Most Secret

by John Dickson Carr

  “My lodgings here at the palace?” exploded Rowdy Kinsmere. “You are very free with damnation, Mr. By-God Gaines, but what hell’s nonsense is this?”

  Gaines whipped round.

  “Man Abraham,” he said, “can you deny that adjoining these rooms there is another set of chambers until today unoccupied?”

  “If I could deny it, you canting ninnyhammer,” roared Bygones, “be sure I would!—”

  “A worse man of blood! Shall not the godly expect this?”

  “But I can’t deny it,” said Bygones, pointing to a closed door in the west wall, “because I told the lad about ’em this morning.”

  Gaines whipped back.

  “And you, I dare suppose, will deny you occupy those chambers now?”

  “Though it’s no concern of yours, I never so much as set eyes on ’em!”

  “Indeed?” said Salvation Gaines.

  For some reason he bustled to the chimneypiece, where he examined the red-leather fire bucket hanging on a nail beside it. Then he went to the table. After looking hard at the black ash fragments where Bygones had burnt the king’s letter, he caught up one of the silver candlesticks. Snuffling and blowing, holding the light high, Gaines scurried across to the door in the west wall.

  It was closed, but not locked or bolted. Gaines threw it open and crossed threshold, with Bygones and my grandfather following.

  The rays of the taper disclosed another withdrawing room almost exactly like Bygones’s, hung and carpeted and furnished in the same way. A round table bearing candlesticks stood in the middle; there were chairs with body cushions. Another sideboard stood between two windows looking down on the Volary Garden. The sky above the rooftops had cleared; before long, as night deepened, a full moon would rise above Whitehall Palace.

  “Here are few signs of occupancy,” cried Salvation Gaines, “and no fire or lights. But let us look a little beyond!”

  He gestured with his taper towards another door opposite the one by which they had entered. It must lead, Kinsmere thought, to a bedchamber corresponding with that in the other set of rooms, save that Bygones’s bedchamber opened towards the east and this second towards the west. Gaines scurried towards it.

  “If they have told lies because they are misguided, there may perhaps be mercy after chastisement! But if they have told lies sinfully, and of their wicked malice …! Oh, and in tears I say it, what is here?”

  Kinsmere, hastening after him, looked into the bedroom. And, not for the first time that day, he found his wits whirling.

  The room, though small and stuffy, was very comfortable. It had a neat carpet. One tiny window showed a glimpse of the sky. Otherwise it was almost filled by a large bed with a tester, a dressing table bearing bowl and ewer for hot water, and a big chair beside the bed. Across the chair hung Kinsmere’s own well-filled saddlebags, having the initials R.K. burned into one corner of the leather with a red-hot poker.

  It was towards Bygones that he turned. “How came the saddlebags here? I took up quarters at the Grapes, near Charing Cross, because Uncle Godfrey recommended it and said my father was used to visit there. I have not seen my possessings since early morning. Had I known they were here, I had scarce need to borrow your shirt.”

  “Well! It was none o’ my doing or knowing,” roared Bygones. “Can I command lodgings at the palace, being here only on sufferance myself? As for the shirt, be pleased to keep it. ’Tis a tastefuller shirt than any you’d choose for yourself. Still, all the same—!”

  Salvation Gaines went back to the table in what unexpectedly appeared to be Kinsmere’s own withdrawing room. He set down the lighted candle beside the two unlighted ones. The palms of his hands were damp; he rubbed them together, and wiped them down the sides of his neat dark-grey coat. But his little eye did not waver.

  “Not know they were here?” said Gaines, with a sneer whistling through his nose. “A likely story, is it not, with which to affront the ears of pious men? Beyond there, or so I understand,” he waved his arm towards the west and south, “beyond there, all but surrounding us, lie the state apartments of the king himself. And tonight, in the Gallery—” when any person said the Gallery, and not Stone Gallery or Matted Gallery, he meant the great Banqueting House—“tonight, in the Gallery, they play at their accursed games, ombre or basset or the like, for gaming stakes which stink in the nostrils of the Lord Most High. Oh, what a godless court is all this!”

