suicide--he’s so hipped. Yes, real suicide. He took laudanum last night.
It didn’t kill him straight off--he’s got over the first shock, but he’s
in a very weak state, and he means to die. And I truly believe he will
die. Now, if you could let him have that million, Dad, you would save
his life.’
Nella’s item of news was a considerable and disconcerting surprise to
Racksole, but he hid his feelings fairly well.
‘I haven’t the least desire to save his life, Nell. I don’t overmuch
respect your Prince Eugen. I’ve done what I could for him--but only for
the sake of seeing fair play, and because I object to conspiracies and
secret murders.
It’s a different thing if he wants to kill himself. What I say is: Let
him.
Who is responsible for his being in debt to the tune of a million
pounds? He’s only got himself and his bad habits to thank for that. I
suppose if he does happen to peg out, the throne of Posen will go to
Prince Aribert. And a good thing, too! Aribert is worth twenty of his
nephew.’
‘That’s just it, Dad,’ she said, eagerly following up her chance. ‘I
want you to save Prince Eugen just because Aribert--Prince Aribert--
doesn’t wish to occupy the throne. He’d much prefer not to have it.’
‘Much prefer not to have it! Don’t talk nonsense. If he’s honest with
himself, he’ll admit that he’ll be jolly glad to have it. Thrones are in
his blood, so to speak.’
‘You are wrong, Father. And the reason is this: If Prince Aribert
ascended the throne of Posen he would be compelled to marry a Princess.’
‘Well! A Prince ought to marry a Princess.’
‘But he doesn’t want to. He wants to give up all his royal rights, and
live as a subject. He wants to marry a woman who isn’t a Princess.’
‘Is she rich?’
‘Her father is,’ said the girl. ‘Oh, Dad! can’t you guess? He--he loves
me.’ Her head fell on Theodore’s shoulder and she began to cry.
The millionaire whistled a very high note. ‘Nell!’ he said at length.
‘And you? Do you sort of cling to him?’
‘Dad,’ she answered, ‘you are stupid. Do you imagine I should worry
myself like this if I didn’t?’ She smiled through her tears. She knew
from her father’s tone that she had accomplished a victory.
‘It’s a mighty queer arrangement,’ Theodore remarked. ‘But of course if
you think it’ll be of any use, you had better go down and tell your
Prince Eugen that that million can be fixed up, if he really needs it. I
expect there’ll be decent security, or Sampson Levi wouldn’t have mixed
himself up in it.’
‘Thanks, Dad. Don’t come with me; I may manage better alone.’
She gave a formal little curtsey and disappeared. Racksole, who had the
talent, so necessary to millionaires, of attending to several matters at
once, the large with the small, went off to give orders about the
breakfast and the remuneration of his assistant of the evening before,
Mr George Hazell. He then sent an invitation to Mr Felix Babylon’s room,
asking that gentleman to take breakfast with him. After he had related
to Babylon the history of Jules’ capture, and had a long discussion with
him upon several points of hotel management, and especially as to the
guarding of wine-cellars, Racksole put on his hat, sallied forth into
the Strand, hailed a hansom, and was driven to the City. The order and
nature of his operations there were too complex and technical to be
described here.
When Nella returned to the State bedroom both the doctor and the great
specialist were again in attendance. The two physicians moved away from
the bedside as she entered, and began to talk quietly together in the
embrasure of the window.
‘A curious case!’ said the specialist.
‘Yes. Of course, as you say, it’s a neurotic temperament that’s at the
bottom of the trouble. When you’ve got that and a vigorous constitution
working one against the other, the results are apt to be distinctly
curious.
Do you consider there is any hope, Sir Charles?’
‘If I had seen him when he recovered consciousness I should have said
there was hope. Frankly, when I left last night, or rather this morning,
I didn’t expect to see the Prince alive again--let alone conscious, and
able to talk. According to all the rules of the game, he ought to get
over the shock to the system with perfect ease and certainty. But I
don’t think he will. I don’t think he wants to. And moreover, I think he
is still under the influence of suicidal mania. If he had a razor he
would cut his throat. You must keep his strength up. Inject, if
necessary. I will come in this afternoon. I am due now at St James’s
Palace.’ And the specialist hurried away, with an elaborate bow and a
few hasty words of polite reassurances to Prince Aribert.
