left its permanent mark on me. Well, perhaps I am mad. Who can tell? God
knows that I have been through enough lately to drive me mad.’
Aribert made no reply. As a matter of strict fact, the thought had
crossed his mind that Eugen’s brain had not yet recovered its normal
tone and activity. This speech of his nephew’s, however, had the effect
of immediately restoring his belief in the latter’s entire sanity. He
felt convinced that if only he could regain his nephew’s confidence, the
old brotherly confidence which had existed between them since the years
when they played together as boys, all might yet be well. But at present
there appeared to be no sign that Eugen meant to give his confidence to
anyone.
The young Prince had come up out of the valley of the shadow of death,
but some of the valley’s shadow had clung to him, and it seemed he was
unable to dissipate it.
‘By the way,’ said Eugen suddenly, ‘I must reward these Racksoles, I
suppose. I am indeed grateful to them. If I gave the girl a bracelet,
and the father a thousand guineas--how would that meet the case?’
‘My dear Eugen!’ exclaimed Aribert aghast. ‘A thousand guineas! Do you
know that Theodore Racksole could buy up all Posen from end to end
without making himself a pauper. A thousand guineas! You might as well
offer him sixpence.’
‘Then what must I offer?’
‘Nothing, except your thanks. Anything else would be an insult. These
are no ordinary hotel people.’
‘Can’t I give the little girl a bracelet?’ Prince Eugen gave a sinister
laugh.
Aribert looked at him steadily. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Why did you kiss her--that night?’ asked Prince Eugen carelessly.
‘Kiss whom?’ said Aribert, blushing and angry, despite his most
determined efforts to keep calm and unconcerned.
‘The Racksole girl.’
‘When do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ said Prince Eugen, ‘that night in Ostend when I was ill. You
thought I was in a delirium. Perhaps I was. But somehow I remember that
with extraordinary distinctness. I remember raising my head for a
fraction of an instant, and just in that fraction of an instant you
kissed her. Oh, Uncle Aribert!’
‘Listen, Eugen, for God’s sake. I love Nella Racksole. I shall marry
her.’
‘You!’ There was a long pause, and then Eugen laughed. ‘Ah!’ he said.
‘They all talk like that to start with. I have talked like that myself,
dear uncle; it sounds nice, and it means nothing.’
‘In this case it means everything, Eugen,’ said Aribert quietly. Some
accent of determination in the latter’s tone made Eugen rather more
serious.
‘You can’t marry her,’ he said. ‘The Emperor won’t permit a morganatic
marriage.’
‘The Emperor has nothing to do with the affair. I shall renounce my
rights.
I shall become a plain citizen.’
‘In which case you will have no fortune to speak of.’
‘But my wife will have a fortune. Knowing the sacrifices which I shall
have made in order to marry her, she will not hesitate to place that
fortune in my hands for our mutual use,’ said Aribert stiffly.
‘You will decidedly be rich,’ mused Eugen, as his ideas dwelt on
Theodore Racksole’s reputed wealth. ‘But have you thought of this,’ he
asked, and his mild eyes glowed again in a sort of madness. ‘Have you
thought that I am unmarried, and might die at any moment, and then the
throne will descend to you--to you, Aribert?’
‘The throne will never descend to me, Eugen,’ said Aribert softly, ‘for
you will live. You are thoroughly convalescent. You have nothing to
fear.’
‘It is the next seven days that I fear,’ said Eugen.
‘The next seven days! Why?’
‘I do not know. But I fear them. If I can survive them--’
‘Mr Sampson Levi, sire,’ Hans announced in a loud tone.
Chapter Twenty MR SAMPSON LEVI BIDS PRINCE EUGEN GOOD MORNING
PRINCE EUGEN started. ‘I will see him,’ he said, with a gesture to Hans
as if to indicate that Mr Sampson Levi might enter at once.
‘I beg one moment first,’ said Aribert, laying a hand gently on his
nephew’s arm, and giving old Hans a glance which had the effect of
precipitating that admirably trained servant through the doorway.
‘What is it?’ asked Prince Eugen crossly. ‘Why this sudden seriousness?
Don’t forget that I have an appointment with Mr Sampson Levi, and must
not keep him waiting. Someone said that punctuality is the politeness of
princes.’
‘Eugen,’ said Aribert, ‘I wish you to be as serious as I am. Why cannot
we have faith in each other? I want to help you. I have helped you. You
are my titular Sovereign; but on the other hand I have the honour to be
your uncle:
I have the honour to be the same age as you, and to have been your
companion from youth up. Give me your confidence. I thought you had
given it me years ago, but I have lately discovered that you had your
secrets, even then. And now, since your illness, you are still more
secretive.’