  “Is it so?”

  “And you, young Master Roderick Kinsmere! What do you do here and wherefore imperil your immortal soul with the filth of lies? You must expound this; expound it at once, I command you, else there shall be no hope for you now or hereafter!”

  “Expound it, must I? By whose authority must I expound it? And who are you?”

  “The same question,” said Bygones, “had occurred once or twice to a cooler head than either of yours. Who in exactness are you, Salvation Gaines, that you impose your presence as though you had a very right to be here? State your business, if any, and then begone.”

  “Did I address you, man of Wood? Nay, not so! I spoke only to this wretched addlepated boy, so misguided that—”

  “Speak to him, then,” interrupted Kinsmere, temper again beginning to simmer. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “In this life, which is as grass and lasteth but a day, I am chief clerk to the household of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham. His Grace, you will say, is a man of loose and immoral life. So he is; you are in the right; and so I have told him to his face. Yet there is hope for him,” gabbled Gaines, “there is hope for him notwithstanding! He hath the kindest feelings towards men of the true faith, Independents all, who are God’s Chosen and shall win eternal life. Above aught else, he will have no truck or traffic with the bloody designs of Popery. We have laws against these Papists—”

  “I call to mind,” said Bygones Abraham, “that we have also laws against Independents and other fanatics.”

  “Tchaa! Now what are such laws to me?”

  “You are above ’em, that’s to say?”

  “It is only to say,” and Gaines drew himself up, “that I have no words for you. I address this young man. Attend to me, poor boy; mark well what I tell you!”

  The flame of the candle wavered a little in a draught, sending great weights of shadow sliding across the tapestries and across the white plaster ceiling with its black crossbeams. Gaines raised an admonitory forefinger.

  “It has been called to His Grace’s notice that you waited upon him at York House this morning, but departed incontinent without paying your respects. Do I say true, sir?”

  “You do, sir.”

  “That was churlish of you; let it not happen again. However! His Grace of Bucks, being acquainted with your uncle and your late father, deigns to pardon this. He bids you sup with him at nine this night. Nay, don’t thank me; ’tis so arranged. A wherry will call for you at Whitehall Stairs in—let me think—a quarter hour’s time from now.”

  “Convey my compliments and thanks to His Grace, but say that this cannot be. I have another engagement for nine o’clock.”

  “Indeed you have.” Gaines almost pounced at him. “Shall I tell you what it is?”

  “Well …”

  “Let him speak, lad!” Bygones interposed, with a strong air of tension. “Let the Saved One speak!”

  “This morning, in a window embrasure at York House, you were observed deep in discourse with a certain banker, one Roger Stainley, whose religious views are strongly suspect …”

  “Mr. Stainley is a communicant of the Church Established!”

  “And what is this Church Established but another name for the Whore of Babylon?”

  “Nevertheless, since it is the Church Established—”

  “Be pleased, young man,” snapped Gaines, “to hold your tongue when I address you. This man Stainley, though not of the elect, is otherwise of good repute. Since he stands in some sense your guardian, since he would transfer to you a conside
rable inheritance, since you have not forgotten you were to sup with him at nine o’clock …”

  But Kinsmere had forgotten it. That appointment with Mr. Stainley (the same hour as he was now bidden to see the king) had been clean driven out of his head. When you consider he had utterly forgotten a meeting arranged for the making over to him of more than ninety thousand pounds, you can conceive the sort of shrewd, farsighted, long-headed man of business my grandfather was. When you add that he had every intention of putting off this meeting until such time as it did not interfere with his adventures, you are still further enlightened.

  “Now don’t deny,” said Gaines, “you are indeed pledged to be in Lombard Street. No more lies on your soul. Don’t deny this, I say: you were heard and observed!”

  “I don’t deny it. But by whom was I observed?”

  “By me. I am much more than scrivener and chief clerk to a household. There are laws, there are household regulations, to be observed at all times. I watch, I study, that such things may be strictly enforced. My eye, like that of the Almighty, must be upon all men at all times.”

  “You must find it a heavy labour.”

