Ten Star Clues (8 page)

“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.”

A car had in fact just driven up with Clinton Wells at the wheel. He alighted and entered the office and after a moment's chat Mr. Longden took his leave and with it Clinton's umbrella instead of his own. Fortunately Ralph saw what had happened and ran after the vicar. Much disconcerted, Mr. Longden wondered what he could have done with his own, and then a passing estate tenant with a grievance pounced on Ralph. Mr. Longden, wondering where his own umbrella could be, went across to the post office where it so often turned up. But this time it was not there, and suddenly he remembered he had had it in the estate office. So he went back there, passing Ralph still trying to get rid of the discontented tenant, and in the office found both the missing umbrella and Clinton Wells impatiently fidgeting at the window and demanding to know how much longer Ralph was going to spend out there with Farmer Young, notorious for his grievances and his demands.

“I'll see if I can chase him away,” he announced, adding a brief acknowledgment of the returned umbrella.

Mr. Longden, left alone, collected his own umbrella, making sure it really was his this time, replaced Clinton's in the stand, noticed Ralph's keys lying on the table, triumphantly put them in his pocket under the impression that they were his own, congratulated himself on everything being all right now, and went off. Nor was it till late that night, after a call that had kept him out till nearly twelve, that he discovered as he was preparing for bed that he was in possession of two sets of keys. This puzzled him so enormously that he just sat there looking incredulously at the two bunches, which indeed resembled each other as closely as bunches of keys generally do, so that it was easy enough to mistake one for the other. Close questioning by Mrs. Longden cleared up the mystery, and then Mr. Longden was so remorseful that he would have started out then and there to return the keys to their rightful owner had not Mrs. Longden very firmly objected.

The morning would do, she said, and besides, the vicar had to confess that he was really tired, for before that late summons had come there had been the long and tiring meeting about evacuation plans. It had been a confused, muddled, quarrelsome meeting, and his job as chairman had not been easy. Mrs. Owen, who was present as a Midwych representative, gave her husband, Inspector Bobby Owen, an amused and detailed account.

“I was hoping to see the returned prodigal,” she added, for the return of the long lost heir was still the one exciting topic of the day, far eclipsing in interest that approaching dance of death down which Hitler was so soon to lead the nations of the world, “but he wasn't there. Mr. Ralph Hoyle was. He looked awfully strained. They say he is working himself to death over the new food production plans, but it looked to me as if there were more than that.”

“Well, you can't wonder,” answered Bobby, who had spent a happy, peaceful evening pottering about the garden, putting there into practice trial and error, especially error. “Enough to bowl any chap over. He was the big man in the district as the heir to the title and the estates, and now he's only himself and nothing more, just a pair of hands and a head like any one else.”

“People generally seem to like him,” Olive observed. “I do myself, what I've seen of him.”

“It's one thing to be liked when you're the heir and important, and another when you are just one more in the market place,” observed Bobby, and added that all the same the new heir didn't seem to be making himself very popular.

There were the rumours, too, that Ralph was calling the new man an impostor and a fraud and that he meant to put up a fight.

“Difficult to see what he can do at present, though,” Bobby observed, “unless he can manage an action for libel or something of that sort. And I don't see how he can work that, if the other fellow lies low and says nothing and spends his time consolidating his position as they say in the army. Of course, if he is the genuine goods, he won't need.”

“You would think he must be genuine with both his grandparents accepting him,” Olive said thoughtfully, “but there's the oddest feeling about that he isn't. Little Sophy Longden was there. She's such a nice child and she's dreadfully worried.”

“What about?” Bobby asked. “Doesn't affect her, does it?”

“No, I suppose not,” agreed Olive, “but all the same she made me feel there's something wrong at the castle and she knows it and she's afraid.”