The Baron Returns by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2014-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

THE DIDCOTTE JEWELS

Mannering pulled the curtains across the library window and saw that they were thick and opaque; he could safely switch on a reading-lamp. He used his torch as he moved cautiously about the room, located the lamp and searched the book-lined walls for the history of Addleman Towers.

It was with a row of other historical books, a heavy, calf-bound volume. Mannering took it from the shelf to a table near by and switched on a reading-lamp. In the surrounding darkness he could almost imagine that he was in his own home. Subconsciously he was alert, but he was studying a plan of The Towers keenly. He took a pencil and a sheet of paper from his pocket and traced the lines. It was always easier for him to remember a plan when he’d drawn it, just as he could always remember names and words he had once written down.

A study of maps and architectural drawing had been one of his earliest tasks after starting the career of daring and cracksmanship that had now grown part of him, was essential to him. He could carry a plan of a building in his mind’s eye and turn one way or the other within the place with as much certainty as if it was as familiar as his own flat or the Elan.

His plan was rough, but effective enough.

The library door opened out into a passage that went right round the ground floor of The Towers. Another passage led from it, and from this opened the doors of the arms-room and the billiard-room. At the end of the passage was a short flight of stairs, with a door at the bottom. Through that door another narrow passage and the main door of the keep.

The distance from the library to the keep door was some fifty yards, and he could get from one place to the other in seconds.

There were three doors from the library, one leading to the passage, one to the morning-room (as it had been in Addleman’s days), the other to the vast hall. Mannering took the heavy, morticed lock out of the library door in less than thirty seconds, wielding the screwdriver like an expert craftsman. Now the door could not be locked against him. The one leading to the left – the morning-room – was open, but the morning-room passage door was locked.

He wondered why the library door to the passage had been unlocked, but gifts from the gods could not be ignored. Another thirty seconds passed before he had opened the morning-room door.

He decided to take that lock out quickly. The more ways of escape the better in this rabbit warren. Two of the screws were stubborn, and Mannering began to sweat. He was working in the darkness, relying on his sense of touch. But he finished at last and put the lock down.

Then clearly through the silence came the sound of a footfall.

He straightened up and slipped behind the partly open door, hardly daring to breathe.

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