Ten Star Clues

by E. R. Punshon

  “I suppose Mr. Blacklock has a lot of business to discuss with you?”

  “Business?” almost wailed Bertram. “Business? You ought to hear the old geeser.” He tried to mimic an old, dry, precise voice. ‘“It’s due to your lordship’s position.’ ‘Your lordship carries heavy responsibilities.’ ‘Your lordship will be expected—’” Bertram threw up both hands in an almost comical gesture of despair. “Seems to me the whole blessed country isn’t doing a thing but expect my lordship. A chain gang isn’t in it.”

  “The duties and responsibilities of an Earl Wych—” began Bobby formally, and then dropped into the vernacular. “There’s a hell of a lot he’s jolly well got to do.”

  “You’ve said it,” grunted Bertram, and looked gloomier and more depressed than ever, as though he saw nothing before him but a life of toil, trouble, and hardship. “Speeches, too,” he added, as mentioning the last straw.

  “Speeches? oh, rather,” agreed Bobby warmly. “Part of the job.”

  Bertram had taken out his handkerchief and was wiping his forehead on which had gathered small drops of perspiration, as at the very thought of speeches he might have to make.

  “Couldn’t get a word out,” he muttered, “not me.”

  “Oh, Miss Anne will help,” Bobby told him cheerfully, and Bertram put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands in an attitude of the most complete dejection.

  Bobby surveyed him, not without satisfaction, nor did he offer the reminder that these duties, responsibilities, public appearances, any Earl Wych would be expected to undertake, could only be enforced by public opinion; and could be, and indeed sometimes were, utterly neglected by those called upon to accept them. But then Bobby, thinking of those weak, scowling, uncertain features, did not much think they showed the degree of resolution that would, after all, be needed to resist such general pressure. Besides, those who set themselves against the current of public opinion and expectation, defying all tradition, must feel their own position secure.

  But was this man’s position sufficiently secure for a display of such defiance of public opinion, when already legal action to test his claim was threatened? A jury would not be favourably impressed by the claims of a man to a great position when he was refusing or neglecting to carry out the duties and responsibilities belonging to it.

  These reflections Bobby kept carefully to himself and said instead in his most cheerful voice:—

  “Oh, that’ll be all right. Miss Hoyle will always be there to see you don’t forget or overlook any of your duties.”

  Bertram fairly jerked himself upright in his seat.

  “What do you mean by that?” he almost shouted.

  “Well, I understood your engagement—”

  “Engagement nothing,” snarled the other. “See?”

  Bobby tried to look very bewildered.

  “But Miss Hoyle...” he began.

  Bertram interrupted with a volley of picturesque and most unseemly comment on that young lady, her appearance, her manners, everything about her. Then suddenly he broke off and looked inclined to cry.

  “Do you think she really means it?” he asked.

  “I do,” Bobby answered with all the emphasis he could command. “From what I’ve seen of her, when she means a thing, she means it, and she gets it.”

  Bertram looked round so wildly that for the moment Bobby almost thought he contemplated flight.

  “I don’t deny I made a pass or two at her,” he said moodily. “She’s a good looker all right, a high stepper from the word ‘Go’, but, lordy, if I had known her as well as I do now I’d as soon have made a pass at a rattlesnake.”

  “Oh, come,” protested Bobby, “she’s not as bad as all that surely.”

  “Worse,” Bertram declared. “Well, not rattlesnake. Boa constrictor.” He seemed rather pleased with this comparison. “Boa constrictor,” he repeated, and looked up at Bobby as one seeking sympathy. In a voice trembling with resentment and sorrow he said:—

  “She’s cut down on the drinks already.”

  “You don’t say,” murmured Bobby.

  “Take my solemn oath,” said Bertram. “If I tell that sneaking butler fellow I want another, he says ‘Yes, sir’ and off he goes. But,” said Bertram impressively, “it don’t come.”

  “Too bad,” said Bobby.

  “I know it’s her,” declared Bertram moodily, and Bobby could not resist saying:—

  “It’s all for your own good, you know.”

