Most Secret

by John Dickson Carr

  Gaines looked at him out of sly little eyes. Then Gaines stood above him, taking the sharp knife from an inside pocket.

  “You knew this, I think? You knew the paper was blank?”

  “I did not know it,” my grandfather retorted truthfully. “Have I lost my senses, that I would challenge Félix and his whole crew to preserve … to preserve …” He felt his jaws working, and exploded into the other’s face. “Let us show a deep pity, shall we, for anyone who would outwit the King of England? And you, Salvation Gaines, and your band of malcontents and their precious plotter-in-chief … keeo-whoosh! Haw, Haw, HAW!”

  “It will be found less diverting,” Gaines felt the edge of the knife, “when necessary chastisement has been administered. Meanwhile, enough of this! You will tell me—”

  “I tell you,” Felix roared suddenly. He rose to his feet, shaking a thick arm in the air. “Always you say what a clever faller you are; but you are one imbécile. No, no, no, I tell you! Dis one ’as not got half de dispatch because de ot’er messenger ’as got it all.”

  Gaines stood stock-still, fingers at his lower lip.

  “Regard!” said Félix, somewhat superfluously. “Consider! T’ink what you yourself ’ave tell me. Dees one is yoong man. He ’ave never carry de dispatch before, eh? And your king is not one trusting faller. But dees yoong man will be one damn fine decoy, yes, and t’row us off while de o’ter messenger go to Calais?”

  To my grandfather, now, the scheme showed as both simple and inevitable.

  “Is this true, Roderick Kinsmere?” snarled Gaines.

  “I don’t know; I can’t say. Yet I would lay any wager it is true. Whereat, gentlemen, you have had your labour for nothing. You are most royally bubbled and undone.”

  “Does it truly appear so, lewd youth? Tremble; you have cause to tremble! For the Lord is not mocked, nor am I. We are come but to the second part of a plan hardly disturbed. You are an obstinate and stupid young man. In your ridiculous efforts to serve Charles Stuart, which Providence sets at naught, you have killed several men and badly injured others. Yet you are not dead, as such behaviour merits. You are not hung up by the thumbs. You have not even had your ears cropped or your nose slit to the bone: that is, not yet. I have been most merciful; can you guess why?”

  “There is a use for me, somebody said.”

  “There is indeed a use,” Gaines fingered the knife, “even for such as you. We had thought to take half a dispatch in your possession, and the other half from an oafish fellow now aboard the Saucy Ann. Our plan is altered but a little: the entire document we will take from the man Bygones Abraham.

  “How ingenious is the Lord! The sloop Saucy Ann has a longer journey round than we. And we are, by happy circumstance, the faster vessel. With full knowledge of the course she customarily sets and no bad weather to delay her, Captain Souter has reckoned we should meet her in the Straits—when?”

  “It be any time now, I tell you,” roared Félix. “We sight her; we over’aul her; we take her. Eh, yoong man?”

  “Félix, for God’s sake! It is you, and this praying murderer—and his Lord too, if you think Him concerned—who must completely have lost your senses. An act of piracy in the Narrow Seas …”

  “Tchaa!” said Gaines, lifting one shoulder. “The law of man, it may be, would apply some such name to it, if indeed we attacked the vessel. But we are about pious work. Shall we use such extreme measures: unless, to be sure, they become needful?”

  “By de Virgin and St. Joseph,” swore Félix, heaving his chest and chuckling, “by de Virgin and St. Joseph, but I ’ope dey are needful. Hoist de bones! Blood in de scuppers! Rum-tiddlety-um-tum, ha, ha!”

  Giving a fillip to his beard, shaking his head so that hair and earrings danced, he peered round benevolently. A knifelike kind of malice edged Salvation Gaines’s mouth.

  “Enough of this, Captain Souter! Tales of violence from the West Indies must not carry your impetuousness too far. There is a difference, let’s allow, between an act of piracy off Barbadoes and an act of piracy in the Straits of Dover. Can you not see the nature of that difference?”

  “Difference—bah! It’s all water,” argued Félix. “Besides, we be very polite.”

