The Scarletti Inheritance

by Ludlum, Robert

  Judging by the expressions of those around him, Scarlett was not notably successful. However, his own countenance radiated optimism itself. Cool, and intensely self-satisfied as well, thought Canfield. The centerpiece was, indeed, a scroll. It was the Silver Star citation for gallantry at the Meuse-Argonne. To judge from the exhibition, Ulster Scarlett was the best-adjusted hero ever to have the good fortune to go to war. The disturbing aspect was the spectacle itself. It was grotesquely out of place. It belonged in the study of some celebrated warrior whose campaigns spanned half a century, not here on Fifty-fourth Street in the ornate living room of a pleasure-seeker.

  ‘Interesting, aren’t they?’ Janet had reentered the room.

  ‘Impressive, to say the least. He’s quite a guy.’

  ‘You have no argument there. If anyone forgot, he just had to walk into this room to be reminded.’

  ‘I gather that this… this pictorial history of how the war was won wasn’t your idea.’ He handed Janet her drink, which, he noted, she firmly clasped and brought immediately to her lips.

  ‘It most certainly was not.’ She nearly finished the short, straight Scotch. ‘Sit down, won’t you?’

  Canfield quickly downed most of his own drink. ‘First let me freshen these.’ He took her glass. She sat on the large sofa facing the mantel while he crossed to the bar.

  ‘I never thought your husband was subject to this kind of’—he paused and nodded to the fireplace—‘hangover.’

  ‘That’s an accurate analogy. Aftermath of a big binge. You’re a philosopher.’

  ‘Don’t mean to be. Just never thought of him as the type.’ He brought over the two drinks, handed one to her, and remained standing.

  ‘Didn’t you read his accounts of what happened? I thought the newspapers did a splendid job of making it perfectly clear who was really responsible for the Kaiser’s defeat.’ She drank again.

  ‘Oh, hell, that’s the publishing boys. They have to sell papers. I read them but I didn’t take them seriously. Never thought he did either.’

  ‘You talk as if you knew my husband.’

  Canfield purposely looked startled and took his glass away from his lips. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, of course, I knew him. I knew him quite well. I just took it for granted that you knew. I’m sorry.’

  Janet concealed her surprise. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. Ulster had a large circle of friends. I couldn’t possibly know them all. Were you a New York friend of Ulster’s? I don’t remember his mentioning you.’

  ‘No, not really. Oh, we met now and then when I came east.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, you’re from Chicago. It is Chicago?’

  ‘It is. But to be honest with you, my job takes me all over the place.’ And certainly, he was honest about that.

  ‘What do you do?’

  Canfield returned with the drinks and sat down. ‘Stripped of its frills, I’m a salesman. But we never strip the frills that obviously.’

  ‘What do you sell? I know lots of people who sell things. They don’t worry about frills.’

  ‘Well, I don’t sell stocks or bonds or buildings or even bridges. I sell tennis courts.’

  Janet laughed. It was a nice laugh. ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No, seriously, I sell tennis courts.’

  He put his drink down and pretended to look in his pockets. ‘Let’s see if I’ve got one on me. They’re really very nice. Perfect bounce. Wimbledon standards except for the grass. That’s the name of our company. Wimbledon. For your information, they’re excellent courts. You’ve probably played on dozens of them and never knew who to give the credit to.’

  ‘I think that’s fascinating. Why do people buy your tennis courts? Can’t they just build their own?’

  ‘Sure. We encourage them to. We make more money when we rip one out and replace it with ours.’

  ‘You’re teasing me. A tennis court’s a tennis court.’

  ‘Only the grass ones, my dear. And they’re never quite ready by spring and they’re always brown in the fall. Ours are year-round.’

  She laughed again.

  ‘It’s really very simple. My company’s developed an asphalt composition that duplicates the bounce of a grass court. Never melts in heat. Never expands when frozen. Would you like the full sales pitch? Our trucks will be here in three days and during that time we’ll contract for the first layer of gravel. We’ll do that locally. Before you know it, you’ll have a beautiful court right out there on Fifty-fourth Street.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘And I assume you’re a champion tennis player.’