  Bertram indulged in another outburst of picturesque and most improper comment, reflecting, by the way, in passing, on all Anne’s ancestors, who were, if his story was true, his ancestors, too. Possibly, however, he hadn’t thought of that. When he had exhausted his available stock of adjectives, he paused, sighed, and, in a meek little tone contrasting oddly with the violence of his outburst of the moment before, he said:—

  “She’s got me scared. That girl—slave-driving is as natural to her as swallowing a highball. There’s a way she has of looking at you—”

  He broke off, seeking a suitable comparison, and Bobby supplied it.

  “Like a cat at the mouse she’s cornered.”

  Bertram nodded in gloomy agreement.

  “All the same,” he muttered, as one whistling to keep up his courage, “she can’t make a fellow.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” Bobby told him. “She just sees that things happen the way she wants them to happen and they do.”

  Bertram made no comment on this, but looked more depressed than ever. Bobby sat down beside him, lighted a cigarette, and smoked in silence, leaving Bertram to muse in equal silence on the fate before him. When Bobby thought these musings had lasted long enough, he remarked as by way of making conversation:—

  “I was interested to read in one of the Midwych papers about you taking your place in the ranks of the Wychshire Dragoons, and hoping presently, like your heroic ancestors, to lead them into action.”

  Bertram turned and gave Bobby an even more malevolent glare.

  “I’m joining no Wychshire Dragoons,” he announced. “Not me. That was a lot of guff I pumped into the fellow because he seemed to expect it. This isn’t my war. Nothing to do with me.”

  “I am afraid,” Bobby said gently, “that the Conscription Act is even more compelling than Miss Anne Hoyle, and that is saying a good deal. It applies to all British subjects—dukes, earls and dustmen.”

  “Suppose I ain’t one? British subject, I mean.”

  “You mean you got naturalised in America?”

  “Would that stop me being earl?”

  Bobby did not answer this question. He said instead:— “You came in on a British passport?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “If you claim American citizenship, it was hardly consistent, was it? And you will have to show your naturalization papers, if you want to avoid being called up. Are they complete?”

  Bertram made no reply; and with a quick inner excitement, Bobby thought:—

  “He doesn’t want to show them.”

  And this seemed to him to throw a clear and sudden light on the situation.

  “You will have to show them,” he repeated aloud.

  “I don’t have to,” Bertram answered sullenly, and then: “I ain’t going to no war.”

  Bobby looked at him thoughtfully. The fellow was quite simply and plainly a born coward. Not his fault perhaps. None the less, without courage there is nothing on which any foundation of character can be built. That no doubt explained the essential weakness which made him feel so helpless before Anne. Bobby told himself grimly that weaknesses are there to be played on when they are weaknesses in a crooked game. He said slowly:—

  “It’ll be an ugly war. Worse than the last. Bombs and sitting in trenches all day being shelled. That sort of thing. Only more of it and worse. Beastly. But it’s there.”

  “Aren’t there conscientious objectors?” Bertram asked suddenly.

 
; The idea of an Earl Wych as a conscientious objector made Bobby gasp. Nor did he think Bertram likely to impress any tribunal before whom he might put forward such a claim, “You would need rather a long record of religious work,” he said drily. “Perhaps you have it. No business of mine. Our job is to find a murderer.”

  “Better ask Martin,” grunted Bertram. “He knows something. Snooping, sneaking guy. You ought to see the way he looks when he goes off to fetch another one he never brings.”

  “I have asked him, but I haven’t got much of an answer,” Bobby said. “Why not try yourself?”

  “Blackmail,” Bertram muttered. “That’s his game.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Bobby. “Only—who?” Bertram shrugged his shoulders, and after a time Bobby said:—

  “Oh, by the way, there’s one thing I wanted to ask you. In the States, you knew Mr. Bertram Brown?”

  It had been a long shot, a very long shot, born merely from Bobby’s instinctive dislike of even so small a coincidence as that between two Christian names. But it hit the mark. Bertram turned pale, and once again his hands flew up, but this time that instinctive gesture was of fear.

  “What... what... what’s that?” he stammered. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I say.”

  “Well, why? what’s it matter if I did? what about it?”

  “He landed in Glasgow two or three days ago,” Bobby explained: and to his surprise this information, instead of intensifying the other’s fears, seemed to dispel them entirely.

