“I’ll give you a day extra. If you can’t scare up the money, I’ll have to pay your father a visit. He owns the law firm Jebkin and Jebkin on Fleet Street, am I right?”
Percival swallowed. “No. I mean—yes, he does, but do not speak to him, please. There must be another way.”
“I think there might be,” Jack interjected. He’d kept deliberately quiet up to this point. He needed the man to be desperate. “How about I agree to buy your debt from Mr. Brandt in exchange for a small service?”
“Anything! What do you want me to do?”
Jack leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Well, it so happens, I’m in need of some information.”
“What sort of information?”
“The sort you keep stored in the offices of Jebkin and Jebkin.”
“Impossible,” Percival said. “I am only a clerk. I don’t have the authority.”
“You don’t need authority, only access.”
“What do you want access to?”
“The will of a dead man.”
Percival blinked. “Who is the man?”
“One Edward Knoll. A wealthy merchant banker who died in a carriage accident a year before my birth, in 1839.”
“1839? I would need to dig through the archives.”
“Is that a problem?”
Percival shifted in his seat. “I don’t know. If my father ever discovered that I betrayed his trust—”
“I think you’ve already done as much, don’t you?” Jack kept his voice icy. He wanted Percival to understand he meant to show him no mercy.
Percival tugged at his cravat as if it choked him. “It will have to be before my father returns from Nottinghamshire.”
“The sooner the better. I’ll need to view the original will, and I’ll want a copy made for myself. Have it ready for me on Monday morning at dawn; that should give us sufficient time before the other clerks arrive, I presume?”
“And you’ll forgive my debt?” Percival asked.
“Forgive? No, but I will allow you significant leeway in how or when you pay what you owe.”
Percival nodded and shrank back in his seat.
“Excellent!” Jack turned to Brandt and raised his whiskey glass. “Then, I believe we have a deal.”
“We sure do,” Brandt said and raised his glass to toast Jack.
Chapter Six
Yet ofttimes in his maddest mirthfulmood,
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold’sbrow,
As if the memory of some deadlyfeud
Or disappointed passion lurkedbelow:
—Byron,“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”
