The cab drew up in front of the bank, and my stomach sank into my shoes. This was the moment of truth, and I had no more of a plan than I had wings to fly.
Then again, I’d flown with a djinni once. That djinni was back in my pocket now.
Maybe more was possible than I thought.
Unless I had to give him to Mr. Treazleton to save Father.
Would I? Would I give away my last wish, and place untold power into the hands of a rich, greedy, selfish, arrogant man? Think of the harm he could do! Make himself king, even!
But what choice did I have?
Maeve Merritt does not give in to bullies. She refuses to play their games.
Was that still true? Or was that the arrogance that had gotten me into such a deep mess?
The cabbie helped Sarah out of the cab, and she haggled with him over the fare, then paid him, while I climbed out. We both gawked at the marble columns that seemed to disappear into the clouds. Guarded by men in smart uniforms, decorated with grand carved doorways and windows, the bank felt like a fortress. A fortress guarding another, protected world—a world of men in important suits, carrying important papers, wielding important fortunes, moving important goods via ships and trains around the world.
All I had to storm the fortress was a tin of sardines.
“Do you know what you plan to say, then, Miss Maeve?” Sarah asked.
“Not a bit of it,” I told her. “Come on, let’s go.”
The guards watched us out of the corners of their eyes as we entered the bank. Without Sarah there, I’d be shooed away like a stray cat. Unchaperoned youths were about as welcome in banks as rats.
The inside of the bank was even more imposing than the outside. Chandeliers and gleaming furnishings. More columns, and granite floors. More guards and clerks, working silently by the light of flickering gas lamps in the cool dimness. The occasional clerk who puttered softly from one door to another, reverently, like a priest in an ancient temple.
“May I help you?”
A tall man in a black suit materialized at Sarah’s shoulder like an apparition. Judging from his wrinkles and his gravelly voice, he was probably a hundred and two. Possibly already dead.
“I’m looking for Mr. Edgar Pinagree,” I told him. “May I speak with him?”
The man’s eyes widened. “The director of the entire bank? Might I ask what is the nature of your business with him, before I inquire into his availability?”
I cleared my throat and tried to sound grown-up. “It’s a matter of private business involving Mr. Alfred P. Treazleton.”
Again the eyes widened. They seemed to have an infinite capacity for it.
“Mr. Pinagree is meeting with Mr. Treazleton at this very moment.”
“Inquire into his availability,” my eye. You knew that all along.
“Then it’s all the more important that I be shown in to speak with them.”
Sarah nodded. “That’s right. It’s very, very important.”
Our interrogator sniffed at our important business—our important feminine business, no doubt. “Your names, please?”
“Maeve?”
I looked up to see my father hurrying toward me as rapidly as a bank clerk is allowed to hurry in the financial sanctum. The sight of him gave me a little pang. He looked even more worn with worry than usual. Thinner, even, than he’d been just a short while ago at Christmas. Poor Dad.
He reached my side. He looked as happy to see me as he would be to greet, for example, my highly religious, scolding great-aunt.
“Maeve, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in school?”
“Pardon me,” said the deep-voiced man. “You know this young person?”
I’d swear I saw my father flinch. “She’s my daughter, Mr. Smithers.”
“Ah.” The man wrinkled his ancient nose. (Huge nostrils.) “She claimed to have urgent business with Mr. Pinagree and Mr. Treazleton.”
His gaze moved briefly to a wood-paneled door. Father’s gaze went there, too. The meeting location. I was sure of it.
My father stiffened. “Thank you, Mr. Smithers. I’ll take it from here.”
Father steered us toward the opposite end of the bank, to a small office, and gestured me inside. I smelled a trap. I wouldn’t go in.
“Maeve,” he whispered, “what is the meaning of this? Why aren’t you in school? Who is this person accompanying you?”
Sarah curtsied. “If you please, sir, I’m Sarah Trippin, and I’m newly in service at Miss Maeve’s school. I came to escort your daughter on an important errand.”
“I see. Er, thank you.”
Father gave up on trying to stuff me into the private closet. He pulled up a chair to see right into my eyes.
“What possible business could you have with the general manager of the bank, Maeve? And with Mr. Treazleton, a member of the board?” He blew out his breath. “Even I scarcely ever speak with Mr. Pinagree. Of late.” He sighed, then locked eyes with me. “Maeve, I forbid this. Whatever you’re planning, I forbid it. Go back to school right away.”
I took my father’s hand.
“I know you won’t understand this, Daddy,” I told him, “and there’s nothing I can do to explain it, but I promise you, I swear to you, that I need to do this. It’s for your good. For everyone’s.”
Father’s mouth hung open. He’d worn this same look of bafflement over the holidays whenever Evangeline tried to explain to him why a certain kind of costly silk fabric was absolutely, positively essential to a respectable Christian wedding.
He pulled himself together and drew me closer so he could whisper into my ear, out of Sarah’s hearing.
“This is hardly the place or the time for one of your schemes, Maeve,” he said. “Especially now. I can’t afford even the tiniest misstep with Mr. Pinagree. I’d be thrown out on my ear if my young daughter went waltzing in there, interrupting him with some cuckoo idea.”
My eyes stung. “You’ll be thrown out on your ear if I don’t, Father,” I told him. “Even now, we might be too late. Please don’t delay me any further.”
“Mr. Merritt,” Sarah said. “I have strong personal reasons for believing your daughter is telling the truth.”
My father wasn’t impressed by the intrusion, nor swayed by the opinion of a domestic servant and a stranger. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, then tucked it back into his pocket. When he spoke again, his voice was angry and hard.
“Now, you listen to me, Maeve,” he said. “That’s enough. Whatever you’re playing at, it ends now. My associates are starting to stare at me. I’m not here to hold picnics with my children during the workday. Go back to school this instant.” He glanced at Sarah. “I request you to accompany my daughter safely back to school.”
“Mr. Merritt?”
A clerk from a nearby office called to Father. He straightened up to answer him. He turned his back toward me.
I made a terrible decision.
I bolted and ran straight for the wood-paneled door.