The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [32]
His eyes positively glowed as he hung up.
“It’s tonight then, Holmes?”
“So it appears. Mr. Barker has retreated to his room, to the gentle ministrations of his manservant. Why don’t you have a rest, Russell? I will make a telephone call to the people in charge of this sort of thing, but I am certain we have at least two hours before anything will happen.”
I did as he suggested, and despite my excitement I drifted off to the mutter of his voice in the next room. I was awakened some time later by wheels in the drive and came down to find Holmes in the sitting room with two men.
“Good, Russell, get yourself ready. Your warmest coat, now, we may be some time. Russell, this is Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, who have come from London for our little affair. Gentlemen, Miss Russell, my right hand. Shall we go?” Holmes shouldered a small knapsack and shoved his cloth cap on his head, and we crunched off down the drive.
The manor house was three miles away by road, and we walked silently along the grass verge. Where the trees came up we left the road, following the woods down to the base of the main gardens. There we stood together and whispered quietly. A slight breeze had come up, cov-ering our noises and carrying our scent away from the noses of the pack that inhabited the house.
“We can see the top of the tower from here, I believe. Your col-leagues should be in place by now at the hill gap and the sea?”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes. We agreed to be settled in by eleven o’clock. It’s ten past now. We’re ready.”
The lights went off one by one in the house above us, and we en-tered that particular state of boredom and excitement that accompa-nies a long wait. And long it was. At one o’clock I bent to whisper in Holmes’ ear.
“Surely it was not so late when Mrs. Barker saw the lights from the garden? Perhaps it will not be tonight.”
Holmes sat silent and unseen beside me, tense with thought.
“Russell, do your eyes pick up anything from that tower?”
I looked so hard at the black tower rising against the black night that my eyes began to quiver. I looked away slightly, and my eyes caught the faintest of changes in the air above the darkness. I let out a soft exclamation, and Holmes was up at once.
“Quick, Russell, up in the tree. Here we sit, blind as moles, while he’s so far back from the edge we can’t see him. Up, Russell. What do you see?”
As I climbed in the dark I watched the tower, and fifteen feet up the beam suddenly appeared—an intermittent flash from the back cor-ner of the folly, pointing over our heads at the low hills and the sea beyond.
“It’s there!” I scrambled down the branches, losing flesh. “He’s up there with a light—” but they were already off up the hill, their hand torches waving wildly in the darkness. I went after them, plunging across flower beds and around a fountain, and suddenly ahead of me the night exploded. Seventeen throats opened at the invaders, yaps and bays and blood-chilling snarls split the air, and the shouts of men, and then a tinkle of glass. I heard Holmes shouting to his companions, dogs began to yelp and howl, two voices coughed and cursed, a larger breakage of glass, and the sound of a door flung open. Electrical lights began to go on in the house, and I could see dogs fleeing in every direction. The first whiff of stink made me hold my breath until I got inside the door. Inside was all lights now, the main kitchen switches all on, the tower next to me blazing with light. I ran in that direction, hearing heavy feet above me on the stairs. They and the voices faded suddenly, and I pictured them on the roof.
A sudden thought occurred to me. There had been a good twenty seconds between the first alarm of the dogs and the time Holmes hit the