  ‘No. I play. Not well. I don’t particularly like the game. Naturally we have several internationally known whizzes on the payroll to vouch for the courts. Incidentally, we guarantee an exhibition match on yours the day we complete the job. You can ask your friends over and have a party. Some magnificent parties have been held on our courts. Now, that’s generally the close that sells the job!’

  ‘Very impressive.’

  ‘From Atlanta to Bar Harbor. Best courts, best parties.’ He raised his glass.

  ‘Oh, so you sold Ulster a tennis court?’

  ‘Never tried, I imagine I could have. He bought a dirigible once, and after all, what’s a tennis court compared to that?’

  ‘It’s flatter.’ She giggled and held her glass out to him. He rose and went to the bar, unwrapping the handkerchief from his hand and putting it in his pocket. She slowly extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray in front of her.

  ‘If you’re not in the New York crowd, where did you know my husband?’

  ‘We first met in college. Briefly, very briefly. I left in the middle of my first year.’ Canfield wondered if Washington had placed the proper records of a long-forgotten freshman down at Princeton University.

  ‘Aversion to books?’

  ‘Aversion to money. The wrong branch of the family had it. Then we met later in the army, again briefly.’

  ‘The army?’

  ‘Yes. But in no way like that, I repeat, no way like that!’ He gestured toward the mantel and returned to the sofa.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We parted company after training in New Jersey. He to France and glory. Me to Washington and boredom. But we had a helluva time before that.’ Canfield leaned ever so slightly toward her, permitting his voice the minor intimacy usually accompanying the second effects of alcohol. ‘All prior to his nuptials, of course.’

  ‘Not so prior, Matthew Canfield.’

  He looked at her closely, noting that the anticipated response was positive but not necessarily liking the fact. ‘If that’s the case, he was a bigger fool than I thought he was.’

  She looked into his eyes as one scans a letter, trying to read, not between the lines, but instead, beyond the words.

  ‘You’re a very attractive man.’ And then she rose quickly, a bit unsteadily, and put her drink down on the small table in front of the settee. ‘I haven’t had dinner and if I don’t eat soon I’ll be incoherent. I don’t like being incoherent.’

  ‘Let me take you out.’

  ‘And have you bleed all over some poor unsuspecting waiter?’

  ‘No more blood.’ Canfield held out his hand. ‘I would like to have dinner with you.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you would.’ She picked up her drink and walked with ever so slight a list to the left side of the fireplace. ‘Do you know what I was about to do?’

  ‘No.’ He remained seated, slouched deeply into the sofa.

  ‘I was about to ask you to leave.’

  Canfield began to protest.

  ‘No, wait. I wanted to be all by myself and nibble something all by myself and perhaps that’s not such a good idea.’

  ‘I think that’s a terrible idea.’

  ‘So I won’t.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go out. Will you have, as they say, potluck with me here?’
r />   ‘Won’t that be a lot of trouble?’

  Janet Scarlett yanked at a pull cord, which hung on the wall at the side of the mantel. ‘Only for the housekeeper. And she hasn’t been overworked in the least since my husband—left.’

  The housekeeper answered her summons with such speed that the field accountant wondered if she were listening at the door. She was about the homeliest woman Matthew Canfield had ever seen. Her hands were huge.

  ‘Yes, madame? We did not expect you home this evening. You did tell us you were dining with Madame Scarlatti.’

  ‘It seems I’ve changed my mind, doesn’t it, Hannah? Mr. Canfield and I will dine here. I’ve told him potluck, so serve us whatever luck the pot holds.’

  ‘Very well, madame.’

  Her accent had a trace of Middle Europe, perhaps Swiss or German, thought Canfield. Her jowled face framed by her pulled-back gray hair should have been friendly. But it wasn’t. It was somehow hard, masculine.

  Nevertheless, she made sure the cook prepared an excellent meal.

