'Yes,' said the Prince, and his brow clouded. 'I am very much afraid that my poor nephew has involved himself in some scrape that he would wish not to be divulged.'
'Then you do not believe that he is the victim of foul play?'
'I do not.'
'And the reason, if I may ask it?'
'Mr Racksole, we speak in confidence - is it not so? Some years ago my foolish nephew had an affair - an affair with a feminine star of the Berlin stage. For anything I know, the lady may have been the very pattern of her sex, but where a reigning Prince is concerned scandal cannot be avoided in such a matter. I had thought that the affair was quite at an end, since my nephew's betrothal to Princess Anna of Eckstein-Schwartzburg is shortly to be announced. But yesterday I saw the lady to whom I have referred driving on the Digue. The coincidence of her presence here with my nephew's disappearance is too extraordinary to be disregarded.'
'But how does this theory square with the murder of Reginald Dimmock?'
'It does not square with it. My idea is that the murder of poor Dimmock and the disappearance of my nephew are entirely unconnected - unless, indeed, this Berlin actress is playing into the hands of the murderers. I had not thought of that.'
'Then what do you propose to do to-night?'
'I propose to enter the house which Miss Racksole entered last night and to find out something definite.'
'I concur,' said Racksole. 'I shall heartily enjoy it. But let me tell you, Prince, and pardon me for speaking bluntly, your surmise is incorrect. I would wager a hundred thousand dollars that Prince Eugen has been kidnapped.'
'What grounds have you for being so sure?'
'Ah! said Racksole, 'that is a long story. Let me begin by asking you this.
Are you aware that your nephew, Prince Eugen, owes a million of money?'
'A million of money!' cried Prince Aribert astonished. 'It is impossible!'
'Nevertheless, he does,' said Racksole calmly. Then he told him all he had learnt from Mr Sampson Levi.
'What have you to say to that?' Racksole ended. Prince Aribert made no reply.
'What have you to say to that?' Racksole insisted.
'Merely that Eugen is ruined, even if he is alive.'
'Not at all,' Racksole returned with cheerfulness. 'Not at all. We shall see about that. The special thing that I want to know just now from you is this: Has any previous application ever been made for the hand of the Princess Anna?'
'Yes. Last year. The King of Bosnia sued for it, but his proposal was declined.'
'Why?'
'Because my nephew was considered to be a more suitable match for her.'
'Not because the personal character of his Majesty of Bosnia is scarcely of the brightest?'
'No. Unfortunately it is usually impossible to consider questions of personal character when a royal match is concerned.'
'Then, if for any reason the marriage of Princess Anna with your nephew was frustrated, the King of Bosnia would have a fair chance in that quarter?'
'He would. The political aspect of things would be perfectly satisfactory.'
'Thanks!' said Racksole. 'I will wager another hundred thousand dollars that someone in Bosnia - I don't accuse the King himself - is at the bottom of this business. The methods of Balkan politicians have always been half-Oriental. Let us go.'
'Where?'
'To this precious house of Nella's adventure.'
'But surely it is too early?'
'So it is,' said Racksole, 'and we shall want a few things, too. For instance, a dark lantern. I think I will go out and forage for a lantern.'
'And a revolver?' suggested Prince Aribert.
'Does it mean revolvers?' The millionaire laughed. 'It may come to that.' 'Here you are, then, my friend,' said Racksole, and he pulled one out of his hip pocket.
'And yours?'
'I,' said the Prince, 'I have your daughter's.'
'The deuce you have!' murmured Racksole to himself.
It was then half past nine. They decided that it would be impolitic to begin their operations till after midnight. There were three hours to spare.
'Let us go and see the gambling,' Racksole suggested. 'We might encounter the Berlin lady.'
The suggestion, in the first instance, was not made seriously, but it appeared to both men that they might do worse than spend the intervening time in the gorgeous saloon of the Kursaal, where, in the season, as much money is won and lost as at Monte Carlo. It was striking ten o'clock as they entered the rooms.
There was a large company present - a company which included some of the most notorious persons in Europe. In that multifarious assemblage all were equal. The electric light shone coldly and impartially on the just and on the unjust, on the fool and the knave, on the European and the Asiatic. As usual, women monopolized the best places at the tables.
The scene was familiar enough to Prince Aribert, who had witnessed it frequently at Monaco, but Theodore Racksole had never before entered any European gaming palace; he had only the haziest idea of the rules of play, and he was at once interested. For some time they watched the play at the table which happened to be nearest to them. Racksole never moved his lips.
With his eyes glued on the table, and ears open for every remark, of the players and the croupier, he took his first lesson in roulette. He saw a mere youth win fifteen thousand francs, which were stolen in the most barefaced mariner by a rouged girl scarcely older than the youth; he saw two old gamesters stake their coins, and lose, and walk quietly out of the place; he saw the bank win fifty thousand francs at a single turn.
