and stuffed them into his inner jacket pocket. He clamped his arm against his chest, making sure that the pressure between his flesh was stopped by the paper, and left the vaults.
He signaled the front guard with a short whistle. The man had been dozing on a black leather chair near the door.
'Oh, m'God, Mr. Cartwright! Y'startled me!'
Cartwright walked out onto the street.
He looked at the grayish white light of the sky. It was going to be morning soon. And the light was his signal.
For he - Jefferson Cartwright, fifty-year-old ex-football player from the University of Virginia, who had married first money and then lost it - held in his pocket carte blanche to everything he had ever wanted.
He was back in the stadium and the crowds were roaring.
Touchdown!
Nothing could be denied him now.
Chapter Thirteen
At twenty minutes after one in the morning, Benjamin Reynolds sat comfortably in an armchair in his Georgetown apartment. He held on his lap one of the file folders the attorney general's office had sent Group Twenty. There had been sixteen in all and he divided the stack equally between Glover and himself.
With congressional pressure, especially New York's Senator Brownlee, the attorney general's office wasn't going to leave a single stone unturned. If the Scarlatti son had disappeared into a void, at least the AG men could write volumes explaining the fact. Because Group Twenty had touched - briefly - on the life of Ulster Scarlett, Reynolds, too, would be expected to add something. Even if it was nothing.
Reynolds felt a trace of guilt when he thought of Glover wading through the same nonsense.
Like all reports of investigations of missing persons, it was filled with trivia. Dates, hours, minutes, streets, houses, names, names, names. A record of the inconsequential made to seem important. And perhaps to someone, somewhere, it might be. A part, a section, a paragraph, a sentence, even a word could open a door for someone.
But certainly not for anyone at Group Twenty.
He'd apologize to Glover later that morning.
Suddenly the phone rang. The sound in the stillness at such an unexpected hour startled Reynolds.
'Ben? It's Glover - '
'Jesus! You scared the hell out of me! What's wrong? Someone call in?'
'No, Ben. I suppose this could wait until morning, but I thought I'd give you the pleasure of laughing yourself to sleep, you bastard.'
'You've been drinking, Glover. Fight with your wife, not me. What the hell have I done?'
'Gave me these eight Bibles from the attorney general's office, that's what you did... I found something!'
'Good Christ! About the New York thing! The docks?'
'No. Nothing we've ever connected with Scarlett. Maybe nothing but it could be...'
'What?'
'Sweden. Stockholm.'
'Stockholm? What the hell are you talking about?'
'I know the Pond file by rote.'
'Walter Pond? The securities?'
That's right. His first memorandum arrived last May. The initial word about the securities - Remember now?'
'Yes, yes, I do. So what?'
'According to a report in the sixth file, Ulster Scarlett was in Sweden last year. Would you like to guess when?'
Reynolds paused before answering. His attention was riveted on the almost unimaginable amount of thirty million dollars. 'It wasn't Christmas, was it.' It was a statement spoken softly.
'Now that you mention it, some people might have looked at it that way. Perhaps Christmas in Sweden comes in May.'
'Let's talk in the morning.' Reynolds hung up without waiting for his subordinate to reply or say good-night. He walked slowly back to the soft armchair and sat down.
As always Benjamin Reynolds's thought processes raced ahead of the information presented. To the complications, the ramifications.
If Glover had made a valid assumption, that Ulster Scarlett was involved with the Stockholm manipulation, then it had to follow that Scarlett was still alive. If that were true, then thirty million dollars' worth of American securities had been illegally offered by him for sale on the Stockholm exchange.
No one individual, not even Ulster Stewart Scarlett, could get his hands on thirty million dollars' worth of securities.
Unless there was a conspiracy.
But of what kind? For what purpose?
If Elizabeth Scarlatti herself were a part of it - she had to be considered in light of the magnitude of the capital - why?
Had he misread her completely?
It was possible.
It was also possible that he had been right over a year ago. The Scarlatti son had not done what he had done for thrills or because he'd met unsavory friends. Not if Stockholm was pertinent.
Glover paced the floor in front of Reynolds's desk. 'It's there. Scarlett's visa shows he entered Sweden on May tenth.