by Sax Rohmer
What do you think we should do?
Very sincerely yours,
Sarah Lakin.
Mark Hepburn laid the letter down upon the table.
“The description,” he said dryly, “would fit James Richet as well as any man I know.”
Nayland Smith, watching him, smiled triumphantly.
“I am glad to hear you say so,” he declared. “You order this man’s arrest; he disappears. He is out to save his skin—”
“It may be.”
“If it is Richet, then Richet would be a valuable card to hold. It’s infuriating, Hepburn, to think that I missed grabbing the fellow tonight! My next regret is that our fair correspondent omits the address at which we can communicate with this Julian Sankey. Does any other point in the letter strike you?”
“Yes,” said Hepburn slowly. “It’s undated. But my own sister, who is an honor graduate, rarely dates her letters. The other thing is the telephone.”
“The telephone is the all-important thing.”
Mark Hepburn turned and met the fixed gaze of Nayland Smith’s eyes. He nodded.
“I don’t like the disconnected telephone, Hepburn. I know the master schemer who is up against us…! I am wondering if this information will ever come to hand…”
* * *
A man who wore a plain yellow robe, in the loose sleeves of which his hands were concealed, sat at a large lacquered table in a small room. Some quality in the sound which penetrated through three windows, all of them slightly opened, suggested that this room was situated at a great height above a sleepless city.
Two of the walls were almost entirely occupied by bookcases; the lacquer table was set in the angle formed by these books, and upon it, in addition to neatly arranged documents, were a number of queer-looking instruments and appliances.
Also, there was a porcelain bowl in which a carved pipe with a tiny bowl rested.
The room was very hot and the air laden with a peculiar aromatic smell. The man in the yellow robe lay back in a carved, padded chair; a black cap resembling a biretta crowned his massive skull. His immobile face resembled one of those ancient masterpieces of ivory mellowed in years of incense; a carving of Gautama Buddha—by one who disbelieved his doctrine. The eyes in this remarkable face had been closed; now, suddenly, they opened. They were green as burnished jade under moonlight.
The man in the yellow robe put on a pair of tinted spectacles and studied a square, illuminated screen which was one of the several unusual appointments of the table… Upon this screen, in miniature, appeared a moving picture of the subterranean room where the seven-eyed goddess sat eternally watching. James Richet was talking to Lola Dumas.
The profound student of humanity seated at the lacquer table was cruelly just. He wished to study this man who, after doing good work, had seen fit to leave his ordered route and to visit the cousin of Orwin Prescott. Steps had been taken to check any possible consequences. But the fate of the one who had made these measures necessary hung now in the balance.
They stood close together, and although their figures appeared distant, but not so perhaps through the lenses of the glasses worn by the Chinaman, their voices sounded quite normal, as though they were speaking in the room in which he sat.
“Lola, I have the game in my hand.” Richet threw his left arm around the woman’s shoulders and drew her to him. “Don’t pretend. We’re in this thing together.”
Lola Dumas’ lithe body bent backwards as he strove to reach her lips.
“You are quite mad,” she said breathlessly. “Because I was amused once, why should you think I am a fool?” She twisted, bent, and broke free, turning and facing him, her dark eyes blazing. “I can play, but when I work, I quit play. You are dreaming, my dear, if you think you can ever get control.”
“But I tell you I have the game in my hand.” The man, fists clenched, spoke tensely, passionately. “It is for you to say the word. Why should a newcomer, a stranger, take charge when you and I—”
“You young fool! Do you want to die so young?”
“I tell you, Lola, I’m not the fool. I know Kern Adler, the big New York lawyer, is in this. And what I say goes with Kern. I know ‘Blondie’ Hahn is. And Blondie stands for all the useful boys still at large. I know how to handle Blondie. We’re old friends. I have all the Donegal material. No one knows the inside of the Brotherhood of National Equality as I know it. What’s more—I know where to go for backing, and I don’t need Bragg! Lola…”
A slender ivory hand, the fingernails long, pointed and highly burnished, moved across the lacquered table in that distant high room.
Six of the seven lights over curtained openings went out.
“What’s this?” muttered Richet. “What do we do now?”
He was inspired by his own vehemence; he felt capable of facing Satan in person.
“Go into the lighted alcove,” said the woman coldly. “The President is ready to interview you.”
Richet paused, fists still half clenched, stepped towards the light, then glanced back. Lola Durmas had gone. She was lost in the incense-haunted darkness… but one green eye of the goddess watched him out of the shadows. He moved forward, swept the curtain aside and found himself in a small, square stone cell, possessing no furniture whatever. The curtain fell back into place with a faint swishing sound. He looked about him, his recent confidence beginning to wane. Then a voice spoke—a high-pitched, guttural voice.
“James Richet, I am displeased with you.”
Richet looked right, left, above and below. Then:
“Who is speaking?” he demanded angrily. “These stage illusions are not impressive. Was I to blame for what happened? I wish to see you, speak to you face to face.”
“An unwise wish, James Richet. Only Numbers one to twelve have that privilege.”
Richet’s brow was covered with nervous perspiration.
“I want a square deal,” he said, striving to be masterful.
“You shall have a square deal,” the implacable, guttural voice replied. “You will be given sealed orders by the Number in charge of Base 3. See that you carry out his instructions to the letter…”
* * *
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 pretended 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 t
he 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 semi-darkness. A lofty, shadow-haunted place. Light shone from the open door of the night manager’s room…
A man who wore a topcoat over pyjamas 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!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RED SPOTS
“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 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 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 chemists’ masks were pumping it full of a powerful germicidal gas.
Later, assisted by Dr. Scheky—both men dressed as if working in an operating theatre—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…”
CHAPTER TWELVE
NUMBER 81
In that domed room, amber-lighted through curious Gothic windows, the white-haired sculptor sat smoking Egyptian cigarettes and putting the finishing touches to a sinister clay head which one might have assumed to be his life’s work. Pinned upon a wooden panel beside the tripod on which the clay was set, was some kind of small colored picture, part of which had been masked out so that what remained resembled a tiny face surrounded by a margin of white paper.
This the sculptor examined through a powerful magnifying glass, and then lowering the glass, scrutinized the clay. Evidently his work was to attempt to produce a life-size model of the tiny head pinned to the board.
Seeming to be not wholly satisfied, the sculptor laid down the lens with a sigh and wheeled the clay along to the end of the table. At which moment the amber light went out, the dim bell rang. A high-pitched, imperious, guttural voice spoke.
“The latest report from the Regal-Athenian.”
“Received at 5.10 a.m. from Number in charge. Foyer closed to the public by Federal orders. Night manager’s office sealed. Taxi in garage on Lexington. The body of the dead man identified as that of James Richet, late secretary to Abbot Donegal, removed at 5 a.m. to police mortuary. Cause of death unknown. Federal Agents Smith and Hepburn in their quarters in the tower. End of report.”
