Free Ten Star Clues by E.R. Punshon

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.”
    â€œIt was a display of very bad manners,” pronounced Mr. Longden, looking this time really annoyed. “Most regrettable.”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œI 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