A Strange Likeness Read Online Free PDF Page A

room, and listened to the staff chattering together instead of working. He noted the clerk’s languid manner and the idle way in which he entered figures into a dog-eared ledger. He reminded himself that his father, always known to his family as the Patriarch, had sent him to England with instructions to find out what was going wrong with the London end of the business.
    He wondered grimly what the Patriarch would do in this situation. Something devious, probably, like not announcing who he was in order to discover exactly how inefficient the business had become. Yes, that was it. They could hang themselves, so to speak, in front of him. Yes, deviousness was the order of the day.
    â€˜I’ll wait,’ he offered, a trifle timidly.
    â€˜I shouldn’t,’ said the clerk, grinning at Alan’s deplorable trousers. ‘He won’t see you without an appointment—and I’ve no note of one here.’
    Alan forbore to say that, judging by the mismanagement he could see in the office and its slovenly appearance, the clerk’s list might be neither accurate nor reliable.
    Time crawled by. When the clock struck eleven the clerk looked at Alan and said, ‘Still with us, then?’
    â€˜Nothing better to do.’ Alan was all shy, juvenile charm, which the clerk treated as shy, juvenile charm should be treated by a man of the world: with contempt.
    â€˜Pity.’ The clerk’s sympathy was non-existent.
    Everyone stopped work at eleven-thirty. One of the junior clerks was sent out for porter. Alan looked around, identified where the privy might be, used it, and came back again to take up his post before the clerk’s desk.
    â€˜Thought you’d gone,’ tittered one of the younger men, currying favour with the older ones, waving his pot of porter at him.
    No one offered Alan porter. He resisted the urge to give the jeering young man a good kick and sat back in his uncomfortable chair.
    It was twelve-fifteen by the clock when George Johnstone entered, blear-eyed and yawning. The clerk waved a careless hand at Alan. ‘Young gentleman to see you, Mr Johnstone.’
    Johnstone looked at Alan in some surprise.
    â€˜Good God, Ned, what are you doing here? Still wearing those dreadful clothes, I see. Lost all the Hatton money?’
    â€˜I came to see how hard you businessmen work.’
    Alan’s imitation of Ned’s speech was perfect enough to deceive Johnstone.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Have a drink,’ offered Johnstone, going immediately to a tantalus on a battered sideboard. ‘Must get ready for Baby Bear.’
    â€˜Not in the morning,’ said Alan, still using Ned’s voice.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜You aren’t Ned!’ squeaked Johnstone, beginning to sit down again.
    â€˜How perceptive of you. No, I’m not. And stand up when Baby Bear speaks to you.’
    â€˜Oh, by God, you weren’t Ned Hatton last night, were you?’
    â€˜No, I wasn’t Ned Hatton last