  “Enough, I say!” This time Gaines addressed Kinsmere. “The sloop Saucy Ann mounts fewer than twenty guns. She can neither fight nor run away. In a good cause we must employ craft to take the man Abraham unawares, lest he destroy the paper as you so foolishly threatened to do. The better plan, therefore—”

  “One man I ’ave got,” Félix said suddenly, “wit’ de educated voice in six languages. Is called Longstaffe; will be de mate now Garlick is gone. Hah, dass it! Him I will put on de quarter-deck beside me to shout: ‘Captain Félix Alexandre Charlemagne Souter present ’is compliments; and you ’eave to damn quick, please, or he give you a broadside.’ What you t’nk of dat, yoong man?”

  “I am not inclined to favour it, Félix.”

  “You are not, goddam? W’y not?”

  “It is overhasty, I think; it comes to business with a thought too much of the abrupt. Let me suggest a better one. ‘Captain Félix Alexandre Charlemagne Souter presents his compliments, and begs leave to pay a short visit aboard your vessel.’ How’s that?”

  Gaines, pale with fury, made a short, threatening gesture.

  “Have you some notion, Roderick Kinsmere, that I speak in jest?”

  “Oh, go to the devil! If you have no intent to take and sink the sloop, how else can you hope to trap Bygones?”

  “With your help.”

  “Oh?”

  “With your help, willingly given,” Gaines assured him. “I say willingly, and I do not jest; I mean this. You will even thank me, when I have done. For the Lord of Hosts shall open your eyes, and set your feet towards righteousness at last. Do you mark me now, Roderick Kinsmere?”

  “Well?”

  “I do not know whether the man Bygones Abraham is aware you are aboard the Thunderer. If he is not, all doubts shall be set at rest. When we sight the sloop, by Captain Souter’s orders, we will draw close and hail. You will be on the quarter-deck in plain sight. You will call for the man Abraham; you will say that difficulties have arisen, and that he must come aboard the Thunderer for discourse with you. Once here, he will be detained; we put back to Dover. Should the captain of the sloop become suspicious, what in pity’s name can he do? Thus does justice triumph; thus is a design accomplished without disorder or any illegal act. You see?”

  “Yes, I see. And now the threats begin, I suppose?”

  “Threats?”

  “‘Do this, or you will feel the knife.’ ‘Do that, else your death will be lingering and unpleasant.’ I am familiar with your tactics, Mr. Salvation Gaines. They will earn you a hemp collar, but they will do much mischief ere that. With what kind of unpleasantness have you a mind to commence?”

  “Now, how I am misjudged!” cried Gaines, uprolling his eyes. “How are the godly reviled and traduced when they but seek to do their duty! Threats, wretched boy? I utter none; I carry none out. I will use only sweet persuasion. For there is hope for you; yea, verily, there is hope for you even yet.—Captain Souter!”

  Félix, who had sat down and poured himself another bumper, rolled his head round.

  “He can do us no further harm, Captain Souter. Since we must be thrice merciful, since we must forgive our enemies, this poor fellow might be made more comfortable, as you suggested. Pray fetch him up; set him in a chair. If you think it prudent, loose his bonds and give him a mouthful of wine. I would plead with him. I would place certain facts before him, and then.—Captain Souter!”

  But Félix had been brooding on a different problem.

  “‘—present his compliments,’” he was muttering, “‘and beg leave to pay a short visit aboard your vessel.’ Hah! H’m! Mabbe you are right,” he continued, scowling round at Kinsmere and tapping his nose thoughtfully. “You are educate in de politeness. You should tell de right way, eh? But I don�
�t know. It sound too damn polite to me. ’Ow are dey goin’ to know I am a pirate?”

  “They’ll see your bones and death’s head, won’t they, all merry and bright over the mainmast? Are you prepared with a pirate flag, Félix?”

  “Not yet; where I get one? Oh, goddam! De principle is de right one, so who care? Hoist de bones! Blood in de scuppers! Tra-la-li-la-la, all’s well! What else you say?”

  “Help me up, will you?”

  Félix surged to his feet, smote his chest a couple of times, and approached at his bow-legged roll. Though my grandfather weighed twelve stone, Felix lifted him as easily and solicitously as a jug of old rum. He put him into a chair beside the table, using his cutlass to sever the rope at Kinsmere’s wrists. Into another silver goblet he poured wine. It was Madeira and sickly sweet, no stuff for a man with a headache, yet it had a grateful warmth once it was gulped down. Kinsmere eased his bruises back into the chair.

