Most Secret by John Dickson Carr

great precision and stateliness up that series of terraces, to hire a sedan chair at the entrance of York House. Kinsmere remembered that he had money in his pouch, which was a good thing; and that he was free of observation now, which was a better. Whistling, he set out on foot for Charing Cross, followed the crowd, and came presently to Whitehall Palace.
    Round the Palace Gate rose a great dust of commotion. And to his ears floated the music of fifes in a quick-step march. From the Horse Guards down the road a company of foot soldiery, flintlocks on their shoulders, swung out through King Street to the lilting clear fife music and a rattlety-tap of drums at every tread.
    Kinsmere thought them very fine indeed. He liked listening to music; he liked watching well-drilled troops; he wondered if it would repay trouble to follow them. But, since the press of people had elbowed him, almost through the Palace Gate, he decided to go in. And so, amiably sauntering, he entered the Great Court.
    “Now hang me,” he said to himself, “hang me, but this is rather a curious sort of palace, if in fact it is the palace?”
    For the place steamed with dirt and offal, as I have indicated at another time, and this Abram-seeming crew had scarcely the appearance of courtiers. But it was dinginess and splendour all jumbled together. Under the arches of a brick gallery you could see several great gilded coaches, and a number of private sedan chairs with varicoloured silk curtains. Over the way from the kitchens the noble spire of the Chapel Royal rose up high above a glow of stained-glass windows in the sun.
    “Come!” says Rowdy Kinsmere, to nobody in particular, “ is this the palace?”
    A loud, hoarse, wheedling voice spoke somewhere behind him.
    “Attend to me !” cried the voice. “Oh, good gentlemen, oh, brave gentlemen, oh, all sharp wits and steely hearts of the true breed, do pray for sport’s sake attend to me !”
    My grandfather turned round.
    Bright sunlight streamed through a rain of soot flakes from the smoke of so many chimneys. Near the arches of the brick gallery, where the sunshine lay warmest, a greasy man with a pitted face stood leering and ducking his head. Round his neck, on leather straps, he carried a wooden board like a pieman’s tray. Several greasy playing cards lay on it. The man with the pockmarked face spoke as though to a multitude, though he addressed Kinsmere alone.
    “Behold,” he continued in a kind of passion. “Here’s the do; here’s the game; here’s the challenge. I vouchsafe this, for sport’s sake, at great risk of loss or beggary to a poor man. Yet I offer it, though it ruin me! And what is’t I offer?”
    “Well, my bucko? Eh, yes, halloa? What is’t you offer?”
    “Find the lady!”
    “Find the lady?”
    “Ay, in all conscience,” cried out the other, fixing Kinsmere with a hypnotic eye. “I have here three right royal cards.” And he snatched them up. “You mark ’em, brave sir? Knave of clubs, king of diamonds, queen of hearts? Queen of hearts above all: that’s the lady. They are put face down: in this fashion. They move, they mingle, they alter their places: so. Now I would hazard a sixpence … a shilling … ay, even the half of a crown piece … you can’t say which is the lady. Would you hazard this wager, most noble gentleman?”
    They were attracting some attention. Other ragtag figures had gathered round to stare. Up to the mountebank hurried a stout, blowsy girl with fixed smile and a leer of great would-be lewdness. Dirty, bepainted, in a battered straw hat and draggled finery, she edged between Kinsmere and the three-card man.
    “Oh, he would!” cried this newcomer. “He would, Tom, but you must not!”
    “I tell you, Chelsea Bess …”
    “Nay, Tom, you must not! ’Twould be no trick at all for him to find the lady. He’ll outwit you, Tom; you’ll starve!”
    And then another voice spoke.
    “Country bumpkins, it would seem, are come to town in