When he had gone Prince Aribert took the other doctor aside. ‘Forget
everything, doctor,’ he said, ‘except that I am one man and you are
another, and tell me the truth. Shall you be able to save his Highness?
Tell me the truth.’
‘There is no truth,’ was the doctor’s reply. ‘The future is not in our
hands, Prince.’
‘But you are hopeful? Yes or no.’
The doctor looked at Prince Aribert. ‘No!’ he said shortly. ‘I am not. I
am never hopeful when the patient is not on my side.’
‘You mean--?’
‘I mean that his Royal Highness has no desire to live. You must have
observed that.’
‘Only too well,’ said Aribert.
‘And you are aware of the cause?’
Aribert nodded an affirmative.
‘But cannot remove it?’
‘No,’ said Aribert. He felt a touch on his sleeve. It was Nella’s
finger.
With a gesture she beckoned him towards the ante-room.
‘If you choose,’ she said, when they were alone, ‘Prince Eugen can be
saved.
I have arranged it.’
‘You have arranged it?’ He bent over her, almost with an air of alarm.
‘Go and tell him that the million pounds which is so necessary to his
happiness will be forthcoming. Tell him that it will be forthcoming
today, if that will be any satisfaction to him.’
‘But what do you mean by this, Nella?’
‘I mean what I say, Aribert,’ and she sought his hand and took it in
hers.
‘Just what I say. If a million pounds will save Prince Eugen’s life, it
is at his disposal.’
‘But how--how have you managed it? By what miracle?’
‘My father,’ she replied softly, ‘will do anything that I ask him. Do
not let us waste time. Go and tell Eugen it is arranged, that all will
be well.
Go!’
‘But we cannot accept this--this enormous, this incredible favour. It is
impossible.’
‘Aribert,’ she said quickly, ‘remember you are not in Posen holding a
Court reception. You are in England and you are talking to an American
girl who has always been in the habit of having her own way.’
The Prince threw up his hands and went back in to the bedroom. The
doctor was at a table writing out a prescription. Aribert approached the
bedside, his heart beating furiously. Eugen greeted him with a faint,
fatigued smile.
‘Eugen,’ he whispered, ‘listen carefully to me. I have news. With the
assistance of friends I have arranged to borrow that million for you. It
is quite settled, and you may rely on it. But you must get better. Do
you hear me?’
Eugen almost sat up in bed. ‘Tell me I am not delirious,’ he exclaimed.
‘Of course you aren’t,’ Aribert replied. ‘But you mustn’t sit up. You
must take care of yourself.’
‘Who will lend the money?’ Eugen asked in a feeble, happy whisper.
‘Never mind. You shall hear later. Devote yourself now to getting
better.’
The change in the patient’s face was extraordinary. His mind seemed to
have put on an entirely different aspect. The doctor was startled to
hear him murmur a request for food. As for Aribert, he sat down,
overcome by the turmoil of his own thoughts. Till that moment he felt
that he had never appreciated the value and the marvellous power of mere
money, of the lucre which philosophers pretend to despise and men sell
their souls for. His heart almost burst in its admiration for that
extraordinary Nella, who by mere personal force had raised two men out
of the deepest slough of despair to the blissful heights of hope and
happiness. ‘These Anglo-Saxons,’ he said to himself, ‘what a race!’
By the afternoon Eugen was noticeably and distinctly better. The
physicians, puzzled for the third time by the progress of the case,
announced now that all danger was past. The tone of the announcement
seemed to Aribert to imply that the fortunate issue was due wholly to
unrivalled medical skill, but perhaps Aribert was mistaken. Anyhow, he
was in a most charitable mood, and prepared to forgive anything.
‘Nella,’ he said a little later, when they were by themselves again in
the ante-chamber, ‘what am I to say to you? How can I thank you? How can
I thank your father?’
‘You had better not thank my father,’ she said. ‘Dad will affect to
regard the thing as a purely business transaction, as, of course, it is.
As for me, you can--you can--’
‘Well?’
‘Kiss me,’ she said. ‘There! Are you sure you’ve formally proposed to
me, mon prince?’
‘Ah! Nell!’ he exclaimed, putting his arms round her again. ‘Be mine!
That is all I want!’
‘You’ll find,’ she said, ‘that you’ll want Dad’s consent too!’
