Read Chapter 29: Confrontation at the Vault

The study door slammed open and Foley’s men flooded in behind it, two of them grabbing Eleanor by the arms before she could move. Arthur raised his hands. The marble floor felt cold through his shoes. He’d been in tighter spots, but not many, and never with a woman who’d just saved his life standing beside him.

“Mr. Phelps.” The Baron’s voice came from the doorway, unhurried, amused. He stepped past Foley and his men in a tailored grey suit, a glass of champagne still in hand. “You’re quite persistent. I admire that, even when it’s inconvenient.”

Arthur kept his palms up. “You know my name.”

“I’ve known your name since the night you took my money from the train. You wore a signalman’s cap and moved like a man who didn’t want to be there. My people in the yards tell me things.”

“Then you know I was set up.”

The Baron smiled. It was a thin, practised thing. “I know you were useful. And now you’re here, in my house, with my sister no less. A family reunion. How touching.”

Eleanor twisted against the grip of the man holding her. “Let him go, Edward. This doesn’t have to end badly.”

“It already has.” The Baron gestured at Arthur. “Mr. Foley here has been watching you for weeks. You think you found him? He found you first.”

Foley stepped forward, a heavy revolver hanging loose in his hand. He was a big man, thick through the shoulders, with the flat eyes of a man who’d done hard things and slept fine afterward. “You’ve been a headache, Phelps. That business with the accountant cost me.”

“The accountant’s fine,” Arthur said. “He talks, but only to me.”

“He won’t talk to anyone now.”

Arthur’s stomach dropped. He forced his voice even. “So you killed him. Good. That’s one less witness for the trial.”

Foley’s mouth twitched. He liked that even less. Good.

The Baron set his champagne down on a side table and walked toward the panel behind his desk. “You’re stalling, Phelps. You want the vault. You want Foley’s ledger. You want to walk out of here clean.” He pressed his palm against a section of the wood paneling, and a rectangle of wall slid back with a soft pneumatic hiss. “The problem is, you don’t know what you’ve actually walked into.”

Inside the recessed vault was a steel door, three feet square, with a digital keypad glowing in six amber positions.

Arthur’s heart hammered. Six digits. The day his father died.

The Baron turned, fixing Arthur with that knowing look again. “Thirty-one years ago this November, a man named Thomas Phelps died on a raid in France. He was a good agent. He trusted the wrong people.” He glanced at Eleanor, and something cold passed between them. “Baron Private Press was built on that trust.”

Arthur’s mouth went dry. “You killed my father.”

“I didn’t. I sent him home from the war with money and a promise. He wanted to work legitimate. I let him think he could.” The Baron shrugged. “When he found out the press printed more than books, he got difficult. Foley handled the difficulty.”

Foley didn’t flinch.

Arthur lunged. Two of the men caught him before he made three steps, pinning his arms behind his back. He thrashed, but they were strong and dense as dock pilings.

“Easy,” the Baron murmured. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“You killed my father.” Arthur’s voice came out sandpaper rough.

“I did what was necessary. As I will now.” The Baron stepped toward the vault door. “Foley, take them both to the cellar. I’ll be on the road in an hour. I want this property clean when the police find it.”

Foley raised the revolver. For a moment, Arthur thought he meant to fire right there. Instead he motioned at two of his men. “You heard him. The woman too.”

The man holding Eleanor shoved her toward the door. She went without a fight, but her eyes locked on Arthur, and she gave a tiny shake of her head—not a warning. A signal.

Then the whole door behind Foley’s men burst open.

A waiter in a white jacket and black bow tie came through it at a full sprint, holding a silver tray like a battering ram. He caught the nearest of Foley’s men square in the chest and drove him into the far wall with a wet crack. Before anyone else could react, he dropped the tray, grabbed Foley’s gun hand, and twisted.

Eddie.

The revolver clattered to the marble floor. Eddie’s foot came up and caught Foley in the knee. Foley went down with a bellow.

Gunfire erupted from the doorway. More waiters—no, Eddie’s people, from the Irish crew, six of them—streamed into the study with pistols drawn. The Baron’s men scrambled for cover. The room dissolved into a chaos of shouts and pointed barrels and the sharp crack of shots fired high.

Arthur pulled free of his stunned captor and dove for Foley’s revolver. He came up with it in both hands, planted his feet, and saw Foley already rising, a knife in his fist.

“You should have stayed dead, Phelps,” Foley spat.

Arthur fired twice. The first shot took Foley in the shoulder, spinning him. The second took his chest. Foley hit the marble floor and stopped moving.

The Baron, meanwhile, had bolted for the open vault door. Arthur swung the revolver toward him, but the old man was already scrambling through, one hand slamming the keypad.

“Stop him!” Eleanor shouted.

The steel door was closing, and Arthur knew the code. The date. His father’s date.

“November the seventh!” Arthur yelled, but the Baron’s hand found the pad.

Then Eddie, wrenching a bottle of champagne off a side table, threw it in a high arc. It caught the Baron low in the back as he turned, sending him stumbling forward, off balance. His foot caught on the vault threshold. He pitched forward into the far wall of the inner chamber with a sickening, final crack of bone.

The Baron slid to the floor, neck bent at the wrong angle, and lay still.

The vault door clunked shut.

The room fell quiet. Twenty-five seconds of silence, broken only by ragged breathing. Arthur stood with the revolver still raised, Foley’s blood cooling on the floor at his feet.

Eleanor stepped forward, took a key from the Baron’s fallen jacket, and held it out to Arthur.

“That code you yelled,” she said. “Was it the right one?”

Arthur lowered the gun. “He won’t be needing it.” He took the key, walked to the vault door, and turned it. The panel slid open on a room full of money and a thick manila folder stamped with a red eagle.

The Baron lay inside, dead.

Arthur reached past him, grabbed the folder and a duffel of notes, and looked at Eddie, who was already bleeding from a cut above his eye, grinning like a man who hadn’t had this much fun in years.

“Time to go,” Eddie said.

Arthur nodded. The sirens were already starting to wail in the distance.