Most Secret Read Online Free
Author: John Dickson Carr
so passed the day.
You now have some notion of the calm pastoral life Roderick Kinsmere led, and of the elements that went into his making. It will not do to dwell on this, since there are mighty things a-brewing in the great world beyond Blackthorn gates. The time has come to speak of him—some eight or nine months after his fight with the carter—when he must pack his saddlebags and ride up to London to claim his inheritance.
From the strongbox in the library he took the letters his father had written for him years ago, notably a letter to His Grace the Duke of Buckingham at York House, one of the most powerful noblemen at court; and also from that strongbox he took the fine sapphire ring. His uncle Godfrey presented him with a letter to Mr. Roger Stainley, a pouch full of money, and a new sword.
All the tenantry had assembled to see him go, lined up deep before the old grey house. Under pretext of addressing parting injunctions to his nephew, Uncle Godfrey did not lose the opportunity of holding forth to them at considerable length.
The old gentleman stood on the steps under the arched doorway out there, carved with heraldic beasts as you see it now, and wiped a vinous tear from his eye as he exhorted. Uncle Godfrey bade him to be of good cheer; to remember the manners of his father, and his father’s famed civility; to reflect on and hold dear the ancient Kinsmere name, its honesty and its worth; and manfully to smite in the eye any ill-disposed thus-and-so who doubted it. Uncle Godfrey further counselled him (rather unexpectedly) to remember that flesh is but grass, and man travelleth a weary road throughout his life, and liveth but to die; and after some minutes of this vein he had got both himself and the tenantry into such a depressed frame of mind that he fell back overcome.
During the harangue my grandfather sat quiet on his horse, with his hat off out of politeness. But he refused to be cast down; he could taste the air of springtime and see the green meadows warm under the sun. So he replied that he would strive to remember all this advice; he bade everyone good-bye, and rode down from the house with the tenantry cheering behind him, in a very tolerable good humour with himself and with the world. Mingled in the cheers he could hear the bells of Keynsham Church ringing far away, and the friendly pigs honking by the roadside; and this was in the green month of May, being the Year of Our Lord one thousand six hundred and seventy, and the tenth since the return of Our Sovereign Liege Charles the Second.
II
B UT NOW I MUST tell you of London, of its masks and fashions, of its squalor and glitter, as my grandfather first saw it all those years ago.
They caught the highwayman Claude Duval one night in January, at the Hole-in-the Wall in Chandos Street: as they catch knaves, almost always, whose tongues clack too freely in public. Claude Duval was the graceful cutthroat who played the flageolet on Hounslow Heath; who stopped the coach, and danced a coranto with the lady on the smooth turf in the moonlight before he relieved her husband of much booty.
But they took away his own money pouch and pistols, clapping him into Newgate. Then arose a great uproar and to-do; ladies in vizard masks came tearfully to visit him. Claude was a hero. Claude postured with ease in the dock at the sessions house, speaking up mighty jocosely to the red-robed judge above the bar, who felt his own importance when he fitted on the black cap.
And then one raw morning the great bell boomed at St. Sepulchre’s. They put Claude into a cart, with the sheriff going before and the javelin men around; they presented him with a bunch of flowers as the procession moved out along roads that ran two and a half miles through the countryside to Tyburn gallows. A vast crowd saw Claude turned off after an affecting last speech, but his honours had only begun when his legs ceased to twitch.
Wailing their lamentations, his admirers arrayed him in
You now have some notion of the calm pastoral life Roderick Kinsmere led, and of the elements that went into his making. It will not do to dwell on this, since there are mighty things a-brewing in the great world beyond Blackthorn gates. The time has come to speak of him—some eight or nine months after his fight with the carter—when he must pack his saddlebags and ride up to London to claim his inheritance.
From the strongbox in the library he took the letters his father had written for him years ago, notably a letter to His Grace the Duke of Buckingham at York House, one of the most powerful noblemen at court; and also from that strongbox he took the fine sapphire ring. His uncle Godfrey presented him with a letter to Mr. Roger Stainley, a pouch full of money, and a new sword.
All the tenantry had assembled to see him go, lined up deep before the old grey house. Under pretext of addressing parting injunctions to his nephew, Uncle Godfrey did not lose the opportunity of holding forth to them at considerable length.
The old gentleman stood on the steps under the arched doorway out there, carved with heraldic beasts as you see it now, and wiped a vinous tear from his eye as he exhorted. Uncle Godfrey bade him to be of good cheer; to remember the manners of his father, and his father’s famed civility; to reflect on and hold dear the ancient Kinsmere name, its honesty and its worth; and manfully to smite in the eye any ill-disposed thus-and-so who doubted it. Uncle Godfrey further counselled him (rather unexpectedly) to remember that flesh is but grass, and man travelleth a weary road throughout his life, and liveth but to die; and after some minutes of this vein he had got both himself and the tenantry into such a depressed frame of mind that he fell back overcome.
During the harangue my grandfather sat quiet on his horse, with his hat off out of politeness. But he refused to be cast down; he could taste the air of springtime and see the green meadows warm under the sun. So he replied that he would strive to remember all this advice; he bade everyone good-bye, and rode down from the house with the tenantry cheering behind him, in a very tolerable good humour with himself and with the world. Mingled in the cheers he could hear the bells of Keynsham Church ringing far away, and the friendly pigs honking by the roadside; and this was in the green month of May, being the Year of Our Lord one thousand six hundred and seventy, and the tenth since the return of Our Sovereign Liege Charles the Second.
II
B UT NOW I MUST tell you of London, of its masks and fashions, of its squalor and glitter, as my grandfather first saw it all those years ago.
They caught the highwayman Claude Duval one night in January, at the Hole-in-the Wall in Chandos Street: as they catch knaves, almost always, whose tongues clack too freely in public. Claude Duval was the graceful cutthroat who played the flageolet on Hounslow Heath; who stopped the coach, and danced a coranto with the lady on the smooth turf in the moonlight before he relieved her husband of much booty.
But they took away his own money pouch and pistols, clapping him into Newgate. Then arose a great uproar and to-do; ladies in vizard masks came tearfully to visit him. Claude was a hero. Claude postured with ease in the dock at the sessions house, speaking up mighty jocosely to the red-robed judge above the bar, who felt his own importance when he fitted on the black cap.
And then one raw morning the great bell boomed at St. Sepulchre’s. They put Claude into a cart, with the sheriff going before and the javelin men around; they presented him with a bunch of flowers as the procession moved out along roads that ran two and a half miles through the countryside to Tyburn gallows. A vast crowd saw Claude turned off after an affecting last speech, but his honours had only begun when his legs ceased to twitch.
Wailing their lamentations, his admirers arrayed him in
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