Ten Star Clues

by E. R. Punshon

  “It might be,” Mr. Longden said thoughtfully, “that he feels he must stand by his friend. If it is that, it’s rather fine. The act of a very honest man and a very true friend.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” agreed Sophy enthusiastically. “I think it’s awfully wonderful,” and she added obstinately:— “I do hope they prove he is a fraud and I expect they will, too.”

  “My dear child, you must be reasonable,” protested Mr. Longden, “when his grandparents—”

  “They haven’t seen him for years and years,” interrupted Sophy, “and what’s more he isn’t a bit happy or comfortable, and he’s as nervous and jumpy as he can be, and he’s always drinking, and he keeps looking over his shoulder as if he thought there was a policeman there, and what’s more, he’s most awfully scared of Anne.” Sophy grew reckless. She threw all thoughts of penance to the winds. She said:—“He thinks she means to marry him and he’s frightened to death.”

  “Sophy,” said Mr. Longden in what for him was a terrible voice, “you must not say such things. Have you forgotten Miss Anne is engaged to Ralph?”

  “No,” retorted Sophy, quite bewildered to find herself sticking up for her own opinion in a way that until now she simply wouldn’t have believed possible, “I haven’t, but I think she has. I don’t understand her a bit. I admired her so awfully, and now it’s all a muddle. She may be only trying to find out things. Mr. Bertram and she were talking ever so long together last night.”

  “Very wise of her,” declared Mr. Longden. “Very wise indeed. I trust she may be able to bring Ralph to a more reasonable state of mind, and I do hope and trust he won’t do anything rash or foolish, anything really to offend his uncle. You can understand how terribly upset he is. You can understand what a terrible shock and surprise it has been. But he must face the facts like the true, honest fellow he is.”

  Sophy did not answer, but she felt an instant conviction that Ralph did indeed intend to face the facts; though whether in a way her father would approve, seemed to her less certain.

  “Has Mr. Arthur Hoyle said anything?” he asked presently.

  “No,” Sophy answered. “But he is always there now. He comes in every day. He keeps trying to ask me questions. No one else, only me. I just say I don’t know, and I don’t.” She paused and looked uncomfortable, for something else was in her mind, something uncharitable, ‘catty’, something that ought never to have occurred to her. She didn’t know what had come over her since Bertram’s arrival. She seemed only to be able to see the worst side of everything. All the same it came out: “He makes you think he’s planning something secret. He said such a strange thing yesterday. He said no one knew now where they were, or whether they were standing on their head or their heels, and most likely it would turn out presently he was the heir himself, and then he would propose to me and we should be Earl and Countess Wych. I was so angry. I thought it was such a vulgar joke, and I told him so, and not a bit funny, either.”

  “It was a display of very bad manners,” pronounced Mr. Longden, looking this time really annoyed. “Most regrettable.”

  “I believe he thinks it’s all some sort of fraud,” Sophy continued. “I’m sure he doesn’t think Mr. Bertram is the real Mr. Bertram. Only why should that make Mr. Arthur the heir?”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Longden answered, and suddenly he was afraid, and when he looked at Sophy again he saw that she also was afraid.

  CHAPTER V

  BUNCHES OF KEYS

  During this time, while there were gathering in the east the war clouds of the coming storm, there was going on a languid, half amused, half bored preparation, often looked upon as a kind of play acting or pageantry, serving as an agreeable break in the routine of everyday life.

  On a day subsequent to that on which Mr. Longden had held with his daughter a conversation he still remembered as disturbing to a degree, there was to be held in the village parish hall a meeting concerning possible evacuation plans.

  According to the usual habits of officialdom all the world over, entirely contradictory instructions had been received from headquarters. One set of officials evidently regarded Brimpton Wych as an evacuation area, since it was so near the great industrial centre of Midwych, and the department would therefore be glad to know what arrangements were being made for the dispatch of the children to a safe district, preferably on the south-east coast, where the children would have the benefit of the sea air. Clacton was suggested as highly suitable. Other equally highly placed officials, however, had as evidently got down Brimpton Wych as a reception area, since it was so far from London, and wished to know at once what steps were being taken to billet the children sent there in the event of an ‘emergency’—at this time it was still considered that to use the word ‘war’ was shockingly bad taste.

