Читать книгу President Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 16

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Mark Hepburn sprang up in bed.

“All right, Hepburn!”—it was Nayland Smith’s voice. “Sorry to awake you, but there’s a job for us.”

The light had been switched on, and Hepburn stared somewhat dazedly at the speaker, then glanced down at his watch. The hour was 3.15 A.M. But Nayland Smith was fully dressed. Now wide awake:

“What is it?” Hepburn asked, impressed by his companion’s grim expression and beginning also to dress hastily.

“I don’t know—yet. I was called five minutes ago—I had not turned in—by the night messenger. A taxi—perhaps a coincidence, but it happens to be a Lotus taxi—pulled up at the main entrance. The passenger asked the man to step into the lobby and inquire for me——”

“In what name?”

“The title was curiously accurate, Hepburn. It was typed on a slip of paper. The man was told to ask for Federal Agent Ex-Assistant Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith, O.B.E.!”

Hepburn was now roughly dressed. He turned, staring:

“But to everybody except myself and Fey you are plain Mr. Smith!”

“Exactly. That is why I see the hand of Dr. Fu Manchu, who has a ghastly sense of humor, in this. The man proceeded to obey his orders, I gather, but he had not gone three paces when something happened. Let’s hurry down. The man is there ... so is his passenger.”

The night manager and a house detective were talking to Fey by the open door of the apartment.

“Queerest thing that ever happened in my experience, gentlemen,” said the manager. “I only hope it isn’t a false alarm. The string of titles means nothing to me. But you are Mr. Smith and I know you are a federal agent. This way. The elevator is waiting. If you will follow me I will take you by a shorter route.”

Down they went to the street level. Led by the manager they hurried along a service passage, crossed a wide corridor, two empty offices, and came out at the far end of the vast pillared and carpeted main foyer. Except for robot-like workers vacuum cleaning, it was deserted and in semidarkness. A lofty, shadow-haunted place. Light shone from the open door of the night manager’s room....

A man who wore a topcoat over pajamas was examining a still figure stretched on a sofa. There were three other men in the room, one of them the taxi driver.

Nayland Smith shot a searching glance at the latter’s pale, horrified face as, cap on the back of his head, he stared over the doctor’s shoulder, and then, pushing his way forward, he too looked once, and:

“Good God!” he muttered. “Hepburn—” Mark Hepburn was beside him—“what is it? Have you ever met with anything like it?”

There was a momentary silence, grotesquely disturbed by the hum of a distant vacuum cleaner.

The prostrate man, whose torso had been stripped by the resident physician probably in a vain attempt to restore cardiac action, exhibited on his face and neck a number of vivid scarlet spots. They were about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on the dull white skin resembled drops of blood....

“Never.”

Mark Hepburn’s voice was husky. The doctor looked up. He was a heavily built, Teutonic type, his shrewd eyes magnified by powerful spectacles.

“If you are a brother practitioner,” he said, “you are welcome. This case is outside my experience.”

“When did he actually die?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“He was already dead when I arrived—although I worked over him for ten minutes or more——”

“The scarlet spots!” blurted the taxi driver in a frightened voice—“That’s what he called out, ‘The scarlet spots’—and then he was down on the sidewalk rolling about and screaming!”

Mark Hepburn glanced at Nayland Smith.

“You were right,” he said; “we shall never get that information.”

The dead man was James Richet, ex-secretary to Abbot Donegal!