A Strange Likeness. Paula Marshall

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at Alan in some surprise.

      ‘Good God, Ned, what are you doing here? Still wearing those dreadful clothes, I see. Lost all the Hatton money?’

      ‘I came to see how hard you businessmen work.’

      Alan’s imitation of Ned’s speech was perfect enough to deceive Johnstone.

      ‘Come into my office, then. Thought that I’d have a visitor waiting to see me. Some colonial savage—but he’s obviously given me a miss. Or he’s late. You can entertain me until he arrives.’

      Alan followed him into his office. It was little cleaner or tidier than the one which the clerks occupied.

      ‘Have a drink,’ offered Johnstone, going immediately to a tantalus on a battered sideboard. ‘Must get ready for Baby Bear.’

      ‘Not in the morning,’ said Alan, still using Ned’s voice.

      ‘T’isn’t morning,’ said Johnstone, sitting down and swallowing his brandy in one gulp. ‘By God, that’s better. Hair of the dog. But have it your way, Ned.’

      ‘I fully intend to,’ returned Alan, in his own voice this time. He rose abruptly: now to do the Patriarch on him. He leaned forward, seized Johnstone by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet with a jerk. He let go of the astonished man and stood back.

      ‘Stand up when you speak to me, you idle devil!’

      His cold ferocity, so unlike Ned Hatton’s easy charm, was frightening in itself. Coming from someone with Ned’s face it was also overpoweringly disconcerting.

      ‘You aren’t Ned!’ squeaked Johnstone, beginning to sit down again.

      ‘How perceptive of you. No, I’m not. And stand up when Baby Bear speaks to you.’

      ‘Oh, by God, you weren’t Ned Hatton last night, were you?’

      ‘No, I wasn’t Ned Hatton last night, either. I am your employer, Tom Dilhorne’s son Alan, come over without his chains to find out what has gone wrong with the London end of the business. I only needed to look at you to find out. Would you care to explain how a worthless fine gentleman like yourself came to be in charge here?’

      ‘But why do you look exactly like Ned Hatton? Are you his cousin?’

      Alan surveyed Johnstone wearily. ‘No, I’m not his cousin. It’s just a strange likeness, that’s all. Pure chance. And I’m not a pigeon for the plucking like poor Ned, either—which you found out last night.’

      ‘Doosed bad form that, pretending to be Ned Hatton.’

      ‘You called me Ned first. You were so dam’d eager to fleece him that you couldn’t look at him properly. You haven’t answered my question.’

      ‘What question?’

      Alan sighed. ‘How you came to be in charge here? Good God man, where’s your memory?’

      ‘I was Jack Montagu’s friend. He knew I needed to find work so he made me the manager here when he married his heiress.’

      ‘I suppose you think that you’ve been working. Good God, man, you don’t know the meaning of the word, but you will by the time that I’ve finished with you.

      ‘I want to inspect all your books and papers. I want to interview every clerk in your employment, see all contracts, bills of sale, be given a full account of all transactions, wages, rents, and what you’re paying for this hole—it had better be cheap. In short, I want a full account of the whole business, and I want everything ready for inspection by ten of the clock tomorrow. Not ten-thirty, mind, but ten. You take me, I’m sure.’

      This last sentence was delivered in a savage imitation of Johnstone’s own gentlemanly drawl.

      Johnstone blenched. ‘I can’t, Dilhorne, you’re mad.’

      ‘Sir, to you,’ said Alan, in the Patriarch’s hardest voice. ‘You can and you will, or it will be the worse for you.’

      ‘Good God, sir, it will take all night.’

      ‘Then take all night. You and the rest of the idlers in the other room have wasted enough of the firm’s time and money. Now you can make some of it up.’

      Johnstone sank back into his chair, his face grey.

      ‘I didn’t give you leave to sit, you idle devil. You’ll remain standing until I leave.’

      Mutinously Johnstone rose, silently consigning all sandy-haired young Australians to the deepest pit of Hell.

      ‘Now mind me,’ said Alan pleasantly. ‘You’ll jump when I say jump, and you’ll say please nicely when I ask you to if you don’t want instant dismissal. And if you think that Baby Bear plays a rough hand I can’t recommend you to meet Father Bear. He’d not only eat your porridge, he’d eat you, too.’

      He strolled into the outer office, leaving behind him a stunned and shaken man. The clerk, quite unaware of what had taken place in Johnstone’s room, gave him yet another insolent grin, and said, ‘Got your interview, did you? Not long, was it?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Alan sweetly. He looked judiciously at the clerk, registered his leer, leaned forward, picked up his inkwell and slowly poured its contents over the page of ill-written figures which the clerk had been carelessly copying from various invoices, receipts and notes of hand.

      ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ yelped the clerk. ‘That’s my morning’s work ruined.’

      ‘Well, you ruined my morning’s work,’ said Alan reasonably, head on one side, surveying the havoc he had wrought. ‘You can do it again, legibly this time.’

      He turned and shouted at the door behind him, ‘Johnstone! Come here at once!’

      To the clerk’s astonishment the door opened and a respectful Johnstone appeared.

      ‘Sir?’ he said to Alan, and the office fell silent at the sound.

      ‘What is this man’s name?’ asked Alan.

      He still had the inkwell in his hand and he leisurely began to pour the remains of the ink on to the clerk’s head. The clerk let out another strangled yelp and looked reproachfully through the black rain, first at Alan and then at the subservient Johnstone.

      ‘Phipps,’ Johnstone said. ‘Nathaniel Phipps.’

      ‘Phipps,’ said Alan thoughtfully. ‘Dirty, isn’t he?’ He critically surveyed the ruined ledger and the ink dripping down Phipps’s face.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Johnstone nervously.

      ‘You did it,’ squealed Phipps at Alan. ‘He did it, Mr Johnstone. Not I.’

      “‘You did it, sir,” is the correct usage,’ said Alan, putting down the empty inkwell. ‘Say it after me, please.’

      ‘Mr Johnstone, sir,’ roared Phipps desperately. ‘Please stop this СКАЧАТЬ