‘Will he make difficulties? He could not, Nell--not with you!’
‘Better ask him,’ she said sweetly.
A moment later Racksole himself entered the room. ‘Going on all right?’
he enquired, pointing to the bedroom. ‘Excellently,’ the lovers answered
together, and they both blushed.
‘Ah!’ said Racksole. ‘Then, if that’s so, and you can spare a minute,
I’ve something to show you, Prince.’
Chapter Thirty CONCLUSION
‘I’VE a great deal to tell you, Prince,’ Racksole began, as soon as they
were out of the room, ‘and also, as I said, something to show you. Will
you come to my room? We will talk there first. The whole hotel is
humming with excitement.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Aribert.
‘Glad his Highness Prince Eugen is recovering,’ Racksole said, urged by
considerations of politeness.
‘Ah! As to that--’ Aribert began. ‘If you don’t mind, we’ll discuss that
later, Prince,’ Racksole interrupted him.
They were in the proprietor’s private room.
‘I want to tell you all about last night,’ Racksole resumed, ‘about my
capture of Jules, and my examination of him this morning.’ And he
launched into a full account of the whole thing, down to the least
details. ‘You see,’ he concluded, ‘that our suspicions as to Bosnia were
tolerably correct. But as regards Bosnia, the more I think about it, the
surer I feel that nothing can be done to bring their criminal
politicians to justice.’
‘And as to Jules, what do you propose to do?’
‘Come this way,’ said Racksole, and led Aribert to another room. A sofa
in this room was covered with a linen cloth. Racksole lifted the cloth--
he could never deny himself a dramatic moment--and disclosed the body of
a dead man.
It was Jules, dead, but without a scratch or mark on him.
‘I have sent for the police--not a street constable, but an official
from Scotland Yard,’ said Racksole.
‘How did this happen?’ Aribert asked, amazed and startled. ‘I understood
you to say that he was safely immured in the bedroom.’
‘So he was,’ Racksole replied. ‘I went up there this afternoon, chiefly
to take him some food. The commissionaire was on guard at the door. He
had heard no noise, nothing unusual. Yet when I entered the room Jules
was gone.
He had by some means or other loosened his fastenings; he had then
managed to take the door off the wardrobe. He had moved the bed in front
of the window, and by pushing the wardrobe door three parts out of the
window and lodging the inside end of it under the rail at the head of
the bed, he had provided himself with a sort of insecure platform
outside the window. All this he did without making the least sound. He
must then have got through the window, and stood on the little platform.
With his fingers he would just be able to reach the outer edge of the
wide cornice under the roof of the hotel. By main strength of arms he
had swung himself on to this cornice, and so got on to the roof proper.
He would then have the run of the whole roof.
At the side of the building facing Salisbury Lane there is an iron fire-
escape, which runs right down from the ridge of the roof into a little
sunk yard level with the cellars. Jules must have thought that his
escape was accomplished. But it unfortunately happened that one rung in
the iron escape-ladder had rusted rotten through being badly painted. It
gave way, and Jules, not expecting anything of the kind, fell to the
ground. That was the end of all his cleverness and ingenuity.’
As Racksole ceased, speaking he replaced the linen cloth with a gesture
from which reverence was not wholly absent.
When the grave had closed over the dark and tempestuous career of Tom
Jackson, once the pride of the Grand Babylon, there was little trouble
for the people whose adventures we have described. Miss Spencer, that
yellow-haired, faithful slave and attendant of a brilliant scoundrel,
was never heard of again. Possibly to this day she survives, a mystery
to her fellow-creatures, in the pension of some cheap foreign boarding-
house. As for Rocco, he certainly was heard of again. Several years
after the events set down, it came to the knowledge of Felix Babylon
that the unrivalled Rocco had reached Buenos Aires, and by his culinary
skill was there making the fortune of a new and splendid hotel. Babylon
transmitted the information to Theodore Racksole, and Racksole might,
had he chosen, have put the forces of the law in motion against him. But
Racksole, seeing that everything pointed to the fact that Rocco was now
pursuing his vocation honestly, decided to leave him alone. The one
difficulty which Racksole experienced after the demise of Jules--and it
was a difficulty which he had, of course, anticipated--was connected
with the police. The police, very properly, wanted to know things. They
desired to be informed what Racksole had been doing in the Dimmock
affair, between his first visit to Ostend and his sending for them to
take charge of Jules’ dead body. And Racksole was by no means inclined
to tell them everything. Beyond question he had transgressed the laws of
England, and possibly also the laws of Belgium; and the moral excellence
of his motives in doing so was, of course, in the eyes of legal justice,
no excuse for such conduct. The inquest upon Jules aroused some bother;
and about ninety-and-nine separate and distinct rumours. In the end,
however, a compromise was arrived at. Racksole’s first aim was to pacify
the inspector whose clue, which by the way was a false one, he had so
curtly declined to follow up. That done, the rest needed only tact and
patience. He proved to the satisfaction of the authorities that he had
acted in a perfectly honest spirit, though with a high hand, and that
substantial justice had been done. Also, he subtly indicated that, if it
came to the point, he should defy them to do their worst. Lastly, he was
able, through the medium of the United States Ambassador, to bring
certain soothing influences to bear upon the situation.
