Revenge of the Adventurer! 24.

I was extremely glad of my grey Jaguar's powerful engine. True, a friend of mine souped it up a bit, but it was a good engine to begin with. I positively burned rubber all the way back to London. There we changed into action wear, and took out my Grey Car, the fastest thing on the road. There isn't a car in existence that can out-pace that! I'd tried to get Barton on my 'phone, but he was out, and I didn't have his mobile number (this was because he didn't have a mobile, as I discovered later).
That meant I had to get to Surrey fast. Scruff sat next to me, and in the back Emily was cleaning her crossbow again. I don't know how she can tell if it's clean or not (it looking black and smoky like the rest of her), but she can.
Galliard's country house was a retreat he used at times, not a full-time home. One of the Modernist houses built in Surrey, it's not really to my taste. Glass boxes. Plenty of windows to see me coming.
But lots of trees in the grounds to hide me as I moved.
It was getting dark when we arrived. I parked the Grey Car out of sight and turned to Emily.
"Careful. We don't want to alert Galliard."
I hoped that Galliard would be planning to kill Barton later rather than sooner. If not, all my insistence on stealth could be very, very counterproductive.
We moved silently through the trees. Emily was invisible, Scruff and I used our costumes to blend into the darkness of the wooded grounds of the house.
Barton's car was there, standing in the drive, close to the collection of glass boxes that were the house. Inside the house was lit up. That gave me an advantage, because it would make it more difficult for anyone inside the house to see what was going on outside.
I could see two men in the drawing-room of the house. They seemed to be talking quietly, and that encouraged me. I wasn't too late.
We moved fast, up to the front door of the house. Galliard thought I was dead, and that meant he wasn't going to be expecting me to turn up and foil his plan. I like things like that. Not that it isn't fun to get past all the traps set by a baddie who knows you're coming, but it's a whole lot easier when they don't.
The door was locked, but it took me three seconds to open it. I stepped into the hall of the mansion and padded silently over the carpet to the drawing-room door.
"Mr. Galliard," Barton was saying. "I implore you to stop this film. It's a travesty, and from what's leaked out about the script, it's going to flop at the box office. I'd be more than happy to help save the picture..."
"No." Galliard said firmly.
"Don't be a fool, man! You've got a reputation! If you release this film, you'll ruin it!"
"But I won't release the film. I WAS going to announce that after the deaths of my lead actors last night, but the Girl in Grey and her friends interfered. Still, it proved she's in the dark about my plans..."
"Great Scott, Galliard! You mean...?"
"Yes, I killed that idiot of a script-writer. He kept objecting to my revisions of the script. And now I'm going to kill you..."
It was then that I realised Galliard had lost his mind.