Most Secret

by John Dickson Carr

  He shifted his boots slightly in their cramped position on the edge of the table. He pretended to stare and gape like one bewildered. The heavy silver dishes rattled; his chair slid a little.

  “Eh?” he grunted. “God alive, my backbone! What did you say?”

  Joseph Garlick repeated the order, with a kind of urgent but casual contempt. The red hangings, tattered and begrimed and wine-stained, tilted behind his head with the ship’s motion. His sullen eye did not waver, and his freckled left hand was outspread on the table.

  “Quick with ’e!” he said. “And don’t think to make a fight, m’son; the’m caught. No trick to put a bullet in ’e; and then ’tes done. They’ll kill ’e if I don’t.”

  Kinsmere blinked.

  “Oh, come!” he said stupidly. “I was neatly bubbled, was I? You are all concerned in Captain Souter’s first act of piracy, or is it only one of a thousand? And where is our good Félix?”

  “A zaid, quick with ’e!” snapped the mate, suddenly coming to life and squaring forward. “The’ll give me yon letter—”

  He was taken a little off balance as the Thunderer pitched. Kinsmere, his heels on the edge of the table, kicked it out savagely.

  Table and dishes crashed into Garlick’s arm a split-second before he fired. The pistol exploded upwards with stunning flash and concussion. Kinsmere, on his feet with the dagger in his hand, was thrown completely off balance by the ship’s long pitch. He struck hard for Garlick’s right shoulder, to disable the man, and stabbed him to the heart instead.

  Then he could hear dishes bumping and rattling on the floor. An orange rolled towards the line of lockers underneath the windows, and bounced back. Kinsmere’s ears were still ringing from the shot.

  In a harsh mist of powder smoke Garlick stood swaying, his mouth open. The pistol dropped. He scrabbled with both hands at the dagger in his chest; he took one step, and fell forward in a convulsion across the overturned table.

  Somebody shouted out beyond the cabin’s one door. On unsteady legs Kinsmere lurched over to the door, twisting the great brass key in its lock. A moment more acrid smoke caught at the lungs; then the breeze whirled it away. There was blood on his hand and wrist, he noted; he wiped them on one of Félix’s curtains, and went back to Garlick.

  The man was dead, by the fortunate misfortune of that blow. Kinsmere hoisted him up and rolled him to one side, where knives, forks, an empty milk jug, and in particular the orange went tumbling in animated fashion round the body. Feet pounded up outside the locked door; volleys of knocks were followed by a shouted question in some language he did not understand.

  “Go to the devil, can’t you?”

  The unsteadiness had left his legs, now battle was joined. What interested him, what roused him to an oath of puzzled admiration, was the conduct of Captain Félix Alexandre Charlemagne Souter. In old Félix you met as jovial and hospitable a cutthroat as ever invited you to his lair. No doubt, out of politeness, he had sent Garlick to demand the letter rather than ask for it himself. What all this portended my grandfather could not determine, but that was not his immediate concern. His immediate concern must be how long he could hold out against the whole crew of an armed merchantman.

  He peered out the windows. Any notion of swimming for it could be abandoned; they were too far from land; and, besides, a longboat could pick him out of the water without fuss. The door was a solid one, bound in iron. They might come at him by way of the windows, climbing down the carved woodwork from the deck above; in good time they probably would. Meanwhile, he had only his sword and Garlick’s empty pistol. If he could find a supply of powder and ball, perhaps another pistol as well …

  He found a lockerful. He found it just before the furious knocking at the door died away. Heavier footsteps approached it. There was a jabber, a whisper, then a very authoritative knock.

  “Allo!” shouted the muffled voice of old Félix. “Allo dere!”

  My grandfather did not answer, being engaged in biting off paper wadding for another pistol. He leaned against the locker, with his drawn sword on top of it, and looked over his shoulder.

  “Al-lo, I say!” roared Félix, kicking at the door. “What is in dere, eh? What has happen?”

  Kinsmere finished loading the pistol; he set the hammer at cock, and put it down.

  “To say a truth, captain,” he called back, “I have been obliged to dispose of the mate. He is as dead as Boethius at this minute. But be polite, Félix! Remember, al-ways polite.”

