cabinets as if they were prize-winning cattle that would someday provide enormous herds.
He had been right.
The room hadn’t changed. It might have been yesterday.
On one side, built into the wall, were the deposit boxes holding the industrials—the stocks, the certificates of ownership in hundreds of corporations. The wherewithal for day-to-day living. Ulster’s first trust fund. On two other walls stood file cabinets, seven on each side. Each file drawer was marked with a year date—changed each year by the Waterman executors. Each drawer contained hundreds of open-faced securities and each cabinet had six drawers.
Securities to be drawn on for the next eighty-four years.
The second trust. Earmarked for Scarlatti expansion.
Elizabeth studied the cards on the cabinets.
. 1927. 1928. 1929. 1930. 1931.
These were listed on the first cabinet.
She saw that there was a monk’s stool pushed several feet away from the cabinet to the right. Whoever had used it last had been seated between the first and second file. She looked at the index cards on the adjacent cabinet.
- 1933- 1934- 1935- 1936-
She reached down and pulled the stool in front of the first cabinet and sat down. She looked at the bottom file drawer.
She opened it.
The year was divided by the twelve months, each month separated by a small index tab. Before each tab was a thin metal carton with two miniature cleats joined by a single wire submerged in wax. On the face of the wax—branded—were the initials WT. in old English lettering.
The year 1926 was intact. None of the thin metal cartons had been opened. Which meant that Ulster had not complied with the bank’s request for investment instructions. At the end of December the executors would take the responsibility themselves and, no doubt, consult Elizabeth as they had always done in the pas
t with Ulster’s fund.
She pulled out the year 1927.
This, too, was untouched. None of the wax crests had been broken.
Elizabeth was about to close the file on 1927 when she stopped. Her eyes caught sight of a blur in the wax. A tiny, slight blemish that would have gone unnoticed had not a person’s attention been on the crests.
The T. of the W.T. was ragged and slanted downward on the month of August. The same was true for September, October, November, and December.
She pulled out the August carton and shook it. Then she ripped the wire apart and the wax crest cracked and fell away.
The carton was empty.
She replaced it and drew out the remaining months of 1927.
All empty.
She replaced the cartons and opened the file for 1928. Every thin carton had the T. of the wax crest ragged and slanting downward.
All empty.
For how many months had Ulster carried out his extraordinary charade? Going from one harried banker to the next and always, always—at the last—coming down to the vaults. Document by document. Security by security.
Three hours ago she wouldn’t have believed it. It was only because a maid sweeping her front steps had triggered the memory of another maid sweeping steps. A maid who remembered a short command given by her son to a cab-driver.
Ulster Scarlett had taken a subway.
One midmorning he could not take the chance of a taxi ride in traffic. He had been late for his session at the bank.
What better time than midmorning? The initial placing of orders, the chaos of early trading in the market.
Even Ulster Scarlett would be overlooked at midmorning.
She hadn’t understood the subway.
Now she did.
As if performing a painful ritual she checked the remaining months and years of the first cabinet. Through December, 1931.
Empty.
She closed the drawer on 1931 and began at the bottom of the second cabinet. 1932.
Empty.
She had reached the middle of the cabinet—1934—when she heard the sound of the metal door opening. She quickly closed the file and turned around in anger.
Jefferson Cartwright entered and shut the door.
‘I thought I told you to remain outside!’
‘My word, Madame Scarlatti, you look like you’ve seen a dozen ghosts.’
‘Get out!’
Cartwright walked rapidly to the first cabinet and arbitrarily pulled out one of the middle drawers. He saw the broken seals on the metal cartons, lifted one out, and opened it. ‘Seems as if somethin’s missin’.’
‘I’ll have you dismissed!’
‘Maybe—Maybe you will.’ The Southerner pulled out another drawer and satisfied himself that several other cartons whose seals had been broken were empty also.
Elizabeth stood silently, contemptuously, next to the banker. When she spoke, it was with the intensity born of disgust. ‘You have just terminated your employment at Waterman Trust!’
‘Maybe I have. Excuse me, please.’ The Virginian gently moved Elizabeth away from the second cabinet and continued his search. He reached the year 1936 and turned to the old woman. ‘Not much left, is there? I wonder how far it goes, don’t you? Of course, I’ll make a complete breakdown for you as soon as possible. For you and my superiors.’ He closed the drawer on 1936 and smiled.
‘This is confidential family business. You’ll do nothing! You can do nothing!’
‘Oh, come now! These cabinets contained open-faced securities. Bearer bonds negotiable subject to signature… Possession is ownership. They’re the same as money… your disappearin’ son took a whale of a hunk of the New York Exchange! And we haven’t even finished lookin’ around. Shall we open a few more cabinets?’
‘I will not tolerate this!’
‘Then don’t. You go on your way, and I’ll simply report to my superiors that Waterman Trust is in one hell of a pile of manure. Forgettin’ very sizable commissions due the bank and puttin’ aside any thoughts of the companies involved gettin’ nervous over who owns what—there might even be a run on some stocks—I possess knowledge which I should report immediately to the authorities!’
‘You cannot! You must not!’
