diplomatic manner, ‘I will endeavour to explain things to you. I
regarded your first question to me when you entered my room as being
offensively put, but I now see that you had some justification.’ He
smiled politely. ‘I was passing along this corridor about eleven
o’clock, when I found Miss Racksole in a difficulty with the hotel
servants. Miss Racksole was retiring to rest in this room when a large
stone, which must have been thrown from the Embankment, broke the
window, as you see. Apart from the discomfort of the broken window, she
did not care to remain in the room. She argued that where one stone had
come another might follow. She therefore insisted on her room being
changed. The servants said that there was no other room available with a
dressing-room and bath-room attached, and your daughter made a point of
these matters. I at once offered to exchange apartments with her. She
did me the honour to accept my offer. Our respective belongings were
moved--and that is all. Miss Racksole is at this moment, I trust, asleep
in No. 124.’
Theodore Racksole looked at the young man for a few seconds in silence.
There was a faint knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Racksole loudly.
Someone pushed open the door, but remained standing on the mat. It was
Nella’s maid, in a dressing-gown.
‘Miss Racksole’s compliments, and a thousand excuses, but a book of hers
was left on the mantelshelf in this room. She cannot sleep, and wishes
to read.’
‘Mr Dimmock, I tender my apologies--my formal apologies,’ said Racksole,
when the girl had gone away with the book. ‘Good night.’
‘Pray don’t mention it,’ said Dimmock suavely--and bowed him out.
Chapter Four ENTRANCE OF THE PRINCE
NEVERTHELESS, sundry small things weighed on Racksole’s mind. First
there was Jules’ wink. Then there was the ribbon on the door-handle and
Jules’ visit to No. 111, and the broken window--broken from the outside.
Racksole did not forget that the time was 3 a.m. He slept but little
that night, but he was glad that he had bought the Grand Babylon Hôtel.
It was an acquisition which seemed to promise fun and diversion.
The next morning he came across Mr Babylon early. ‘I have emptied my
private room of all personal papers,’ said Babylon, ‘and it is now at
your disposal.
I purpose, if agreeable to yourself, to stay on in the hotel as a guest
for the present. We have much to settle with regard to the completion of
the purchase, and also there are things which you might want to ask me.
Also, to tell the truth, I am not anxious to leave the old place with
too much suddenness. It will be a wrench to me.’
‘I shall be delighted if you will stay,’ said the millionaire, ‘but it
must be as my guest, not as the guest of the hotel.’
‘You are very kind.’
‘As for wishing to consult you, no doubt I shall have need to do so, but
I must say that the show seems to run itself.’
‘Ah!’ said Babylon thoughtfully. ‘I have heard of hotels that run
themselves. If they do, you may be sure that they obey the laws of
gravity and run downwards. You will have your hands full. For example,
have you yet heard about Miss Spencer?’
‘No,’ said Racksole. ‘What of her?’
‘She has mysteriously vanished during the night, and nobody appears to
be able to throw any light on the affair. Her room is empty, her boxes
gone.
You will want someone to take her place, and that someone will not be
very easy to get.’
‘H’m!’ Racksole said, after a pause. ‘Hers is not the only post that
falls vacant to-day.’
A little later, the millionaire installed himself in the late owner’s
private room and rang the bell.
‘I want Jules,’ he said to the page.
While waiting for Jules, Racksole considered the question of Miss
Spencer’s disappearance.
‘Good morning, Jules,’ was his cheerful greeting, when the imperturbable
waiter arrived.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Take a chair.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘We have met before this morning, Jules.’
‘Yes, sir, at 3 a.m.’
‘Rather strange about Miss Spencer’s departure, is it not?’ suggested
Racksole.
‘It is remarkable, sir.’
‘You are aware, of course, that Mr Babylon has transferred all his
interests in this hotel to me?’
‘I have been informed to that effect, sir.’
‘I suppose you know everything that goes on in the hotel, Jules?’
‘As the head waiter, sir, it is my business to keep a general eye on
things.’
‘You speak very good English for a foreigner, Jules.’
‘For a foreigner, sir! I am an Englishman, a Hertfordshire man born and
bred. Perhaps my name has misled you, sir. I am only called Jules
because the head waiter of any really high-class hotel must have either
a French or an Italian name.’
‘I see,’ said Racksole. ‘I think you must be rather a clever person,
Jules.’
‘That is not for me to say, sir.’
‘How long has the hotel enjoyed the advantage of your services?’
