The Sussex Cuckoo: An Anthony Bathurst Mystery (The Anthony Bathurst Mysteries Book 17) by Brian Flynn

Author:Brian Flynn [Flynn, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2020-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

About two o’clock on the following morning, Anthony was aroused by a noise. To his ear, as he awakened from what, for him, was a comparatively light sleep, the sounds that he heard seemed to come from the interior of “Splasher’s Mead.” For a time he propped himself on to his elbow and lay and listened. The noise had stopped. He was about to settle himself for sleep again, under the impression that he had mistaken the play of the wind for a noise inside the house when he heard the sound again. He peered into the blanket of darkness and listened intently. The sound, he thought, was like the sound which a mouse makes when gnawing at wood. This idea reassured him somewhat, but only for a short duration of time. For the noise quite suddenly grew much louder and stronger. It became almost insistent. Then there came a sharp metallic click.

Anthony sat straight up in bed. He had little doubt what that last sound meant. Somebody was attempting to enter the house . . . somewhere . . . from the outside. The last noise that he had heard had undoubtedly been caused by somebody using an instrument upon one of the windows. A bedroom window, he fancied. Yes . . . he was right . . . for immediately his brain had registered this last thought Anthony heard the unmistakable creaking of an opening window.

This was the moment for Anthony to slide noiselessly out of bed. Being unaware of the exact topography of the upper parts of the house, he felt that his best plan must be to wake his host, William Sabel Congreve, Esq. He quickly donned a dressing-gown and dress shoes (let it be said that Anthony never sought housebreakers with bare feet—his own, not theirs) and slipped along the carpeted corridor to the door of Bill’s bedroom. He tapped lightly with his knuckle on the panel of the door. With surprising celerity Bill Congreve’s face was thrust towards him round the edge of the door.

“Who is it? What’s up with you?” he grunted.

Anthony took a step forward and explained in a sharp, short sentence. The news that he heard changed Mr. Congreve as in the twinkling of an eye.

“Holy smoke,” he cried excitedly. “After me, Anthony, we haven’t a moment to lose. I know where you mean.”

Then he flung over his shoulder a reassurance to the semi-sleeping Virginia. He dashed down the corridor with Anthony hot on his heels. They passed Anthony’s bedroom and came to the door of the second room beyond. Bill Congreve put a key into the lock, turned it with a quick twist of the wrist, and flung open the door. Anthony and he burst into the room. It was a room in which Anthony Bathurst had never before been. But he had little time to ponder on that aspect of the matter. A dark stooping figure crouched by the window-sill. Like a flash the figure swung out through the

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