three minutes I thought I should perish in that grating, Dad, with my
shoulder inside and the rest of me outside. However, at last, by the
most amazing and agonizing efforts, I pulled myself through and fell
into this extraordinary cellar more dead than alive. Then I wondered
what I should do next. Should I wait for the mysterious visitor to
return, and stab him with my pocket scissors if he tried to enter, or
should I raise an alarm? First of all I replaced the broken grating,
then I struck a match, and I saw that I had got landed in a wilderness
of bottles. The match went out, and I hadn’t another one. So I sat down
in the corner to think. I had just decided to wait and see if the
visitor returned, when I heard footsteps, and then voices; and then you
came in. I must say I was rather taken aback, especially as I recognized
the voice of Mr Babylon. You see, I didn’t want to frighten you.
If I had bobbed up from behind the bottles and said “Booh!” you would
have had a serious shock. I wanted to think of a way of breaking my
presence gently to you. But you saved me the trouble, Dad. Was I really
breathing so loudly that you could hear me?’
The girl ended her strange recital, and there was a moment’s silence in
the cellar. Racksole merely nodded an affirmative to her concluding
question.
‘Well, Nell, my girl,’ said the millionaire at length, ‘we are much
obliged for your gymnastic efforts--very much obliged. But now, I think
you had better go off to bed. There is going to be some serious trouble
here, I’ll lay my last dollar on that?’
‘But if there is to be a burglary I should so like to see it, Dad,’
Nella pleaded. ‘I’ve never seen a burglar caught red-handed.’
‘This isn’t a burglary, my dear. I calculate it’s something far worse
than a burglary.’
‘What?’ she cried. ‘Murder? Arson? Dynamite plot? How perfectly
splendid!’
‘Mr Babylon informs me that Jules is in London,’ said Racksole quietly.
‘Jules!’ she exclaimed under her breath, and her tone changed instantly
to the utmost seriousness. ‘Switch off the light, quick!’ Springing to
the switch, she put the cellar in darkness.
‘What’s that for?’ said her father.
‘If he comes back he would see the light, and be frightened away,’ said
Nella. ‘That wouldn’t do at all.’
‘It wouldn’t, Miss Racksole,’ said Babylon, and there was in his voice a
note of admiration for the girl’s sagacity which Racksole heard with
high paternal pride.
‘Listen, Nella,’ said the latter, drawing his daughter to him in the
profound gloom of the cellar. ‘We fancy that Jules may be trying to
tamper with a certain bottle of wine--a bottle which might possibly be
drunk by Prince Eugen. Now do you think that the man you saw might have
been Jules?’
‘I hadn’t previously thought of him as being Jules, but immediately you
mentioned the name I somehow knew that he was. Yes, I am sure it was
Jules.’
‘Well, just hear what I have to say. There is no time to lose. If he is
coming at all he will be here very soon--and you can help.’ Racksole
explained what he thought Jules’ tactics might be. He proposed that if
the man returned he should not be interfered with, but merely watched
from the other side of the glass door.
‘You want, as it were, to catch Mr Jules alive?’ said Babylon, who
seemed rather taken aback at this novel method of dealing with
criminals. ‘Surely,’ he added, ‘it would be simpler and easier to inform
the police of your suspicion, and to leave everything to them.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Racksole, ‘we have already gone much too far
without the police to make it advisable for us to call them in at this
somewhat advanced stage of the proceedings. Besides, if you must know
it, I have a particular desire to capture the scoundrel myself. I will
leave you and Nella here, since Nella insists on seeing everything, and
I will arrange things so that once he has entered the cellar Jules will
not get out of it again--at any rate through the grating. You had better
place yourselves on the other side of the glass door, in the big cellar;
you will be in a position to observe from there, I will skip off at
once. All you have to do is to take note of what the fellow does. If he
has any accomplices within the hotel we shall probably be able by that
means to discover who the accomplice is.’
Lighting a match and shading it with his hands, Racksole showed them
both out of the little cellar. ‘Now if you lock this glass door on the
outside he can’t escape this way: the panes of glass are too small, and
the woodwork too stout. So, if he comes into the trap, you two will have
the pleasure of actually seeing him frantically writhe therein, without
any personal danger; but perhaps you’d better not show yourselves.’