‘A little over twenty years.’
‘That is a long time to be in one place. Don’t you think it’s time you
got out of the rut? You are still young, and might make a reputation for
yourself in another and wider sphere.’
Racksole looked at the man steadily, and his glance was steadily
returned.
‘You aren’t satisfied with me, sir?’
‘To be frank, Jules, I think--I think you--er--wink too much. And I
think that it is regrettable when a head waiter falls into a habit of
taking white ribbons from the handles of bedroom doors at three in the
morning.’
Jules started slightly.
‘I see how it is, sir. You wish me to go, and one pretext, if I may use
the term, is as good as another. Very well, I can’t say that I’m
surprised. It sometimes happens that there is incompatibility of temper
between a hotel proprietor and his head waiter, and then, unless one of
them goes, the hotel is likely to suffer. I will go, Mr Racksole. In
fact, I had already thought of giving notice.’
The millionaire smiled appreciatively. ‘What wages do you require in
lieu of notice? It is my intention that you leave the hotel within an
hour.’
‘I require no wages in lieu of notice, sir. I would scorn to accept
anything. And I will leave the hotel in fifteen minutes.’
‘Good-day, then. You have my good wishes and my admiration, so long as
you keep out of my hotel.’
Racksole got up. ‘Good-day, sir. And thank you.’
‘By the way, Jules, it will be useless for you to apply to any other
first-rate European hotel for a post, because I shall take measures
which will ensure the rejection of any such application.’
‘Without discussing the question whether or not there aren’t at least
half a dozen hotels in London alone that would jump for joy at the
chance of getting me,’ answered Jules, ‘I may tell you, sir, that I
shall retire from my profession.’
‘Really! You will turn your brains to a different channel.’
‘No, sir. I shall take rooms in Albemarle Street or Jermyn Street, and
just be content to be a man-about-town. I have saved some twenty
thousand pounds--a mere trifle, but sufficient for my needs, and I shall
now proceed to enjoy it. Pardon me for troubling you with my personal
affairs. And good-day again.’
That afternoon Racksole went with Felix Babylon first to a firm of
solicitors in the City, and then to a stockbroker, in order to carry out
the practical details of the purchase of the hotel.
‘I mean to settle in England,’ said Racksole, as they were coming back.
‘It is the only country--’ and he stopped.
‘The only country?’
‘The only country where you can invest money and spend money with a
feeling of security. In the United States there is nothing worth
spending money on, nothing to buy. In France or Italy, there is no real
security.’
‘But surely you are a true American?’ questioned Babylon.
‘I am a true American,’ said Racksole, ‘but my father, who began by
being a bedmaker at an Oxford college, and ultimately made ten million
dollars out of iron in Pittsburg--my father took the wise precaution of
having me educated in England. I had my three years at Oxford, like any
son of the upper middle class! It did me good. It has been worth more to
me than many successful speculations. It taught me that the English
language is different from, and better than, the American language, and
that there is something--I haven’t yet found out exactly what--in
English life that Americans will never get. Why,’ he added, ‘in the
United States we still bribe our judges and our newspapers. And we talk
of the eighteenth century as though it was the beginning of the world.
Yes, I shall transfer my securities to London. I shall build a house in
Park Lane, and I shall buy some immemorial country seat with a history
as long as the A. T. and S. railroad, and I shall calmly and gradually
settle down. D’you know--I am rather a good-natured man for a
millionaire, and of a social disposition, and yet I haven’t six real
friends in the whole of New York City. Think of that!’
‘And I,’ said Babylon, ‘have no friends except the friends of my boyhood
in Lausanne. I have spent thirty years in England, and gained nothing
but a perfect knowledge of the English language and as much gold coin as
would fill a rather large box.’
These two plutocrats breathed a simultaneous sigh.
‘Talking of gold coin,’ said Racksole, ‘how much money should you think
Jules has contrived to amass while he has been with you?’
‘Oh!’ Babylon smiled. ‘I should not like to guess. He has had unique
opportunities--opportunities.’
‘Should you consider twenty thousand an extraordinary sum under the
circumstances?’
‘Not at all. Has he been confiding in you?’
‘Somewhat. I have dismissed him.’
‘You have dismissed him?’
‘Why not?’
‘There is no reason why not. But I have felt inclined to dismiss him for
the past ten years, and never found courage to do it.’
‘It was a perfectly simple proceeding, I assure you. Before I had done
with him, I rather liked the fellow.’