One afternoon, a fortnight after the recovery of the Hereditary Prince
of Posen, Aribert, who was still staying at the Grand Babylon, expressed
a wish to hold converse with the millionaire. Prince Eugen, accompanied
by Hans and some Court officials whom he had sent for, had departed with
immense éclat, armed with the comfortable million, to arrange formally
for his betrothal.
Touching the million, Eugen had given satisfactory personal security,
and the money was to be paid off in fifteen years.
‘You wish to talk to me, Prince,’ said Racksole to Aribert, when they
were seated together in the former’s room.
‘I wish to tell you,’ replied Aribert, ‘that it is my intention to
renounce all my rights and titles as a Royal Prince of Posen, and to be
known in future as Count Hartz--a rank to which I am entitled through my
mother.
Also that I have a private income of ten thousand pounds a year, and a
château and a town house in Posen. I tell you this because I am here to
ask the hand of your daughter in marriage. I love her, and I am vain
enough to believe that she loves me. I have already asked her to be my
wife, and she has consented. We await your approval.’
‘You honour us, Prince,’ said Racksole with a slight smile, ‘and in more
ways than one. May I ask your reason for renouncing your princely
titles?’
‘Simply because the idea of a morganatic marriage would be as repugnant
to me as it would be to yourself and to Nella.’
‘That is good.’ The Prince laughed. ‘I suppose it has occurred to you
that ten thousand pounds per annum, for a man in your position, is a
somewhat small income. Nella is frightfully extravagant. I have known
her to spend sixty thousand dollars in a single year, and have nothing
to show for it at the end. Why! she would ruin you in twelve months.’
‘Nella must reform her ways,’ Aribert said.
‘If she is content to do so,’ Racksole went on, ‘well and good! I
consent.’
‘In her name and my own, I thank you,’ said Aribert gravely.
‘And,’ the millionaire continued, ‘so that she may not have to reform
too fiercely, I shall settle on her absolutely, with reversion to your
children, if you have any, a lump sum of fifty million dollars, that is
to say, ten million pounds, in sound, selected railway stock. I reckon
that is about half my fortune. Nella and I have always shared equally.’
Aribert made no reply. The two men shook hands in silence, and then it
happened that Nella entered the room.
That night, after dinner, Racksole and his friend Felix Babylon were
walking together on the terrace of the Grand Babylon Hôtel.
Felix had begun the conversation.
‘I suppose, Racksole,’ he had said, ‘you aren’t getting tired of the
Grand Babylon?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I am getting tired of doing without it. A thousand times since
I sold it to you I have wished I could undo the bargain. I can’t bear
idleness. Will you sell?’
‘I might,’ said Racksole, ‘I might be induced to sell.’
‘What will you take, my friend?’ asked Felix
‘What I gave,’ was the quick answer.
‘Eh!’ Felix exclaimed. ‘I sell you my hotel with Jules, with Rocco, with
Miss Spencer. You go and lose all those three inestimable servants, and
then offer me the hotel without them at the same price! It is
monstrous.’ The little man laughed heartily at his own wit.
‘Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘we will not quarrel about the price. I accept
your terms.’
And so was brought to a close the complex chain of events which had
begun when Theodore Racksole ordered a steak and a bottle of Bass at the
table d’hôte of the Grand Babylon Hôtel.
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Grand Babylon Hotel, by Arnold Bennett