In another moment Felix Babylon and Nella were left to themselves in the
darkness of the cellar, listening to the receding footfalls of Theodore
Racksole. But the sound of these footfalls had not died away before
another sound greeted their ears--the grating of the small cellar was
being removed.
‘I hope your father will be in time,’ whispered Felix
‘Hush!’ the girl warned him, and they stooped side by side in tense
silence.
A man cautiously but very neatly wormed his body through the aperture of
the grating. The watchers could only see his form indistinctly in the
darkness.
Then, being fairly within the cellar, he walked without the least
hesitation to the electric switch and turned on the light. It was
unmistakably Jules, and he knew the geography of the cellar very well.
Babylon could with difficulty repress a start as he saw this bold and
unscrupulous ex-waiter moving with such an air of assurance and
determination about the precious cellar. Jules went directly to a small
bin which was numbered 17, and took there from the topmost bottle.
‘The Romanee-Conti--Prince Eugen’s wine!’ Babylon exclaimed under his
breath.
Jules neatly and quickly removed the seal with an instrument which he
had clearly brought for the purpose. He then took a little flat box from
his pocket, which seemed to contain a sort of black salve. Rubbing his
finger in this, he smeared the top of the neck of the bottle with it,
just where the cork came against the glass. In another instant he had
deftly replaced the seal and restored the bottle to its position. He
then turned off the light, and made for the aperture. When he was half-
way through Nella exclaimed, ‘He will escape, after all. Dad has not had
time--we must stop him.’
But Babylon, that embodiment of caution, forcibly, but nevertheless
politely, restrained this Yankee girl, whom he deemed so rash and
imprudent, and before she could free herself the lithe form of Jules had
disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-Four THE BOTTLE OF WINE
AS regards Theodore Racksole, who was to have caught his man from the
outside of the cellar, he made his way as rapidly as possible from the
wine-cellars, up to the ground floor, out of the hotel by the
quadrangle, through the quadrangle, and out into the top of Salisbury
Lane. Now, owing to the vastness of the structure of the Grand Babylon,
the mere distance thus to be traversed amounted to a little short of a
quarter of a mile, and, as it included a number of stairs, about two
dozen turnings, and several passages which at that time of night were in
darkness more or less complete, Racksole could not have been expected to
accomplish the journey in less than five minutes. As a matter of fact,
six minutes had elapsed before he reached the top of Salisbury Lane,
because he had been delayed nearly a minute by some questions addressed
to him by a muddled and whisky-laden guest who had got lost in the
corridors. As everybody knows, there is a sharp short bend in Salisbury
Lane near the top. Racksole ran round this at good racing speed, but he
was unfortunate enough to run straight up against the very policeman who
had not long before so courteously supplied Jules with a match. The
policeman seemed to be scarcely in so pliant a mood just then.
‘Hullo!’ he said, his naturally suspicious nature being doubtless
aroused by the spectacle of a bareheaded man in evening dress running
violently down the lane. ‘What’s this? Where are you for in such a
hurry?’ and he forcibly detained Theodore Racksole for a moment and
scrutinized his face.
‘Now, officer,’ said Racksole quietly, ‘none of your larks, if you
please.
I’ve no time to lose.’
‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ the policeman remarked, though hesitatingly and
not quite with good temper, and Racksole was allowed to proceed on his
way. The millionaire’s scheme for trapping Jules was to get down into
the little sunk yard by means of the ladder, and then to secrete himself
behind some convenient abutment of brickwork until Mr Tom Jackson should
have got into the cellar. He therefore nimbly surmounted the railings--
the railings of his own hotel--and was gingerly descending the ladder,
when lo! a rough hand seized him by the coat-collar and with a ferocious
jerk urged him backwards. The fact was, Theodore Racksole had counted
without the policeman. That guardian of the peace, mistrusting
Racksole’s manner, quietly followed him down the lane. The sight of the
millionaire climbing the railings had put him on his mettle, and the
result was the ignominious capture of Racksole. In vain Theodore
expostulated, explained, anathematized. Only one thing would satisfy the
stolid policeman--namely, that Racksole should return with him to the
hotel and there establish his identity. If Racksole then proved to be
Racksole, owner of the Grand Babylon, well and good--the policeman
promised to apologize. So Theodore had no alternative but to accept the
suggestion. To prove his identity was, of course, the work of only a few
minutes, after which Racksole, annoyed, but cool as ever, returned to
his railings, while the policeman went off to another part of his beat,
where he would be likely to meet a comrade and have a chat.
