Most Secret by John Dickson Carr Page B

Bygones Abraham’s wrist, and whirled sideways as he rose to his feet. They stood at grips, locked together, looking each other in the eye.
    “You’re right surprisingly strong, sir,” pursued my grandfather. “It would be chancy, I think, to bet on a wrestling fall against any such—”
    “Have a care, jackanapes!”
    “No! You have a care!”
    They reeled against the table. Several wine bottles clattered over, one of them rolling wide to fall and smash on the floor. Still these two contestants stood locked at grips amid disturbed dust motes. They veered away from the table; my grandfather went on wrenching, with shufflings and crackings and grants, until the sharp point was turned outward from his throat.
    “Forbear, now! Put up your dagger!” And Kinsmere released him. “Ay, keep it at hand, if its presence shall comfort you. I desire only to disabuse your mind of certain fancies, and also to offer proof. Will you hear me?”
    Bygones Abraham cursed him with some comprehensiveness, gasping for breath as he did so. But his wrath seemed to be cooling into a puzzled stare. He hesitated, returned the dagger to a sheath inside his coat, and fell back a step.
    “Well, young man?”
    “Rogue I may be; that’s a matter of opinion; though with no plot against you or against anyone else. A Kinsmere of Blackthorn assuredly I am. Come! Here’s my own ring, which you bade me hide away. Will you be good enough to examine this, and to look inside?”
    The old soldier stared with protruding eyes.
    “Look … inside ?”
    “Faith, yes! The stone in its setting turns upward on a hinge. The king—the late king, that’s to say, whom they are now pleased to call Charles the Martyr—gave it to my father after Newbury fight in the Great Rebellion. On the gold inside the setting, with another dagger point, he scratched the letters C.A. Will it please you to test this?”
    “Mr. Kinsmere,” Bygones said abruptly, “almost I am persuaded to believe you.”
    “‘Almost’? Faith, at least we make progress!”
    “ ’Tis to be hoped so.” Bygones held up his hand. “And now, if I may?”
    Kinsmere threw him the ring, which he caught with a flat smack against his palm. Bygones carried it to the left-hand window, through a whole legion of settling dust motes.
    “ ’Tis, known—sub rosy, as they say in Latin—two of these rings are in existence. Lingard, that was once the cunningest jeweller in Cheapside, made ’em more than forty years gone. The late king, ere his barbarous murder by the Roundheads, passed ’em both to our Charles. Hark’ee, though! I’ve heard report of a third ring, said to ’a’ been lost. True, false; ecod, what can’t we hear? Still! If what you say is true, this is like to be the third ring, the supposed-lost one. If what you say is true …”
    “Yes?”
    “King Charles the First, of glorious memory, had a most distinctive way o’ fashioning the letters C.R. Let’s adventure it!”
    Holding up my grandfather’s ring against the light from the window, he opened the sapphire on its hinge, stared long at the inscription inside, and shut it up again.
    “The ring I carry,” he said through his teeth, “I have long worn next my skin without suspicion the jewel is like a lid: If this should open too …?”
    Muttering under his breath, Bygones braced himself. He took his own ring from the leather pouch. He held it up beside my grandfather’s. With gentle fingers he prised at the setting. The stone opened at once.
    “Oh, body o’ God!”
    “Sir,” said Kinsmere, “will you drink your wine with me now?”
    “Drink it?” echoed Bygones, turning round. “I’ll do better than that, ecod! I’ll bid you to dinner at the Devil…”
    “Come, damn me no damns. Can’t we make an end of cursing each other?”
    “I meant no damns, pray credit me. I am all honest apology, as full of excuses as a man may be. My reference was to the Devil tavern, a haunt of good people. We’ll dine there;