The old woman rose unsteadily. “Don’t!”
He turned to face her. “Why not?”
“I’ll do as you ask!”
He replaced the phone. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He had won.
Ulster Scarlett smiled with his misshapen lips. “Then our business is concluded.”
“Not quite.” Elizabeth now would try, realizing that the attempt might cost her her life.
“Oh?”
“I’d like to speculate, for just a minute.”
“On what?”
“For the sake of argument, supposing I decided to abandon our understanding?”
“You know the consequences. You couldn’t hide from us, not for any length of time.”
“Time, however, could be the factor on my side.”
“The securities have been disposed of. No sense in thinking about that.”
“I assumed they had been, or else you wouldn’t have come here.”
“This is a good game. Go on.”
“I’m sure that if you hadn’t thought of it yourself, someone would have told you that the only intelligent way of selling those securities would be on a currency basis in exchange for diminished value.”
“No one had to tell me.”
“Now it’s my turn to ask a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“How difficult do you think it is to trace deposits, gold or otherwise, of that magnitude? I’ll make it two questions. Where are the only banks in the world willing or even capable of such deposits?”
“We both know the answer. Coded, numbered, impossible.”
“And in which of the great banking concerns of Switzerland is there the incorruptible man?”
Her son paused and squinted his lidless eyes. “Now you’re the one who’s insane,” he answered quietly.
“Not at all. You think in small blocks, Ulster. You use large sums but you think in small blocks.… Word goes out in the marble halls of Bern and Zurich that the sum of one million American dollars can be had for the confidential exchange of information.…”
“What would you gain by it?”
“Knowledge!… Names! People!”
“You make me laugh!”
“Your laughter will be short-lived!… It’s obvious that you have associates; you need them. Your threats make that doubly clear, and I’m sure you pay them well.… The question is—once they’re known to me and I to them—will they be able to resist my price? Certainly you can never match it! In this we are not beyond sums!”
The grotesque face distorted itself further as a thick, drawlish laugh came forth from the misshapen mouth. “I’ve waited years to tell you that your slide-rule theories smell! Your stinking buy-me, sell-me manipulations are finished! You’ve had your way! It’s finished! Dead! Gone!… Who are you to manipulate? With your conniving bankers! Your stinking little Jews! You’re finished! I’ve watched you! Your kind is dead!… Don’t talk to me about my associates. They wouldn’t touch you or your money!” The man in black was in a rage.
“You believe that?” Elizabeth did not move. She asked a simple question.
“Completely!” Ulster Scarlett’s unhealed flesh was red with the blood rushing to his head. “We have something else! And you can’t touch us! Any of us! There is no price for us!”
“However, you’ll grant—as with the bank letters—I could prove irksome. Only to a far greater degree. Do you wish to take that gamble?”
“You sign eleven death warrants! A mass burial! Is that what you want, Mother?”
“The answer to both our questions would seem to be no. This is now a more reasonable understanding.”
The man-mask in black paused and spoke softly, precisely. “You’re not my equal. Don’t for one minute think you are!”
“What happened, Ulster? What happened?… Why?”
“Nothing and everything! I’m doing what none of you are capable of doing! What has to be done! But you can’t do it!”
“Would I … or we … want to?”
“More than anything in the world? But you haven’t the stomachs! You’re weak!”
The telephone rang, piercing the air.
“Don’t bother to answer it,” Ulster said. “It’ll ring only once. It’s merely a signal that my wife—the devoted whore—and her newest bedmate have left Claridge’s.”
“Then I assume our meeting is adjourned.” She saw to her great relief that he accepted the statement. She noted also that in such a position he was dangerous. A tick was developing on the surface of his skin above his right eye. He again stretched his fingers in a slow deliberate motion.