In the meantime, our friend Jules, sublimely unconscious of the
altercation going on outside, and of the special risk which he ran, was
of course actually in the cellar, which he had reached before Racksole
got to the railings for the first time. It was, indeed, a happy chance
for Jules that his exit from the cellar coincided with the period during
which Racksole was absent from the railings. As Racksole came down the
lane for the second time, he saw a figure walking about fifty yards in
front of him towards the Embankment. Instantly he divined that it was
Jules, and that the policeman had thrown him just too late. He ran, and
Jules, hearing the noise of pursuit, ran also. The ex-waiter was fleet;
he made direct for a certain spot in the Embankment wall, and, to the
intense astonishment of Racksole, jumped clean over the wall, as it
seemed, into the river. ‘Is he so desperate as to commit suicide?’
Racksole exclaimed as he ran, but a second later the puff and snort of a
steam launch told him that Jules was not quite driven to suicide. As the
millionaire crossed the Embankment roadway he saw the funnel of the
launch move out from under the river-wall. It swerved into midstream and
headed towards London Bridge. There was a silent mist over the river.
Racksole was helpless....
Although Racksole had now been twice worsted in a contest of wits within
the precincts of the Grand Babylon, once by Rocco and once by Jules, he
could not fairly blame himself for the present miscarriage of his plans-
-a miscarriage due to the meddlesomeness of an extraneous person,
combined with pure ill-fortune. He did not, therefore, permit the
accident to interfere with his sleep that night.
On the following day he sought out Prince Aribert, between whom and
himself there now existed a feeling of unmistakable, frank friendship,
and disclosed to him the happenings of the previous night, and
particularly the tampering with the bottle of Romanée-Conti.
‘I believe you dined with Prince Eugen last night?’
‘I did. And curiously enough we had a bottle of Romanée-Conti, an
admirable wine, of which Eugen is passionately fond.’
‘And you will dine with him to-night?’
‘Most probably. To-day will, I fear, be our last day here. Eugen wishes
to return to Posen early to-morrow.’
‘Has it struck you, Prince,’ said Racksole, ‘that if Jules had succeeded
in poisoning your nephew, he would probably have succeeded also in
poisoning you?’
‘I had not thought of it,’ laughed Aribert, ‘but it would seem so. It
appears that so long as he brings down his particular quarry, Jules is
careless of anything else that may be accidentally involved in the
destruction. However, we need have no fear on that score now. You know
the bottle, and you can destroy it at once.’
‘But I do not propose to destroy it,’ said Racksole calmly. ‘If Prince
Eugen asks for Romanée-Conti to be served to-night, as he probably will,
I propose that that precise bottle shall be served to him--and to you.’
‘Then you would poison us in spite of ourselves?’
‘Scarcely,’ Racksole smiled. ‘My notion is to discover the accomplices
within the hotel. I have already inquired as to the wine-clerk, Hubbard.
Now does it not occur to you as extraordinary that on this particular
day Mr Hubbard should be ill in bed? Hubbard, I am informed, is
suffering from an attack of stomach poisoning, which has supervened
during the night. He says that he does not know what can have caused it.
His place in the wine cellars will be taken to-day by his assistant, a
mere youth, but to all appearances a fairly smart youth. I need not say
that we shall keep an eye on that youth.’
‘One moment,’ Prince Aribert interrupted. ‘I do not quite understand how
you think the poisoning was to have been effected.’
‘The bottle is now under examination by an expert, who has instructions
to remove as little as possible of the stuff which Jules put on the rim
of the mouth of it. It will be secretly replaced in its bin during the
day. My idea is that by the mere action of pouring out the wine takes up
some of the poison, which I deem to be very strong, and thus becomes
fatal as it enters the glass.’
‘But surely the servant in attendance would wipe the mouth of the
bottle?’
‘Very carelessly, perhaps. And moreover he would be extremely unlikely
to wipe off all the stuff; some of it has been ingeniously placed just
on the inside edge of the rim. Besides, suppose he forgot to wipe the
bottle?’
‘Prince Eugen is always served at dinner by Hans. It is an honour which
the faithful old fellow reserves for himself.’
‘But suppose Hans--’ Racksole stopped.
‘Hans an accomplice! My dear Racksole, the suggestion is wildly
impossible.’
