A Sword For The Baron by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Publisher: House Of Stratus
Published: 2014-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

CALL 999!

Mannering’s taxi slowed down as it approached Gentian House. The beautifully wrought iron gates were open, and Mannering saw his Bentley in the light of the lamp in the middle of the courtyard. He was feeling grim and gloomy, because of the way things were working out, but at least Lorna was here with Gentian; she might have had more luck with him.

“Drop me here,” he said.

He paid the cab off, and walked quickly across the flagged courtyard, seeing exactly the same view as Lorna, and getting the same kind of impression; that he was walking out of one London age into another. He saw the bell, a press button in the middle of a brass circle, and pressed. He waited for a few seconds, fancying that he could hear people coming inside; but the door didn’t open. He pressed again. He began to feel alarm because Lorna was here, and he couldn’t understand the situation. Why didn’t someone answer? He pressed again. Quick, sharp footsteps sounded on the stone floor inside. At least someone was hurrying.

Lorna opened the door.

“John, thank God it’s you!”

Mannering stepped in very quickly, and she let the door slam, she was so agitated.

“Sara’s on the roof,” she told him. “They’re afraid that she’ll throw herself down. It’s like a madhouse here.”

He remembered how calm and quiet everything had been outside.

“Where are they?”

“They went this way,” she said. She led him across the circular hall to a door opposite the one from which Claude Orde had come when she had been upstairs. This door, standing open, led to a passage towards a secondary hall, where lights blazed. Mannering saw people moving about as he stepped ahead of Lorna and pushed the door open.

It opened onto a square courtyard, surrounded on all four sides – a way of making sure that every room in the building had daylight. A dozen windows were bright with light, a lamp – like the one outside – stood in the middle, surrounded by a rockery on which the flowers had been robbed of colour by the bright lights. Mannering saw three people, one of them Gentian.

Orde was calling out: “The ladder’s broken!” He seemed to be gasping for breath. “Talk to her, for God’s sake – don’t let her jump.”

“Sara,” Lord Gentian called in a clear voice, “we want you to unlock the doors up there, and to come down here at once. We want to help you.”

There was no answer; nothing to suggest that anyone was on the roof.

“Sara, all we want to do is help you,” Gentian called again. His voice echoed in the courtyard. “We don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Suddenly, a beam of light shot out. Orde held a powerful torch, and swivelled it upwards. The beam flickered on windows, shone on the white stone facing of the house, shone on a stack pipe and some guttering, and then onto the stone ledge which went right round the roof.

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