  The bulkheads creaked and cracked. Dishes, cutlery and a dancing orange slithered round Garlick’s body and round a copy of The Consolation of Philosophy sprawled face up.

  “Oh, goddam!” yelled Félix.

  “Have an orange,” suggested my grandfather. “Most amiable prince of pirates, have an orange. Come in and get it; your reception will be a warm one.”

  “My dear yoong man—” protested a distressed voice.

  “Félix, for shame! Where is your nobility of thought? And what would Boethius say to such japes? ‘For as good is ever rewarded in this world,’” Kinsmere read a sentence aloud, “so is evil infallibly punished.’ Is this your fashion of carrying King’s Messengers, Captain Souter?”

  Beyond the door he heard something like a deep chuckle.

  “Young man,” proclaimed Félix, “I don’ want to ’urt you. I am commanded not to ’urt you, but I don’ want to ’urt you either. I tell you, I like your ways. Venez, mon cher! Be good. We only wan’ to carry you out at sea where you can’t raise no fuss and they don’ find you if anything bad ’appen. We wan’ something you have got; why should we ’urt you? Alors, be good. You can’ escape where you are. And we take you easy if we smash de door, hein?”

  “Yes, let us all be in good humour,” Kinsmere yelled back. “You want what I have in the oilskin packet, is that it?”

  “Ah, my brave one! If you will be so good—”

  “Now attend carefully, Félix. As soon as you attack that door to smash it, the packet will be weighted with a salt shaker and thrown overboard out of a window. An even warmer welcome, I had better tell you, awaits the first three or four men who stick their heads inside.”

  There was a muffled, excited consultation, in which no words could be distinguished. Kinsmere had set out four pistols, all loaded. He kept a wary eye out between the windows and the door which faced them. It seemed to him that subdued activity seethed on the quarter-deck above.

  Then, outside the door, another voice spoke in English.

  “Now is the wicked one enmeshed to his doom! For the Lord shall set a snare for their feet, and hath done so. He is fast bound in his iniquity, and by us too; and, when he shall learn who I am—”

  “To say a truth,” shouted Kinsmere, “he already knows who you are. Surely that’s Salvation Gaines?”

  “And if it is?”

  “Still filled with conceit, Salvation? Is there anything else of which you would make a report to authority? Fire buckets? Pirates? When you had stabbed Harker and Butterworth, did you call down a fine on some poor-devil clerk for losing his quill-cutting knife? Enter, Anointed One; be pleased to enter!”

  “Enough of this child’s defiance, wretched youth. Will you allow defeat at last, and capitulate to us?”

  “No!”

  “What I call down upon you, lewd beyond your years, is the fire everlasting and the worm that dieth not. And yet, ere He shall burn and torment you, there are chastisements to be met on earth. When the crew take you and torment you at their own pleasure, as they will do within a matter of moments—”

  “Then why not begin?”

  “I say to you—”

  Somebody must have plucked at Gaines’s sleeve; he broke off; there was a muttered conference, with Félix’s chuckle at the end of it. Kinsmere rather liked old Félix; he could not help liking old Félix; at the same time, when he pictured Gaines’s reddish eyes and vicious blend of humility with arrogance, it was not easy to contain fury.

  “
Yes, that is best,” snapped Gaines, evidently speaking to Félix. “Let it be done; what do they fear? He is a monument of treason, like his master Charles Stuart. He is a whoreson boy with a kept drab. But he cannot harm them. The Lord vouchsafed me sight of him when you led him aboard; he hath no firearms, and no weapons save a sword or perhaps a dagger too. Give the word, Captain Souter; give the word.” Then Gaines screamed: “Your last chance, youth of blood! Will you open this door and yield you, ere they take you and rend you in pieces?”

  “Go crawl in the gutter where you belong!”

  Footsteps retreated and pounded on a companionway. Kinsmere thrust a pistol into one each of his side pockets, tucked the rapier under his arm, and took the remaining two pistols in his hands. Overhead there was a bump, together with louder voices. All over the top of the sterncastle he heard a stirring and scraping like a cupboard full of rats. They would make their first tack at climbing down.

  Taking up a position midway between door and windows, his eyes on the windows, he raised one pistol. A song, he thought, might not be out of place. This was pure bravado; he knew it. But he was feeling rather lightheaded, either from fear or from some other emotion; to sing in their faces seemed the only way of expressing defiance when they crowded into a corner to kill you.

