Free President Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer

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 on to 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