Most Secret

by John Dickson Carr

  The blades clacked together. Kinsmere, jerking his wrist to the left, parried beyond the centre line and drove back in riposte for the left side of his opponent’s chest. He heard the stamp of his own foot, then the recurrent stamp and steel slither of full engagement—thrust, parry, riposte, thrust, parry, riposte—as a great dust rose round snaky light flashes on the swords.

  Rapier play in my grandfather’s time was much brasher and cruder than the polished business we learned towards the end of the eighteenth century. What it lacked of skill or finesse it made up in murderous fury. And yet these two could not go on at such a pace: all out, near-blind, breathing poisoned air, with every thrust aimed at a vital spot.

  Kinsmere, no doubt overreckless, had begun to press his man back towards the wall which held the royal proclamation against health-drinking. And Harker nicked him.

  For Kinsmere had tried a feint, his eye clouding. Harker, anticipating this by instinct, broke it and shot forward in vicious full-length lunge for the heart. But his foot slipped, or his eye clouded too. Though the point pierced, it struck high and wide of the mark.

  Instantly Harker disengaged and drew back. His boots did not clack or thump; he took little shuffling steps; the tall figure seemed almost to melt and disappear. Then it did disappear. Death and damnation, where was he?

  Kinsmere felt no consciousness of hurt. Sweat stung his forehead, his eyes, his ribs. From somewhere at the top of the left shoulder spread a warm, thickish wetness which could not be sweat at all.

  But where was Harker?

  He’s back against that wall. It’s my accursed eyesight that I can’t see him. But he’s coming out; I heard him shuffle. He’s coming out; he’s moving slowly; he …

  Take care!

  What Kinsmere saw shocked him awake and alert.

  Harker loomed up, an avatar of terror. His right hand held the blade poised and slanted at guard. On his left hand was—a glove, to be sure! One of the black-leather cavalry gloves which previously had been in his pocket.

  He was about to try an old trick, a famous trick of which Kinsmere’s Uncle Godfrey had given warning, and which would win or lose you your life.

  You thrust at your adversary, no matter where. After parrying his return thrust, in the brief moment when the points were disengaged, you deliberately threw yourself inside his guard. You seized his blade in your left hand; with your right hand, shortening your sword, you stabbed him through the chest at close quarters. If you missed and failed to seize the blade, he had you at his mercy.

  This was the manoeuvre Harker had prepared to execute, and would execute at any moment … that is, unless Kinsmere beat him to it by using the same trick first. He had no glove, but he needed none. The swords, though needle-sharp of point, had no cutting edge. You could cut yourself if you were careless, admittedly. Also, if he groped wildly and missed the blade …

  He found himself looking into Harker’s eyes.

  “Art prepared to die, oaf?”

  “Have at you, Captain Loud-Mouth!”

  Harker’s back was still towards the wall with the royal proclamation. Kinsmere kicked at an overturned chair that all but tripped him. He lunged out at his adversary, blindly and rather low; he darted back at guard, to await the return thrust he must parry before he could spring forward and seize the sword. That return thrust never came.

  Then he stared incredulously.

  Harker, head bent far forward, had sunk down on one knee. For a moment he remained there, gasping. Kinsmere’s heart jumped up in his throat. He had hit Harker vitally, but he had no notion how; he had not felt the point go in or come out.

  Still doubled forward, the dragoon captain lurched to his feet. He stumbled against the overturned chair. His rapier wavered, turning slowly round his hand, its cup-hilt and quillons reflecting dusty light. Then it clattered to the floor.

  Harker had started towards the fireplace. A stricken, ghostly figure in red coat and black periwig, he went stumbling across through gloom. He stretched out his hand for the mantel-shelf, but failed to reach it. Abruptly he staggered again. He pitched head foremost into the fireplace, across dead ashes and shattered glass. His head struck one andiron as he fell. A little puff of ash blew up and settled round his head.

  My grandfather himself was trembling all over and could scarcely hold the sword. His left shoulder felt numb; the thick wetness ran from arm and shoulder down to ribs. He pulled himself together, or tried to, when a heavy footstep stirred from the direction of the door.

  “Friend Bygones, is that you?”