‘What do you mean, Aribert?’ said Eugen, in a tone which might have been
either inimical or friendly. ‘What do you want to say?’
‘Well, in the first place, I want to say that you will not succeed with
the estimable Mr Sampson Levi.’
‘Shall I not?’ said Eugen lightly. ‘How do you know what my business is
with him?’
‘Suffice it to say that I know. You will never get that million pounds
out of him.’
Prince Eugen gasped, and then swallowed his excitement. ‘Who has been
talking? What million?’ His eyes wandered uneasily round the room. ‘Ah!’
he said, pretending to laugh. ‘I see how it is. I have been chattering
in my delirium. You mustn’t take any notice of that, Aribert. When one
has a fever one’s ideas become grotesque and fanciful.’
‘You never talked in your delirium,’ Aribert replied; ‘at least not
about yourself. I knew about this projected loan before I saw you in
Ostend.’
‘Who told you?’ demanded Eugen fiercely.
‘Then you admit that you are trying to raise a loan?’
‘I admit nothing. Who told you?’
‘Theodore Racksole, the millionaire. These rich men have no secrets from
each other. They form a coterie, closer than any coterie of ours. Eugen,
and far more powerful. They talk, and in talking they rule the world,
these millionaires. They are the real monarchs.’
‘Curse them!’ said Eugen.
‘Yes, perhaps so. But let me return to your case. Imagine my shame, my
disgust, when I found that Racksole could tell me more about your
affairs than I knew myself. Happily, he is a good fellow; one can trust
him; otherwise I should have been tempted to do something desperate when
I discovered that all your private history was in his hands. Eugen, let
us come to the point; why do you want that million? Is it actually true
that you are so deeply in debt? I have no desire to improve the
occasion. I merely ask.’
‘And what if I do owe a million?’ said Prince Eugen with assumed valour.
‘Oh, nothing, my dear Eugen, nothing. Only it is rather a large sum to
have scattered in ten years, is it not? How did you manage it?’
‘Don’t ask me, Aribert. I’ve been a fool. But I swear to you that the
woman whom you call “the lady in the red hat” is the last of my follies.
I am about to take a wife, and become a respectable Prince.’
‘Then the engagement with Princess Anna is an accomplished fact?’
‘Practically so. As soon as I have settled with Levi, all will be
smooth.
Aribert, I wouldn’t lose Anna for the Imperial throne. She is a good and
pure woman, and I love her as a man might love an angel.’
‘And yet you would deceive her as to your debts, Eugen?’
‘Not her, but her absurd parents, and perhaps the Emperor. They have
heard rumours, and I must set those rumours at rest by presenting to
them a clean sheet.’
‘I am glad you have been frank with me, Eugen,’ said Prince Aribert,
‘but I will be plain with you. You will never marry the Princess Anna.’
‘And why?’ said Eugen, supercilious again.
‘Because her parents will not permit it. Because you will not be able to
present a clean sheet to them. Because this Sampson Levi will never lend
you a million.’
‘Explain yourself.’
‘I propose to do so. You were kidnapped--it is a horrid word, but we
must use it--in Ostend.’
‘True.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘I suppose because that vile old red-hatted woman and her accomplices
wanted to get some money out of me. Fortunately, thanks to you, they
didn’t.’
‘Not at all,’ said Aribert. ‘They wanted no money from you. They knew
well enough that you had no money. They knew you were the naughty
schoolboy among European Princes, with no sense of responsibility or of
duty towards your kingdom. Shall I tell you why they kidnapped you?’
‘When you have done abusing me, my dear uncle.’
‘They kidnapped you merely to keep you out of England for a few days,
merely to compel you to fail in your appointment with Sampson Levi. And
it appears to me that they succeeded. Assuming that you don’t obtain the
money from Levi, is there another financier in all Europe from whom you
can get it--on such strange security as you have to offer?’
‘Possibly there is not,’ said Prince Eugen calmly. ‘But, you see, I
shall get it from Sampson Levi. Levi promised it, and I know from other
sources that he is a man of his word. He said that the money, subject to
certain formalities, would be available till--’
‘Till?’
‘Till the end of June.’
‘And it is now the end of July.’
‘Well, what is a month? He is only too glad to lend the money. He will
get excellent interest. How on earth have you got into your sage old
head this notion of a plot against me? The idea is ridiculous. A plot
against me? What for?’
‘Have you ever thought of Bosnia?’ asked Aribert coldly.
