“No,” she said. “It makes sense that he’d not tell her where he’s going, and he wouldn’t want to return to the house after the buy.”
“But why would he go two days before the buy?”
“This leads me to think that the exchange will be tonight, rather than tomorrow. It can’t happen any earlier than that, because his man at Eastover will be working all day; if he didn’t show up for work, our people would be all over him.”
“Then why hasn’t Lance called with the wiring instructions?” Stone asked. “He can’t make the buy without the funds, and he made the very good point last night that the cash would have to be transported to England. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Carpenter got out her cellphone and went into the study. She came back a few minutes later. “Both our suspects at Eastover are at work, as usual,” she said. “We’ll be notified if they leave the installation for any reason, and there are people there to keep track of them if they do.”
Stone was suddenly struck with an odd feeling. “Excuse me a minute, will you?” He went upstairs and retrieved his copy of the Swiss bank documents. There was an account manager’s name at the top of the first page, and a telephone number. Stone dialed the number.
An operator answered, repeating only the number.
“May I speak with Dr. Peter von Enzberg?” Stone asked.
“Who is calling, please?” the operator asked in stiff English.
“My name is Stone Barrington.”
“One moment.” There was a brief pause, followed by several clicks.
“This is Peter von Enzberg,” a deep voice said, sounding very English. “Is that Mr. Barrington?”
“Yes, Doctor. I opened an account yesterday and transferred some funds from New York.”
“Of course, Mr. Barrington; we received the funds in good order.”
“Can you tell me the current balance in my account?”
“May I have your code word, please?”
Stone gave it to him.
“One moment.” Stone could hear computer keys clicking. “Your current balance is one hundred dollars, Mr. Barrington.”
Stone felt suddenly ill. “What was the amount you received from New York?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Then why isn’t it in the account?”
“A request was made to transfer the funds shortly before closing yesterday. It was very late, but the request was urgent, so we accommodated Mr. Cabot.”
“Mr. Cabot had access to my account?”
“Why, yes, Mr. Barrington; his signature was on the account application, and he knew the code word.”
Stone felt frozen. “Where were the funds transferred?”
“To an account in Hong Kong,” the account manager replied.
“Thank you, Dr. von Enzberg.” He hung up and trudged down the stairs.
“What’s wrong?” Carpenter asked. “You look ill.”
“I’ve been had,” Stone replied.
Chapter 52
STONE SANK HEAVILY INTO AN ARMCHAIR in the drawing room.
“Explain,” Carpenter said.
“Lance transferred all the money out of the account yesterday, to a bank in Hong Kong.”
“How could he do that?”
“Apparently, he had access to my account.”
Carpenter stared at him. “Did you sign the account application, then give it back to Lance?”
“Yes.”
“Then he simply added his own signature to the document. Did he know your code?”
“I wrote it on the form. How could I have been so stupid?”
“An expensive oversight,” Carpenter said.
“I could get the Hong Kong account number, and we could trace the funds,” Stone said.
Carpenter shook her head. “Remember the time difference; Cabot has had plenty of opportunity to retransfer the funds half a dozen times; he was probably at it all night. We’d never find it.”
“But your people will reimburse me?”
“I can’t make any promises; my management are likely to take a dim view of all this.”
“I worked very hard to earn that money,” Stone said, though he’d really made it in the market. “You can’t let them hang me out to dry.”
“If it were our funds he’d stolen, that would be one thing, but your funds are quite another.” She looked at her watch. “We have to get going,” she said.
“To where?”
“To Wiltshire; obviously, the timetable has been accelerated. I hope we’re not too late.”
Stone grabbed a tie and his suit jacket and they met downstairs.
“We’ll take your Jaguar,” Carpenter said. “But you can’t go,” she said to Dino.