‘Miss Spencer and Jules--both gone in one day!’ mused Felix Babylon.
‘And no one to take their places,’ said Racksole. ‘And yet the hotel
continues its way!’
But when Racksole reached the Grand Babylon he found that Miss Spencer’s
chair in the bureau was occupied by a stately and imperious girl,
dressed becomingly in black.
‘Heavens, Nella!’ he cried, going to the bureau. ‘What are you doing
here?’
‘I am taking Mis Spencer’s place. I want to help you with your hotel,
Dad. I fancy I shall make an excellent hotel clerk. I have arranged with
a Miss Selina Smith, one of the typists in the office, to put me up to
all the tips and tricks, and I shall do very well.’
‘But look here, Helen Racksole. We shall have the whole of London
talking about this thing--the greatest of all American heiresses a hotel
clerk! And I came here for quiet and rest!’
‘I suppose it was for the sake of quiet and rest that you bought the
hotel, Papa?’
‘You would insist on the steak,’ he retorted. ‘Get out of this, on the
instant.’
‘Here I am, here to stay,’ said Nella, and deliberately laughed at her
parent.
Just then the face of a fair-haired man of about thirty years appeared
at the bureau window. He was very well-dressed, very aristocratic in his
pose, and he seemed rather angry.
He looked fixedly at Nella and started back.
‘Ach!’ he exclaimed. ‘You!’
‘Yes, your Highness, it is indeed I. Father, this is his Serene Highness
Prince Aribert of Posen--one of our most esteemed customers.’
‘You know my name, Fräulein?’ the new-comer murmured in German.
‘Certainly, Prince,’ Nella replied sweetly. ‘You were plain Count
Steenbock last spring in Paris--doubtless travelling incognito--’
‘Silence,’ he entreated, with a wave of the hand, and his forehead went
as white as paper.
Chapter Five WHAT OCCURRED TO REGINALD DIMMOCK
IN another moment they were all three talking quite nicely, and with at
any rate an appearance of being natural. Prince Aribert became suave,
even deferential to Nella, and more friendly towards Nella’s father than
their respective positions demanded. The latter amused himself by
studying this sprig of royalty, the first with whom he had ever come
into contact. He decided that the young fellow was personable enough,
‘had no frills on him,’ and would make an exceptionally good commercial
traveller for a first-class firm. Such was Theodore Racksole’s
preliminary estimate of the man who might one day be the reigning Grand
Duke of Posen.
It occurred to Nella, and she smiled at the idea, that the bureau of the
hotel was scarcely the correct place in which to receive this august
young man. There he stood, with his head half-way through the bureau
window, negligently leaning against the woodwork, just as though he were
a stockbroker or the manager of a New York burlesque company.
‘Is your Highness travelling quite alone?’ she asked.
‘By a series of accidents I am,’ he said. ‘My equerry was to have met me
at Charing Cross, but he failed to do so--I cannot imagine why.’
‘Mr Dimmock?’ questioned Racksole.
‘Yes, Dimmock. I do not remember that he ever missed an appointment
before.
You know him? He has been here?’
‘He dined with us last night,’ said Racksole--‘on Nella’s invitation,’
he added maliciously; ‘but to-day we have seen nothing of him. I know,
however, that he has engaged the State apartments, and also a suite
adjoining the State apartments--No. 55. That is so, isn’t it, Nella?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ she said, having first demurely examined a ledger. ‘Your
Highness would doubtless like to be conducted to your room--apartments I
mean.’ Then Nella laughed deliberately at the Prince, and said, ‘I don’t
know who is the proper person to conduct you, and that’s a fact. The
truth is that Papa and I are rather raw yet in the hotel line. You see,
we only bought the place last night.’
‘You have bought the hotel!’ exclaimed the Prince.
‘That’s so,’ said Racksole.
‘And Felix Babylon has gone?’
‘He is going, if he has not already gone.’
‘Ah! I see,’ said the Prince; ‘this is one of your American “strokes”.
You have bought to sell again, is that not it? You are on your holidays,
but you cannot resist making a few thousands by way of relaxation. I
have heard of such things.’
‘We sha’n’t sell again, Prince, until we are tired of our bargain.
Sometimes we tire very quickly, and sometimes we don’t. It depends--eh?
What?’
Racksole broke off suddenly to attend to a servant in livery who had
quietly entered the bureau and was making urgent mysterious signs to
him.
‘If you please, sir,’ the man by frantic gestures implored Mr Theodore
Racksole to come out.