‘What of Bosnia?’
‘I need not tell you that the King of Bosnia is naturally under
obligations to Austria, to whom he owes his crown. Austria is anxious
for him to make a good influential marriage.’
‘Well, let him.’
‘He is going to. He is going to marry the Princess Anna.’
‘Not while I live. He made overtures there a year ago, and was
rebuffed.’
‘Yes; but he will make overtures again, and this time he will not be
rebuffed. Oh, Eugen! can’t you see that this plot against you is being
engineered by some persons who know all about your affairs, and whose
desire is to prevent your marriage with Princess Anna? Only one man in
Europe can have any motive for wishing to prevent your marriage with
Princess Anna, and that is the man who means to marry her himself.’
Eugen went very pale.
‘Then, Aribert, do you mean to convey to me that my detention in Ostend
was contrived by the agents of the King of Bosnia?’
‘I do.’
‘With a view to stopping my negotiations with Sampson Levi, and so
putting an end to the possibility of my marriage with Anna?’
Aribert nodded.
‘You are a good friend to me, Aribert. You mean well. But you are
mistaken.
You have been worrying about nothing.’
‘Have you forgotten about Reginald Dimmock?’
‘I remember you said that he had died.’
‘I said nothing of the sort. I said that he had been assassinated. That
was part of it, my poor Eugen.’
‘Pooh!’ said Eugen. ‘I don’t believe he was assassinated. And as for
Sampson Levi, I will bet you a thousand marks that he and I come to
terms this morning, and that the million is in my hands before I leave
London.’ Aribert shook his head.
‘You seem to be pretty sure of Mr Levi’s character. Have you had much to
do with him before?’
‘Well,’ Eugen hesitated a second, ‘a little. What young man in my
position hasn’t had something to do with Mr Sampson Levi at one time or
another?’
‘I haven’t,’ said Aribert.
‘You! You are a fossil.’ He rang a silver bell. ‘Hans! I will receive Mr
Sampson Levi.’
Whereupon Aribert discreetly departed, and Prince Eugen sat down in the
great velvet chair, and began to look at the papers which Hans had
previously placed upon the table.
‘Good morning, your Royal Highness,’ said Sampson Levi, bowing as he
entered. ‘I trust your Royal Highness is well.’
‘Moderately, thanks,’ returned the Prince.
In spite of the fact that he had had as much to do with people of Royal
blood as any plain man in Europe, Sampson Levi had never yet learned how
to be at ease with these exalted individuals during the first few
minutes of an interview. Afterwards, he resumed command of himself and
his faculties, but at the beginning he was invariably flustered, scarlet
of face, and inclined to perspiration.
‘We will proceed to business at once,’ said Prince Eugen. ‘Will you take
a seat, Mr Levi?’
‘I thank your Royal Highness.’
‘Now as to that loan which we had already practically arranged--a
million, I think it was,’ said the Prince airily.
‘A million,’ Levi acquiesced, toying with his enormous watch chain.
‘Everything is now in order. Here are the papers and I should like to
finish the matter up at once.’
‘Exactly, your Highness, but--’
‘But what? You months ago expressed the warmest satisfaction at the
security, though I am quite prepared to admit that the security, is of
rather an unusual nature. You also agreed to the rate of interest. It is
not everyone, Mr Levi, who can lend out a million at 5-1/2 per cent. And
in ten years the whole amount will be paid back. I--er--I believe I
informed you that the fortune of Princess Anna, who is about to accept
my hand, will ultimately amount to something like fifty millions of
marks, which is over two million pounds in your English money.’ Prince
Eugen stopped. He had no fancy for talking in this confidential manner
to financiers, but he felt that circumstances demanded it.
‘You see, it’s like this, your Royal Highness,’ began Mr Sampson Levi,
in his homely English idiom. ‘It’s like this. I said I could keep that
bit of money available till the end of June, and you were to give me an
interview here before that date. Not having heard from your Highness,
and not knowing your Highness’s address, though my German agents made
every inquiry, I concluded, that you had made other arrangements, money
being so cheap this last few months.’
‘I was unfortunately detained at Ostend,’ said Prince Eugen, with as
much haughtiness as he could assume, ‘by--by important business. I have
made no other arrangements, and I shall have need of the million. If you
will be so good as to pay it to my London bankers--’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Mr Sampson Levi, with a tremendous and dazzling
air of politeness, which surprised even himself, ‘but my syndicate has
now lent the money elsewhere. It’s in South America--I don’t mind
telling your Highness that we’ve lent it to the Chilean Government.’