That night Prince Aribert dined with his august nephew in the superb
dining-room of the Royal apartments. Hans served, the dishes being
brought to the door by other servants. Aribert found his nephew
despondent and taciturn. On the previous day, when, after the futile
interview with Sampson Levi, Prince Eugen had despairingly threatened to
commit suicide, in such a manner as to make it ‘look like an accident’,
Aribert had compelled him to give his word of honour not to do so.
‘What wine will your Royal Highness take?’ asked old Hans in his
soothing tones, when the soup was served.
‘Sherry,’ was Prince Eugen’s curt order.
‘And Romanée-Conti afterwards?’ said Hans. Aribert looked up quickly.
‘No, not to-night. I’ll try Sillery to-night,’ said Prince Eugen.
‘I think I’ll have Romanée-Conti, Hans, after all,’ he said. ‘It suits
me better than champagne.’
The famous and unsurpassable Burgundy was served with the roast. Old
Hans brought it tenderly in its wicker cradle, inserted the corkscrew
with mathematical precision, and drew the cork, which he offered for his
master’s inspection. Eugen nodded, and told him to put it down. Aribert
watched with intense interest. He could not for an instant believe that
Hans was not the very soul of fidelity, and yet, despite himself,
Racksole’s words had caused him a certain uneasiness. At that moment
Prince Eugen murmured across the table:
‘Aribert, I withdraw my promise. Observe that, I withdraw it.’ Aribert
shook his head emphatically, without removing his gaze from Hans. The
white-haired servant perfunctorily dusted his napkin round the neck of
the bottle of Romanée-Conti, and poured out a glass. Aribert trembled
from head to foot.
Eugen took up the glass and held it to the light.
‘Don’t drink it,’ said Aribert very quietly. ‘It is poisoned.’
‘Poisoned!’ exclaimed Prince Eugen.
‘Poisoned, sire!’ exclaimed old Hans, with an air of profound amazement
and concern, and he seized the glass. ‘Impossible, sire. I myself opened
the bottle. No one else has touched it, and the cork was perfect.’
‘I tell you it is poisoned,’ Aribert repeated.
‘Your Highness will pardon an old man,’ said Hans, ‘but to say that this
wine is poison is to say that I am a murderer. I will prove to you that
it is not poisoned. I will drink it.’ And he raised the glass to his
trembling lips. In that moment Aribert saw that old Hans, at any rate,
was not an accomplice of Jules. Springing up from his seat, he knocked
the glass from the aged servitor’s hands, and the fragments of it fell
with a light tinkling crash partly on the table and partly on the floor.
The Prince and the servant gazed at one another in a distressing and
terrible silence.
There was a slight noise, and Aribert looked aside. He saw that Eugen’s
body had slipped forward limply over the left arm of his chair; the
Prince’s arms hung straight and lifeless; his eyes were closed; he was
unconscious.
‘Hans!’ murmured Aribert. ‘Hans! What is this?’
Chapter Twenty-Five THE STEAM LAUNCH
MR TOM JACKSON’s notion of making good his escape from the hotel by
means of a steam launch was an excellent one, so far as it went, but
Theodore Racksole, for his part, did not consider that it went quite far
enough.
Theodore Racksole opined, with peculiar glee, that he now had a tangible
and definite clue for the catching of the Grand Babylon’s ex-waiter. He
knew nothing of the Port of London, but he happened to know a good deal
of the far more complicated, though somewhat smaller, Port of New York,
and he was sure there ought to be no extraordinary difficulty in getting
hold of Jules’ steam launch. To those who are not thoroughly familiar
with it the River Thames and its docks, from London Bridge to Gravesend,
seems a vast and uncharted wilderness of craft--a wilderness in which it
would be perfectly easy to hide even a three-master successfully. To
such people the idea of looking for a steam launch on the river would be
about equivalent to the idea of looking for a needle in a bundle of hay.
But the fact is, there are hundreds of men between St Katherine’s Wharf
and Blackwall who literally know the Thames as the suburban householder
knows his back-garden--who can recognize thousands of ships and put a
name to them at a distance of half a mile, who are informed as to every
movement of vessels on the great stream, who know all the captains, all
the engineers, all the lightermen, all the pilots, all the licensed
watermen, and all the unlicensed scoundrels from the Tower to Gravesend,
and a lot further. By these experts of the Thames the slightest unusual
event on the water is noticed and discussed--a wherry cannot change
hands but they will guess shrewdly upon the price paid and the
intentions of the new owner with regard to it. They have a habit of
watching the river for the mere interest of the sight, and they talk
about everything like housewives gathered of an evening round the
cottage door. If the first mate of a Castle Liner gets the sack they
will be able to tell you what he said to the captain, what the old man
said to him, and what both said to the Board, and having finished off
that affair they will cheerfully turn to discussing whether Bill Stevens
sank his barge outside the West Indian No.2 by accident or on purpose.
