The Scarletti Inheritance - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,80

been an uninterested motion because she hadn't taken Canfield seriously. Why should she? They were seven stories high.

Of course, she hadn't closed it. Or, if she had, she hadn't secured the catch and it had slipped off. Nothing at all unusual. She crossed to the window and pushed it closed. And then she heard it. 'Hello, Mother.'

Out of the shadows from the far end of the room walked a large man dressed in black. His head was shaved and he was deeply tanned.

For several seconds she did not recognize him. The light from the one table lamp was dim and the figure remained at the end of the room. As she became adjusted to the light and the object of her gaze, she realized why the man appeared to be a stranger. The face had changed. The shining black hair was shaved off; the nose was altered, smaller and the nostrils wider apart; the ears were different, flatter against the head; even the eyes - where before there had been a Neapolitan droop to the lids - these eyes were wide, as if no lids existed. There were reddish splotches around the mouth and forehead. It was not a face. It was the mask of a face. It was striking. It was monstrous. And it was her son.

'Ulster! My God!'

'If you die right now of heart failure, you'll make fools out of several highly paid assassins.'

The old woman tried to think, tried with all her strength to resist panic. She gripped the back of a chair until the veins in her aged hands seemed to burst from the skin.

'If you've come to kill me, there's little I can do now.'

'You'll be interested to know that the man who ordered you killed will soon be dead himself. He was stupid.'

Her son wandered toward the french window and checked the latch. He cautiously peered through the glass and was satisfied. His mother noticed that the grace with which he had always carried himself remained but there was no softness now, no gentle relaxation, which had taken the form of a slight aristocratic slouch. Now there was a taut, hard quality in his movement, accentuated by his hands - which were encased in skintight black gloves, fingers extended and rigidly curved. Elizabeth slowly found the words. 'Why have you come here?'

'Because of your obstinate curiosity.' He walked rapidly to the hotel phone on the table with the lighted lamp, touching the cradle as if making sure it was secure. He returned to within a few feet of his mother and the sight of his face, now seen clearly, caused her to shut her eyes. When she reopened them, he was rubbing his right eyebrow, which was partially inflamed. He watched her pained look.

'The scars aren't quite healed. Occasionally they itch. Are you maternally solicitous?'

'What have you done to yourself?'

'A new life. A new world for me. A world which has nothing to do with yours. Not yet!'

'I asked you what you've done.'

'You know what I've done, otherwise you wouldn't be here in London. What you must understand, now, is that Ulster Scarlett no longer exists.'

'If that's what you want the world to believe, why come to me of all people?'

'Because you rightly assumed it wasn't true and your meddling could prove irksome to me.'

The old woman steeled herself before speaking. 'It's quite possible then that the instructions for my death were not stupid.'

'That's very brave. I wonder, though, if you've thought about the others?'

'What others?'

Scarlett sat on the couch and spoke in a biting Italian dialect. 'La Famiglia Scarlatti! That's the proper phrase, isn't it?... Eleven members to be exact. Two parents, a grandmother, a drunken bitch wife, and seven children. The end of the tribe! The Scarlatti line abruptly stops in one bloody massacre!'

'You're mad! I'd stop you! Don't pit your piddling theft against what I have, my boy!'

'You're a foolish old woman! We're beyond sums. It's only how they're applied now. You taught me that!'

'I'd put them out of your reach! I'd have you hunted down and destroyed.'

The man effortlessly sprang up from the couch. 'We're wasting time. You're concerning yourself with mechanics. That's pedestrian. Let's be clear. I make one phone call and the order is sent to New York. Within forty-eight hours the Scarlattis are snuffed out! Extinguished! It will be an expensive funeral. The foundation will provide nothing but the best.'

'Your own child as well?'

'He'd be first. All dead. No apparent reason. The mystery of the lunatic Scarlattis.'

'You