  “By the laws of all youthful foolery, and o’ mad Bedlamite champions in a first duello,” rumbled back the oratorical flourish, “it can be affirmed that ’tis none other. Lad, lad, how d’ye fare?”

  “Pretty well, I thank you. But could we have a window set open, do you think? It is devilish hot here, and I am not so fine a fellow as I imagined. How is it with the divine Dolly?”

  “She’s a-weeping and a-cursing, as might be expected, in the customary female proportions. But we have her safe, and all’s well.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “Be easy; not one bit! The lass did desire to witness issue of the fight, looking in reverse direction through that same knothole past the open cupboard door. She could not face what she could scarce have seen, but fell to skreeking out with a noise like ‘Eee!’ and forthwith hid her face. And yet, when she learned ’twas Harker suffered scathe and not you, she was so wild-relieved she fell to skreeking again.—Lad, lad, it was bravely done; but where did you hit him?”

  “The only honest answer,” retorted Kinsmere, “is that I don’t, know and can’t remember. Below the belt, I think, though even with Harker I would never deliberately have aimed there.”

  “Below the belt? Ay, that would account—!” Bygones stopped.

  He blundered across to the rear wall, folding back the shutters on both windows and pushing open their sashes like little doors. Daylight entered; cleaner air blew through. Below the windows an alley stretched in some distance from Chancery Lane away on the left. Beyond the alley, northward, ran the old brick wall round the gardens behind Serjeants’ Inn, their plum-trees heavy with ripening fruit.

  But Kinsmere had no time to observe this. Bygones—his face fierier, pulling hard at moustache and tuft of chin whisker—was muttering as he peered round the room. His gaze travelled to my grandfather, past him to the overturned chair, across towards Harker, and back to Kinsmere again.

  “There must be deep drinking belowstairs, and a rare afternoon’s carouse. Not a man heard the noise o’ this, though it was like to shake the house. Below the belt, you think? Ay, ay! and yet …” Suddenly his eyes bulged out, “Great body o’ Pilate!” he roared. “What weird fantastical circumstance is this?”

  “Eh?”

  “There’s no blood on your sword,” said Bygones Abraham.

  Kinsmere peered down, moving his rapier blade as though he had never seen it before. There was not one drop of blood. Bygones, muttering again, hurried to the chimneypiece. With a wrench he rolled Harker face upwards.

  “Insensible and deaf to all sounds,” Bygones grunted, “from the cause that he cracked his head against the andiron in falling. Here’s the bruise of it below the foretop of the wig. But—but …”

  Once more Bygones peered round the room. He looked at the overturned chair, he looked back at Harker and the glove on Marker’s left hand; then with a great surge of triumph he smote his thigh.

  “This man,” he said, “is not even wounded.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He was not even touched! And here, let it be asseverated and proclaimed of all trumpets, is the luckiest and most fortunate circumstance e’er befell two wights like you and me. Lad, lad! D’ye see what happened?”

  “No, I am hanged if I do! Harker doubled up quite suddenly; he went down on one knee …”

  Bygones pointed to the chair, with its legs turned obliquely upwards.

  “The glove
gives sign, eel sote ohz yuh, he seized for your blade to stab you at close quarters with his other hand. And the chair was there. Is this so?”

  “It was what he had intent to do, yes, and what I would have done myself! But there was no time for either of us. We—”

  “Had intent to do, d’ye tell me?” roared the other. “It was what in fact he did do. Harker was caught below the belt, God knows. But not by you. He parried your thrust in seckowned; he leaped to seize your blade—”

  “And beat me to it?”

  “Ay, ecod, if you’d put it so. He leaped, I say, but missed his grab. He slipped; he fell, and went down with his full weight on the sharp leg of that chair. ’Twas the andiron struck him senseless. He’ll be up in an hour, belike, to meet charges of treason from a sterner judge than you.”

  Whereupon Kinsmere began, like St. Peter, to curse and swear.

