A Strange Likeness

‘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 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.