Читать книгу President Fu Manchu - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 17

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“What is it, mister,” the taximan whispered, “some new kind of a fever?”

“No,” said Nayland Smith. “It’s a new kind of a murder!”

“Why do you say so?” the hotel doctor asked, glancing in a puzzled way at the ghastly object on the sofa.

But Nayland Smith did not reply. Turning to the night manager:

“I want no one at present in the foyer,” he said, “to leave without my orders. You—” he pointed to the house detective—“will mount guard over the taxicab outside the main entrance. No one must touch it or enter it. No one must pass along the sidewalk between the taxi and the hotel doors. It remains where it stands until further notice. Hepburn—” he turned—“get two patrolmen to take over this duty. Hurry. I need you here.”

Mark Hepburn nodded and went out of the night manager’s room, followed by the house detective.

“What about anyone living here and coming in late?” asked the night manager, speaking with a rich Tipperary brogue.

“What’s your house detective’s name?”

“Lawkin.”

“Lawkin!” cried Smith, standing in the open door, “any residents are to be directed to some other entrance.”

“O.K., sir.”

“The use of an office, Mr. Dougherty,” Nayland Smith continued, addressing the manager, “on this floor? Can you oblige us?”

“Certainly, Mr. Smith. The office next to this.”

“Excellent. Have you notified the police?”

“I considered I had met regulations by notifying yourself and Captain Hepburn.”

“So you have. I suppose a man is not qualified to hold your job unless he possesses tact.” He turned to the taximan. “Will you follow Mr. Dougherty to the office and wait for me there?”

The driver, a man palpably shaken, obeyed Dougherty’s curt nod and followed him out, averting his eyes from the sofa. Two men and the doctor remained, one wearing dinner kit, the other a lounge suit. To the former:

“I presume that you are assistant night manager?” said Nayland Smith.

“That is so. Fisk is my name, sir. This—” indicating the square-jowled wearer of the lounge suit—“is James Harris, assistant house detective.”

“Good,” rapped Nayland Smith. “Harris—give a hand to Lawkin outside.” Harris went out. “And now, Mr. Fisk, will you please notify Mr. Dougherty that I wish to remain alone here with Dr.——?”

“My name is Scheky,” said the physician.

“—with Dr. Scheky.”

The assistant night manager went out. Nayland Smith and Dr. Scheky were alone with the dead man.

“I have endeavored to clear this room, Doctor,” Smith continued, addressing the burly physician in the topcoat, “without creating unnecessary panic. But do you realize that you and I now face risk of the same death—” he pointed—“that he died?”

“I had not realized it, Mr. Smith,” the physician admitted, glancing down with a changed expression at the bright-red blotches on the dead man’s skin. “Nor do I know why you suspect murder.”

“Perhaps you will understand later, Doctor. When Captain Hepburn returns I am sending for certain equipment. If you care to go to your apartment I will have you called when we are ready....”

In an adjoining office, amid cleared desks and closed files, the pale-faced taximan faced Nayland Smith’s interrogation.

“I took him up on Times Square.... No, I never seen him before. He gave the address ‘Regal-Athenian, Park entrance.’ ... Sure he seemed all right; nothing wrong with him. When we get here he says: ‘Go in to the desk and ask if this man is in the hotel’—and he slips me the piece of paper through the window. ‘Give ’em the paper’—that was what he said. ‘It’s a hard name——’ ”

“Sure of that?” rapped Nayland Smith.

“Dead sure. I took the paper and started.... There was nobody about. As I moved off, he pulled out of his pocket what looks like a notebook. I guess it’s out there now.... Next minute I hear his first yell—mister, it was awful! He had the door open in a flash and falls right out onto the sidewalk.”

“Where were you? What did you do?”

“I’m halfway up the hotel steps. I started to run back. He’s lashing around down there and seems to be tearing his clothes off——”

“Stop. You are quite certain on this point?”

“Sure,” the man declared earnestly; “I’m sure certain. He had his topcoat right off and ripped his collar open.... He’s yelling, ‘The scarlet spots!’—like I told you. That’s what I heard him yell. And he’s fighting and twisting like he was wrestling with somebody ... Gee!”

The man pulled his cap off and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

“I run in here. There wasn’t a cop in sight. Nobody was in sight.... What could I do, mister? I figured he’d gone raving mad.... When we got out to him he’s lying almost still. Only his hands was twitching. ...”

The night manager came into the office.

“All heat turned off on this floor,” he reported, “and all doors closed....”

Outside the Regal-Athenian the atmosphere was arctic. Two patrolmen watched Mark Hepburn with an electric torch and a big lens examining every square foot of sidewalk and the carpeted steps leading up to the main entrance. Residents who arrived late were directed to a door around the corner. In reply to questions the invariable answer of the police was:

“Somebody lost something valuable.”

The death cab had been run into an empty garage. It had been sealed; and at this very moment two men wearing chemist’s masks were pumping it full of a powerful germicidal gas.

Later, assisted by Dr. Scheky—both men dressed as if working in an operating theater—Hepburn stripped and thoroughly examined the body and the garments of James Richet. The body was then removed, together with a number of objects found in Richet’s possession. The night manager’s room was sealed, to be fumigated. The main foyer, Nayland Smith ordered, must be closed to the public pending further orders. Dawn was very near when Dr. Scheky said to Hepburn:

“You are not by chance under the impression that this man died of some virulent form of plague?”

Mark Hepburn stared haggardly at the physician. They were dead beat.

“To be perfectly frank, Doctor,” he answered, “I don’t know of what he died....”