Most Secret

by John Dickson Carr

  The minutes crawled by, and then the hours. No magistrate arrived, but no word from Dolly either. St. Dunstan’s clock went on striking interminably. It had just banged out the quarter hour past six when there were more footsteps, and a light rap at the door. My grandfather leaped up as though burnt; then controlled himself and strolled across to it. The servile tapster, his forehead all but touching the floor, handed in a sealed note addressed in painful lettering to “Young Gentlman in Hebby Room.”

  “Ay, lad? What’s the word?”

  Kinsmere broke open the note and spread it out on the table.

  “‘Deare boy,’” said Dolly’s crooked handwriting, which sprawled all over the paper, “‘Deare boy I dount knowe yr name. Dount feare, all is well. Goe back with A. to his lodgings. Leve H. where he ys, he will be taken care of by R.’s order. Staye with A. till you have word from R., you have don well he saith. Much love, D.’”

  Bygones Abraham expelled a deep breath.

  “‘He will be taken care of,’” Bygones quoted in a heavy voice, “‘by R.’s order.’ Y’know, lad, the man could have left us stranded.”

  “He could. I much feared he would.”

  “Well! He could ha’ done that, I say. And yet, arrive what may for the future, he hath behaved with much exactness as the lass said he would. That’s a fine brisk honest lass too!”

  “Am I not sensible of it?”

  “Come then!” said Bygones, wheezing still more as he poured out two bumpers of claret. “Considering certain remarks of yours a while ago … Will ye drink, can ye drink, the toast I proposed this morning? Here it is, then: God for King Charles! Can ye drink that?”

  “I can, with all my heart. Dolly above all, but—God for King Charles!”

  Again they both looked at Dolly’s note. While Kinsmere, at last permitted to pay for something, went to the door and bawled for the tapster so that he could settle their score, Bygones Abraham pushed aside the cards, fetched out his dagger, and fell to carving a large VIVAT REX in the top of the table.

  And so, as the great bell called Old Tom struck eight in one corner of Whitehall Palace Yard, that same note from Dolly lay on another table, but a round table and not a square one. It was the table in the withdrawing room of Bygones’s lodgings off the Shield Gallery, where they had drunk their first toast that morning.

  Spacious and pleasant the room was, with its tapestries, its French carpet, and the sideboard between two dark windows looking down on the Volary Garden below. Under the stone hood of the chimneypiece against the east wall, a fire of Scotch coal had been lighted against the damp. Someone had cleaned and tidied the place since morning; on the table near the note, where two wax candles burned in silver holders, stood a new and freshly opened bottle of sack, together with the two tankards and Bygones’s brass-bound tobacco box.

  Bygones himself—mottled face fresh-shaven, his periwig combed and a clean fall of lace at his throat—sat at the far side of the table, smoking a long clay pipe.

  “Six, seven, eight.” He counted the strokes of the clock, heard through softly falling rain. “Time a-getting on; and no word yet, ecod, as to what I’m to do this night! Come, then!”

  Kinsmere himself felt pretty comfortable. He also had got a shave; and washed all over with water out of a tub in his companion’s bedchamber adjoining. His bloodstained shirt had been exchanged for one of Bygones’s most resplendent shirts. His shoulder pained very little; nothing to speak of. Having just finished a pipe of tobacco, he put it down on the table. “Well?” says he.

  “Where’s the lass now, I should like to know? What did she say to the king?”

  With the stem of his pipe Bygones pushed round the note so that Kinsmere could read it from the other side.

  “‘Go back with A. to his lodgings. … Stay there till you have word from R.’ And, ‘You have done well.’ That means, as safe as anything you can bet, we shall both be summoned to see the king. But what did she say to him? Stop, stop; what are you at now?”

  For Kinsmere had picked up the note, folded it, and stowed it away in an inside pocket beside his sapphire ring.

  “It’s the only thing I have that belongs to Dolly. I am keeping it safely, by your leave.”

  “Oh, ecod! You’ll see the lass herself soon enough: can’t you guess that?”

  “It’s devoutly to be hoped so. Meanwhile—”

  “These outpourings o’ sentiment may be proper enough and excusable enough,” snorted Bygones, “but when they become moonstruck sickliness they vex all nature and give me a pain in the behind. Come, let’s be practical men!”

