Apparently Mr Ambrose was all right, because he started to speak a few seconds later. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and part of me was glad for that. Stone nodded, put down the horn and then looked up at me smiling.
‘Mr Linton,’ he said, ‘I have been informed that you have been accepted as Mr Simmons' replacement and are now a member of the staff. May I take this opportunity to welcome you?’ He got up, walked around the desk held out a hand for me to shake.
Hesitantly, I reached out. I had never shaken a man’s hand before, only curtsied. Would he be able to tell that I was a woman by a handshake? Determined not to give him any clues, I resolved to make my grip convincingly strong and masculine.
‘Ouch!’ Mr Stone grimaced. All right, maybe I had overdone it with the masculinity… ‘Err… yes. Welcome, as I said. Now, where was I…?’ Cautiously, he removed his hand from my grip and flexed his fingers.
‘Ah, yes. Mr Ambrose regrets to inform you that he does not have time to receive you right now, since urgent business detains him. He wishes you to go directly into the secretary’s office and wait for instructions there.’
I frowned. Urgent business that detains him? What business could be so urgent that he couldn’t receive his private secretary? It should be my job to help him with his urgent business, shouldn’t it? But orders were orders. And though I usually wasn’t very good at obeying orders, these were different: unlike my aunt, Mr Ambrose would have to pay me for bossing me around. So I simply asked: ‘The secretary’s office?’
With his thumb, Mr Stone indicated a door to the right of his desk. ‘That door over there. I hope you find everything to your satisfaction, Mr Linton. If there is anything I can help you with, please don't hesitate to ask.’
Wow. If all my new colleagues were like this, working for a living would actually be a piece of cake. Maybe even a chocolate cake with extra sugar.
Then I remembered my new employer, and reconsidered.
No. Not a piece of cake. Definitely not. A piece of granite might be an appropriate description.
I walked over to the door Mr Stone had indicated. I reached for the doorknob. I grasped and turned it, holding my breath. With a low 'click', the door swung open. Nervously, I peered into my new domain.
The room was just as I might have expected: bare stone walls, heavy curtains, a large desk. It looked like a smaller version of Mr Ambrose’s office except that here, the desk stood against the wall and much of the space was taken up by enormous shelves holding large, differently coloured boxes. They all had numbers and letters written on them.
Good God, what was this? Seeing these vast mountains of paper, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder what the duties of a private secretary would actually be. Ever since my discovery of his wealth, I had expected Mr Rikkard Ambrose to be a rich landowner and that, as his secretary, I would maybe have to write a few letters for him when he was too lazy to do it himself. But apparently he wrote and received a hell of a lot more than just ‘a few letters’. I was in for more than I had bargained for.
Tip-toeing over to one of the boxes, I could see under the cryptic message '29V118' the explanation 'Georg. G. R.' Spiffing.[14] Who was Georg G. R.? Sounded foreign. He had to be a most dedicated letter-writer, though. I reached out to open the box, then hesitated.
But why not? After all, I was his secretary now. I would have to look through most of these sooner or later. Yes, that was an excellent excuse. Much better than ‘I’m just nosy’.
I opened the box and took a few papers out.
What I found made me feel even more puzzled. They weren’t letters. They were maps, drawings of mountains with short annotations about such things as rockers, nuggets and a whole lot of other things I had never heard of in my life.
Mystified, I put the papers back into the box and put it back on the shelf.
Then it occurred to me: why was I still waiting? Why had Mr Rich-and-Mysterious not called me yet to assist him in his oh-so-urgent business? I wanted to step out from between the shelves, but before I could do so I noticed a door behind them. From the layout of the room I supposed it to be a connecting door to Mr Ambrose’s office. I approached it and carefully tried the knob.
Locked.
Blimey, this was getting on my nerves!
But it was up to him to give me work, not the other way around. Having nothing better to do, I strolled over to the window and looked out over the city. As had been evident already from the outside, Empire House was a lot taller than any of the surrounding buildings and provided a stunning view. My office - I felt a thrill go through me at the words - my office faced west, and in the distance I could see the white dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral rising over the houses. I waited. And waited.
Great Paul struck eleven, and still I waited.
I was just about to leave the room and ask Mr Stone if anything was wrong when I heard a strange sizzling noise from the direction of my desk. Eyebrows raised, I went over to investigate.
The noise seemed to be coming from within the wall beside my desk. Whoever had put the stones there had done a shoddy job of it, because in the wall directly over my desktop was a hole, about an inch in diameter. The sizzling noise seemed to originate from there.
Curious, I bent forward and put my eye to the hole. I couldn’t see anything inside; it was pitch-black. But I could hear the sizzling noise getting louder and louder, until…
‘Ouch!’
Something poked me in the eye, hard, and I staggered back. I almost fell onto my rear end but managed to grab the edge of my desk and stay upright. Bright lights flashed across my field of vision. I blinked furiously. When I could finally see again, I discovered a tiny metal cylinder lying on my desk. Apparently, it had shot out of the hole in the wall and right into my eye. The hole in the wall that was separating my office from that of Mr Rikkard Ambrose. I knew where that cylinder came from.
Furious, I grabbed the thing and marched towards the door separating my office from his.
‘Hey!’
No answer.
‘Hey, I want to know why you tried to poke my eye out!’
Still no answer. I banged on the door with the hand holding the metal cylinder, and as I did, it fell out of my hand and onto the floor, breaking apart in the process. It was hollow!
Curious, I leaned forward and saw that there was a tiny piece of paper rolled up in the cylinder. Taking it out, I unrolled it, revealing a few hand-written words in a clear, precise, no-nonsense hand.
Mr Linton,
Bring me file 227B
Rikkard Ambrose.
Bring me file 227B? Just ‘Bring me file 227B’? That was all? No please, no thank you. God, why did he even feel the need to sign it? No one else I know would write a message that cold, curt and discourteous. Well, maybe my uncle. But discourtesy from family didn’t count.
And… ‘Mr Linton’? He couldn’t even acknowledge the fact that I was a female when there was nobody else around? I had been afraid he was a chauvinist. I had been wrong. He was the king of chauvinists.
But he was also the man who wrote my pay cheques. So I swallowed the adjectives I would have liked to throw at him and instead demanded of the closed door: ‘Why are we communicating via tiny paper rolls? And what is file 227B?’
No answer - though he must have heard me through the door. The man didn’t say a single word. But shortly after, a plink noise came from behind me, and I turned around only to see another missive from my master shooting out of the hole in the wall.
Stomping over to the desk, I grabbed it and read:
Mr Linton,
We are communicating via tiny paper rolls because this is the most efficient system of communication. And you should be able to find a file on your own if you want to keep your position.
Rikkard Ambrose