"Did he threaten you?"
"No. Not directly. Just said that it would be in my best inter- est to cooperate."
"What did you say?"
"What could I say? I mumbled something about doing nothing wrong but he said that didn't matter and I would be blamed for every- thing and that he could prove it."
"Could he prove it?" Hugh was scribbling furiously in his note- book.
"If he had the files in my computer I guess I would look pretty guilty, but there's no way anyone could get in there. I'm the only one, other than McMillan who can get at that stuff. It's always been a big secret. We don't even make any printouts of it. It's never on paper, just in the computer." Hugh fell back in the thinly stuffed torn red Naugahyde bench seat and gulped from his water glass.
Scott shook his head as he scanned the notes he had been making. This didn't make any sense at all. Here was this little nerdy man, with a convoluted tale of embezzlement and blackmail, off shore money and he was scared. "Hugh," Scott began slowly. "Let me see if I've got this right. You were part of a scheme to shift investments overseas, falsify reports, yet the investments always made a reasonable return in investment." Hugh nodded in agreement silently.
"Then, after how many, eight years of this, creating a secret little world that only you and McMillan know about . . ."
"A few others knew, I have the names, but only McMillan could get the information from the computer. No one else could. I set it up that way on purpose." Hugh interrupted.
"OK, then you receive a call from some Englishman who says he's got the numbers you say are so safe and then I get a copy. And the numbers agree with the results that First State reported. Is that about it?" Scott asked, almost mocking the apparent absurd- ity.