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‘Mr Ambrose! Let me out!’
In answer, I heard only silence. Silence, and the sound of footsteps retreating down the hallway. Then those were gone, too.
I beat against the door, again and again, not because I thought I would be able to break it, but simply to vent my anger. Anger at him, and at myself. How could I have been so stupid? Of course he didn’t want to let me come along! Of course he had a hidden trap laid for me! This was Rikkard Ambrose we were talking about. And I had forgotten that fact, and walked right into his trap.
Maybe I didn’t deserve to come along on the great adventure. Maybe I deserved to stew here, in this office, like an old piece of beef in an old pot the cook forgot to take off the fire. I felt appropriately disgusted with myself.
When my hands hurt so badly I could hardly feel them anymore, I stopped torturing the office door. Instead, I looked around, desperate for a way to get out. But there was nothing. The office was just as bare as I remembered, with no possibilities of… wait a second.
In the farthest corner, there was a niche I hadn’t noticed before. Quickly, I crossed the room to see what it contained, and found myself in front of a door. My heart made a leap! Could it be? Could my escape be so easy?
I reached for the doorknob. My fingers clasped the cool metal, turned it, and - the door was locked.
Blast, blast, blast!
Of course, my escape couldn’t be that easy.
Turning around, my gaze drifted to the windows. They, too, appeared to be firmly shut and locked. I could break the glass, of course, but what would that gain me? If I shouted from the top floor to people in the street that one of London’s richest financiers was keeping me prisoner in his office, this surely would bring the police down on me. I would be lucky if I ever got away, let alone in time to join Mr Ambrose in his illegal endeavour.
Yes, but it would make a nice, juicy scandal and annoy the hell out of him, wouldn’t it?
True. But in my heart of hearts, I knew the problem was I didn’t want to annoy him.
I wanted to help him.
Blast!
Resigned, I dragged my feet over to Mr Ambrose’s desk and slumped into his chair. Not even the thought of what he might say, were he to know I was sitting in the chair reserved for the master of the house, could improve my mood right now. I sat there, in endless anxiety, horrible images flitting through my head the entire time: Mr Ambrose faced by a platoon of the Presidency Armies, Mr Ambrose being led off to a firing squad…
The thought sent a shock of pain through my heart.
But why? Why did I feel pain? For the future I might lose if he died? My job? No. This pain was not for me. It was for him. Maybe… maybe I didn’t detest him quite as much as I had always imagined.
This is getting you nowhere, you lazy idiot! Think of something!
My fist came down on the desk, hard. Curse him! Curse him and his chauvinistic ways! How dare he go without taking me with him! Hadn’t I earned the right to be a part of his life, to go where he went and support him in what he did? And he left me behind simply because I was no man!
But then, whispered a nasty little voice in my head, maybe, if you were a man, you might not want to go with him so badly.
Angrily, I sprang up and marched over to the window. The sun had risen by now. I could see people coming down the street. It wasn’t difficult to pick out the ones who were heading to work at Mr Ambrose's: they were the ones running like scared rabbits.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that some of those people might know me from sight. If I smashed the window, and called out to someone who worked here, telling them that I had locked myself in and couldn’t find my keys…
Even before the thought was finished thinking, I started pounding on the glass. If I had managed to break it, I would probably have cut my hands to ribbons. Yet the glass held firm, no matter how hard I pounded it.
Of course it did. This was Mr Ambrose’s office. His walls were hard, his chairs were hard, his head was hard, why shouldn’t his windows be hard, too? Plus, they were next to his archive and safe. Whatever these windows were made of, I would not be able to break them, not even with a hammer.
I went back to the chair of the man who had locked me in here and sat down again. A humourless smile spread on my face. My entire life I had been afraid of being trapped by a man. Most of my imaginings had contained such gruesome horrors as engagements, wedding bells and a honeymoon in the south of France followed by a slow death by domesticity. Never had I imagined being literally trapped by a man, in a room, high up in London’s largest monument to Mammon. And, also, unlike in my imaginings, where the man himself would have been my prison and I would have wanted nothing more than to get away from him, now the room was my prison and I wished nothing more than for the man to be with me, or for me to be with him.
But not because I felt anything for him, of course! I was a strong, independent woman and would never have any sort of silly, soppy feelings for any man, least of all Rikkard Ambrose. I just…
My eyes slid shut, trying to keep the tears in.
Well, I just wished I were with him. That was all.
If only there were a way to have someone come and open a door…
Slowly, my eyes opened again - and fell on the pneumatic tube with the basket of message papers right beside it.
Slowly, as if I feared they might run away should I approach them too quickly, I stretched my hands out in the direction of quill and paper. My fingers were only a few inches away from the pen, my way to freedom. It didn’t seem to want to make a run for it. My fingers closed.
Yes! A way to get out. A way to get to him.
But one thing after another.
Putting one of the little squares of message paper right in front of me, I dipped the quill into the ink. For a moment, the quill hovered hesitantly over the paper. I thought of the pale man who staffed the desk downstairs. What was Sallow-face’s name again? Mr Ambrose had mentioned it to me once, not appreciating the accuracy of the nickname I had come up with…
Ah yes: Pearson!
Quickly, I wrote in my best imitation of Mr Ambrose’s neat, precise handwriting:
Dear Mr Pearson,
Be so kind as to bring me a list of all last week’s visitors, which I require for a project I am currently working on. I may not be in my office when you arrive. If that is the case, unlock the door and leave the list on my desk. Thank you.
Yours Sincerely,
Rikkard Ambrose
For a long moment, I stared down at what I had written. Then I crossed it out, grabbed another piece of paper and wrote: