Ten Star Clues (30 page)

“It hit me in the eye,” wailed Martin. “I expect I shall lose the sight. Who'll want a one-eye'd butler?”

“Martin, too,” groaned Ralph, who had not previously noticed him. Resignedly he asked Bobby:— “Who else have you got in your pocket?”

“It's like this,” began Martin, but Bobby stopped him.

“You keep quiet,” he said. “You've plenty to explain, but that can wait.” To the two plain clothes men, he said:— “Got a car anywhere around? Good. Take this man to headquarters. Detained for inquiries.”

They departed, Martin still bewailing his injuries, still protesting the excellence of his explanation if only it were listened to. But Bobby was in no hurry to hear it. His experience told him that Martin would be the readier to talk the more his panic increased with the reluctance shown to listen to him. He would be sure to think that that reluctance was due to the police believing that they had all necessary information already. Which would make him all the more anxious to give his own version. To the still very bewildered Ralph, Bobby said:—

“He had the pistol I think was used in the murder of Lord Wych.”

“Martin? Martin had it?” repeated Ralph. “You mean Martin is the murderer?”

Bobby did not answer. He was deep in his own thoughts. Ralph, looking at Sophy, suddenly forgot all about Martin. 

The utter bewilderment her appearance had caused him changed abruptly to an almost equally bewildered admiration, for now it was as though he had never seen her before. Strangely lovely she looked in the dim light beneath the trees that the two beams, one from Bobby's strong electric torch, another from one of Ralph's that he had now produced, shone on the tree trunks and the foliage around, mingling with the faint starlight falling through the leaves and branches overhead. The hard daylight might have deprived her of some of that strange beauty which at the moment was hers, for beauty it was that hung about her now till it seemed as though she were some strange, ethereal spirit of the woods that hovered there, hesitant upon the point of going.

“It's Miss Longden,” Ralph muttered. “Is it?” he said, still bewildered. It seemed he could hardly believe what he saw, almost as though he thought it must be some phantom of his own imagination that hovered there. He said again:— “Why, Miss Longden...?”

“Well, don't ask her, because she won't tell,” Bobby interposed with a faint grin; and then froze to sudden attention as he realized that the magazine of the automatic he was holding had only one cartridge left.

Three had been fired at Lord Wych. One was left. What had become of the others? Why had they been fired? Why? and—at what mark?

He said abruptly to Ralph:—

“I must hurry off. You can see Miss Longden home.”

With that he nodded to them and hurried away, and as he did so it came into his mind that Olive, a matchmaker like all women, would highly approve of what he had just done, and of the opportunity he had thus almost accidentally given Ralph.

“Oh, well,” he thought, “if they send me a piece of the wedding cake I shall have earned it,” and with that he dismissed all thought of them from his mind that he might busy it with grimmer things.

When, after an almost all night long conference with Colonel Glynne and but an hour or two of hurriedly snatched sleep, Bobby arrived at the castle next morning it was to hear from an excited maid the information that the engagement of Miss Anne to the new Lord Wych was to be formally announced that day.

Bobby said that was grand. Notwithstanding murders and disappearances and so on, it was engagements and betrothals and marriages that really mattered. The maid agreed heartily—heartily is the appropriate word here. Bobby said he must find Lord Wych to congratulate him. But no one seemed to know where the happy man was to be found, so at a venture Bobby wandered off to that remote and hidden seat in a solitary portion of the grounds where once before he had found him.

He greeted Bobby with a scowl and a general air of ‘Hast thou found me, oh, mine enemy?' and Bobby beamed on him in response.

“I heard the happy news up at the castle,” he explained. “I just couldn't help coming along to congratulate you.” He sat down by the other's side, produced a cigarette, offered his case to his companion, and beamed afresh at a sulky refusal. For a moment or two he smoked in silence. Then he said gently:—

“Well, she's brought it off all right.”

His lordship squirmed.

“I knew she would,” said Bobby meditatively. “Not much Miss Anne wants she doesn't get.” He added:— “Just as she's got you.”

Once more his lordship squirmed.

“I have more good news for you,” Bobby went on.

His lordship looked at him suspiciously.

“The Wychshire Dragoons are ordered on active service. As a mechanized unit they expect to lead the attack.” (This, by the way, was an addition of Bobby's own, but then there is much virtue in an ‘expect'.) “I expect” (again, how useful a word is ‘expect') “you'll be given a commission direct without having to bother to apply. That'll be so you can lead them into action, like that chap in the picture in the castle. You know. The one showing an earlier Lord Wych waving his sword in the air to lead the way to the enemy.”

“They don't catch me,” said his lordship sourly.

“Shot at dawn,” murmured Bobby. “That's what happens in war to chaps who try to shirk.”

His lordship didn't so much squirm this time as turn pea green. He suffered from a vivid imagination, and he actually saw a picture of himself standing against a wall with half a dozen grim looking men, all extremely like Bobby, standing opposite, rifles in their hands.

“Look here,” Bobby said. “You are in a spot. A bad spot. If you're a British lord, you've got to live up to it— and Miss Anne's there to see you jolly well do. There's a war on, and the Earl Wych will have to be in the thick of it. Or people will talk. Talk a lot. You know best what that may lead to. Well, there it is. Hadn't you better make a clean breast of it?”

“I don't know what you're getting at,” the other mumbled.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Bobby answered. “You are no more Earl Wych than I am. You've given that away half a dozen times. For one thing, you didn't even know why it is Earl Wych and not Earl of Wych.”

“Can't expect a chap to remember everything,” retorted Bertram, trying to pluck up spirit. “Not after all the time I've been in the States.”

“Rubbish. People don't forget things like that they hear when they are children. Another point. More important. You let slip you had taken out your papers over there. That can be traced. May take some time because I believe you can do it anywhere in any part of any State.”

“How do you know I gave my right name?” Bertram demanded, evidently thinking that there he had scored a point.

“That's a matter for the American authorities to consider,” Bobby answered amiably. “What matters is that it gives us a starting point. Something to work from—to trace your identity.”

Bertram mumbled something indistinct. Easy to see that he was growing more and more disturbed. Relentlessly Bobby continued:—

“I told you about the disappearance of a Mr. Bertram Brown from his hotel in Midwych.”

“Nothing to do with me,” Bertram answered with more confidence. “Nobody I ever knew.”

“I wouldn't be too sure of that,” Bobby said. “You admitted you knew someone of that name in the States, but you say it can't be the same man because he is ‘as good as dead'. I wonder if that means he had been given a long term of imprisonment?”

“Good at guessing, aren't you?” Bertram snarled, now all his former unease returning and in even greater measure.

“Detectives never guess,” Bobby protested, a little hurt. “They draw exact deductions from given premises.”

Bertram looked impressed but said nothing.

“Parole system in the States, isn't there?” Bobby asked. “Do you think it might be applied to a Britisher so as to get rid of him, get him out of the country and save his keep and so on?”

Bertram's jaw dropped.

“I... I never thought of that,” he stammered. “Well, think of it now,” Bobby said grimly. He added:— “If that Bertram Brown you knew, is this Bertram Brown—well, who is he and where is he?” 

By this time his soi-disant lordship was beginning to perspire gently.

“Now you know,” Bobby went on, “why I told you you were in a spot. Why I told you you had better make a clean breast of it.”

He paused, watching with scientific detachment his victim's ever-increasing doubts and fears. He thought to himself with a touch of surprise:— ‘Why, this is the third degree I'm giving him. What would the papers say?' He continued aloud:—

“There's been one murder. You're under suspicion still. Every one is. Not much evidence yet, but we may get some soon. Was it to your interest old Lord Wych should die before he could change his mind about acknowledging you? Perhaps it was only a temporary arrangement he had been talked into. Perhaps he never meant it to stand. Mr. Bertram Brown has disappeared. Was that to your interest also? and has he been murdered, too?”

Bertram was on his feet now, very pale, gesticulating wildly.