  “It is indeed a heavy labour, but shall I therefore complain? Well! Since you are resolved to wait upon the man Stainley, and since this shows at least some degree of filial respect, I will excuse and even encourage it. The wherry shall call for you. Stout men, pious men, shall accompany you to the stairs above London Bridge. They shall escort you through an ill neighbourhood of thieves and footpads, so that you suffer no harm. There! Since that is settled …”

  “It is not settled, I fear. The pious men will lose their own labour if they come for me in a boat. Wherever I am going at nine o’clock I will look to myself and protect myself.”

  “Oh, what is this my ears are hearing?”

  “They heard correctly. Did the head apprehend?”

  “What an ill-regulated place,” breathed Salvation Gaines, clasping his hands together, “is this palace of Whitehall, and how ill-regulated is the deportment of those who dwell therein! No porters with tipstaves at the doors! Your fault, the man Abraham’s fault! And—what have we here? What have we here?”

  Snatching up the light, he scurried to the chimneypiece in the east wall communicating with Bygones’s room. No fire burned here, but another red-leather fire bucket hung beside it. Salvation Gaines peered at this. He stalked back to the table and put down the candlestick.

  “There are ways to teach you manners, most impious and impudent young man! Verily, verily there are ways to teach you manners! Not one drop of water in a bucket which by command must be kept filled. What should you do if fire, the symbol of men’s fate in the hereafter, were at this moment to burst and consume? And what should you say if I tell you I mean to make report of your oversight?”

  “Only that you fail to curdle my Wood. Tell me much more and, by the bonfires of hell you are so fond of, I will fill that bucket and stick your head in it.”

  “Then what would you say,” returned Gaines, “to a report of abduction or even murder?”

  “Eh?” roared Bygones Abraham.

  “At the Devil tavern, where I went in search of you.” Gaines did not take his eyes from my grandfather, “a person answering your description was seen to leave at half past six o’clock. Captain Pembroke Harker of the Dragoons, who had dined there much earlier, was not seen to leave.

  “He had paid his score, I made discovery; he might have departed unobserved of his own accord. Yet it is a most strange thing that towards seven o’clock an ensign of the Foot Guards, together with a sergeant and two men—by whose order?—called at that tavern and betook themselves abovestairs. A cart was seen to drive away in the rain from an alley behind the tavern. Was something perhaps lowered from the window? Had Captain Harker, being at best a bullying creature, paid his score in different fashion?”

  Here Salvation Gaines began to laugh.

  It was brief laughter, not very loud; but it clashed and rang eerily in that dim room before he choked it off to become fanatic-eyed again.

  “And this wretched boy!” Gaines added. “Did he tell me, a while gone, that he did not this day consort with lewd women? Oh, did he not? When in fact he disported himself and made a tack at the foulest and most abandoned trull in the whole kingdom of—”

  “Salvation Gaines,” interrupted Kinsmere, “you could have said anything but that. Bygones, set open the door to the Shield Gallery.”

  “Gently, lad, gently! We can—”

  “Bygones, set open the door to the Shield Gallery.”

  Bygones did so.

  “Stand back!” yelped out Gaines, as Kinsmere advanced towards him. “Take but one more step, and I will …”

  “Ay? You will what?”

  Gaines uttered a screech like a strangled parrot. His right hand darted to the sheath pocket inside his coat. But whatever he may have been concealing there, he had no opportunity to draw it. Kinsmere, taking him by the back of the collar and the slack of the breeches, ran him across the room so fast and hard that Gaines’s toes seemed barely to touch the carpet. On the threshold of the open doorway Kinsmere halted—and pitched him.

  Salvation Gaines staggered across the width of the gallery, just saved by upflung hands from going face first into the opposite wall. He reeled, fell, and bounced to his feet like an India-rubber cat. He whipped round, the curls of his wig flying out. Once more his hand flew to the inside of his coat, but he checked the gesture.

  “The Lord of Hosts,” says he, “shall exact vengeance for this!”

  “Is there anything else of which you would make report?” says Kinsmere. “Well, do you report it as you see fit.”

