Parson Kelly by A.E.W. Mason

For Colonel Montague was taken in Mr. Kelly's place, as you may see with your own eyes in his Grace of Dorset's Report to the Lords' Committees, where the informations of John Hutchins and Daniel Chandler, described as 'two of his Majesty's Messengers in Ordinary,' are printed. These did not chance to be men of a very high degree of intelligence, as their own confessions bear testimony, in itself a fortunate circumstance.

Colonel Montague, when he parted from the Parson at the grove in St. James's Park, walked into Pall Mall Street by the path at the corner of St. James's House and up to St. James's Street to the corner of Ryder Street, where he turned. Ryder Street, what with gentlemen walking home on the footpaths and chairs carried in the road, was a busy thoroughfare at this time of the night, and he remarked nothing extraordinary until he was close to his own doorstep. Then he distinguished, or rather seemed to distinguish -- for in the doubtful light he could not be certain -- at a little distance on the opposite side of the road a man in the blue and silver livery of Lady Oxford. The man was loitering at the edge of the path, taking a few steps now this way now that. He was tall, and not unlike Mr. Wogan in his girth. Now, Colonel Montague was aware that her ladyship possessed a lackey of just such a conspicuous figure.