The Scarlatti Inheritance(105)

“That’s what Elizabeth said.”

She sat up, pulling the blanket over her shoulders, and leaned back against the headrest. She felt cold, and the ache in her eyes intensified. “Did she tell you?”

“Finally.… She didn’t want to. I didn’t give her an alternative.… She had to.”

Janet stared straight ahead, at nothing. “I knew it,” she said quietly. “I’m frightened.”

“Of course you are.… But you don’t have to be. He can’t touch you.”

“Why are you so sure? I don’t think you were so sure last night.” She was not aware of it, but her hands began to shake.

“No, I wasn’t.… But only because he existed at all.… The unholy specter alive and breathing.… No matter how much we expected it, it was a shock. But the sun’s up now.” He reached for his pencil and made a note on the paper.

Suddenly Janet Scarlett flung herself down across the bed. “Oh, God, God, God!” Her head was buried in the pillow.

At first Canfield did not recognize the appeal in her voice, for she did not scream or shout out and his concentration was on his notes. Her muffled cry was one of agony, not desperation.

“Jan,” he began casually. “Janet!” The field accountant threw down his pencil and rushed to the bed. “Janet!… Honey, please don’t. Don’t, please. Janet!” He cradled her in his arms, doing his best to comfort her. And then slowly his attention was drawn to her eyes.

The tears were streaming down her face uncontrollably, yet she did not cry out but only gasped for breath. What disturbed him were her eyes.

Instead of blinking from the flow of tears, they remained wide open, as if she were in a trance. A trance of horror.

He spoke her name over and over again.

“Janet. Janet. Janet. Janet.…”

She did not respond. She seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the fear which controlled her. She began to moan, at first quietly, then louder and louder.

“Janet! Stop it! Stop it! Darling, stop it!”

She did not hear him.

Instead she tried to push him away, to disengage herself from him. Her naked body writhed on the bed; her arms lashed out, striking him.

He tightened his grip, afraid for a moment that he might hurt her.

Suddenly she stopped. She threw her head back and spoke in a choked voice he had not heard before.

“God damn you to hell!… God damn you to hellll!”

She drew out the word “hell” until it became a scream.

Her legs spread slowly, reluctantly, apart on top of the sheet.

In that same choked, guttural voice she whispered, “You pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!”

Canfield watched her in dread. She was assuming a position of sexual intercourse, steeling herself against the terror which had enveloped her and which would progressively worsen.

“Janet, for God’s sake, Jan.… Don’t! Don’t! No one’s going to touch you! Please, darling!”

The girl laughed horridly, hysterically.

“You’re the card, Ulster! You’re the God damn jack of … jack of …” She quickly crossed her legs, one emphatically on top of the other, and brought her hands up to cover her breasts. “Leave me alone, Ulster! Please, dear God, Ulster! Leave me alone!… You’re going to leave me alone?” She curled herself up like an infant and began to sob.

Canfield reached down to the foot of the bed and pulled the blanket over Janet.

He was afraid.

That she could Suddenly, without warning, reduce herself to Scarlett’s unwilling whore was frightening.

But it was there, and he had to accept it.

She needed help. Perhaps far more help than he could provide. He gently stroked her hair and lay down beside her.

Her sobs evened off into deep breathing as she closed her eyes. He hoped she was sleeping but he could not be sure. At any rate, he would let her rest. It would give him the time to figure out a way to tell her everything she had to know.

The next four weeks would be terrible for her.

For the three of them.

But now there was an element which had been absent before, and Canfield was grateful for it. He knew he shouldn’t have been, for it was against every professional instinct he had.

It was hate. His own personal hate.

Ulster Stewart Scarlett was no longer the quarry in an international hunt. He was now the man Matthew Canfield intended to kill.





CHAPTER 37


Ulster Scarlett watched the flushed, angry face of Adolf Hitler. He realized that in spite of his fury, Hitler had a capacity for control that was nothing short of miraculous. But then the man himself was a miracle. A historic man-miracle who would take them into the finest world imaginable on earth.