Twelve Minutes to Midnight by Christopher Edge Read Free Book Online Page B

you next see Montgomery Flinch, please give him this.” He handed Penelope his card. “Tell him the Pall Mall Gazette would very much like the courtesy of speaking to him to check a few facts, else we might have to run a less than flattering story.” 
    Penelope looked down at the card in her hand.
    Mr Robert Barrett
    Arts and Entertainments Correspondent
    Pall Mall Gazette
    2 Northumberland Street
    Strand, London
    Pulling the collar of his coat tight against the early morning chill, the journalist turned and headed down the stone steps. As he reached the bottom, he glanced back up at Penelope.
    “By the way, it was a clever trick you pulled the other night at the theatre,” he said begrudgingly. “Speaking up for Flinch like that – you had everybody fooled. I wonder what they would have said, though, if they knew he was your uncle.”
    Penny’s smile cracked. The lies she had spun to bring Montgomery Flinch to life now had her trapped in their web.
    “That’s ridiculous,” she spluttered. “Who told you that?”
    Barrett tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.
    “A good journalist never reveals his sources,” he replied, a wry smile creeping across his face. “But when the bestselling author in Britain pays a visit to Bedlam, well, let’s just say people start to talk.” He tipped his hat as he turned away. “Goodbye, Miss Tredwell.”
    Penelope stood frozen for a second, her knuckles whitening around the door handle. Then she slammed the door shut on Barrett’s departing figure, a scowl splitting her own face in reply.
    “Problem?” her guardian asked as Penelope stomped across the office and flung herself into the chair behind her desk.
    Penny shook her head in defiance as she reached for a fresh sheet of foolscap paper.
    “Only that journalist from the Gazette, he’s still digging around for tittle-tattle about Montgomery Flinch. It’s nothing that a warning letter to his editor won’t solve.”
    Wigram’s forehead creased into its habitual frown, his hooded eyes narrowing as he watched Penelope start to draft her letter.
    “I really don’t think you should rise to the provocations of the gutter press.” He sighed. “I did warn you that giving Montgomery Flinch a more public profile might draw some unwelcome attention.”
    Penny looked up from her letter, her fountain pen poised in mid-flow above the paper.
    “But we had to do something. Since we published Flinch’s first story in The Penny Dreadful , the other magazines have been scrambling to keep up with our sales – sending their authors on publicity tours, public readings, even signing sessions. We couldn’t risk the public forgetting about Montgomery Flinch.”
    “I don’t think there’s any chance of that,” her guardian replied with a droll half-smile. “Have you seen the latest sales figures for the December editions?”
    He pushed the ledger he had been studying across to Penny’s desk. Setting her letter to one side, she picked up the ledger, her eyes quickly scanning across the rows of titles and figures.
    “ Pearson’s Magazine – 200,000 copies sold to date, The Boy’s Own Paper – 250,000, The Strand – 350,000 – and that’s with the latest Conan Doyle story.” Penny paused, her eyes flashing in a double take across the page. “ The Penny Dreadful – 750,000 copies. That’s three quarters of a million!”
    “And there’s still ten days to go before Christmas,” Wigram replied. “When the sales from the provinces are added in, we could be looking at our first million-seller. We’ve gone to a seventeenth print run already.”
    A disbelieving grin spread across Penny’s face, her green eyes sparkling with pleasure. The Penny Dreadful in a million homes! When she’d first taken over the magazine after her father’s death, her only wish had been to keep his memory alive in its pages, a tribute to his unfulfilled dreams of literary stardom. But ever since she’d taken on the pen name of