  “Gave me a bit of a jolt,” he said, looking quite jaunty again. “Some other fellow. I did know a Bertram Brown on the other side. But he’s dead—as good as dead,” he added under his breath. “Upset me for a moment when you said he had landed. Thought for a moment there was a ghost come chasing me.”

  “The Bertram Brown you knew is dead?” Bobby asked, remembering the original report of the death of Bertram Hoyle and the suggestions made that this man was an impostor who had somehow got hold of the dead man’s papers.

  “Just about,” Bertram answered grimly. “Not landing here anyway, not him.”

  Bobby looked thoughtfully at the new earl, new certainly and doubtful perhaps as well. For it began to seem to him that possibly those two words ‘Just about’ held yet another and important clue—a star clue, so to say. A strange clue, too, no doubt, and yet it might be as significant as the thread that leads to the heart of the labyrinth. He said:—

  “Well, a Mr. Bertram Brown has landed. At Glasgow. He came on to Midwych and he has vanished from his hotel. A second disappearance. We don’t have so many in Midwych as all that, and now two have happened together, I do rather wonder if there is any connection.

  Bertram was beginning to look worried again.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he muttered. “Anyway, it can’t be the fellow I knew. Not possible.”

  “I hope,” said Bobby, again guilty of a long shot, “the disappearance doesn’t turn out another murder.”

  And at that Bertram looked more worried than ever. For a moment indeed Bobby thought he was going to jump up and run away, and he thought that instinctive reaction interesting as throwing yet additional light on the other’s character.

  “I wish to God—” he muttered under his breath.

  “Yes?” Bobby said when he paused.

  “Nothing. It’s a hell of a mix up. I never meant... I never thought,” and now Bertram’s voice had grown a little wild. “It can’t be... just can’t... how could it be?... the fellow I knew, I mean... if it is... well, what’s it mean?” He got to his feet and looked round with a furtive and a frightened air. “Oh, hell,” he repeated.

  “Hadn’t you better make a clean breast of the whole thing?” Bobby asked. “I don’t think you’ll find it’s an awful lot of fun being Earl Wych, especially when you are no more Earl Wych than I am. I don’t think you much want to marry Anne, but she goes with the title and you’ll have to. She’ll see to that. You don’t want to go to the war, but Lord Wych will have to—at the head of his regiment.”

  Bertram winced. The picture of himself leading a regiment into battle was evidently one that he found singularly unattractive. Bobby saw Colonel Glynne come out on the castle terrace and stand there, evidently looking for him. Bobby said:—

  “There’s my boss. I’ll have to go. Thanks for what you’ve told me.”

  “Told you? what have I told you?’’ Bertram asked, looking startled, and Bobby smiled on him amiably and said:—

  “Why, everything, I think.”

  Then he walked away towards the waiting colonel, and as he went added to himself: ‘Everything, that is, except the murderer’s name—unless it’s this vanished Bertram Brown.’ He wondered uneasily if thus suddenly and unexpectedly had appeared upon the scene the unknown, the ‘X’ postulated as a mere possibility but now, as it were, emerging into the light.

  As he came up Colonel Glynne said to him:—

  “Was that Lord Wych you were talking to? I can’t get anything out of the old lady. She talks round and round, and if you press her, she shuts her eyes and asks for one of those pills for her heart the doctor left her. Then you have to shut up. At the same time she doesn’t want you to go, and I’m sure there’s something she wants to say, only for some reason she can’t bring herself to it. Get anything out of his new lordship?”

  “He’s in a very interesting state of mind,” Bobby said. “He thinks it would be fine to be Lord Wych, but he’s deadly scared of the things a Lord Wych is expected to do, and I think he feels he wouldn’t be strong enough to defy public opinion, and that if he did it would attract too much attention. He is still more scared of going to the war, and yet he knows as Lord Wych he would have to. And most of all I think he is scared of Miss Anne. She’s cut down his drinks already. I’ve tried to give him as much as possible to think over. Miss Longden has rather been rubbing things in, too. I’m quite hopeful that if he is left alone for a bit he may decide to throw in his hand.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t?”