  It was hard enough to stand upright without staggering. The Thunderer both rolled and pitched; everything was in motion, including the dead man. A silver drinking goblet skittered past his foot and bumped into the door.

  Here’s a health unto His Majesty,

  With a tow-row-row and a tow-row,

  Confusion to his enemies,

  With a tow-row-row and a tow-row …

  The scuffling over the sterncastle approached closer, with more of caution now.

  And he that will not drink his health

  I wish him neither life nor health …

  A loose foot kicked against wood. As the Thunderer went over in a roll to port, its wake seething and boiling, the fingers of a hand edged over the top of one window whose light stood partway open. It groped farther down. Kinsmere could see the black nails, and took good aim.

  Nor yet a rope to hang himself;

  With a tow-row-row and a—CRACK!

  There was a deafening report. His pistol ball smashed one oblong pane and skewered that hand as neatly as a rapier blade. Through the gust of smoke a few bloody raindrops splashed the window; somebody screamed. As the Thunderer plunged and shouldered to starboard, a man shot past the windows, wriggling in the air. Kinsmere saw his mouth and eyes a fraction of a second before his back struck the great rudder. It kicked him into the wake, limply; he did not cry out again, and the white rush bore him away.

  A yell went up from above. Past the windows flew the ends of a Jacob’s ladder, swinging wide with another man clinging to it and aiming a pistol. With one foot he smashed in a whole window, the glass clattering down, and fired point-blank as he swung. Kinsmere could not tell where the bullet lodged, save that it went wild. Smoke and flying glass briefly blinded him. Then the Jacob’s-ladder swept back like a pendulum, its occupant lurching for the window sill with knife in teeth; and my grandfather fired straight at the knife. It disappeared; together with face and figure, just as other hands swarmed round and down.

  Two shots gone. He staggered back, last two pistols ready to hand, coughing in the raw smoke. Behind him there were crashings when axes splintered at the door. He could hear Félix yelling, “Don’ ’urt him; ne faites pas du mal; don’ ’urt him—”

  Another figure, cutlass in hand, tumbled in through the shattered window. Kinsmere’s third pistol snapped and missed fire. The figure with the cutlass, who seemed all hair and steel, dived down against sun-glittering smoke. Kinsmere fired for the last time; his own bullet went wild as other figures, more hair and steel, pressed in through the window. The first man with the cutlass flung out a savage cut; he parried this with the rapier, but lurched off-balance on his return thrust, and only pierced an arm. Hair and steel jerked back from the sting, doing a fantastic dance as though surrounded by wasps. Other hair swept past and shocked Kinsmere back with its weight. Twice he thrust, at bodies wide open when the arm went back for a cut; twice he got home deeply, and tried to set his back against a bulkhead …

  “Doucement!” thundered the voice of Félix. “Doucement, j’implore …”

  In went the door, smashed off its hinges. That was the point at which Kinsmere tripped over the rolling dead man, and arms caught him from behind. In an abstract way he knew he had been struck on the head; he heard a heavy bump or thud, as though it had occurred to someone else; then a great roaring in the ears, an exploding wave of pain, and no more.

  Consciousness returned to a blurry sound of voices. His eyes were open; his head had become a mass of pain. He was lying on the floor—deck, rather; let’s be nautical—at the foot of a bunk in that same cabin. He tried to move his wrists, and failed because they were tied together. He lifted his head a little, inducing more pain. But at least he had a glimpse of his surroundings.

  The motion of the ship was much steadier. The cabin had been put to rights in so far as this could be managed. A humped little bearded man, on hands and knees, scrubbed at the boards and wrung out into his bucket a cloth so black that it scarcely showed bloodstains at all. At the restored table sat Captain Souter, with a silver goblet and silver wine jug before him and The Consolation of Philosophy open at his elbow.

  Kinsmere closed his eyes against pain. He must have lost consciousness again, though only for a few seconds. He was roused by hands reaching inside his shirt. Hands lifted out the leather pouch on its thongs round his neck, and again he opened his eyes.

  Over him bent Salvation Gaines, iron-grey periwig and all. With another knife, not a bone-handled one, Gaines cut the thongs and took the pouch. He stood up straight, glowing with smug triumph.