  Bygones drew smoke into his lungs and hoisted himself to his feet. Then, pipe cradled across his left arm, he began to pace back and forth, tugging at his moustache and tuft of chin whisker.

  “We may be sure the king (God bless him!) knows there’s a conspiracy against him. Ayagh! But what do we know, or think we know from Harker’s speaking too much, of that same conspiracy?”

  “Well …”

  “Imprimmus, there’s a band of malcontents. Who they are, or how many of ’em, we can’t say. The only name Harker mentioned—”

  “The only name,” interrupted Kinsmere, “was of a canting Puritan named Salvation Gaines. Salvation Gaines, Harker said, had employment as a scrivener at court.”

  “Has he so, lad? I am acquainted with no such man, and I know everybody at court.”

  “Yet somebody employs him! He exists; Dolly is acquainted with him. Did you mark what Dolly said? ‘Most lewd with his hands,’ she said, ‘when he can put a woman into a corner.’ Now burn my soul in the bonfire,” yelled Kinsmere, who was simmering with rage, “when I think of a clammy-fisted Roundhead …”

  “Lad, lad, enough o’ this maundering! Take your mind for two seconds from the wench, and pay some heed to business!”

  Bygones stopped briefly to look at the red-leather fire bucket hanging beside the mantelpiece; according to palace regulations, you were subject to a ten-shilling fine if you let a chimney catch fire. But immediately he resumed his pacing, drawing deep lungfuls of smoke from the pipe.

  “At the head of this band,” he continued, “there’s a plotter-in-chief. Body o’ Pilate, it might be anybody! We’ve no means of knowing who he is …”

  “No; but we know something of what he did.”

  “Ay, lad? What did he do?”

  “The plotter-in-chief was suspicious of Harker. Others, including yourself, have been suspicious of him. A hired bullyrock was sent to follow Harker and observe him. When Harker’s tongue wagged too freely, because he thought Dolly would not dare betray him, the bullyrock—”

  “Stopped his tongue with a bone-handled knife?” supplied Bygones. “No, lad! Never in this world!”

  “Wherefore not, o Sounder of Mysteries?”

  “Imprimmus, hired bullyrocks kill on hire, and on instructions. They don’t take it into their own heads to make decisions o’ that nature; and Harker had given satisfaction, you may depend on’t, up to the time his tongue wagged before us. Eyetem, hired bullyrocks are not described as ‘gentlemen’ by tapsters who meet ’em in the dark. They make no merry jests touching things in cupboards that must be carried downstairs. They—”

  “Oh, burn everything! Do you tell me,” demanded Kinsmere, “that the comical fellow on the staircase must have been the plotter-in-chief himself?”

  “No, not that either! It might ha’ been, and yet I doubt it. Shall I say why?”

  “If you can.”

  “Ayagh!” snorted Bygones, puffing more smoke. “I pose not as Sir Oracle; and, when I speak, let no dog bark. Still! There’s coruscating conclusions to be drawn here. Eminent men do in fact visit common taverns; this is not France; ’tis a free-and-easy society. But they don’t let their hands be seen so fully and freely; they don’t mock and jeer with tapsters in public, as this comedian did when he’d used his knife.

  “No, I would lay my life on it! The man who stabbed Harker is someone else in the band of mal
contents: not so highly placed as the plotter-in-chief, but concerned enough and knowing enough to make his own decision when he found Harker could blab.”

  “You may have to lay your life on it,” says Kinsmere. “These people kill as quickly as a dog gnaws bones or as you and I drink. And both of us—yes, and Dolly too!—have acquired more information than is good for health’s sake. At risk of being cast again into outer darkness, shall I name the one thing we assuredly know about the plotter-in-chief?”

  “Ay, lad?”

  “He wants a document in cipher, setting forth certain terms in a secret treaty, of which Harker was to have carried one half and you the other half. Yet you say you have received no instructions about a mission to France?”

  “Nay, friend, you know I have not! That is: not yet.”

  “Harker said he took his instructions from someone called Butterworth, Rab Butterworth.”