‘Pray don’t let me detain you, Mr Racksole,’ said the Prince, and
therefore the proprietor of the Grand Babylon departed after the
servant, with a queer, curt little bow to Prince Aribert.
‘Mayn’t I come inside?’ said the Prince to Nella immediately the
millionaire had gone.
‘Impossible, Prince,’ Nella laughed. ‘The rule against visitors entering
this bureau is frightfully strict.’
‘How do you know the rule is so strict if you only came into possession
last night?’
‘I know because I made the rule myself this morning, your Highness.’
‘But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk to you.’
‘Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or as the friend--the
acquaintance--whom I knew in Paris last year?’
‘As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.’
‘And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to your
apartments?’
‘Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here
soon.’
‘Then we will have tea served in father’s private room--the proprietor’s
private room, you know.’
‘Good!’ he said.
Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and behaved
generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever it
might concern that she was a young woman of business instincts and
training, and then she stepped down from her chair of office, emerged
from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led Prince Aribert to the
Louis XV chamber in which her father and Felix Babylon had had their
long confabulation on the previous evening.
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ she asked her companion, as she
poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for a
moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a young man of sane,
healthy, instincts, he could think of nothing for the moment except her
loveliness.
Nella was indeed beautiful that afternoon. The beauty of even the most
beautiful woman ebbs and flows from hour to hour. Nella’s this afternoon
was at the flood. Vivacious, alert, imperious, and yet ineffably sweet,
she seemed to radiate the very joy and exuberance of life.
‘I have forgotten,’ he said.
‘You have forgotten! That is surely very wrong of you? You gave me to
understand that it was something terribly important. But of course I
knew it couldn’t be, because no man, and especially no Prince, ever
discussed anything really important with a woman.’
‘Recollect, Miss Racksole, that this afternoon, here, I am not the
Prince.’
‘You are Count Steenbock, is that it?’
He started. ‘For you only,’ he said, unconsciously lowering his voice.
‘Miss Racksole, I particularly wish that no one here should know that I
was in Paris last spring.’
‘An affair of State?’ she smiled.
‘An affair of State,’ he replied soberly. ‘Even Dimmock doesn’t know. It
was strange that we should be fellow guests at that quiet out-of-the-way
hotel--strange but delightful. I shall never forget that rainy afternoon
that we spent together in the Museum of the Trocadéro. Let us talk about
that.’
‘About the rain, or the museum?’
‘I shall never forget that afternoon,’ he repeated, ignoring the
lightness of her question.
‘Nor I,’ she murmured corresponding to his mood.
‘You, too enjoyed it?’ he said eagerly.
‘The sculptures were magnificent,’ she replied, hastily glancing at the
ceiling.
‘Ah! So they were! Tell me, Miss Racksole, how did you discover my
identity.’
‘I must not say,’ she answered. ‘That is my secret. Do not seek to
penetrate it. Who knows what horrors you might discover if you probed
too far?’ She laughed, but she laughed alone. The Prince remained
pensive--as it were brooding.
‘I never hoped to see you again,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘One never sees again those whom one wishes to see.’
‘As for me, I was perfectly convinced that we should meet again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I always get what I want.’
‘Then you wanted to see me again?’
‘Certainly. You interested me extremely. I have never met another man
who could talk so well about sculpture as the Count Steenbock.’
‘Do you really always get what you want, Miss Racksole?’
‘Of course.’
‘That is because your father is so rich, I suppose?’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’ she said. ‘It’s simply because I always do get what
I want. It’s got nothing to do with Father at all.’
‘But Mr Racksole is extremely wealthy?’
‘Wealthy isn’t the word, Count. There is no word. It’s positively awful
the amount of dollars poor Papa makes. And the worst of it is he can’t
help it.
He told me once that when a man had made ten millions no power on earth
could stop those ten millions from growing into twenty. And so it
continues.
I spend what I can, but I can’t come near coping with it; and of course
Papa is no use whatever at spending.’
‘And you have no mother?’
‘Who told you I had no mother?’ she asked quietly.
‘I--er--inquired about you,’ he said, with equal candour and humility.
‘In spite of the fact that you never hoped to see me again?’
‘Yes, in spite of that.’
‘How funny!’ she said, and lapsed into a meditative silence.
‘Yours must be a wonderful existence,’ said the Prince. ‘I envy you.’
‘You envy me--what? My father’s wealth?’
‘No,’ he said; ‘your freedom and your responsibilities.’