  ‘When that old bitch wants something, she makes them all quiver and quake until she gets it,’ said Janet. They had gone back to the living room and sat sipping brandy on the pillow-fluffed sofa, their shoulders touching.

  ‘That’s natural. From everything I’ve heard, she runs the whole show. They’ve got to cater to her. I know I would.’

  ‘My husband never thought so,’ the girl said quietly. ‘She’d get furious with him.’

  Canfield pretended disinterest. ‘Really? I never knew there was any trouble between them.’

  ‘Oh, not trouble. Ulster never cared enough about anything or anybody to cause trouble. That’s why she’d get so angry. He wouldn’t fight. He’d just do what he wanted to. He was the only person she couldn’t control and she hated that.’

  ‘She could stop the money, couldn’t she?’ Canfield asked naively.

  ‘He had his own.’

  ‘God knows that’s exasperating. He probably drove her crazy.’

  The young wife was looking at the mantel. ‘He drove me crazy, too. She’s no different.’

  ‘Well, she’s his mother…’

  ‘And I’m his wife.’ She was now drunk and she stared with hatred at the photographs. ‘She has no right caging me up like an animal! Threatening me with stupid gossip! Lies! Millions of lies! My husband’s friends, not mine! Though they might as well be mine, they’re no God damn better!’

  ‘Ulster’s pals were always a little weird, I agree with you there. If they’re being louses to you, ignore them. You don’t need them.’

  Janet laughed. ‘That’s what I’ll do! I’ll travel to Paris, Cairo, and wherever the hell else, and take ads in the papers. All you friends of that bastard Ulster Scarlett, I ignore you! Signed, J. Saxon Scarlett, widow. I hope!’

  The field accountant pressed his luck. ‘She’s got information about you from… places like that?’

  ‘Oh. she doesn’t miss a trick. You’re nobody if the illustrious Madame Scarlatti hasn’t got a dossier on you. Didn’t you know that?’

  And then almost as rapidly as she had flown into rage, she receded into calm reflection. ‘But it’s not important. Let her go to hell.’

  ‘Why is she going to Europe?’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  Canfield shrugged. ‘I don’t. I just read it in the columns.’

  ‘I haven’t the vaguest idea.’

  ‘Has it anything to do with all that gossip, those lies she collected from Paris… and those places?’ He tried and it wasn’t difficult, to slur his words.

  ‘Ask her. Do you know, this brandy’s good.’ She finished the remainder in her glass and set it down. The field accountant had most of his left. He held his breath and drank it.

  ‘You’re right. She’s a bitch.’

  ‘She’s a bitch.’ The girl pressed into Canfield’s shoulder and arm, turning her face to his. ‘You’re not a bitch, are you?’

  ‘No, and the gender is wrong, anyway. Why is she going to Europe?’

  ‘I’ve asked myself that lots of times and I can’t think of an answer. And I don’t care. Are you really a nice person?’

  ‘The nicest, I think.’

  ‘I’m going to kiss you and find out. I can always tell.’

  ‘You’re not that practiced…’

  ‘Oh, but I am.’ The girl reached across Canfield’s neck and pulled him to her. She trembled.

  His response was mild astonishment. The girl was desperate and for some senseless reason, he had the feeling of wanting to protect her.

  She pulled her hand down from his shoulder. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she said.

  And upstairs they kissed and Janet Scarlett put her hands on his face.

  ‘She said… fun of being a Scarlett without a Scarlett around. That’s what she said.’

  ‘Who? Who said that?’

  ‘Mother Bitch. That’s who.’

  ‘His mother.’

  ‘Unless she finds him… I’m free—Take me, Matthew. Take me, please, for God’s sake.’

  As he led her to bed, Canfield made up his mind that he’d somehow convince his superiors that he had to get aboard that ship.

  The Scarletti Inheritance

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jefferson Cartwright draped a towel over his body and walked out of the club’s steam room. He went into the needle shower and let the harsh spray beat down on the top of his head, turning his face upward until the tiny blasts of water hurt his skin. He adjusted the faucets so that the water slowly became colder, finally icy.

