The Scarlatti Inheritance(11)

Matthew Canfield wasn’t coming back.

What had he said? In the last extremity, Janet had to be told. His mother had to be told the truth. And there was no one else now who could tell her.

Andrew Scarlett looked at the briefcase on the table.

The son and the stepfather were going to Bern, but only the son would come back.

Matthew Canfield was going to his death.


Canfield closed the apartment door and leaned against the hallway wall. He was heavy with sweat, and the rhythmic pounding in his chest was so loud he thought it might be heard back in the apartment.

He looked at his watch. It had taken him less than an hour, and he had remained remarkably calm. Now he wished to get as far away as possible. He knew that by any of the standards of courage or morality or responsibility, he should stay with the boy. But such demands could not be made on him now. One thing at a time or he’d go out of his mind. One item crossed off and then on to the next.

What was the next?

Tomorrow.

The courier to Lisbon with the detailed precautions. One mistake and everything could explode. The courier wasn’t leaving until seven o’clock in the evening.

He could spend the night and most of the day with Janet. He rationalized that he had to. If Andy cracked, the first thing he’d do was try to reach his mother. Because he couldn’t face staying with him, he had to be with her.

To hell with his office! To hell with the army! To hell with the United States government!

In light of his impending departure he was under voluntary surveillance twenty-four hours a day. God damn them!

They expected him to be no farther than ten minutes from a Teletype.

Well, he wasn’t going to be.

He would spend every minute he could with Janet. She was closing up the Oyster Bay home for the winter. They’d be alone, perhaps for the last time.

Eighteen years and the charade was coming to a finish.

Fortunately for the state of his anxiety, the elevator came quickly. Because now he was in a hurry. To Janet.

The sergeant held the car door open and saluted as smartly as he could. Under ordinary circumstances, the major would have chuckled and reminded the sergeant that he was in civilian clothes. Instead, he returned the salute informally and hopped into the car.

“To the office, Major Canfield?”

“No, Sergeant. Oyster Bay.”





CHAPTER 3


An American Success Story

On August 24, 1892, the social world of Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, was shaken to its foundations, which were not inordinately firm to begin with. For on this day Elizabeth Royce Wyckham, the twenty-seven-year-old daughter of industrialist Albert O. Wyckham, married an impoverished Sicilian immigrant by the name of Giovanni Merighi Scarlatti.

Elizabeth Wyckham was a tall, aristocratic girl who had been an ever-present source of worry to her parents. According to Albert O. Wyckham and his wife, the aging Elizabeth had thrown over every golden matrimonial opportunity a girl could ask for in Chicago, Illinois. Her reply had been:

“Fool’s gold, Papa!”

So they had taken her on a grand tour of the Continent, expending great sums in great expectations. After four months of surveying the best matrimonial prospects from England, France, and Germany, her reply had been:

“Idiot’s gold, Papa. I’d prefer a string of lovers!”

Her father had slapped his daughter resoundingly.

She proceeded, in turn, to kick him in the ankle.

Elizabeth first saw her future husband at one of those picnic outings the officers of her father’s firm in Chicago held annually for deserving clerks and their families. He had been introduced to her as a serf might have been to the daughter of a feudal baron.

He was a huge man with massive, yet somehow gentle hands and sharp Italian features. His English was almost unintelligible, but instead of accompanying his broken speech with awkward humility, he radiated confidence and made no apologies. Elizabeth liked him immediately. Although young Scarlatti was neither a clerk nor had he a family, he had impressed the Wyckham executives with his knowledge of machinery and had actually submitted a design for a machine that would cut the cost of producing paper rolls by possibly 16 percent. He had been invited to the picnic.

Elizabeth’s curiosity had already been aroused by her father’s stories about him. The greaser had a knack for tinkering—absolutely incredible. He had spotted two machines in as many weeks wherein the addition of single levers eliminated the necessity of second men on the jobs. As there were eight of each machine, the Wyckham Company was able to lay off sixteen men who obviously were no longer pulling their weight. Further, Wyckham had had the foresight to hire a second-generation Italian from Chicago’s Little Italy to accompany Giovanni Scarlatti wherever he wandered in the plant and literally act as his interpreter. Old Wyckham objected to the eight dollars a week he paid the conversant Italian but justified the salary on the basis that Giovanni would make other improvements. He had better. Wyckham was paying him fourteen dollars a week.