‘Hang the Chilean Government, Mr Levi,’ exclaimed the Prince, and he
went white. ‘I must have that million. It was an arrangement.’
‘It was an arrangement, I admit,’ said Mr Sampson Levi, ‘but your
Highness broke the arrangement.’
There was a long silence.
‘Do you mean to say,’ began the Prince with tense calmness, ‘that you
are not in a position to let me have that million?’
‘I could let your Highness have a million in a couple of years’ time.’
The Prince made a gesture of annoyance. ‘Mr Levi,’ he said, ‘if you do
not place the money in my hands to-morrow you will ruin one of the
oldest of reigning families, and, incidentally, you will alter the map
of Europe. You are not keeping faith, and I had relied on you.’
‘Pardon me, your Highness,’ said little Levi, rising in resentment, ‘it
is not I who have not kept faith. I beg to repeat that the money is no
longer at my disposal, and to bid your Highness good morning.’
And Mr Sampson Levi left the audience chamber with an awkward, aggrieved
bow. It was a scene characteristic of the end of the nineteenth century-
-an overfed, commonplace, pursy little man who had been born in a
Brixton semi-detached villa, and whose highest idea of pleasure was a
Sunday up the river in an expensive electric launch, confronting and
utterly routing, in a hotel belonging to an American millionaire, the
representative of a race of men who had fingered every page of European
history for centuries, and who still, in their native castles, were
surrounded with every outward circumstance of pomp and power.
‘Aribert,’ said Prince Eugen, a little later, ‘you were right. It is all
over. I have only one refuge--’
‘You don’t mean--’ Aribert stopped, dumbfounded.
‘Yes, I do,’ he said quickly. ‘I can manage it so that it will look like
an accident.’
Chapter Twenty-One THE RETURN OF FÉLIX BABYLON
ON the evening of Prince Eugen’s fateful interview with Mr Sampson Levi,
Theodore Racksole was wandering somewhat aimlessly and uneasily about
the entrance hall and adjacent corridors of the Grand Babylon. He had
returned from Ostend only a day or two previously, and had endeavoured
with all his might to forget the affair which had carried him there--to
regard it, in fact, as done with. But he found himself unable to do so.
In vain he remarked, under his breath, that there were some things which
were best left alone: if his experience as a manipulator of markets, a
contriver of gigantic schemes in New York, had taught him anything at
all, it should surely have taught him that. Yet he could not feel
reconciled to such a position. The mere presence of the princes in his
hotel roused the fighting instincts of this man, who had never in his
whole career been beaten. He had, as it were, taken up arms on their
side, and if the princes of Posen would not continue their own battle,
nevertheless he, Theodore Racksole, wanted to continue it for them. To a
certain extent, of course, the battle had been won, for Prince Eugen had
been rescued from an extremely difficult and dangerous position, and the
enemy--consisting of Jules, Rocco, Miss Spencer, and perhaps others--had
been put to flight. But that, he conceived, was not enough; it was very
far from being enough. That the criminals, for criminals they decidedly
were, should still be at large, he regarded as an absurd anomaly. And
there was another point: he had said nothing to the police of all that
had occurred. He disdained the police, but he could scarcely fail to
perceive that if the police should by accident gain a clue to the real
state of the case he might be placed rather awkwardly, for the simple
reason that in the eyes of the law it amounted to a misdemeanour to
conceal as much as he had concealed. He asked himself, for the
thousandth time, why he had adopted a policy of concealment from the
police, why he had become in any way interested in the Posen matter, and
why, at this present moment, he should be so anxious to prosecute it
further? To the first two questions he replied, rather lamely, that he
had been influenced by Nella, and also by a natural spirit of adventure;
to the third he replied that he had always been in the habit of carrying
things through, and was now actuated by a mere childish, obstinate
desire to carry this one through. Moreover, he was splendidly conscious
of his perfect ability to carry it through. One additional impulse he
had, though he did not admit it to himself, being by nature adverse to
big words, and that was an abstract love of justice, the Anglo-Saxon’s
deep-found instinct for helping the right side to conquer, even when
grave risks must thereby be run, with no corresponding advantage.
He was turning these things over in his mind as he walked about the vast
hotel on that evening of the last day in July. The Society papers had
been stating for a week past that London was empty, but, in spite of the
Society papers, London persisted in seeming to be just as full as ever.
