The Black Cabinet Read Online Free Page B

spoilt. I prefer him to his mistress anyhow.”
    Michael made a face.
    â€œPretty steep, isn’t she? I’ve never been called such names in my life. Thank goodness, I’ve only got another week of it.”
    â€œHave you given notice?” asked Chloe demurely. “Or—or is it the other way round?” His eyes twinkled. He had rather nice little creases round them. Chloe liked the way they wrinkled up when he laughed.
    â€œOh, I don’t belong to her,” he said. “I’m driving my own car for a firm—just to get the hang of things whilst I’m marking time,—and she came in the other day, and said she’d got an impertinent nincompoop of a chauffeur who’d smashed her car and gone off at a moment’s notice. She wanted us to put it right and give her another car and ‘a really reliable man’ meanwhile, because she was just going off to pay a round of visits. I’m the really reliable man, worse luck. I don’t wonder the other poor chap got desperate and smashed the car.”
    Miss Tankerville swept back into the room, bearing a heavy Victorian album with gilt clasps. She laid it on Michael’s knees, and sat down beside him.
    â€œDearest Maud at fourteen,” she said, breathlessly. “No, not that one: that’s Fanny Latimer who made that very sad marriage—but there, we won’t talk about it; it’s better not. And this is Judith Elliott who was your mother’s great friend. She went to Hong Kong, and married an American—a very accomplished girl, though too fond of reading novels. And this—now this is a really good photograph, a most excellent group of our croquet team, taken in the summer of 1897. No, your mother’s not in it, I’m afraid; but that girl in the middle is Emily Longwood who used to be quite a friend of hers; and the one next to her is Daisy Anderson—or is it Milly? Now, that’s really very stupid of me.” She turned the page to the light, and the pince-nez fell with a clatter. “Very stupid of me,” she murmured as she disentangled them from the watch-chain and replaced them on her nose, “very stupid indeed; but, d’you know, I can’t be sure which of the Anderson twins played in that croquet tournament. I think it was Daisy; but, on the other hand, it may have been Milly, because I think she really was the better player of the two.” She turned another page.
    Chloe caught Michael’s eye for an instant. And a little spark of something seemed to dance between them. She looked away again at once. The interminable string of names flowed on.

Chapter V
    Michael wrote that night to his mother:
    â€œDarling Mum,—
    â€œI’m feeling so virtuous that I must blow my own trumpet. Instead of skulking in by-ways, I boldly accosted the Tank in the High Street—absolutely walked into her very jaws and said, ‘How d’you do?’ And of course she asked me to tea. After a frightful struggle with myself, I went; and we looked at school albums for two solid hours, sitting side by side on the sofa. There were some perfectly appalling photos of you. My hat! What clothes women wore in the nineties! I’m glad you don’t look like that now—only please don’t shingle your hair, or I shall go back to Africa, and never come home any more.
    â€œI’ve practically made up my mind to put Uncle Horace’s money into the firm I’m working for now. I like ’em better than the other people, and you do get to know the ropes a bit when you’re behind the scenes. I shall carry on as cabby for a bit longer though. As I shall probably never have any more capital than this, I’m going to be horribly cautious. It was frightfully decent of the old fellow to think of me.
    â€œBy the way, there was a most awfully pretty girl at the Tank’s—an old pupil like you, but a little more recent. At present I feel as if