  And he slammed the door with a crash.

  “Lad, lad,” exclaimed Bygones Abraham, “surely that was a thought overhasty? Did you mark his laugh? And at what he laughed? And his voice? ‘Had a gentleman’s voice,’ said the tapster; ‘ ’tis all I know.’ And how twice his hand went to the pocket where most of us carry a dagger? By the great body o’ Pilate, I would lay a hundred guineas to a Birmingham groat there’s the merry fellow on the stairs at the Devil!”

  “Yes; it occurred to me. Still—!”

  “If we had questioned him unsparingly … Still,” argued Bygones, who had commenced pacing, “still, as you say, should ha’ learned much or gone far if we had? He can be taken whenever we please, and questioned at Newgate or the Tower by men who know their business. Meanwhile, has he another bone-handled knife awaiting its uses? Of one more thing, though, we can have fair certainty. Come, lad! Into my room, now; ’tis more comfortable for discourse, and we have wine and tobacco. This way!”

  He lumbered into his own withdrawing room. Kinsmere followed, taking the candle and restoring it to the table beside its companion. With the rain ceased and the warmth of May restored, a coal fire made the place uncomfortably hot Bygones did not seem to mind this, though my grandfather did.

  “Well?” said Kinsmere. “What’s the one other thing of which we can feel certain?”

  “Salvation Gaines, that murdering and sanctimonious hypocrite, was never sent here by the Duke of Bucks—either for an honest purpose or a dishonest one. Nay, I’ll not credit it! My lord duke may one day become the king’s enemy; but he is not an enemy now, unless he plays at a deeper game than any would think him capable of. Gaines comes to see us, either of his own accord or sent by the plotter-in-chief …”

  “Why did he come? What was he at?”

  “He was fishing for information, and mighty crudely too! Has the king intent to see us this night? Will His Majesty help us out o’ the scrape Gaines put us in when he stabbed Harker? What’s afoot in any case? Remember, save that they set most of the problems and we must solve ’em, they’re as much in the dark as we are.”

  “Which may be called a good deal of darkness. Bygones, who is the plotter-in-chief?”

  “Lad, am I Sir Oracle? I am not. It sticks in my gullet,” retorted the other, “that there may be
a dozen clues or indications all about, which we can’t see even when we trip over ’em. As to who it might be …”

  He discussed the matter at some length, pacing, with almost unintelligible comments in French and Latin. He took out an ornate watch and held it in his hand. He reviewed names, on which Kinsmere could pass no opinion since my grandfather knew none of the persons mentioned.

  “And yet,” Bygones said vehemently, “there is one question I would have answered above all. This band of malcontents and their plotter-in-chief: what’s the motive for the schemes they spin? If they laid hands on the terms of a none-too-pretty secret treaty, how would they use it?”

  “Pull down the king? Destroy the throne?”

  “And substitute whom? Plotting, d’ye see, is no mere labour o’ love to a parcel of schoolboys, like tipping a beadle into a horse trough or greasing the stairs for your schoolmaster to go untimely down. If there’s something or somebody you would overthrow, there must be something or somebody you would put in its place.

  “Did they succeed in destroying the king, who’d take his place? The Duke of York? Not so, and not ever! The Duke of York is too much hated because he’s suspected—only suspected—of being a Papist. Restore the Puritan Commonwealth? That’s still more impractical and as wild as wind, because—Oh, ecod!”

  Bygones stopped abruptly, staring hard beyond the windows towards the radiance of a rising moon.

  “Come! There is a motive they might have and a game they might be at. It never occurred to me, though Pem Harker as good as told us. If you employ your wits, lad, you may see what it is!”

  “I have been doing little else, but to no purpose. Something Gaines said was all wrong and misleading into the bargain, and yet for the life of me I can’t call to mind what it was. There are other questions too. Where’s Dolly now? Who put my saddlebags in that bedchamber, and why? Also—”

  It was Kinsmere’s turn to stop. Through the night stillness, through the faint rustle which marked Whitehall Palace, clove the voice of the bell named Old Tom striking nine.