  “Now what, pray,” he continued, “is so lucky or fortunate in all this? Here’s my first duello, as you were so quick to observe. I am resolved to carry myself well, to fend off or even defeat this mighty braggart, to gain credit in the eyes of my divine Dolly. Do any of these things occur? They do not. I succeed, I gain my triumph, only because the great swordsman trips over his own feet and goes down with a chair leg striking hard into his … into his … Bah,” shouts Kinsmere, “bah, yah, with another bah to crown it all. And be damned to you, Bygones Abraham, for the grinning clown Harker said I was!”

  “Oh, lad! Pish, tush, and again pish! You’ll not win out against me—no, nor against the lass either!—should it come to a swearing match. And it is most unholy fortunate, say what you will. We can still move in secret against King Charles’s enemies. Scant harm has been done; Harker is much alive; and you, a loyal king’s man, are embroiled in no fatal brawl to earn the displeasure of the king. Besides,” added Bygones in a voice of awe, “consider the nature of the punishment already meted out to Harker! Mah fwha! We have gained much—we have gained—”

  “Yes, now I think on it,” Kinsmere interrupted, “we may have gained something greatly to be desired. Stay a moment!”

  He returned his sword to the very light shagreen-covered scabbard swung on two tiny chains from his belt He went over to the chimneypiece, where Harker lay sprawled face up amid dead ashes and the broken fragments of a punch bowl. Kneeling down, he felt for the sheath pocket within the left-hand side of the coat. From this he drew out a much-creased paper, several years old and growing frayed, which showed many lines of writing when he unfolded it

  “Come!” Bygones rumbled above his shoulder. “Is it Sir Aubrey Fairchild’s statement against the lass? Was it more of Harker’s huffing, or did he speak truth?”

  “He spoke truth. ‘I, Aubrey Fairchild, of Monkshood Hall in the County of Hampshire, do depose and testify that, on the afternoon of 8th September, 1667, being at the King’s House for the witnessing of a new play called She Would If She Could, I detected the orange wench known as Dolly Lands or Landis when she did insinuate her hand into the pocket of my camlet cloak and abstract therefrom—’Bygones!”

  “Ay?”

  “On the mantel in front of you you’ll see a tinder box and a tallow dip in a pewter holder. Will you be civil enough to strike a light?”

  “Ay, with pleasure. Would you do what I think you’ll do?”

  “Indeed, I would, when you’ve lighted the candle too. We burn this on the instant. Then let Harker—or another, or a whole parcel of ’em—make shift to prove what they can!”

  “Ay, with still more pleasure! Good luck in all you do. We’ll make a King’s Messenger of you yet, lad, once you’ve soaked up the sun of my presence. Here.”

  The lighted candle was handed down. Kinsmere touched flame to the paper; he watched it curl up and blacken; he ground the ashes to powder in his hand, scattering them on Harker’s coat, and handed the candle back up.

  “And now …” he continued, rising to his feet and feeling a slight dizziness as he did so.

  “Why, there should be a coil of rope for use in case o’ fire! We’ll tie Harker most securely. We’ll roll him into the cupboard. We’ll tell the tapster, should any inquire, he is sleeping off the fumes of too much drink. Then we’ll sit down and study what’s to be done. We’ll—” Bygones, staring at him, broke off with a look of alarm. “Body o’ Pilate, lad, are you hurt? Did he hit you?”

  “Yes, he hit me,” admitted Kinsmere, who had been brooding on this. “Though ’tis of small import and I had much worse in a quarterstaff fight with a carter. But he hit me, curse him,” explodes my grandfather, “and all he got was …”

  “Come, my Bedlamite champion! Come, my moonstruck roisterer! Never make light o’ what he got We’ll—No, stop! I’ll do the tying and disposing. Do you make haste to the next room and speak to the lass. But—”

  “But what?”

  “Nay, ecod, I am NOT troubled. Yet she’s a woman, and deestray. Use her gently, as your father would ha’ done. Be not amazed at any wild talk.”

  “What wild talk?”

  “No matter; will you linger here? Make haste, I say!”

  Kinsmere, far from easy in his mind, went out into the passage and along it to the closed door of the Cupid Room, where he tapped lightly at its panel.

  “Madam—” he said.

  “No!” cried Dolly’s voice from behind the door, with a touch of anguish he could not resist. “No! Be off! Go ’way!”

