Most Secret by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

jewellers, and swordsmiths, and hosiers, and heaven knew whom else, until his listener’s head began to reel.
    All such suggestions were pleasing rather than otherwise to my grandfather. He was resolved never to become a spark of fashion. But he rather looked forward to bedecking himself (briefly) in this manner, as he would have looked forward to donning some wildly outrageous costume, just once, for a masquerade ball.
    And then, the banker declared in some anguish, they must find him proper quarters to live in. It must not be known that he was lodged, even for one day, at a common tavern. Mr. Stainley suggested (somewhat uneasily, you might have thought) that Kinsmere should come to lodge with himself and his wife and daughter in Lombard Street, until such time as he should find a place in the fashionable world.
    But this offer my grandfather opposed with heat. For you must know he had his eye out to certain amusements for that night, not unconnected with wine bottles and willing dames. Prim and elderly people, however kindly, are almost always opposed to such diversions; he wanted no watchful eye upon him. So he protested with warm civility that he couldn’t, burn him in hell if he could, so inconvenience his good friend, and the rest of it, burn him to a cinder.
    He had a pretty fair notion that Mr. Stainley suspected his reasons; but the banker only shut up one eye and nodded, with what looked like relief, and they were mighty considerate of each other. Well, then, the banker said, no doubt conscious of having done his duty; well, then, at least his young friend would sup with him at nine o’clock? His young friend would, with pleasure.
    “Enfin, as it may be,” Mr. Stainley concluded, adjusting his flat-crowned hat as he prepared to depart. “I shall be much preoccupied with business for the rest of today. At best of it, you will allow, we can’t go a-buying until the morrow. Meanwhile, young sir, will you take advice from one who is older and pehaps wiser than yourself?”
    “I will take advice from you .”
    “Come, that’s better! That’s seeming hopeful!” And the banker pondered. “You must see the sights, I suppose. But keep to yourself, I conjure you, as much as may be. Go not a-buying at the New Exchange; mingle little with your equals among the quality until such time as I , though of humble birth and small consequence in this world, shall be close at hand to give counsel. Above all things, since you seem not oversupplied with prudence, I would urge upon you the need for self-control. These impulses of yours, when you think yourself jeered or insulted, to knock somebody’s head against a wall …”
    “What of the impulses, Mr. Stainley?”
    “They are unworthy; they are unseemly; resist them! A last word in your ear, Roderick Kinsmere. Do you honour your father’s memory?”
    “I honour it and I cherish it, sir, with all my heart.”
    “Would ever Alan Kinsmere have behaved as you desired to behave? Would Alan Kinsmere have stooped oafishly to assault a dragoon captain and knock his head against the wall?”
    “My father, rot me? He’d have measured the jackanapes with a sword blade.”
    “But not, I think, for an offence which may only have been of accident or heedlessness? Never, never without just cause?”
    “No, never without just cause.”
    “Upon your father’s memory, my boy, will you give me a pledge to walk warily?”
    “Upon my father’s memory,” cried Kinsmere, lifting his hand to take the oath, “upon my father’s memory, damn me, I swear I will.”
    And he meant this, too, when he said it.
    “Well!” observed Mr. Stainley, and fetched up a deep sigh. “The rest must be left to fortune and to your own native good sense. There are some safeguards which God Himself must provide. I can’t provide ’em. Until nine o’clock this evening, then! Mr. Kinsmere, I bid you good day.”
    My grandfather was not altogether sorry to see him go, the little man walking with