The Scarlatti Inheritance(64)

Elizabeth Scarlatti was already in bed when she heard the knocking. She reached into the bedside table drawer and withdrew a small revolver.

Elizabeth arose and walked to the door to the outer room. “Who is it?” she asked loudly.

“Matthew Canfield. I’d like very much to speak with you.”

Elizabeth was confused. She had not expected him and she reached for words. “I’m sure you’ve had a touch too much to drink, Mr. Canfield. Can’t it wait until morning?” She wasn’t even convincing to herself.

“You know perfectly well I haven’t and it can’t. I think we should talk now.” Canfield was counting on the wind and the sea to muffle his voice. He was also counting on the fact that he had business at hand to keep him from becoming very, very sick.

Elizabeth approached the door. “I can’t think of a single reason why we should talk now. I hope it won’t be necessary to call the ship’s police.”

“For God’s sake, lady, will you open this door! Or shall I call the ship’s police and say we’re both interested in someone running around Europe with securities worth millions, none of which, incidentally, will I get.”

“What did you say?” Elizabeth was now next to the stateroom door.

“Look, Madame Scarlatti”—Matthew cupped his hands against the wood of the door—“if my information is anywhere near correct, you have a revolver. All right. Open the door, and if I haven’t got my hands over my head, and if there’s anyone behind me, fire away! Can I be fairer than that?”

She opened the door and Canfield stood there with only the thought of the impending conversation keeping him from being sick. He closed the door and Elizabeth Scarlatti saw the state of his discomfort. As always, she knew the sequence of priorities under pressure.

“Use my bathroom, Mr. Canfield. It’s in here. Straighten yourself up and then we’ll talk.”

Charles Conaway Boothroyd stuffed two pillows under the blanket of his bed. He picked up the rope and snapped the lines in a lasso loop. The crackle of the fibers was sweet music to him. He placed his wife’s silk stocking in his pocket and silently left his cabin. Because he was on A deck, starboard side, he had only to walk around the bow promenade to reach his destination. He ascertained the pitch and the roll of the ship in the rough seas and quickly determined the precise moment of side roll for a human body to reach the water below with the minimum of structural interference. Boothroyd was nothing if not a thorough professional. They would all soon learn his worth.


Canfield came out of Elizabeth Scarlatti’s toilet feeling very much relieved. She stared at him from an easy chair several feet on the far side of the bed, pointing the revolver directly at him.

“If I sit down, will you put that damn thing away?”

“Probably not. But sit down and we’ll talk about it.”

Canfield sat on the bed and swung his legs over so that he faced her. The old woman cocked the hammer of her pistol.

“You spoke of something at the door, Mr. Canfield, which is the only reason this pistol hasn’t been fired. Would you care to carry on?”

“Yes. The first thing I can think of saying is that I’m not …”

Canfield froze.

The lock in the outer room was being opened. The field accountant held up his hand to the old woman and she immediately, instinctively, handed him the pistol.

Swiftly Canfield took her hand and gently but firmly placed her on the bed. The look in his eyes instructed her and she obeyed.

She stretched out on the bed with only the table lamp illuminating her while Canfield backed into the shadows behind the open bedroom door. He signaled her to close her eyes, a command he did not really expect her to carry out, but she did. Elizabeth let her head fall to the left while the newspaper lay several inches from her right hand. She looked as though she had fallen asleep while reading.

The stateroom door was rapidly opened and closed.

Canfield pressed his back against the wall and gripped the small pistol tightly in his hand. Through the overlapping steel lip of the door’s inside border was a two-inch space that let Canfield look out. It struck him that the open space gave the intruder the same advantage, only Canfield was in shadow and, he hoped, unexpected.

And then the visitor was revealed and Canfield found himself involuntarily swallowing, partially from amazement, partially from fear.

The man was huge, several inches taller than Canfield, with immense chest and shoulders. He wore a black sweater, black gloves, and over his entire head was a translucent filmy cloth, silk, perhaps, which gave the giant an eerie, inhuman appearance and completely blurred his face.