  Mr. Longden was to preside at this meeting, whereat also Midwych representatives would be present. In connection with one or two preliminary details he called at the Wych Estate office to see Ralph, who for his part was working continuously on the various schemes for increased food production the Ministry of Agriculture was showering upon him by almost every post—not to mention those that arrived by ’phone and by telegraph, many of them of course entirely incompatible with all the others. And any one who has ever had to try to persuade a farmer to cultivate his land other than in his own way and time, can guess what kind of a life Ralph was now leading. Especially as not one single farmer believed for a moment that war was coming, or that, even if it did, there would be any necessity to do much more than sit tight behind the Maginot Line and the British Navy until Germany had got tired of allowing that mountebank, Hitler, to prance about in his big boots.

  Ralph was as busy as usual when Mr. Longden appeared, but a trifle relieved that at any rate this interview was not going to be an effort to induce some slow thinking farmer to follow the advice of a London official, entirely and ridiculously ignorant of the difference between the lower field and the ten acre patch, not even knowing that such and such pasture would have to be drained before it could possibly be used for wheat. “They don’t even know, them up there, in London,” one man had protested amazedly, “that there’s springs just under the surface,” and as Ralph himself, well as he knew the countryside, had not been aware of that fact, he agreed that very likely up in London they had not known it either.

  The business the vicar had called upon in connection with the evening’s meeting was soon settled, and then Mr. Longden went on to mention another matter. The church plate was of some intrinsic and of high antiquarian value, and he was beginning to be worried about its safety.

  If there were air raids—and Brimpton Wych, like every other village in England, was convinced it would be the special target of every German airman—-would that church plate be secure in the somewhat antiquated safe in the vestry? In case of fire caused by an incendiary bomb, Mr. Longden doubted if that safe would give full protection. Ralph was quite sure it would give very little protection. He suggested the bank; but the difficulty was that the plate was often required for early service, and would indeed be as frequently out of the bank’s strong room as in it. As for buying an alternative set, well, Ralph knew the difficulty there was going to be in meeting the next instalment due on the new heating system. But, Mr. Longden pointed out hesitatingly, the Wych Estate office had a fairly new, very large, reputedly fire-proof safe, bought by the old land agent before his death and before Ralph took over the work, and occasionally now referred to by Ralph as a ‘white elephant’. There had of course been more need for it in former days, but at present when nearly all rents and payments were settled by cheque, there was seldom any large sum of cash in the office over night. Consequently the safe was often half empty, and was chiefly used for keeping books and papers. In office hours, it generally stood open, as in fact it did now. His attention drawn to it, Ralph agreed that the church plate could quite well be stored there, if and when that doubtful ‘emergency’ did arrive.

  Naturally it woul
d be necessary for Mr. Longden to have keys both for the outer door of the office and for the safe itself. For the safe there were only three keys in existence, one on Ralph’s bunch and two in the bank. One of these Ralph promised Mr. Longden should have if the need arose, and he got up to show how the lock worked. It was a somewhat early form of the combination lock, and required to be set in one special way before the key would turn. Mr. Longden, guiltily conscious of how often he managed to mislay his own keys, wondered timidly if the verger could have a third key to the safe, as he had a duplicate key to the vestry safe. But that idea did not much appeal to Ralph, who thought it was one thing to trust the vicar and quite another to let the verger have office and safe keys. Mr. Longden took out his own keys and looked at them sorrowfully, and Ralph suggested that instead, when the time came, of putting the office and safe keys with these others so frequently lost, he should wear them on a string round his neck.

  “Quite safe then,” suggested Ralph, and Mr. Longden put his keys back in his pocket and thought the suggestion an excellent one.

  Or he might, he reflected, give them to Mrs. Longden to take care of. She somehow or another avoided mislaying things. Always knew where things were, and what was more astonishing still, things always were where she said they were. Whereas when Mr. Longden himself knew where things were, very often it turned out that they weren’t, but in fact in some quite different place.