  “All I regret, me,” Félix proclaimed sadly, “is what dey ’ave done to my belle cabine. Dey ’ave smash de window. Dey ’ave shoot bullets in de bulkhead. Somebody step on Boethius, even. If I find de scoundrel dat step on Boethius, I will give him de cat, you bet Still, is beautiful, hein?” he demanded, and refreshed himself with a look round. “Regard my Spanish chest, wit’ de ivory. Nine ’undred crowns I pay for him …”

  “Near to all the damage was done by our guest,” said Gaines, playfully thrusting the knife towards Kinsmere. “But we forgive him, don’t we? Yes, we forgive him! Captain Souter, sit down and be silent. I have much to say to our young friend.”

  Gaines’s friendliness was as overpowering as his humility or arrogance. In an instant he had become all ingratiating airs and playful ways. He would run into corners and run at you, this time in good will Then he stood with his back to the window, framed against a tilting white-capped Channel.

  “Roderick Kinsmere, you have been unjust! A group of worthy gentlemen, gathered together for the public weal under a patron of most noble motives, you have seen fit to designate as a ‘band of malcontents and their plotter-in-chief’!”

  “‘Worthy gentlemen,’ is it?”

  “Oh, indeed, the most worthy and the most laudable. When you apprehend, when you know the truth, you will join our number.”

  “Join your number, will I? Salvation Gaines, do you care to lay a wager on that?”

  “I do not lay wagers; ’tis an impious practice. Still, if I did, I would put my very soul into the business. Yes: you will join us in happiness and rejoicing, and indeed you can do no other.

  “Come!” added Gaines, uprolling his eyes and spreading out his hands in appeal. “Could I have spoken with you in private yesterday, I could have opened the matter and unburdened my heart. But this could not be; you were for ever in the company of the man Abraham. Besides, if I may say so, these poor hands were somewhat occupied.”

  “They were occupied, for one thing, with the slaughtering of Harker and Butterworth. Is that what you call worthy work?”

  “Poor boy, this had to be!”

  “Now, damn my soul—!”

  “No blasphemies, I beg!” Gently Gaines touched Kinsmere’s forehead with the point of the knife. “Come! When you and the man Abraham skulked in a cupboard at that tavern, was I not close behind you; and unseen as I am always unseen? Did I not hear Harker, out of overweening vanity, boast of his deeds and his knowledge to a shameless harlot, and so betray our group of patriots to what might have been their undoing?

  “Butterworth (need I say it?) was a case near as bad. He was a stupid man, a weak man. He had allowed himself to be trapped by Charles Stuart. Only a few questions, only a touch of rough handling at the Tower, and he would have confessed all. Could this be permitted? You know it could not. Is there not scriptural authority if I cry that the end justifies the means? And so, for the preservation of a band of patriots …”

  Kinsmere repeated the word, in no sympathetic tone.

  “Yes, patriots!” retorted Gaines, not so amiably now. “If you like, however, I will rejoice in vile insults as martyrs have ever rejoiced in the arena or the cross. I will accept your term ‘band of malcontents’ and ‘plotter-in-chief.’ Who were or are these people? Myself. Harker. Butterworth. There are only two more of us, one of whom I need not mention because he is of no consequence. But the other one, the important one—”

  “The plotter-in-chief, then?”

  “I prefer to say our patron, but have it so. Only I am fully in his confidence: only I know what he means to do.”

  “Well?”

  “Well!” said Gaines, and showed his teeth. “What did the plotter-in-chief design, and doth still design as we approach the hour of triumph? Touching this there has been much misconception, even in our band itself. Harker, even poor Butterworth, died in the belief that it was a scheme against the body politic, a plan to cast Charles Stuart from his throne.”

  “And it’s not that?”

