“Not at his expense, sir. He’ll get the same stock option you get. Nobody stands to lose.”

“Nevertheless, it’s an effort to corrupt me-to bribe me with stock options. What must you think of me? An old fool, yes, perhaps-but a common chiseler?”

Wyatt’s voice began to harden. “Everybody chisels, Arthur. It’s only a question of need and time and motive. We all start out honest-we all see how easy it would be to give the suckers a shearing, but we’re too decent to take advantage of them. Our consciences hold us back. But then some of us get pushed into a corner-bills we’ve got to pay, or grandchildren who need money for medical care or university tuition, or a relative who needs an expensive lawyer. Am I getting warm, sir?”

Stiff in his chair, the old man muttered, “You’re a wretch, Steve boy. A scoundrel. How did you find out?”

“What does that matter? You need money, Arthur. You’re not nearly as rich as you want your family to think. You need it very fast, because you don’t know how long you’re going to live. You’ve been thinking about it for quite some time. And it won’t be the first time, will it? Forty years ago you saw a way to get money, and you must have explained very carefully to yourself how the suckers were just asking for it, just begging for it, and you might as well take it away from them, because if you didn’t, somebody else would.”

The old man’s jaws were bunched on the pipe; his eyes were closed. Wyatt bounced to his feet and spoke from a semicrouch; his voice clacked abruptly: “September, nineteen-twenty-nine-you were a member of the board of directors of the Merchants and Maritime Trust, and you were present at a company meeting where the board decided to pay a reduced dividend. While the secretary went out of the room to type up the notification to the Stock Exchange, you excused yourself by pleading a call of nature. Only instead of going down the hall to the men’s room you got to a telephone and sold all your stock in the company and sold more short. You got out just in time. Half an hour later the news hit the ticker, and the Exchange was swamped with sell orders-trading was suspended for two hours, and the stock reopened down several points. You made good your short sales and cleared a half-million dollars. Isn’t that how it happened, Arthur? And didn’t my grandfather, who was with you on that board of directors, cover up what you’d done?”

Rademacher, eyes shut, was dry-washing his clasped hands. Mottled veins stood out on his wrists. He drew in a long ragged breath, and his gaunt old frame shuddered when he let it out.

Slowly he opened his desk drawer and put the meerschaum away in it, closed the drawer deliberately, and looked up, his eyes devoid of expression. He said, “I won’t waste the energy it would take to call you names. What do you want of me?”

“Your quarter-million shares of Melbard, at the market price. And your affidavit relinquishing your option on James Melbard’s quarter-million shares.”

“Of course,” the old man muttered to himself. Without further discussion, he turned to the phone and dialed a number. He composed his face into a slack-muscled smile, so forced he looked as if he had been posing too long for a slow photographer.

Wyatt picked up his attache case and opened it on his lap. Rademacher began to talk into the phone in an exhausted, defeated voice: “Hello, James. I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but something’s come up… No, nothing like that. Look, James, I’ve done some questionable things in my lifetime, but I’ve never been a treacherous man, so I think I’m going to have to give you fair notice before I sell you out… Let me finish, please. Certain facts have come to my attention which have caused me to change my mind about the Nuart tender… Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I’m going to sign my control over to them. I wanted you to know… No. I’m really quite tired, James, can’t we discuss it in daylight? Very well. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Good night.”

Wyatt pushed the documents across the desk and handed the old man a pen.

“I am tempted,” Arthur Rademacher said, “to scrawl a big fat X on this dotted line, sir.”

But he signed. Wyatt slid the papers into his case, snapped it shut, went out of the office, and shut the door softly behind him.

23. Mason Villiers

Wednesday morning at ten, looking tired and confident and pouch-eyed in a slim mohair suit, Mason Villiers concluded his phone conversation with Montreal and went directly from the phone booth to the lobby doors. Crossing to the curb was like walking through a Turkish bath. He slid into the back seat of the limousine and slammed the door before the doorman could reach it.

Sanders, at the wheel, said, “Good morning, sir,” over his shoulder.

Villiers grunted. “Hackman’s. Don’t dawdle.”

The car slid out into traffic. Sanders said, “Sir, if you don’t mind, I-”

“Later,” Villiers said. “Not now.” He reached for a button on the armrest panel. The hard glass screen ascended from the top of the front seat and sealed itself shut with a click against the ceiling. Concealed from the world by tinted glass, he leaned back and closed his eyes. He had been on the move for seventy-two hours, catnapping at insufficient intervals; but he was pleased.

Sanders was unusually nervous. He almost clipped a truck, ran a stoplight, barely missed an errant pedestrian, and when he pulled up and double-parked outside Hackman’s office building, he didn’t leave enough room beside the car to allow the door to open. He looked back over his shoulder; his face twisted as if he were a small child valiantly fighting back tears. He jockeyed the car forward until there was space for the door to swing out, trotted around to open it, and tucked his chin shyly toward his shoulder.

Villiers, minding the heat, got out and said, “What’s on your mind? I suppose your mother is sick.”

“She’s very ill, sir. Very ill.” Sanders gave him a pained, ghastly smile. He ducked his head, birdlike, as if checking to see whether his fly was zipped. Finally he summoned the courage to speak. “I’ve got to have the rest of the day off, sir. Otherwise I’d like to give in my notice.”

“Come again?”

Sanders’ throat worked; he blurted, “I want to quit.”

Villiers drew back. It was the first independent remark he had ever heard Sanders utter. “You don’t like your job.”

“I’m an engineer, sir. Working for you, I’m just a gopher. Sir, I know I can’t quit if you won’t let me. I haven’t forgotten. But I’m begging you, sir.”

“Why?”

“How’s that, sir?”

“Why now? What’s given you the backbone?”

Sanders averted his face. He said in a cold, rigid little voice, “She’s dying, sir. My mother.” His mouth corners jerked up in a shy little nervous smile. Sanders presented his cheek as if he wanted it slapped; he accepted every degradation willingly, out of some black buried need for self-mortification, and he was ready once again to receive rebuff without protest. Villiers suddenly could not stand his whining dyspeptic cowardice. The game had grown dreary.

“All right. I’m sick of looking at you. Get a chauffeur to take your place-I’ll want the car here to pick me up by eleven.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir.” Sanders’ lips were moist with eagerness. “I’ll have to hire someone from one of the livery agencies.”

“At your own expense, Sanders.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

“Keep me advised of your whereabouts at all times. I may need you again.”

“Naturally, sir.”

“With you for a son,” Villiers said mildly, “she’ll be better off dead.” He crossed the sidewalk into the office building without looking back, forgetting the matter instantly. He reached the Hackman and Greene door and began to push it open, heard voices inside, and stopped where he was. The English receptionist was talking too loudly: “Your wife called. She said she was returning your call.”