The Grand Babylon was certainly not as crowded as it had been a month
earlier, but it was doing a very passable business. At the close of the
season the gay butterflies of the social community have a habit of
hovering for a day or two in the big hotels before they flutter away to
castle and country-house, meadow and moor, lake and stream. The great
basket-chairs in the portico were well filled by old and middle-aged
gentlemen engaged in enjoying the varied delights of liqueurs, cigars,
and the full moon which floated so serenely above the Thames. Here and
there a pretty woman on the arm of a cavalier in immaculate attire swept
her train as she turned to and fro in the promenade of the terrace.
Waiters and uniformed commissionaires and gold-braided doorkeepers moved
noiselessly about; at short intervals the chief of the doorkeepers blew
his shrill whistle and hansoms drove up with tinkling bell to take away
a pair of butterflies to some place of amusement or boredom;
occasionally a private carriage drawn by expensive and self-conscious
horses put the hansoms to shame by its mere outward glory. It was a hot
night, a night for the summer woods, and save for the vehicles there was
no rapid movement of any kind. It seemed as though the world--the world,
that is to say, of the Grand Babylon--was fully engaged in the solemn
processes of digestion and small-talk. Even the long row of the
Embankment gas-lamps, stretching right and left, scarcely trembled in
the still, warm, caressing air. The stars overhead looked down with many
blinkings upon the enormous pile of the Grand Babylon, and the moon
regarded it with bland and changeless face; what they thought of it and
its inhabitants cannot, unfortunately, be recorded. What Theodore
Racksole thought of the moon can be recorded: he thought it was a
nuisance. It somehow fascinated his gaze with its silly stare, and so
interfered with his complex meditations. He glanced round at the well-
dressed and satisfied people--his guests, his customers. They appeared
to ignore him absolutely.
Probably only a very small percentage of them had the least idea that
this tall spare man, with the iron-grey hair and the thin, firm,
resolute face, who wore his American-cut evening clothes with such
careless ease, was the sole proprietor of the Grand Babylon, and
possibly the richest man in Europe. As has already been stated, Racksole
was not a celebrity in England.
The guests of the Grand Babylon saw merely a restless male person, whose
restlessness was rather a disturber of their quietude, but with whom, to
judge by his countenance, it would be inadvisable to remonstrate.
Therefore Theodore Racksole continued his perambulations unchallenged,
and kept saying to himself, ‘I must do something.’ But what? He could
think of no course to pursue.
At last he walked straight through the hotel and out at the other
entrance, and so up the little unassuming side street into the roaring
torrent of the narrow and crowded Strand. He jumped on a Putney bus, and
paid his fair to Putney, fivepence, and then, finding that the humble
occupants of the vehicle stared at the spectacle of a man in evening
dress but without a dustcoat, he jumped off again, oblivious of the fact
that the conductor jerked a thumb towards him and winked at the
passengers as who should say, ‘There goes a lunatic.’ He went into a
tobacconist’s shop and asked for a cigar. The shopman mildly inquired
what price.
‘What are the best you’ve got?’ asked Theodore Racksole.
‘Five shillings each, sir,’ said the man promptly.
‘Give me a penny one,’ was Theodore Racksole’s laconic request, and he
walked out of the shop smoking the penny cigar. It was a new sensation
for him.
He was inhaling the aromatic odours of Eugène Rimmel’s establishment for
the sale of scents when a gentleman, walking slowly in the opposite
direction, accosted him with a quiet, ‘Good evening, Mr Racksole.’ The
millionaire did not at first recognize his interlocutor, who wore a
travelling overcoat, and was carrying a handbag. Then a slight, pleased
smile passed over his features, and he held out his hand.
‘Well, Mr Babylon,’ he greeted the other, ‘of all persons in the wide
world you are the man I would most have wished to meet.’
‘You flatter me,’ said the little Anglicized Swiss.
‘No, I don’t,’ answered Racksole; ‘it isn’t my custom, any more than
it’s yours. I wanted to have a real good long yarn with you, and lo!
here you are! Where have you sprung from?’
‘From Lausanne,’ said Felix Babylon. ‘I had finished my duties there, I
had nothing else to do, and I felt homesick. I felt the nostalgia of
London, and so I came over, just as you see,’ and he raised the handbag
for Racksole’s notice. ‘One toothbrush, one razor, two slippers, eh?’ He
laughed. ‘I was wondering as I walked along where I should stay--me,
Felix Babylon, homeless in London.’
‘I should advise you to stay at the Grand Babylon,’ Racksole laughed
back.
‘It is a good hotel, and I know the proprietor personally.’
‘Rather expensive, is it not?’ said Babylon.
‘To you, sir,’ answered Racksole, ‘the inclusive terms will be exactly
half a crown a week. Do you accept?’