‘I have no responsibilities,’ she remarked.
‘Pardon me,’ he said; ‘you have, and the time is coming when you will
feel them.’
‘I’m only a girl,’ she murmured with sudden simplicity. ‘As for you,
Count, surely you have sufficient responsibilities of your own?’
‘I?’ he said sadly. ‘I have no responsibilities. I am a nobody--a Serene
Highness who has to pretend to be very important, always taking immense
care never to do anything that a Serene Highness ought not to do. Bah!’
‘But if your nephew, Prince Eugen, were to die, would you not come to
the throne, and would you not then have these responsibilities which you
so much desire?’
‘Eugen die?’ said Prince Aribert, in a curious tone. ‘Impossible. He is
the perfection of health. In three months he will be married. No, I
shall never be anything but a Serene Highness, the most despicable of
God’s creatures.’
‘But what about the State secret which you mentioned? Is not that a
responsibility?’
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘That is over. That belongs to the past. It was an
accident in my dull career. I shall never be Count Steenbock again.’
‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘By the way, is not Prince Eugen coming here to-
day? Mr Dimmock told us so.’
‘See!’ answered the Prince, standing up and bending over her. ‘I am
going to confide in you. I don’t know why, but I am.’
‘Don’t betray State secrets,’ she warned him, smiling into his face.
But just then the door of the room was unceremoniously opened.
‘Go right in,’ said a voice sharply. It was Theodore Racksole’s. Two men
entered, bearing a prone form on a stretcher, and Racksole followed
them.
Nella sprang up. Racksole stared to see his daughter.
‘I didn’t know you were in here, Nell. Here,’ to the two men, ‘out
again.’
‘Why!’ exclaimed Nella, gazing fearfully at the form on the stretcher,
‘it’s Mr Dimmock!’
‘It is,’ her father acquiesced. ‘He’s dead,’ he added laconically. ‘I’d
have broken it to you more gently had I known. Your pardon, Prince.’
There was a pause.
‘Dimmock dead!’ Prince Aribert whispered under his breath, and he
kneeled down by the side of the stretcher. ‘What does this mean?’
The poor fellow was just walking across the quadrangle towards the
portico when he fell down. A commissionaire who saw him says he was
walking very quickly. At first I thought it was sunstroke, but it
couldn’t have been, though the weather certainly is rather warm. It must
be heart disease. But anyhow, he’s dead. We did what we could. I’ve sent
for a doctor, and for the police. I suppose there’ll have to be an
inquest.’
Theodore Racksole stopped, and in an awkward solemn silence they all
gazed at the dead youth. His features were slightly drawn, and his eyes
closed; that was all. He might have been asleep.
‘My poor Dimmock!’ exclaimed the Prince, his voice broken. ‘And I was
angry because the lad did not meet me at Charing Cross!’
‘Are you sure he is dead, Father?’ Nella said.
‘You’d better go away, Nella,’ was Racksole’s only reply; but the girl
stood still, and began to sob quietly. On the previous night she had
secretly made fun of Reginald Dimmock. She had deliberately set herself
to get information from him on a topic in which she happened to be
specially interested and she had got it, laughing the while at his
youthful crudities--his vanity, his transparent cunning, his absurd
airs. She had not liked him; she had even distrusted him, and decided
that he was not ‘nice’. But now, as he lay on the stretcher, these
things were forgotten. She went so far as to reproach herself for them.
Such is the strange commanding power of death.
‘Oblige me by taking the poor fellow to my apartments,’ said the Prince,
with a gesture to the attendants. ‘Surely it is time the doctor came.’
Racksole felt suddenly at that moment he was nothing but a mere hotel
proprietor with an awkward affair on his hands. For a fraction of a
second he wished he had never bought the Grand Babylon.
A quarter of an hour later Prince Aribert, Theodore Racksole, a doctor,
and an inspector of police were in the Prince’s reception-room. They had
just come from an ante-chamber, in which lay the mortal remains of
Reginald Dimmock.
‘Well?’ said Racksole, glancing at the doctor.
The doctor was a big, boyish-looking man, with keen, quizzical eyes.
‘It is not heart disease,’ said the doctor.
‘Not heart disease?’
‘No.’
‘Then what is it?’ asked the Prince.
‘I may be able to answer that question after the post-mortem,’ said the
doctor. ‘I certainly can’t answer it now. The symptoms are unusual to a
degree.’
The inspector of police began to write in a note-book.
Chapter Six IN THE GOLD ROOM