  He had gotten very drunk the night before. Actually he had started drinking early in the afternoon and by midnight was so far gone he decided to stay at his club rather than go home. He had every reason to celebrate. Since his triumphant meeting with Elizabeth Scarlatti he’d spent several days analyzing to the best of his ability the affairs of the Scarwyck Foundation. Now he was prepared to walk among his peers. Elizabeth’s agreement never left his mind. He kept it in his briefcase until he knew enough about Scarwyck so that even his own attorneys would be impressed. He remembered as the water splashed down on his head that he had put the briefcase in a locker at Grand Central Station. Many of his colleagues swore that the Grand Central lockers were safer than vaults. Certainly they were safer than the Scarlatti vaults.

  He’d pick up the briefcase after lunch and take the agreement to his lawyers. They’d be astonished and he hoped they’d ask him questions about Scarwyck. He’d rattle off facts and figures so rapidly they’d be in shock. He could hear them now. ‘My God, ole Jeff. We had no idea.’’ Cartwright laughed out loud in the shower. He, Jefferson Cartwright, was the most cavalier of Virginia Cavaliers. These Northern pricks with their high-fallutin’ condescending ways, who couldn’t even satisfy their own wives, had ole Jeff to reckon with now. On their level.’

  My God he thought, he could buy and sell half the members in the club. It was a lovely day!

  After his shower, Jefferson dressed and, feeling the full measure of his power, jauntily entered the private bar. Most of the members were gathered for lunch and with false graciousness several accepted his offer of a drink. However, their reluctance turned into minor enthusiasm when Jefferson announced casually that he had taken over Scarwyck’s financial chores.

  Two or three suddenly found that the boorish Jefferson Cartwright had qualities that they had not noticed before. Indeed, not a bad chap, if you came to think about it—Certainly must have something! Soon the heavy leather chairs surrounding the circular oak table to which Jefferson had repaired were occupied.

  As the clock neared two-thirty, the members excused themselves and headed to their offices and their telephones. The communications network was activated and the startling news of Cartwright’s coup with the Scarwyck Foundation was spread.

  One particular gentleman did not leave, however. He stayed on with a few diehards and joined the court of Jefferson Cartwright. He was perhaps fifty years old a
nd the essence of that image so sought by aging socialities. Even to the graying moustache so perfectly overgroomed.

  The funny thing was that no one at the table was quite sure of his name, but no one wanted to admit it. This was, after all, a club.

  The gentleman gracefully propped himself into the chair next to Jefferson the minute it became available. He bantered with the Southerner and insisted upon ordering another round of drinks.

  When the drinks arrived, the well-tailored gentleman reached for the martinis and in the middle of an anecdote placed them in front of him for a moment. As he finished his story, he handed one to Jefferson.

  Jefferson took the drink and drank fully.

  The gentleman excused himself. Two minutes later Jefferson Cartwright fell over on the table. His eyes were not drowsy or even closed as might become a man who had reached the limit of alcoholic capacity. Instead, they were wide open, bulging out of his skull.

  Jefferson Cartwright was dead.

  And the gentleman never returned.

  Downtown in the press room of a New York tabloid an old typesetter punched out the letters of the short news story. It was to appear on page 10.

  Banker Succumbs in Fashionable Men’s Club. The typesetter was disinterested. Several machines away another employee pushed the keys

  Grand Central: Locker Robbed. The man wondered. Isn’t anything safe anymore?

  The Scarletti Inheritance

  Chapter Eighteen

  At the captain’s table in the first-class dining room of the Calpurnia, Elizabeth was somewhat surprised to find that her companion to the right was a man no more than thirty years old. The normal practice when she traveled alone was for the ship line to provide her with an aging diplomat or a retired broker, a good card player, someone with whom she’d have something in common.

  She had no one to blame, however, as she had checked the captain’s list—a procedure she insisted upon so that there would be no embarrassing business conflicts—and had merely noted that one Matthew Canfield was an executive with a sporting goods firm that purchased heavily in England. Someone with social connections, she had assumed.