A Change of Heir Read Online Free PDF

hostile speech.
    ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘are you really being all that bright? You take a lot of trouble with false beards and noses and whatever, and then you haul me in here in the sight of the whole place. It doesn’t make sense.’
    ‘My dear man, it’s perfectly all right. Nobody here will bother about us. The important thing was to leave a cold trail at that other place. It was the address, you know, that I gave your friend Falsetto. Not that anybody is going to get at Falsetto. Still, one can’t be too careful. Not with the stakes as high as they are. Don’t you agree? But here we’re quite all right. A respectable resident, you might say, entertaining – well, entertaining his younger brother. Waiter – I don’t think much of these as Martinis. Bring two more of the same size.’
    This speech had an odd and powerful effect on Gadberry. For a moment he couldn’t place it at all. He stared again at Comberford, and suddenly the truth came to him. The reference to a younger brother had revealed it. The person Comberford reminded him of was himself. They must indeed be almost as alike as identical twins. He’d been searching gropingly for the memory of somebody he rather liked and decidedly didn’t trust. Of course that person was himself. It was a description that fitted him perfectly.
    He took yet another look at Comberford, and saw that he was a distinctly handsome man. This was gratifying as far as it went. He saw too that ‘identical twins’ was a little wide of the mark. Comberford was older than he was – perhaps by eight, certainly by five years.
    It was fantastic! The sense of being in a bizarre situation produced in Gadberry a renewed sense of alarm.
    But it also attracted him, just as Comberford himself did. Sitting around Ma Lapin’s, waiting for something that didn’t happen, and waiting as often as not without even the price of a drink: this had made of late a pretty dull sort of life. It had made a duller life, certainly, than is at all tolerable at twenty-seven. So now he steadied himself by drinking his Martini – all at a go, since another was on the way – and addressed Comberford with at least a moderated hostility.
    ‘I don’t know what this is about,’ he said. ‘But aren’t you taking a bloody lot for granted? You go to this chap Falsetto, and you rake through hundreds of photographs until you see something like your own face staring at you. It happens to be mine, and you know nothing about me. But you take it for granted that I can be hired for whatever funny business is in your head.’
    ‘So you can, old boy.’
    ‘I’ll thank you not to call me “old boy”.’ Gadberry marked with satisfaction the arrival of the second round of Martinis. They prompted him, indeed, to a return to truculence. ‘I have to bandy that stuff with Falsetto and his sort. But I’ll be damned if I’ll be old-boyed by you.’
    ‘All right, George. I suppose I may call you George? For the time being, that is. It isn’t much of a name, if you ask me. You could find a better one.’
    ‘And I don’t like this stupid talk about names. First about Gadberry, and then about George.’ Gadberry took a gulp of his second Martini. ‘Weren’t you taught one doesn’t make jokes about people’s names?’
    ‘That’s fine, George!’ There was genuine satisfaction in Comberford’s voice. ‘You had a nursery, hadn’t you? And then a schoolroom, and then a prep school, and then Harrow or Rugby or whatever, after that? All the works, just as I had. And that’s a great relief. You see, Falsetto’s dossier – would it be called that? – didn’t run to information of that kind. And it would be no good if you were some sort of jumped-up prole. The old girl simply wouldn’t take it.’
    ‘Who the devil is this old girl you keep on talking about?’
    ‘Drink up, old boy. George, I mean. No heel-taps. And now we’ll go up and have lunch.’
     
    The lunch was a good one. To Gadberry, whose