  He opened the door, walked in, and closed it behind him.

  She was sitting in a righted chair at the far side of the table. She had been sitting with her face down on her arms on the table, but she twitched up her head as he entered.

  Dolly was one of those girls who can cry streams without it in the least puffing their eyelids or destroying their beauty. If he had been attracted before, he was bowled over now. She looked so intense, so alluringly pretty, with her long-lashed eyes and her fair complexion and her pink mouth, that my respected grandsire’s heart sailed like a paper dart out a window.

  “Sir, begone! Do pray be civil and begone! I won’t see you. Oh, sweet Jesus, I am so utterly discomposed that I can’t see you!”

  Down went her head into her arms, the brown ringlets tumbling forward; then, almost instantly, she raised it.

  “But he said you were ill-looking!”

  “Madam?”

  “Pem said you were ill-looking!”

  “He said true. My beauty, madam, has not hitherto been generally remarked. To the contrary, a conspicuous lack of it has led various people in my family, when sufficiently provoked from one cause or another, to draw such comparison as ape, crocodile, or similar creatures of no vast personal charm. However! As touches this matter of looks—”

  “Stop, stop! I’ll not hear you!”

  “Perhaps not. And yet, madam, although circumstances have not allowed me the honour of being formally presented to you, still I hope you will forgive me, Mistress Landis, when I say you are beyond question the loveliest wench I ever saw.”

  “Do you think so? Oh, truly, do you think so?”

  “With all my heart. And therefore, madam, I apologize—”

  “Now wherefore should you apologize? Because you beat him? Or was it because,” her mood changed, wrath and tears joining together, “was it because, in my pitifully overwrought feelings, I said what I did say concerning the man who should face him unafraid? Are you so like to the others, then? Would you seek to gain advantage from that?”

  “I seek no advantage, God knows. I apologize because the son of a wh—because Captain Harker addressed you with so many words you must have wished had not been overheard. He even proposed, worst of all, you should set yourself at a blundering object like me. By consequence, if you were well and truly insulted …”

  “Insulted?” repeated Dolly, sitting up straight with the tears running down her face. “You are not displeasing to me; I own this; wherefore, if I am honest, should I have cause to feel myself insulted? And yet I think I could kill you. Why, why,
must you make a noise and interfere?”

  “He struck you!”

  “Ever since I can remember,” Dolly said in her beautiful voice, “somebody or other has been a-striking me and a-walloping me. And a-calling me fool and strumpet and much else I must seem and perhaps am. But why, why must you cry your challenge to Pem, when I had all but wormed from him enough information to give the king?”

  “When you had wormed from him,” yelled a thunderstruck Kinsmere, “enough information to give whom?”

  “The king, strike me dead of a pox, who else? ’Twas His Majesty set me on Pem, to trap him if I could. Sure you guessed I was leading him on? I had no notion ’twas so big a plot as it’s like to prove; I am afeared, though not for the reason I said. I know Pem suffered no hurt, save for a certain mishap we won’t discuss; could I not hear you and Mr. Bygones talking through the wall? I know you burned that paper writ by Aub Fairchild; and truly, truly I am grateful. But was it of such very needful help?”

  “Madam, for God’s sake—”

  “No matter what I had done, the king said, he would pardon me could I but even in part confirm his suspiciousness of Pem Harker. Come!” said Dolly, with a little smile flashing through tears. “You are not displeasing to me. Sit down, dear boy; we’ll hold soft discourse of other things. And yet, notwithstanding that at one moment I could have killed you for your interference, perhaps I am not truly sorry after all.”

  Kinsmere said nothing. He bowed to her, almost reverently, and sat down.

  PART II: THE GRAND DESIGN

  “Le Roi de la Grande Bretagne a une manière si cachée et si difficile à pénétrer que les plus habiles y sont trompés.”

  Ambassador Barillon to King Louis XIV

  VIII

  THERE HAD BEEN A deal of talk, and even some little action, before the bells of the City clocks struck two. While Kinsmere was still pondering the relation of Dolly Landis, Mistress Dolly discovered the wound in his left shoulder, and “Eee’d!!” in a most hair-raising way.