Chief Justice Arthur Vance did not sign immediately.
He smiled—a slow, razor-thin, terrifying line of white porcelain that had charmed forty congressional hearings:
“Arthur Mercer was an exceptional surveyor, gentlemen,” Arthur purred, his voice a deep, resonant velvet cello that echoed off the acoustic baffles of the vault:
“He bored forty miles of subterranean granite with naval sweat, and he left the master deed to an unsuspecting granddaughter who spent eight years on her knees scrubbing toilets for sixty dollars a day, completely blind to the fact that we were using her own poverty to extract her grandfather’s safe while we prepared to seize the defense bedrock from beneath her boots.”
Arthur dipped the gold nib of his pen toward the parchment:
“To the compliant maid in Long Island, gentlemen.”