  “Mr. Robert Butterworth,” Bygones reared up and rolled out the name, “is Second Page of the Back-Stairs to His Majesty. Will Chiffinch, the First Page, meddles not in affairs of the body politic.”

  “Do you get your instructions from Mr. Robert Butterworth?”

  “No, though I have seen him once or twice in the king’s private cabinet.”

  “Then how do you get ’em?”

  Bygones halted abruptly and made a fierce gesture for silence, finger to lip.

  And it was of silence that Kinsmere became most aware. The rain had ceased; it pattered no more against windows or into the dark Volary Garden. At the back of it you were conscious of a vague stir and mutter from this great hive called Whitehall Palace. Otherwise silence had descended like an extinguisher cap on the room, on the Shield Gallery, on the palace itself.

  Silence, that is, except for a padding of soft little footsteps that approached in the Shield Gallery outside the closed door. There was a rustle of paper; something white was pushed under the door sill.

  Bygones lumbered over, picked it up, and returned to the table. He displayed a letter—another letter!—but this one of a sort somewhat different from Dolly’s. Large, clean, and oblong, having no superscription, it was folded over once and closed with black wax bearing a plain seal.

  “Come!” said Bygones. He put down his pipe, which had gone out. He broke open the paper and held it near one candle flame to be read. “Come, this is something like business!”

  The note, unsigned and in small neat writing, was very short. It requested that at nine o’clock that night, if convenient, Bygones Abraham, Esq., and the young gentleman accompanying him (name unknown) would present themselves at the westernmost door on the south side of the Shield Gallery. To no one would they mention this communication, which they would be good enough to destroy as soon as read.

  “Well!” continued Bygones.

  As Kinsmere had dealt with Sir Aubrey Fairchild’s deposition against Dolly, so Bygones dealt with this letter. He touched its edge to the candle flame. It flared up into a sheet of fire, throwing wild yellow light across the walls, and crumpled to black flimsiness. Bygones crushed it in his fist, letting the ashes sift down on the table.

  “Aha!” he added, with a triumphant look and a conspiratorial wink. “I would offer ye two guesses as to who sent this, save that ye may save one of ’em for future use. Eh?”

  “True enough. We need no Sir Oracle to tell us who sent it. But what’s its meaning?”

  “Why, it may mean only that His Majesty would desire to learn details of what befell this afternoon. Or, which is a thing far more likely, it means his plan for France will go forward this night. I carry one half the cipher dispatch: well and good! Then, by the claws of the Eternal, who should carry the other half but you?”

  “Me?”

  “Ay, lad, and who better?”

  “But he has no knowledge whatever of me! Since he intrusts so few people, would he intrust a total stranger?”

  “Come! From what the lass must ha’ told His Majesty, he’s not the man I think if he has many doubts. For one thing, you’ve shown you are a loyal king’s man—”

  “Am I?” says Kinsmere, in some perplexity. “I suppose I am. All my family have been, God knows.”

  “Well, are you not?” demanded the other. “If not, ecod, you take mighty strange ways o’ showing it! Why have you behaved as you have done this day, then? ’Twas not all the wench, surely. Why have you behaved as you have done?”

  “In all candour, I don’t know. It must be laid at the cause, in all likelihood, of an utter inability to keep out of trouble. And yet, looking back on the events of the day, I fail to see I could have behaved in any other way. The king (God bless him! as you would say) …”

  “Lad, lad, whose side are you on? A plain question, now! Should His Majesty graciously request you to carry one half of this document, would you do it?”

  “I would. Mark this, Bygones! If you are right touching the terms of this secret treaty to be proposed …”

  “I am right; depend on’t!”

  “Then the king (God bless him) would appear to be almost as great a rogue as the enemies leagued against him. But that,” Kinsmere added sharply, “is beside the point and signifies nothing.”

  “Beside the point, ecod? Signifies nothing?”

  “Or at least very little, damn me. Let him make a treaty with King Louis or with Prester John or with the worms that shall feed on us after death! For I am on the side of my friends. And, if you and Dolly Landis are loyal king’s men—why, then, by the sixty-eight bonfires of hell, so am I.”