  “No, it is not that: unless the King of England shall prove too troublesome when he sees himself ensnared.” Gaines stood up straight. “Did we destroy him, whom should we substitute? One day in future, no doubt, a return of the ever-glorious Commonwealth, with some worthy and pious man like Oliver (myself, for instance) raised from modest gentleman’s beginnings to the very Seats of the Mighty! Meanwhile, no. Charles Stuart—whoremonger though he may be, Papist at heart though he is—will serve the day well enough. He owns certain graces; he is popular with the vulgar. He will serve, that is, provided he obey the behest of Parliament; provided he walk in sober ways, put aside evil women and cease to squander money upon them; provided, to be short, he does precisely as he is told in all things.

  “And he will do this, be assured. Upon one thing His Majesty is resolved: he will go no more on his travels, nor risk axe and block as his father did. Over him, shortly, my patron will hold a document so damning that he will be tied hand and foot. As my patron has a grip fast on the king, so I shall have a grip fast on my patron. Even the godliest man must protect his own interests, else where is he? And you, Roderick Kinsmere,” Gaines suddenly cried, “will do as you are bid in all things. Do you follow me?”

  About the man there was such raptness, such blazing certainty, that Kinsmere felt shaken as though by great hands.

  “Follow you? How?”

  “You will stand on the quarter-deck of this ship. You will whistle the other messenger to his doom. Afterwards, as a good patriot and one of us, you will do what else I shall bid at any time.”

  “You think so, do you? Why will I?”

  “Because, rash youth who would not be warned,” answered Gaines, “the plotter-in-chief of this band of malcontents is your guardian, Mr. Roger Stainley.”

  Then the pious one’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.

  “I greatly fear,” he said, “I have astonished and even shocked you. You will cry fie and out upon it; you will profess not to believe me. And yet, had you paused but a moment to reflect—as you never have—you would have seen this fact as inevitable.”

  Wind and sea went by; a quiet wind and a calm sea, with only the wake like a millrace. Captain Félix Souter (“I don’t want to ’urt you; I am commanded not to ’urt you”) rose up massively and poured Kinsmere a goblet of wine. Again he drank off the sweet Madeira, choking a little; and set down the goblet. He was shocked at Gaines’s words, yes; nevertheless, in a tumult of conflicting feelings, was he so very astonished after all?

  For he was pursuing other memories, and conjuring up other words.

  In his mind rose the image of Roger Stainley: the shrewd, correct, mildly cynical face; the spectacles, the sober elegance, the pitted wrinkles from a troubled mind; of Roger Stainley, at their only interview, waiting in the foyer of York House without hope of being received by the Duke of Buckingham.

  If you are a suitor of some kind, or he owes you money, the banker’s words came back, you are not like to see him at all. ’Tis a thing far easier to gain audience with the k
ing. His Majesty pays no debts, on my life; but at least he is mighty affable and civil in putting you off.

  And so he remembered Roger Stainley, clearly taken aback when Kinsmere arrived to claim an inheritance several days too early; Roger Stainley, who had urged him to keep as much as possible out of sight, and to speak with few unless the banker himself could be there.

  Aboard the Thunderer, now, he listened to the rush of the wake.

  “Stop!” he said suddenly. “We thought—”

  “You thought?” interrupted Gaines, thrusting forward with a barely concealed sneer. “Who thought?”

  “Bygones Abraham and I. Or I thought, at all events …”

  “Is it so? And what did you think?”

  “In seeking the plotter-in-chief, I surmised it must be a man of importance. A great lord, that’s to say, of power or influence at court. But what is importance, and how is it measured? In plottings of this kind, for the motives that prompt it, the most important man is the man who holds the moneybags, and can open or shut ’em at will.”

  “It dawns upon you at last, does it? This is indeed the person of consequence: Roger Stainley. Remember that, foolish youth, and consider how you will ruin yourself unless you join our group of patriots. What is the fortune Roger Stainley holds in trust for you? Ninety thousand pounds, or is it a hundred thousand? Not to be thrown away, I think. Not even to be endangered by a stubborn whim. However!” said Salvation Gaines. “Since no man guessed what we were about, or in any way pierced the design …”

  “I will give you odds, damn me, that Bygones Abraham guessed. And I ought to have guessed, from the lies you told last night.”

  “Lies, young man?”

  “What else? At Whitehall Palace, in the set of chambers I did not know was reserved for me, you gave details of a private discourse I had with Mr. Stainley. If the king had learned so much concerning me and my affairs, where did you learn?