Page 56 of Undercover with the Heiress
How had he even got inside?
Taylor sneered, then inspected his nails. ‘I heard you were looking for me.’
The penny dropped. How had he been so blind, so stupidly, stubbornly oblivious?
‘Pennington.’ Phineas gripped the banister tighter as terror coursed through him. ‘If Lord Richard has spent your money, I’ll pay it directly to you. I’ll pay double. Leave Rosanna out of it. She’s nothing to do with him or anything else.’
Pennington chuckled. ‘I’m not interested in that bumbling fool. Although he did come in far more useful than I expected. What he cost me is a small price to pay for finally cornering you.’
‘If you don’t want money, what do you want?’ Phineas asked, even though his stomach sunk with realisation as he spoke. Only one thing was more powerful than greed.
Revenge.
‘You cost me thousands of pounds in Edinburgh, but more than that, you cost me time. When the National came undone, I lost all my contacts. For years, I worked on that network. All of it was humming along. Then you stuck your nose in, and I lost everything. I found you here in this infernal metropolis, hiding away in your little bank, ruling your margins, watching the stock market, just like before. Quite good at speculating, aren’t you? Most clerks can barely afford a few rooms over a shop, and yet you managed this.’ He waved a finger in the air. ‘I knew money wouldn’t move you, but I am a patient man. I’ve been waiting for you to have something to care about. Something you couldn’t bear to lose.’ He pulled a slip of paper from his coat pocket and flipped the cheque Phineas had written for Lord Richard between his fingers. ‘And now, you finally do.’
‘You showed me the ledger, though… You…’ The gaping size of his failure loomed before him, stretching into the grey light of the hallway. ‘You showed me on purpose. Not because you wanted my help, but to make me curious. You wanted me to stay.’
‘Can’t help but help, can you?’ Pennington scrunched the cheque, then tossed it aside. ‘Let’s go to the bank. I’d like you to check my figures. And when I say check my figures, I mean open the safes so that I can clean them out.’
Phineas scanned the entrance. Knick-knacks, his umbrella, so many damn ornaments—there had to be something he could use as a weapon. ‘I’m just a clerk. Why would they tell me the combinations?’
‘They wouldn’t, and yet I’d wager your lovely wife that you still know them.’ Pennington opened the door. Tepid early morning light glanced off the walls, and the hum of an awakening street filled the air. Phineas edged into the entrance and craned his head just enough to look in the direction where Pennington gestured.
Across Honeysuckle Street, before the ruin that had been Number 6, Spencer sniffed the air, then scarpered and climbed the tree beside the fence, edging along a branch that ran close by a window to Number 4. A man in a black suit dropped a cigarette, then stubbed it out with his toe. He leant against the fence and crossed his arms. The man from the park and the hallway at the Aster. He raised a finger in acknowledgement. Pennington nodded in reply.
A tap and skip came from upstairs, a few levels up. Phineas’s heart contorted, its rhythm alternating between still and racing. He slunk back into the doorway to the lobby and peered up the stairs. Bare feet patted against the wood. A slip of ankle and the white hem of a nightgown skipped down the upper stairs.
‘Phineas? Did you get lost trying to find the kitchens?’ Rosanna giggled.
He swallowed a knot of fear. ‘I’ll be just a moment,’ he called. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘I’ll help you with the tea. I can’t imagine you’ve evenbeenin your kitchens, much less know how to use them.’
‘For once, will you listen to me!’ he bellowed, his voice bouncing up the stairwell. He sucked his next breath between his teeth. ‘Go upstairs. I will bring you tea.’ Would she understand the urgency in his voice? Would she comprehend what he was trying to say?
‘No need to be such a grump,’ she snapped as she turned and clomped up the steps. ‘Two sugars and lots of milk, if you don’t mind.’
As Rosanna stomped out of earshot, Phineas eyed Taylor, weighing the man’s mettle, his reach, his fists. He could fight him off well enough to run, but to win? To knock him out and keep Rosanna safe? Uncertain. And even if he could get to Rosanna and get her away, what of the rest of the household? Felix and Hugh and Letitia and the singing one, that Jean… And an entire family next door. Her family. Her everything.
‘You can’t beat me, Babbage. Maybe if you were just you, and I was just me, you might. But you have people to look after now, and I have people who look after me.’ Pennington huffed a laugh. ‘She’ll do better without you. Deep down, you know that.’
Phineas hung his head. His vision blurred as he blinked down the painful realisation. She would do better without him. It would always be true. And the only way to give her a free life, to keep her safe like he’d promised, was to walk away.
‘How can I trust you?’ he asked. ‘I could do everything you want, and you’ll still hurt her. You could be lying.’
Pennington strode through the entrance hall, his neck muscles tensing as he grasped Phineas’s collar and pulled his face close. ‘I never lie. I always keep my word.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘That’s what makes me so terrifying.’
Phineas stumbled as Pennington shoved him through the entrance and towards the door. Phineas reached for his umbrella. Pennington smirked and shook his head. ‘Clerks. All the same.’
As a small outfit with a modest number of clients on the books but still holding aspirations to be mentioned in the same sentence as Barclays or the Bank of England, Empire Savings and Loans had invested in a range of security measures to keep their clients’ money protected. The most impressive of these was the subterranean bank vaults which secured dozens of locked drawers and safe deposit boxes. Clients placed their precious money and belongings in a box, locked them away, and kept their own copy of the key.
The bank also had small safes in each senior manager's office, and in a space behind the clerks’ rooms on the lower ground floor, they had installed two Mosler safes. As tall as a man, with fireproof double doors and almost indestructible, they secured the necessities for the bank’s day-to-day operations. New bonds, shares, banknotes that needed to be exchanged at other banks, and currency for withdrawals—they were all stored in the Mosler safes.
Keys were too fiddly and too easily stolen or lost, but a three-number-combination, spun by hand to release the lock, offered a practical means of security.
Phineas hadn’t ever intended to learn and memorise the combinations. But over the course of seven years, he had noticed the flick of a wrist while assisting a senior manager to deposit a stack of bonds. Or he’d overheard one man reminding another of the number sequence, as each safe had a different combination and occasionally the older bank officers became confused. Far more than words, numbers adhered to his memory and settled into the nooks and crannies of his mind.
It had always felt like a blessing before. His capacity to calculate had allowed him to reinvent himself over and over again, to move through life unobserved and unremarked on. But as he spun the last number on the dial, heard the bolt drop, and cranked the lever on the heavy door open, a cold shiver raced the length of his spine. The blessing had turned into a curse.