  Ralph thought putting the keys in Mrs. Longden’s care was another excellent suggestion, and then another point occurred to the vicar. The church plate in question was kept in a large, old-fashioned box, said itself to date from the seventeenth century, and Mr. Longden began to wonder if it would be too big to go in the safe. So Ralph had to get out his keys again, open the safe once more, and allow the vicar to take careful measurements with his umbrella, which so far that morning he had managed not to lose. Ralph, beginning to wish the vicar would go and let him get on with his work, took the opportunity to open a small polished case lying on a shelf in the safe and startled Mr. Longden by producing from one of the drawers of his writing table an automatic pistol, a Colt .32. He replaced it in the polished case in which it was evidently kept.

  “I’ve just been oiling and cleaning it,” he explained.

  Mr. Longden eyed it askance. It had for him, the snub-nosed thing, an ominous, unpleasant air, recalling to him his talk with Sophy and the queer impression that conversation had made on him. Noticing how the vicar was looking at the pistol, Ralph smiled.

  “It’s been here ever since I can remember,” he said. “I don’t know that it matters now. There’s never anything here motor-car bandits would think worth coming for.”

  “Why not get rid of it?” Mr. Longden asked.

  But Ralph looked grim, put back case and pistol on the shelf in the safe where they were kept, banged the sale door, and went back to his seat at the writing table.

  “One never knows,” he said. “I thought I would clean it. Must have been years since it was touched, but it’s all right now.”

  Mr. Longden still thought it would be better got rid of, and then turned the conversation towards recent happenings at the castle. To his disappointment, for he had hoped to bring Ralph to a better and more friendly frame of mind, the young man made no secret of his conviction that the newcomer was a bare-faced impostor.

  “No more Bertram than I am,” Ralph declared emphatically.

  “But haven’t his grandparents recognized him?” Mr. Longden protested.

  “They say they have, and it isn’t true,” Ralph answered. “I suppose it’s old age. I don’t know. It may be something else. Only people do go a bit queer when they get old. All I know is that uncle and aunt are lying.”

  Mr. Longden gasped. Ralph had spoken with an intensity of feeling and emotion that almost frightened him. Ralph lifted his bunch of keys lying on the table and it was almost as though he grasped a weapon—pistol or sword. His grasp relaxed, he put the keys down, but his eyes remained hard and intent. Mr. Longden said protestingly:—

  “My dear boy, my dear boy, you mustn’t say such things. Why should they? Earl Wych is the very last man to be untruthful. The countess, too. Why should he? both of them?”

  “I don’t know,” Ralph answered, and suddenly looked tired, unnaturally tired, for a man so young and strong. It was a grey face and lined that he showed now, though the eyes were still clear and hard and angry. “I can’t imagine. I think and think. All the time it’s there.” He put his hand to his head with a gesture that in its helplessness had a touch of pathos, too. “Why should uncle—and aunt—both of them—why should they want to put a stranger in my place?”

  “But—” began Mr. Longden, still protesting.

  “Oh, I know it’s incredible,” Ralph interposed, “only they are; and yet uncle’s always been so keen on the family, on direct descent from father to son. This is the first time it’s gone even to a nephew. I’m not in the absolutely direct line, but I do go straight back to the fourth earl, the ninth baron, and now uncle wants to put a perfect stranger in my place.”

  “Surely—” began Mr. Longden, but Ralph was on his feet now, talking excitedly, walking up and down, evidently glad, though perhaps unconsciously so, of an opportunity to pour out feelings suppressed too long.

  “The man’s an impostor,” he repeated with intense energy. “And uncle and aunt know it, they must know it, so why are they telling lies in the face of all the family tradition has ever stood for? It’s incredible, it’s impossible, only it is. Arthur thinks so, too—that the fellow’s a fraud, I mean.” He stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I oughtn’t to have said that. He does, but he asked me not to say so at present. It slipped out. I suppose I’m a bit excited. Arthur says we must lie low for the present and see what happens. Business man’s idea—wait developments. All very well for him. I intend to make developments, not wait for them. You’ll keep that about Arthur to yourself, won’t you?”

