Page:The Black Camel (IA blackcamel0000earl).djvu/274

“Oh, well. Sometimes he live at Nippon Hotel, on Beretania Street.”

Chan bowed. “Thank you so much.” He wasted no time in that odorous cluttered room, but hastened down the dark stair. In a few moments he entered the Nippon Hotel. The sleek little Japanese behind the desk greeted him with a cordiality Chan knew was rankly insincere.

“Inspector, you honor my house.”

“Such is not my purpose. Haole named Smith—he stops here?”

The clerk took a register from beneath the desk. “I look see——”

Charlie reached out and took the book from his slightly resisting hands. “I will see. Your eyes are notably bad. Archie Smith, room seven. Lead me there.”

“Mr. Smith out, I think.”

“We will discover if he is. Please make haste.”

Reluctantly the Japanese led him across an open courtyard, filled with a neglected tangle of plants and flowers. The Nippon Hotel was a cluster of shabby sheds, antiquated outbuildings. They stepped on to a lanai; a Japanese woman porter, bent low under a heavy tin trunk, staggered by. The clerk moved on into a musty hallway, and pointed to a door. The numeral seven—or what was left of it—hung by one nail on the panel.

“In there,” said the Jap, and with a hostile look, disappeared.

Chan opened the door of number seven, and entered a dim low-ceilinged room. One dirty bulb was burning over a pine table, and at that table sat Smith, the beach-