  “You again?” said Kinsmere, who could not quite recover his voice. “If it is you and not a nightmare, be off! You sicken me.”

  Gaines looked down, studied him, and then kicked him viciously in the ribs.

  “Stop dat!” boomed Félix, putting down his goblet after taking a deep pul. “You will do none of dat, my friend. No, no, no! You may be as ’oly as de Pope ’imself—”

  “Oh, pity and spare us, but what wicked words are these? As the Pope, did you say?”

  “ ’Oo else? And if it come to dat, you sicken me. You would not go in and take ’im while ’e could still fight. You do not touch him now, I tell you.” Félix swivelled round in the chair. “Ah, my dear yoong man! Is better, I hope? You go better now, hein?”

  Félix rubbed his hands together, chuckling and beaming. And, try as he would, Kinsmere could not feel anything but friendly towards this solicitous old bandit It was due to Félix, he knew, that he had merely been struck senseless and not killed.

  “Well, Félix,” he said in Captain Souter’s own philosophical tone, “we had something of a brawl, don’t you think?”

  “I do, I do! Yes, you are in de right. It was one damn fine burly-’urly, you bet. Come!” continued Felix, pouring and draining another bumper. “Soon you get up and be com-for-table, yes? We drink de wine and t’row de dice, as I ’ave said long ago. Your are not ’urt; I ’ave look at you. A bump on de ’ead, but it do not bleed. A wound in de shoulder has bleed a leetle; but it is not new wound, I t’ink; you do not get it ’ere. You are well and as good as new.”

  Here he looked at Gaines, who was swallowing hard as though swallowing bile.

  “And you, de great ’oliness which rejoice to kill people when dey are not looking? What ail you, Salvation Gaines? Already you ’ave agree this yoong man mus’ not be ’urt or torture: in part because I will not ’ave it and in part because there is still a use for him. Then what ail you, goddam? Why are you so glum? We ’ave got what we were ’ired to get; it is in your clench now; goddam, are you not content?”

  “I do the Lord’s work,” cried Gaines, with tears rising to his eyes;
“therefore am I sustained in all trials. You are a wicked man, Captain Souter, lewd and a Papist too. Yet there is reason in what you say.”

  He took the oilskin packet from the leather pouch. The pouch he thrust into his pocket. Delicately he removed the oilskin, putting that into his pocket too, and weighed the sealed document in his hand.

  “Let there be rejoicing! Here,” declared Gaines, “is half of the dispatch that will trap Charles Stuart. Let him henceforward obey the behest of godly men; else he will go for ever on his travels or know the axe and block as his father did. Now are the sinners cast into their pit, and the worthy exalted on high!”

  The seaman with cloth and bucket had long ago scuttled out, past a half-broken door which was propped against the bulkhead. With hands none too steady Gaines broke the seals on the document.

  “We have but little more to do. We intercept the sloop Saucy Ann; we gain the other half of the dispatch. Joy is not complete (no, no!) until both halves are in the possession of the man who employed us. Yet already we may praise the Lord for a consummation. Here—”

  Spreading out the document in his fingers, Salvation Gaines stopped dead. His face seemed to grow rigid, the mouth pulled square like a Greek mask. A falsetto screech went piercing up; he flung his arms wide, and executed a couple of convulsive little steps, like the beginning of a danse macabre, against the line of partly shattered windows.

  “Eh?” roared Felix, starting up. “What is it? What is wrong?”

  “What is wrong, you ask?” Then Gaines choked. “Look there, man of sin! Look there!”

  He spurned the document from him; it fluttered and fell on the table. The oilskin packet had contained, heavily sealed up, half of a blank sheet of paper.

  XVI

  ALREADY—BLINDING HEADACHE OR no, bound wrists or no—Kinsmere had struggled up to a sitting position with his back against the bunk.

  What started him off laughing he could never afterwards be sure. It may have been Salvation Gaines’s anguished contortions, like a Puritan clergyman thinking of sin. It may have been the thought of how furiously he had carried himself with sword and pistol to defend a half-sheet of blank foolscap. Anyway, he could not stop. Unlike Gaines’s giggling laughter, which was largely a sneer, his full-throated mirth rang in the wrecked cabin. He kicked out his heels. He leaned back and roared until he was near tears.