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Lucky ants.
I, for my part, heard a fresh plink that announced another demand for a file every five minutes. Apparently Mr Ambrose was still determined to break my resolution and make me give him some excuse for firing me. Ha! That fellow didn’t know me from Adam!
Or rather Eve, since I was a girl.
Some part of me wondered what he did with all those files. Surely, a secretary’s duties consisted of more than carrying files? Having letters dictated, for example.
‘Oh, but for that he’d have to actually speak to me,’ I muttered, grabbing another box of files from the shelves. ‘And he couldn’t do that, now could he! Blast him!’
While I slaved away, my determination grew. I would keep this job. Moreover, I would make him accept me as a girl, and then I could come to work in my own clothes and stop wearing this stupid top hat! But how to make him accept me?
‘I have to catch him,’ I growled, grabbing the next box and imagining that it was Mr Ambrose’s stiff neck. ‘I have to grab him and simply make him see!’
Yesterday, I hadn’t been able to get to him in time, and he had escaped. Today, he had placed his watchdog in front of the door - but he would have to come out eventually. To prevent him slipping away like last time, I cracked my office door open and kept an ear out for any steps moving out there.
As the day progressed, I got more and more excited. The thought of seeing him again - and of giving him a whopping big piece of my mind - was thrilling. I hadn’t set eyes on him since the day he not-so-graciously accepted me into his service, and I was looking forward to the encounter very much. Hm… Did punching your employer count as grounds for dismissal?
Too bad I didn’t have my parasol with me.
Some time around twelve o'clock, the requests for files suddenly stopped.
Ah! He was preparing to leave. Now he had to be coming soon. I sidled up to the door in anticipation.
Steps approached my door. What? Was he coming to see me? No, the steps didn’t sound like him. Too slow, too timid. There was a knock on my door and Mr Stone’s voice called: ‘Mr Linton? May I come in?’
‘Please do,’ I said, stepping back, frowning.
Mr Stone entered with a slightly puzzled expression on his face. ‘I am to inform you,’ he said, ‘that Mr Ambrose has left again and that you can finish your day early, too, if you want to.’
‘What?!’
‘Yes, the strangest matter indeed. He never leaves early normally, and now twice in a row? And this time he even went down the back staircase that is normally never used. I am beginning to fear for our master’s safety.’
‘You are, are you?’ I grabbed my top hat off the desk and slammed it on my head with probably a bit too much force. ‘Well, you’re right to be!’
Mr Stone paled. ‘So you think, too, that his life is in danger? That there is someone after him?’
‘You bet there is,’ I growled and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind me.
Oh that… I couldn’t even think of a bad enough word for him! The next time I would get my hands on him, I would take one of those little message containers with the words 'I AM FEMALE' in it and stuff it down his throat!
I went home to lunch, but since I didn’t have the wherewithal to cope with my aunt’s incessant questions about Lieutenant Ellingham, I made my disappearance as soon as possible. I decided to go the King’s Library to look a few things up. Maybe I’d find an interesting book on China, or a Colonial adventure story, or…
All right, I admit it. I was going to look up Rikkard Ambrose. So what? Was it a crime that I wanted to find out a bit more about the man I worked for? It was only natural that I would like to discover a few more things about him. It might help me avoid such blunders as the one with the charity requests. Maybe I’d discover that he kept a poodle, or was allergic to strawberries, or some other interesting fact.
Maybe I’d even find out whether he was, as I was beginning to suspect, more than a simple citizen. Books and newspapers could hold all sorts of interesting information.
Fortunately, unlike riding, shooting and pretty much anything else that I thought might be interesting to do in life, reading was not solely the domain of men. Nobody gave me a second glance as I walked along the gallery of the King’s Library, between the mile-high shelves and imposing busts of historical personalities.
In passing, I sent up a glare at the busts. ‘Of course you’re all men,’ I muttered, gesturing up at them threateningly. ‘It didn’t occur to anyone to put a bust of Queen Elisabeth or Mary Astell up there, did it? Darn chauvinist sculptors!’
An elderly gentleman passing in the opposite direction stopped when he saw me shaking my fist at the statues, and blinked as if he wasn’t sure he was seeing right. I quickly hurried on to the newspaper section.
Shortly afterwards I stood in front of a row of shelves, examining the enormous books which contained the Times of the last few decades. Where to start? From the dates on the file boxes I knew his history went back quite some time. So I pretty randomly picked one of the massive volumes. With effort, I managed to get it down from the shelf and transported it to a table next to a bust of Julius Caesar.
‘Hello there, fellow,’ I said, petting Caesar on his head. ‘Let’s see what we have on Mr Ambrose, shall we?’
Three hours and seven volumes later, I gave up.
He was everywhere: always on the edge of things, never quite part of society yet always in the middle because all of society seemed to orientate itself around him. Mr Ambrose had been spotted near the races - but did he bet on a horse? No! Mr Ambrose had been seen talking with business partners outside the theatre. But did he go in? Of course not! Once he had been spotted at the opera but had left before the performance ended.
What did he do in his free time?
Where was his family?
What nefarious activities had he engaged in to amass his enormous fortune?
There were no articles about his past, not even the indication that at some point he might have given an interview. Nowhere in the dozens of papers I leafed through did I find a single answer to my questions. But then again - why was I so anxious to find out? What business of mine was it how he had gotten his money? Why did I so desperately want to know?
Deep down I knew why. With a shiver I remembered his words, almost a threat, on that day he had sat opposite me in his office, his dark eyes burning holes into my head: