A Strange Likeness. Paula MarshallЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 madman.’
‘Madman? Tut-tut,’ said Alan. ‘And if I am mad you’ve driven me into that condition, what with making me wait over two hours in a dam’d uncomfortable chair and enduring your insolence while I did so. I’ve a short fuse, which anyone who works for me soon finds out.’
This was a lie, but Phipps was too agitated to care.
‘Works for you! I don’t work for you! I work for Mr Johnstone.’
‘And he works for me,’ said Alan gently. He picked up the clerk’s quill pen, and with the whole office and Johnstone watching him silently, breath drawn in, he rolled it in the ink and negligently wrote his initials on Phipps’s forehead.
‘Yes, he works for me, and so do you now. You’re mine, Phipps. Alan Dilhorne’s property so long as you’re in this room. Unless, of course, you care to resign.’
The silence in the room grew more deathly, broken only by the clerk’s whimpering while he scrubbed at his face with his handkerchief. ‘This can’t be true, Mr Johnstone.’
‘Oh, but it is,’ said Alan. ‘Now clean up your disgusting person and your disgraceful work and do it again: properly this time.’
‘It’s not fair,’ said Phipps tearfully. ‘You should have told me who you were.’
Alan’s face was suddenly like stone. ‘Ah, but you see, I needed to know how you would treat someone whom you didn’t know was your employer’s son, and I found out, didn’t I. Didn’t I, Phipps? And if you can’t see what was wrong with what you’ve just said, then we shall never get Dilhorne and Sons’ London branch straight again, shall we?’
He swung round and addressed his staring staff. ‘The rest of you can get down to it immediately, and do an honest day’s work for once. You’re none of you fit to work in my Sydney office. Mr Johnstone will tell you what I expect of you by tomorrow, and God help you all if it’s not ready by ten.’
He walked to the door before turning and delivering his parting shot.
‘Oh, and by the by, mid-morning porter is out, from today!’
Chapter Two
T hat afternoon Eleanor left the schoolroom, where she had been working with Charles and young Mr Dudley, and decided that, four-thirty being almost upon her, she would not trouble to change her clothes in order to meet Ned’s Australian friend. She was still wearing her deep blue walking dress and that would have to do.
She had reached the last step of the graceful staircase which spiralled to the top of the house when she met Staines, the butler. He bowed and said ‘Mr Ned is in the drawing room, Miss Eleanor, awaiting his friend, and asks you to join him there.’
Somehow Eleanor gained the impression that he was enjoying a small private joke. She immediately dismissed this notion as fanciful and walked across the stone-flagged hall to the drawing room door.
She should have trusted to her instincts. Ned had spent the afternoon avoiding her. He had also given orders to Staines for Mr Alan Dilhorne to be taken straight to the small drawing room with the message that Mr Ned Hatton would shortly join him there.
He had taken care to tell Staines of the likeness and to warn him not to inform anyone else of it before Alan arrived.
‘For,’ he had said ingenuously, ‘I wish to tease the family a little and you must not spoil the fun.’
Staines had agreed to be discreet. All the servants liked Ned: he was so easy, jolly and kind, although some worried what would happen to the Hatton fortune when Sir Hart had gone to his last rest.
Eleanor said over her shoulder to Staines, in a sudden access of her old impetuous spirit, ‘Australian, is he? D’you think he’ll be wearing his chains?’
Staines, bowing his head again, opened the double doors for her, and she entered the drawing room to find not the Australian guest but Ned, standing in front of the fireplace studying Lawrence’s portrait of Great-Aunt Almeria in her youth, which hung above it.
Eleanor resembled her father’s aunt a little, but Almeria Stanton was sterner-looking, and even her airy draperies and the posy of flowers which she was holding did not soften her austere expression. Ned had his sandy head tipped back, the better to inspect it, which struck Eleanor as amusing—as did the outlandish clothes he was wearing.
She gaily continued teasing him when he turned towards her, his back to the light so that his features were a little obscured. ‘Wearing fancy dress so as not to discommode your new friend, are you, Ned? Why didn’t you put chains on, too? Then he would have felt really at home.’
Ned looked at her. His eyes seemed bluer than ever, and they roved over her in a manner which, had he not been Ned, would have made her blush.
Alan found her enchanting. She did not resemble Ned in the least, either in manner or appearance. She was a tall girl, beautifully proportioned, elegantly dressed, from the crown of her glossy head to the toes of her well-shod feet. Ned had spoken of a sister and this must be her. Her colouring was deeper and richer than Ned’s and her hair was a raven-black in colour.
It was very plain that naughty Ned had told her of a visitor from Australia but had not seen fit to mention the likeness. His mouth twitched in involuntary amusement, but before he could identify himself Eleanor spoke again.
‘I understand that you’re taking him to Cremorne Gardens. Tell me, don’t you think that your colonial friend will be overset by such worldly sophistication?’
Before she could commit herself further, and add to her ultimate embarrassment,