  “Now here falls on our ears,” observed Bygones, “the sound of a most handsome sentiment. To this old hulk it calls for libations, which shall distil the lucubrations of a manly heart, and make blooming the sandy wastes of the throat. Lad, tilt the bottle.”

  Kinsmere poured sack. There was not enough to fill both tankards. But they clinked pewter together, drank off the wine, and had set down the tankards when Bygones made another fierce gesture. “Hush!” he whispered.

  “Burn me, but is this more mysteriousness? Is everything mysteriousness?”

  “I don’t know what it is. Hush, for God’s sake!”

  More footsteps could be heard in the Shield Gallery. They did not sound the same as those of whatever person had brought the letter a little while ago. They were brisk, questing steps, as of square-toed shoes a-clack. They approached from an easterly direction, not a westerly, and passed. There was the noise of somebody knocking at a door not too far away. Then a long silence.

  Bygones, lifting his shoulders to dismiss this, had started for the sideboard in search of another bottle when the footsteps returned and stopped just outside. There was a sharp, self-important fusilade of knocks at the withdrawing room door.

  “Ay?” called Bygones, turning. “Who knocks there? And ’tis not locked; set it open, if that please you.”

  The door swung wide. Only a few wall candles were burning down the length of the Shield Gallery, making a dusk in which the figure on the threshold showed only as a silhouette.

  “No tipstaff is on guard here,” said a snappish voice. “Or anywhere else, it seems.” Then the snappish tone changed. “Good souls, good souls, will you surfer a poor sinner to enter? My name is Salvation Gaines.”

  XI

  IN SWEPT A LEAN, middle-sized man with an iron-grey periwig.

  “Now His ways be praised!” intoned the newcomer, uprolling his eyes. “He shall be pleased to take the crafty in their own net, yet set the feet of the righteous upon paths of godliness and peace.”

  Mr. Salvation Gaines hurried to the middle of the room. There he stopped, peering at each of the others in turn.

  “Think not that He is mocked!” the newcomer said. “As hell and Rome contrive snares for the unwary, so the Lord in His own time shall circumvent the one and chastise the other for their souls’ good. Do I address Mr. Bygones Abraham?”

  “You do.”

  “The man Bygones Abraham, hanger-on at Whitehall? Of no known occupation,
yet in receipt of a certain income from the Privy Purse itself? Are these things true?”

  “They’re true and I can’t deny ’em, though they might be put with more civility.”

  “Now what have I to do with civility?” snapped Salvation Gaines.

  There were several contradictions here. Though his phrasing was the usual cant of the old-line Roundhead, Independent or perhaps Fifth-Monarchy man, he had none of that through-the-nose twang by which “Lord” became “Laard” and “God” became “Goad.” His speech and pronunciation were those of culture. If bearing, clothes, and periwig indicated an elderly man, his actual age could have been no older than the very early forties. He would give a little run forward, as though to peer closely at something, and then dart away. After a snuffle of humility, he would throw back his shoulders and send a glance anything but humble from sharp little red-rimmed eyes.

  Then he rounded on my grandfather.

  “And you, young man! You are Roderick Edward Kinsmere, of Blackthorn Hall in Somerset?”

  “Just Blackthorn will suffice.”

  “Now tell me, young man! Hath your soul been plucked from Satan as a brand is plucked from the burning? Are you saved and among the elect?”

  “I can’t say. But I should think it most unlikely.”

  “So young! So young! And yet already a man of blood. Oh, the pity of this!” Gaines snuffled, moaned, and then flung away his hands from his own eyes. “You must be chastised, I fear; yes, you must be chastised! Further tell me: how have you employed your day in this sink of abomination called London? Not in pursuit of lewd women, I hope?”

  “If ’tis any of your business …”

  “It is the Lord’s business, boy, and therefore mine. Speak home; don’t think to evade! How have you employed your time in this very stench of abomination?”

  “I passed most of today at the Devil tavern.”

  “Indeed you did, as I know. Oh, the pity of that! ‘And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever’”—Gaines stopped. “I have sought you everywhere in this wicked town. I have this moment come from seeking you in your lodgings here at the palace, and you were not even there!”