“WE HAVE YOUR WIFE AND DAUGHTER. DO EXACTLY AS WE SAY IF you want them to live. Do not call the police. We will know if you have. We have eyes on the police station. Take twenty-five thousand out of the safe. Come out to the lake yourself. Get into a boat with the money and come to the island. You have fifteen minutes.”
The line went dead.
Three men stood in the butler’s pantry: Albert Ellingham had the telephone. Robert Mackenzie and Montgomery, the butler, stood at the door. Albert Ellingham replaced the receiver on the hook and thick, frantic quiet followed.
“Montgomery,” Ellingham said quietly, “have Miss Pelham secure the children at the school. Everyone back in their houses. Doors locked. Curtains drawn. Everyone is to go inside. Do this now. Robert, with me.”
Robert Mackenzie again trailed his fast-moving employer to his office. Once inside, Ellingham shut and locked the door, then went to the French doors and looked outside. The dark had come down over the mountains. The dark had come down everywhere.
Ellingham marched to one of the bookcases in the windowless wall. He pulled down a book from a top shelf, but just halfway. There was a telltale snick, and the entire panel of wall gave. Ellingham swung back the bookcase, revealing a massive vault inside of the wall. He entered the combination and turned the lock. Robert, meanwhile, ran from window to window, pulling the curtains.
“We have to call the police,” Robert said. “We have to call them now.”
“Find a lamp and light it for me,” Ellingham said, pulling out several bags of cash.
“There are still a few workmen on the property,” Robert persisted, pulling the massive curtains that swept over the wall of French doors at the back of the room. “We could have them out in five minutes, surrounding the property and out on the roads. Some of them have shotguns. All of them are handy enough.”
“Robert, there is no time for this. I am taking this money out to the lake. Light a lamp and then help me count.”
Later, when asked about this moment, Robert Mackenzie would say that there really was no time to think. That was the genius of the demand—no time to think, no time to plan. He grabbed one of the oil lamps kept in every room of the house (power loss was frequent), lit it, and then dropped to his knees and started to count money. In the end, there was twenty-three thousand and a few extra twenties.
“It’s not enough. We need more.” For one of the first times in his life, Albert Ellingham sounded desperate. “I only have five more minutes to get this outside. We need something.”
One of America’s richest men raced around his office for a moment, pulling open drawers, looking for piles of cash he certainly didn’t have, or anything that might be worth that much money.
“It will have to do,” he said.
The bag of cash only weighed maybe twenty pounds. Ellingham hoisted it and opened the French doors.
Robert paused before handing him the oil lamp. “You know they can take you out there. It’s probably you they want!”
“Then they’ll have me.”
“And then what?” Robert said. “This is madness. We need help.”
Albert Ellingham took a crucial second’s pause.
“Marsh,” he said. “Call him at home. Don’t say what’s happened. Just get him up here on some pretense. No one else, do you understand? No one but Marsh.”
Robert nodded. Albert Ellingham took the lamp and stepped out into the Vermont mountain fog carrying a bag of money. He walked the fifty or so yards to the lake edge, where there was a small dock. He set the money into one of the rowboats he had moored on the side facing the house and got inside carefully, then put the lamp on the empty bench seat. When he knocked the edge of land away with his oar, his entire body was shaking. Still, he reached the mound in a minute or two and threw the rope around the mooring post.
“I’m here,” he called into the dark.
A flashlight shone down on him, blinding him for a moment.
“Get out,” said a voice. “Bring the money.”
“My wife and daughter—where are they?”
“Stop talking.”
Ellingham threw the bag. It landed on the narrow strip of grass around the dome. He got out as well as he could, considering that he could barely see.
The person kept the light squarely on Ellingham’s face, forcing him to look down and shield his eyes. He half crawled out of the boat onto the ground.
“Open the door,” the voice said.
Ellingham pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the door on the side of the dome. This dome was his little thinking place—his island of peace. The person shoved him hard, pushing him into the dome, where he landed on the floor.
“Put the money in the hatch,” the voice said. The person was speaking through a scarf, so it was muffled. There was an accent there, an accent he was trying to hide by pulling out the words in a strange way. His pupils were still constricted from the light, so Ellingham felt blindly along the floor, feeling for the hatch. He found it and opened it and pushed the sack into the hole. He heard it knocking some bottles off the shelves as it fell, and they shattered on the floor. He turned back to the stranger, but the light was shoved right back into his face, blinding him again.
Ellingham battled with himself for a moment. Should he lunge for this person? Just take him down now, beat his head into the side of the stone base of the observatory floor and demand with every blow where his family was? Fear and rage came in equal measure. But Ellingham had not gotten as far as he had in life by giving in to every impulse.
“It’s everything I had in the safe,” he said. “I was under two thousand short, but we gave you whatever we had. If I’d had more time . . . you can have whatever you want. Anything you want.”
Something came down on his head, and then all faded to black.