A Strange Likeness (3 page)

By the end of a couple of hours, though, they were all frowning. Stupid Ned Hatton was having the devil's own luck, and was far in advance of the game, having consistently won despite muttering and moaning, losing his cards and once depositing all his gaming counters on the floor.

‘Hands and knees business, again,' he announced
cheerfully. ‘Rising like Venus from the waves,' he drunkenly told them all, before he began winning again. In his last hand, before he broke Johnstone completely, he even Rubiconed him—a feat rarely performed.

‘By God, Ned, you've got the cards tonight,' exclaimed Johnstone, unable to credit that it was skill and not luck which was defeating him.

‘Fool's luck,' muttered Alan, picking up yet another of Johnstone's IOUs with shaking hands. His father's tuition and his own mathematical skills, honed by several years of running the money-lending side of his father's business, gave him a good edge over most card players—even those as skilful as Johnstone, who was obviously unused to losing.

Towards the end Alan began to suspect that Johnstone's friend was shrewd enough to guess that there was something odd about Ned Hatton that night, and when Lloyd's game came to an end, with him as winner, Alan announced that he was too tired to continue. Since Johnstone had also had enough, they finished playing in the early hours of the morning.

Stone-cold sober, as he had been all along, Alan was careful to stagger out of Rosie's some little distance behind Johnstone and his friends. The Haymarket was alive with light and noise—he was in the midst of the
demi-monde
about which his father had warned him. Chance and his strange resemblance to Ned Hatton had brought him here—and had also given him a strange opportunity.

He laughed to himself all the way to Brown's. Not only would he be better prepared to meet Johnstone in the morning, but he was relishing the prospect of watching the other man's reaction when someone with Ned Hatton's face walked into Dilhorne and Sons' London office.

And in the afternoon he was due to visit Stanton House off Piccadilly. It should be an interesting day.

Although perhaps not quite so surprising as the one just past!

 

‘You're up early today,' Eleanor Hatton commented to a yawning Ned, who had come down for breakfast in the middle of the morning and not at its end.

He took a long look at her and said inconsequentially, ‘I still can't get used to how much you've changed.'

Eleanor smiled somewhat ruefully. She was remembering the first occasion on which Ned had visited Stanton House after her great-aunt Almeria had taken her over. She had only been away from Yorkshire for three months—the longest three months of her life, she had thought at the time.

At first she had fought and argued in her determination not to be turned into a fine lady. She had hated London and longed for her carefree life in the country. Worst of all had been to be told to forget notions of educating herself beyond the mere demands of most fashionable women's lives.

Finally she had confronted her great-aunt with an ultimatum. ‘If you will allow me to spend a few hours each week with Charles and his tutor, Mr Dudley, then I will agree to be groomed for the life of a fine young lady. Otherwise…' And she had shrugged.

Almeria Stanton, faced with a will as strong as her own, had capitulated.

‘A bargain then,' her aunt had agreed, amused by Eleanor's strange mixture of learning, and athleticism, both qualities totally unsuitable for the lady of fashion which she was destined to be.

Charles was Lady Stanton's grandson, a lively twelve-
year-old who had been left behind in England when his soldier father had been ordered to India. His tutor, an earnest young man, had been pleased to teach her once Eleanor had proved that her interest in learning was genuine. He had also, much against his will, fallen in love with the lively young woman who was so far beyond his reach.

Eleanor kept her promise. Ned, meeting her again after nearly two years, had barely recognised her. She had entered the room where he'd been reading the
Morning Post
, stripped off her gloves, pulled off her poke-bonnet to reveal her fashionably dressed hair, and smiled at him in the cool, impersonal way she had learned from her great-aunt.

‘Oh, Ned, how nice to see you,' she'd murmured, graciously offering him two fingers and her cheek.

Ned had been lost between admiration and horror. Where had tomboy Nell gone to?

‘Good God, sister, what have they done to you?'

‘I'm a lady now, Ned. I've had my come-out and two proposals of marriage. Both unsuitable, I hasten to add. I've also got a marquess dangling after me. Not that I care about
him
; he's as old as the hills.'

Almeria had surveyed her transformed charge approvingly. ‘Well done, my dear—although we could have done without the bit about the Marquess.'

‘Well done?' Ned had exclaimed scornfully. ‘What do you think that Stacy will have to say about this?' He had flipped his hand derisively in his sister's direction. ‘I thought that you, at least, were a girl of sense. Never thought that propriety would overtake you, Nell.'

‘Eleanor,' she'd said automatically, colouring faintly and moving away from him. ‘Nell's days are over. Sir Hart was right. My behaviour was not proper. In any case, I have to leave now. I need to change for Lady Lyttelton's soirée.'

‘Oh, you'll come about, I'm sure,' Ned had said uneasily, but she hadn't. Some of their old rapport had returned, but the Nell who had romped with Ned, Nat and Stacy had gone for ever.

Now, sitting opposite to her, months later, drinking coffee and nursing a thick head after the previous evening's debauchery, he asked, somewhat blearily, ‘Going to be in this afternoon, Eleanor?'

She looked up from her plate. ‘I shall be with Charles and his tutor until four-thirty, and then I'm free. Why?'

‘I've invited an Australian friend I made last night to meet me here around half past four. I promised to take him to Cremorne Gardens this evening. Thought that you might like to meet him before we go.'

He did not say so, but Ned was hoping to play a jolly jape—his words—on his sister when Alan arrived. It was all that she deserved for turning herself into such a fashionable prig.

‘An Australian?' said Almeria Stanton doubtfully. ‘Is he a gentleman, Ned?'

‘As much as I am,' returned Ned ambiguously. ‘Which isn't saying much, I know. But I think that you'll like the look of him.'

He laughed to himself when he said this, and watched Nell rise gracefully from the table. She and Great-Aunt Almeria were about to spend the morning shopping in Bond Street, an occupation which the Nell who had once been Ned's boon companion would have rejected completely.

Never mind that, though. Ned nearly choked over his coffee when he thought of the shock she would get when she met Alan Dilhorne. He wondered idly what his new friend might be doing on this bright and shining early summer morning.

 

Alan was enjoying himself by combining business with pleasure. He rose early, ate a large breakfast and arrived at Dilhorne and Sons' London office promptly at ten. They were situated in one of the rabbit warren of streets in the City, at the far end of a filthy alley. This appeared to signify nothing, since several of the dingy offices sported brass plates bearing the names of businesses equally if not more famous than Dilhorne's.

He still wore his disgraceful clothes, and the clerk in the outer office gave him a look which could only be called insolent.

‘Yes?' he drawled, not even putting down his quill pen. His contemptuous look dismissed this poorly dressed anonymous young man.

‘I have an appointment with Mr George Johnstone at ten of the clock,' Alan announced without preamble.

‘Doubt it.' The clerk's drawl was more insolent than ever. ‘He never gets in before ten thirty, mostly not until eleven.'

‘Indeed.'

Alan looked around the untidy, disordered 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.

‘I'll wait,' he offered, a trifle timidly.

‘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?'

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.'