Theodore Racksole had no satisfactory means of identifying the steam
launch which carried away Mr Tom Jackson. The sky had clouded over soon
after midnight, and there was also a slight mist, and he had only been
able to make out that it was a low craft, about sixty feet long,
probably painted black. He had personally kept a watch all through the
night on vessels going upstream, and during the next morning he had a
man to take his place who warned him whenever a steam launch went
towards Westminster. At noon, after his conversation with Prince
Aribert, he went down the river in a hired row-boat as far as the Custom
House, and poked about everywhere, in search of any vessel which could
by any possibility be the one he was in search of.
But he found nothing. He was, therefore, tolerably sure that the
mysterious launch lay somewhere below the Custom House. At the Custom
House stairs, he landed, and asked for a very high official--an official
inferior only to a Commissioner--whom he had entertained once in New
York, and who had met him in London on business at Lloyd’s. In the large
but dingy office of this great man a long conversation took place--a
conversation in which Racksole had to exercise a certain amount of
persuasive power, and which ultimately ended in the high official
ringing his bell.
‘Desire Mr Hazell--room No. 332--to speak to me,’ said the official to
the boy who answered the summons, and then, turning to Racksole: ‘I need
hardly repeat, my dear Mr Racksole, that this is strictly unofficial.’
‘Agreed, of course,’ said Racksole.
Mr Hazell entered. He was a young man of about thirty, dressed in blue
serge, with a pale, keen face, a brown moustache and a rather handsome
brown beard.
‘Mr Hazell,’ said the high official, ‘let me introduce you to Mr
Theodore Racksole--you will doubtless be familiar with his name. Mr
Hazell,’ he went on to Racksole, ‘is one of our outdoor staff--what we
call an examining officer. Just now he is doing night duty. He has a
boat on the river and a couple of men, and the right to board and
examine any craft whatever. What Mr Hazell and his crew don’t know about
the Thames between here and Gravesend isn’t knowledge.’
‘Glad to meet you, sir,’ said Racksole simply, and they shook hands.
Racksole observed with satisfaction that Mr Hazell was entirely at his
ease.
‘Now, Hazell,’ the high official continued, ‘Mr Racksole wants you to
help in a little private expedition on the river to-night. I will give
you a night’s leave. I sent for you partly because I thought you would
enjoy the affair and partly because I think I can rely on you to regard
it as entirely unofficial and not to talk about it. You understand? I
dare say you will have no cause to regret having obliged Mr Racksole.’
‘I think I grasp the situation,’ said Hazell, with a slight smile.
‘And, by the way,’ added the high official, ‘although the business is
unofficial, it might be well if you wore your official overcoat. See?’
‘Decidedly,’ said Hazell; ‘I should have done so in any case.’
‘And now, Mr Hazell,’ said Racksole, ‘will you do me the pleasure of
lunching with me? If you agree, I should like to lunch at the place you
usually frequent.’
So it came to pass that Theodore Racksole and George Hazell, outdoor
clerk in the Customs, lunched together at ‘Thomas’s Chop-House’, in the
city of London, upon mutton-chops and coffee. The millionaire soon
discovered that he had got hold of a keen-witted man and a person of
much insight.
‘Tell me,’ said Hazell, when they had reached the cigarette stage, ‘are
the magazine writers anything like correct?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Racksole, mystified.
‘Well, you’re a millionaire--“one of the best”, I believe. One often
sees articles on and interviews with millionaires, which describe their
private railroad cars, their steam yachts on the Hudson, their marble
stables, and so on, and so on. Do you happen to have those things?’
‘I have a private car on the New York Central, and I have a two thousand
ton schooner-yacht--though it isn’t on the Hudson. It happens just now
to be on East River. And I am bound to admit that the stables of my
uptown place are fitted with marble.’ Racksole laughed.
‘Ah!’ said Hazell. ‘Now I can believe that I am lunching with a
millionaire.