Mr. Budd Novelettes Stories of Crime and Detection Volume One — Gerald Verner

Sinister HouseWhispering Beeches stood well back from the roadway, almost hidden by thickly-growing trees that gave it its name. Its owner, Doctor Shard, had been murdered by an unknown hand in his laboratory, since when the house has remained empty for three years, dubbed locally as 'Sinister House'. Stories had circulated of shadowy figures seen after dark flitting about the weed-choked grounds and of lights behind the dark windows.Newspaper reporter Anthony Gale had made a habit of stopping to look whenever he passed the house at nightfall. After one night, noticing a light in one room, he had entered through the open front door, only to stumble over a man's body lying stark and rigid, with a gaping throat wound! Mr KHad Peter Lake not elected to walk home on that hot summer night, and got caught in a storm, his life might have been changed. He would never have met the beautiful Lola Marsh, a young woman who burgled his home, and would have remained ignorant of the existence of the sinister 'Mr K'. He'd have avoided the danger surrounding his finding of the green fountain pen belonging to Harvey Slade-whose dead body Peter discovered when he took shelter in Slade's house.But fate decreed that he took the route that was to lead him out of the commonplace routine of his daily life and plunge him into an uncharted sea of mystery, danger and sudden death!