  “Certainly, of course,” Mr. Longden assured him.

  “Arthur doesn’t really come into it much,” Ralph went on. “Except from the family tradition point of view. Of course, he would if I pegged out, but then I don’t mean to. I think that’s nonsense. I suppose Arthur’s a bit bowled over, too.” Ralph flung himself back again into his chair. “I suppose we’re all half crazy. I think and think till I’m nearly off my head. Why is uncle lying?”

  “But if both he and your aunt do persist in saying that this young man—”

  “I tell you it’s a lie, and they know it,” almost shouted Ralph, banging his hand passionately on the table. “Don’t argue about that, please,” and he gave the vicar once again a look so fierce, so full of menace, as Mr. Longden had seen only once before, in his London East-End parish, when a man had warned a blackmailer not to go too far.

  Fortunately that blackmailer had seen wisdom and had decided to retire, so all had been well; but Mr, Longden still remembered how for that one moment he had seemed to see before him the grisly form of approaching murder. Perhaps Ralph noticed how shocked and disturbed Mr. Longden looked, for his expression changed at once and he smiled so pleasantly he hardly seemed the same man. Mr. Longden grew quite ashamed of his recent thoughts, feeling sure now that he had unpardonably allowed his imagination to run away with him.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Ralph said. “You mustn’t mind if I let off steam a bit. You do understand, don’t you? Lord knows, if I had as much as a moment’s doubt, I would say ‘all right, very likely it is Bertram after all’, and I would fall on his neck and welcome him back like a good little boy. I don’t want to do any one out of his rights. The more I feel like sticking up for my own rights, the more I would recognize his. But I shan’t give in to a fraud, not for all the senile old men and women in the world. It’s the only explanation. Age. People do get into a second childhood. Uncle and aunt were awfully cut up when they were left without any children or grandchildren. They’ve been brooding, and it’s worked on them till
they were ready to fall for the first impostor that came along. Arthur thinks he is an American gangster, and he’s bumped off the real Bertram. He says I had better look after myself or he’ll bump me off, too. That’s why I was cleaning up that automatic when you came in.” He made a gesture over his shoulder towards the closed door of the safe, behind which Mr. Longden was so thankful to think that the weapon in question was so safely reposing. “But Arthur’s wrong there. The fellow is English all right, and he has no need to bump me off so long as he has the old people behind him. More likely I’ll bump him off. He has been in America, that’s plain, but he is English, and what’s more I think he comes from this part. Only,” he repeated, turning to the thought never long absent from his mind, “why does uncle—?”

  He left the sentence unfinished, and an idea came into Mr. Longden’s mind, born of that scene he had witnessed in his East End parish so long ago when a blackmailer had driven his victim beyond what had seemed safe.

  “You don’t think,” he said timidly, shamefacedly indeed, “that it might be blackmail?”

  Ralph looked very much taken aback.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I never thought of that. Blackmail? Uncle? Aunt? It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “It isn’t,” said Mr. Longden, very firmly. “I don’t know whatever made me say anything so absurd.” Indeed the word seemed as incongruous in connection with the dignified old earl, the stately countess, as any word well could be—as incongruous indeed as to associate together a night club and Canterbury Cathedral.

  Ralph plainly felt that, too. He shook his head.

  “Out of the question,” he said. “Only there’s some reason, and even if I can’t find it out, I’ll show this fellow up and get him booted back where he belongs. Clinton Wells is going to act for me. It’s awfully decent of him. He can’t go on acting for uncle, too, so he is resigning from his firm. I didn’t want him to, I thought it was too much. But he stuck to it he would. I’ll never forget it, never. I only hope I’ll be able to make it up to him later. He’s coming along to have a talk. Only he says there’s not much you can do at present, because he says it hardly arises legally till uncle’s death, and of course he may live for ten or twenty years. People do get to the hundred. In a sense I’m no worse off. In the eyes of the law, I mean. Hullo, here is Clinton now.”