“I wish I had never started the damn thing,” he shouted. “Hell, it's no catch being a lord in this damn old country. Hell, I don't want to marry that slave-driving vixen, me that's been married twice already and both of 'em still alive most like, trust 'em for that. Hell, you don't find me getting blown to bits sitting in trenches all day, not me, and me a full American citizen five years and more.”

“Clinton Wells put you up to it in the first place, didn't he?” Bobby asked.

Bertram nodded gloomily.

“Know it all, don't you?” he mumbled.

Bobby never denied knowledge. He said:—

“Do you care to make a statement? For you to decide, of course. But it may make a difference. It's generally taken into consideration.”

Bertram hesitated.

“Just as you like,” Bobby repeated. “Your affair. I think we know enough. I'll have to take you along to headquarters. Not an arrest, you understand. Detained for inquiries, that's all.”

Bertram looked as if he thought that ‘all' was enough and more than enough.

“Will you promise?” he began.

“No,” interrupted Bobby sharply. “You get no promises, my lad. All I say is, if you make a voluntary statement, that fact—provided you don't tell a pack of lies—may be taken into consideration. You'll need it, too,” he added grimly.

“Oh, all right,” Bertram said, his last shred of resistance broken down. “It was him started it, Clinton Wells, I mean. I'd never have thought of it, never had the gall to try it on. He said it was on Easy Street. If you ask me, he was in a spot himself. At his office. That's my idea. It was Bert told me to go to the lawyers first, to find out how the old man was likely to take it, the old lord I mean. That was after they had handed Bert a ninety-nine-year sentence. Hadn't had as much to do with it as the rest of the boys, but it was him had to stand the racket.”

“What was it?” Bobby asked.

“Bank,” explained Bertram. “A guy got himself shot. Bert wasn't in it. But the cops picked him up where they found some of the dollars. So they soaked it to him. He got word to me to come see him. Asked me to go back home and tell his people so they could do something about it. Ninety-nine years, that's a packet. Gave me all his papers and such like. Told me where to get 'em, so the cops wouldn't know who he was. Talked a lot about the honour of the family, and him with a ninety-nine-year stretch to do. I was to go to the lawyers first so they could break it to the old lord and see how things lay with him. Bert hadn't a notion then it was him was to be the next lord. He reckoned there was several in the family came first. When I got back home—I was born round these parts, that's how Bert and me first got pally—it was Clinton Wells I saw at the lawyers' office. He's a smart guy all right. Worked it all out while I was sitting there. Smart as the devil. I said: Nix. I said: The old lord, he'll know I'm not the goods. But Clinton Wells, he showed me how we could fix him.”

“How?” Bobby asked.

“Mixing it. Half truth, half lies. A story always goes best if part of it's true. Noticed that?”

“I have,” agreed Bobby. “So have the poets. A lie that is half a truth is always the stuff to give 'em.”

“That in poetry?” asked Bertram, impressed. “He knew his stuff, that poet.”

“Sometimes poets do, though it is not generally known,” Bobby remarked. “Well?”

“He fixed it so I was to tell the old lord how Bert hadn't got ninety-nine years but only nine months in the cooler, and how the cops and the newshawks, too, had their noses to the trail who he really was. So how about me being him for nine months, because if the old lord handed out a certificate I was him, I mean, that I was his genuine grandson, then when they heard that on the other side, then cops and newshawks, too, would lay off, thinking the lad in the cooler wasn't any more a British lord's grandson than they were themselves.”

“What was to happen when the nine months were up and no grandson appeared?” Bobby asked.

“I was to have the job of finding him,” Bertram answered. “The idea we put up to start with was that I was to have a fat wad for being him while I was here, and then another wad to go back to the States and hunt him up and bring him home.”

“You mean the real Bertram? But he was serving a ninety-nine-year sentence?”

“That's so, but the old man thought it was nine months. When the time came, we reckoned to let on what it really was. Clinton Wells said maybe rather than have such a scandal break, the old lord would go on letting me be—it the grandson, I mean. Because of the family honour. Dead nuts they all were on the family honour. Used to make me laugh, with that ninety-nine-year packet in the background. But they were all so keen on it, Clinton Wells said maybe they wouldn't see any other way to have it saved.”