  “Well, sir,” Bobby said slowly, “I’ve made a list of ten points I think significant. Ten Star Clues, so to say.”

  He took out his notebook in which he had jotted them down, and while the colonel listened carefully, he read out:—

  ‘TEN STAR CLUES

  1. Bertram’s hint that he is a naturalised American citizen.

  2. Bertram’s statement that the Bertram Brown he knew in U.S. is “as good as dead”.

  3. Earl Wych’s statement that his action had done Ralph no harm.

  4. Lady Wych’s statement that “ill would come of it”.

  5. Lady Wych’s reference to her homicidal ancestress.

  6. Anne Hoyle’s dogs.

  7. Sophy Longden’s silence.

  8. The Charles the Second oak.

  9. Messrs. Blacklock’s office boy.

  10. Clinton Wells’s chivalry.’

  When he had finished he handed the notebook to Colonel Glynne, who for some moments sat knitting his brows over it. Then he said:—

  “I can see what you mean sometimes, but what is this about the office boy?”

  “Only that I thought I should like to know what strangers called recently at their office.”

  The colonel said moodily:—

  “It’s still: ‘Put in your thumb and pull out a murderer’.” Then he said:—“Where’s your proof?”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” Bobby admitted. “I do feel confident that the answers to my ‘ten star clues’, taken together, give the murderer’s name. But we need to find the pistol used in the murder to have a case for a jury.”

  “And when and if we do find it,” the colonel pointed out, “it may knock your ‘ten star clues’ higher than the skies where stars ought to be.”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” admitted Bobby again, looking more worried than was often the case with him. “It’s in my mind—”

  He broke off. Anne Hoyle was coming towards them. S
he looked angry and disturbed. She said:

  “Why is the ornamental pond being drained? Who said it could be? If it’s you, what authority, what right, have you to interfere like that on our property?”

  “Miss Hoyle,” the colonel said, “a murder is being investigated. The police have a good deal of authority in such cases. In point of fact, Mr. Owen here spoke to both Lady Wych and to Mr. Blacklock, who is one of the executors. Neither of them raised any objection. Do I understand that you see any reason for objecting?”

  She looked at him, sullenly and with fear, and did not answer. Bobby told himself that probably it was the first time in her life that she had ever shown fear. The colonel resumed:—

  “It is of course quite usual, when a disappearance is reported, to drag all ponds and so on near by. By way of precaution.”

  “You don’t think, you don’t mean...?” she asked, surprised and scornful, and also, Bobby thought, a good deal relieved, “Ralph would never commit suicide,” she said abruptly. “He hasn’t drowned himself, if that’s what you are thinking. I suppose it’s the sort of idea police would get.”

  This last was said to Bobby, and accompanied by a look of great scorn. To her, Colonel Glynne was hardly ‘police’, she thought of him as a neighbour, one of her own class. It was Bobby whom she regarded as responsible for all that was being done, and it was Bobby who now answered her. He said:—

  “When the pond is dry, we shall know for certain. Then, too, it is not only Ralph Hoyle who has disappeared.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

  “There are two pistols which have vanished,” Bobby reminded her. “Ponds are natural places for hiding such things. Handy if there’s one about and somebody has a pistol to get rid of—a colt automatic point three-two, perhaps.”

  Once again, as once before, their eyes met in a long and silent challenge. Anne was white to the lips when in a voice that was low and steadied only by an effort, she said:—

  “What do you mean?”

  “That I wondered a good deal why, with your grandfather murdered only a few hours before, you could still find time to play with your dogs, throwing sticks into the water for them to bring out. I wondered if it was only sticks for your dogs to fetch, that you threw into the water.” Even then her pride did not desert her. She held herself erect, she brought her voice more under her control, she turned from Bobby as though he were beneath her attention. She spoke to the colonel as equal to equal:— “I suppose this man was watching. I suppose he saw me. Very well. I had my grandfather’s pistol. I took it. To keep Bertram sensible. I fired one shot to make sure it would not go off accidentally. I didn’t kill grandfather. I expect you think I did. I fired one shot in the air to prevent accidents. That’s why you will find one cartridge has been fired.”