‘Why not?’ Jefferson Cartwright held out the palms of both hands.
Elizabeth turned away from him and tried to marshal her thoughts. ‘Estimate what’s gone, Mr. Cartwright…’
‘I can estimate as far as we’ve looked. Eleven years, approximately three and a half million a year comes to something like forty million. But we may have only just begun.’
‘I said… prepare an estimate. I trust that I don’t have to tell you that if you say a word to anyone—I shall destroy you. We’ll arrive at mutually agreeable terms.’ She slowly turned and looked at Jefferson Cartwright. ‘You should know, Mr. Cartwright, that through an accident you’re privileged to information that lifts you far above your talents or abilities. When men are so fortunate, they must be cautious.’
Elizabeth Scarlatti spent a sleepless night.
Jefferson Cartwright also spent a sleepless night. But it wasn’t in bed. It was on a monk’s stool with reams of papers at his feet.
The figures mounted as he cautiously checked the file cabinets against the Scarlatti trust reports.
Jefferson Cartwright thought he’d go mad.
Ulster Stewart Scarlett had removed securities worth over $270 million.
He totaled and retotaled the figures.
An amount that would cause a crisis on the exchange.
An international scandal, which could—if known—cripple the Scarlatti Industries—And it would be known when the time came to convert the first missing securities. At the outside, barely a year.
Jefferson Cartwright folded the last of the pages together and stuffed them into his inner jacket pocket. He clamped his arm against his chest, making sure that the pressure between his flesh was stopped by the paper, and left the vaults.
He signaled the front guard with a short whistle. The man had been dozing on a black leather chair near the door.
‘Oh, m’God, Mr. Cartwright! Y’startled me!’
Cartwright walked out onto the street.
He looked at the grayish white light of the sky. It was going to be morning soon. And the light was his signal.
For he—Jefferson Cartwright, fifty-year-old ex-football player from the University of Virginia, who had married first money and then lost it—held in his pocket carte blanche to everything he had ever wanted.
He was back in the stadium and the crowds were roaring.
Touchdown!
Nothing could be denied him now.
The Scarletti Inheritance
Chapter Thirteen
At twenty minutes after one in the morning, Benjamin Reynolds sat comfortably in an armchair in his Georgetown apartment. He held on his lap one of the file folders the attorney general’s office had sent Group Twenty. There had been sixteen in all and he divided the stack equally between Glover and himself.
With congressional pressure, especially New York’s Senator Brownlee, the attorney general’s office wasn’t going to leave a single stone unturned. If the Scarlatti son had disappeared into a void, at least the AG men could write volumes explaining the fact. Because Group Twenty had touched—briefly—on the life of Ulster Scarlett, Reynolds, too, would be expected to add something. Even if it was nothing.
Reynolds felt a trace of guilt when he thought of Glover wading through the same nonsense.
Like all reports of investigations of missing persons, it was filled with trivia. Dates, hours, minutes, streets, houses, names, names, names. A record of the inconsequential made to seem important. And perhaps to someone, somewhere, it might be. A part, a section, a paragraph, a sentence, even a word could open a door for someone.
But certainly not for anyone at Group Twenty.
He’d apologize to Glover later that morning.
Sudd
enly the phone rang. The sound in the stillness at such an unexpected hour startled Reynolds.
‘Ben? It’s Glover—’
‘Jesus! You scared the hell out of me! What’s wrong? Someone call in?’
‘No, Ben. I suppose this could wait until morning, but I thought I’d give you the pleasure of laughing yourself to sleep, you bastard.’
‘You’ve been drinking, Glover. Fight with your wife, not me. What the hell have I done?’
‘Gave me these eight Bibles from the attorney general’s office, that’s what you did… I found something!’
‘Good Christ! About the New York thing! The docks?’
‘No. Nothing we’ve ever connected with Scarlett. Maybe nothing but it could be…’
‘What?’
‘Sweden. Stockholm.’
‘Stockholm? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I know the Pond file by rote.’
‘Walter Pond? The securities?’
That’s right. His first memorandum arrived last May. The initial word about the securities—Remember now?’
‘Yes, yes, I do. So what?’
‘According to a report in the sixth file, Ulster Scarlett was in Sweden last year. Would you like to guess when?’
Reynolds paused before answering. His attention was riveted on the almost unimaginable amount of thirty million dollars. ‘It wasn’t Christmas, was it.’ It was a statement spoken softly.
‘Now that you mention it, some people might have looked at it that way. Perhaps Christmas in Sweden comes in May.’
‘Let’s talk in the morning.’ Reynolds hung up without waiting for his subordinate to reply or say good-night. He walked slowly back to the soft armchair and sat down.
As always Benjamin Reynolds’s thought processes raced ahead of the information presented. To the complications, the ramifications.
If Glover had made a valid assumption, that Ulster Scarlett was involved with the Stockholm manipulation, then it had to follow that Scarlett was still alive. If that were true, then thirty million dollars’ worth of American securities had been illegally offered by him for sale on the Stockholm exchange.
No one individual, not even Ulster Stewart Scarlett, could get his hands on thirty million dollars’ worth of securities.
The Scarletti Inheritance Page 12