Most Secret by John Dickson Carr

waiting until it reached his stomach before it cried “Huzza!” He drew a deep breath for air, ticking over the tankard and leaving one drop on his left thumbnail. Then he threw out his chest under Bygones’s approving glance.
    “Sir,” said Kinsmere, with much earnestness, “I come of a cavalier family which, whatever its other failings, has paid distinguished service in the matter of health-drinking and all loyal toping. There was a Kinsmere,” says he, stretching his imagination, “there was a Kinsmere dead-drunk under the table at the signing of Magna Charta. A Kinsmere saw the Spanish Armada all over Plymouth Hoe ere they persuaded him ’twas a vision born of a bottle.—Thank you. Since you seem so insistent, I will take another.”
    Bygones stayed his hand in the act of pouring again, and stared.
    “Hey?” he demanded. “Your name, now! Your name, you said, was … ?”
    “It is Kinsmere. Roderick Kinsmere.”
    “Kins—” And Bygones smote his forehead. “And your father’s name, his Christian name! Was it the same as yours?”
    “No. My father, whom they called Buck, was named Alan.”
    “Of the West Country, or so I think?”
    “Of Blackthorn, in Somerset, near Bristol.”
    “And commanded his own troop of horse at Naseby fight? Ay! Left arm shattered, and they cut it away …”
    Bygones Abraham sat down. He put his elbows on the table and his fists against his temples. For that brief time sombreness had come on him; his battered face wore a look of pathos near the comical.
    “Buck Kinsmere’s son!” he said. “And with no better luck at Whitehall than to meet a posturing old hunks like … Into what drunkard’s boasts do I betray myself, at my age? Your father, Roderick Kinsmere, was the noblest of the noble. How is he, lad? He fares well, I trust?”
    “He fares well, I am sure, though he has been dead almost ten years.”
    “God rest him, Roderick Kinsmere!”
    “Amen to that, Bygones Abraham!”
    “He never knew—?”
    “Ah, but he did! He lived to see the Stuarts restored to their own, and took much comfort thereby. You knew my father, then? You were acquainted with him?”
    The wigless man threw himself back in the chair.
    “I am out of old times, lad. I am passy. Even these,” and he touched moustache and chin tuft, “are passy and not ah la mode. Nay; I had no acquaintance with your father, save by sight. I was no fashionable beau then, whatever I may affect to be now. I carried a pike in Langdale’s Yorkshire Foot, the ones who lost us that last battle. Your father was of Prince Rupert’s Horse; and they helped much in the losing of it, as the hell-riders they were so proud to be. When they’d broke Ireton’s line, as they designed to do, not a man would stop or draw rein until he got to the baggage wagons. By the time they were back again at full gallop, Black Tom and Oliver had piled horse and foot against our centre, and some fool gave command to march to the right …”
    Bygones Abraham rose to his feet.
    “I can’t say,” he added, rather wearily. “I’ve heard ’em describe it, including a parcel of men who weren’t there. It was a blazing hot day, with much dust, and my head ached worse than the back-sword cut I took from one of Noll’s Ironsides. But what befell, or how it befell, I can say no more than though it happened in a dream.
    “ ’Tis the common feeling of any ranker, the lowest of the low. You’re choked and near blind. You stand holding a sixteen-foot pike elbow to elbow with the next man. Then the charge comes down out of smoke. It may be they’ll trample you, it may be they won’t. There’s naught to be apprehended save confusing and firing. Then you have some dull notion ’tis all over. You walk a-stagger along a road somewhere amid much blood and screaming from those who are left. The trees seem strange; the road is strange too; and your only thought is to wonder how the devil you are come there at all. That, d’ye see, that’s