'This is rather good fun,' he said at length, 'but the stakes are too small to make it really exciting. I'll try my luck, just for the experience. I'm bound to win.'
'Why?' asked the Prince.
'Because I always do, in games of chance,' Racksole answered with gay confidence. 'It is my fate. Then to-night, you must remember, I shall be a beginner, and you know the tyro's luck.'
In ten minutes the croupier of that table was obliged to suspend operations pending the arrival of a further supply of coin.
'What did I tell you?' said Racksole, leading the way to another table further up the room. A hundred curious glances went after him. One old woman, whose gay attire suggested a false youthfulness, begged him in French to stake a five-franc piece for her. She offered him the coin. He took it, and gave her a hundred-franc note in exchange. She clutched the crisp rustling paper, and with hysterical haste scuttled back to her own table.
At the second table there was a considerable air of excitement. In the forefront of the players was a woman in a low-cut evening dress of black silk and a large red picture hat. Her age appeared to be about twenty-eight; she had dark eyes, full lips, and a distinctly Jewish nose. She was handsome, but her beauty was of that forbidding, sinister order which is often called Junoesque. This woman was the centre of attraction. People said to each other that she had won a hundred and sixty thousand francs that day at the table.
'You were right,' Prince Aribert whispered to Theodore Racksole; 'that is the Berlin lady.'
'The deuce she is! Has she seen you? Will she know you?'
'She would probably know me, but she hasn't looked up yet.'
'Keep behind her, then. I propose to find her a little occupation.' By dint of a carefully-exercised diplomacy, Racksole manoeuvred himself into a seat opposite to the lady in the red hat. The fame of his success at the other table had followed him, and people regarded him as a serious and formidable player. In the first turn the lady put a thousand francs on double zero; Racksole put a hundred on number nineteen and a thousand on the odd numbers.
Nineteen won. Racksole received four thousand four hundred francs. Nine times in succession Racksole backed number nineteen and the odd numbers; nine times the lady backed double zero. Nine times Racksole won and the lady lost.
The other players, perceiving that the affair had resolved itself into a duel, stood back for the most part and watched thos
e two. Prince Aribert never stirred from his position behind the great red hat. The game continued. Racksole lost trifles from time to time, but ninety-nine hundredths of the luck was with him. As an English spectator at the table remarked, 'he couldn't do wrong.' When midnight struck the lady in the red hat was reduced to a thousand francs. Then she fell into a winning vein for half an hour, but at one o'clock her resources were exhausted. Of the hundred and sixty thousand francs which she was reputed to have had early in the evening, Racksole held about ninety thousand, and the bank had the rest.
It was a calamity for the Juno of the red hat. She jumped up, stamped her foot, and hurried from the room. At a discreet distance Racksole and the Prince pursued her.
'It might be well to ascertain her movements,' said Racksole.
Outside, in the glare of the great arc lights, and within sound of the surf which beats always at the very foot of the Kursaal, the Juno of the red hat summoned a fiacre and drove rapidly away. Racksole and the Prince took an open carriage and started in pursuit. They had not, however, travelled more than half a mile when Prince Aribert stopped the carriage, and, bidding Racksole get out, paid the driver and dismissed him.
'I feel sure I know where she is going,' he explained, 'and it will be better for us to follow on foot.'
'You mean she is making for the scene of last night's affair?' said Racksole.
'Exactly. We shall - what you call, kill two birds with one stone.'
Prince Aribert's guess was correct. The lady's carriage stopped in front of the house where Nella Racksole and Miss Spencer had had their interview on the previous evening, and the lady vanished into the building just as the two men appeared at the end of the street. Instead of proceeding along that street, the Prince led Racksole to the lane which gave on to the backs of the houses, and he counted the houses as they went up the lane. In a few minutes they had burglariously climbed over a wall, and crept, with infinite caution, up a long, narrow piece of ground - half garden, half paved yard, till they crouched under a window - a window which was shielded by curtains, but which had been left open a little.
'Listen,' said the Prince in his lightest whisper, 'they are talking.'
'Who?'
'The Berlin lady and Miss Spencer. I'm sure it's Miss Spencer's voice.'
Racksole boldly pushed the french window a little wider open, and put his ear to the aperture, through which came a beam of yellow light.
'Take my place,' he whispered to the Prince, 'they're talking German. You'll understand better.'
Silently they exchanged places under the window, and the Prince listened intently.
'Then you refuse?' Miss Spencer's visitor was saying.
There was no answer from Miss Spencer.
'Not even a thousand francs? I tell you I've lost the whole twenty-five thousand.'
Again no answer.
'Then I'll tell the whole story,' the lady went on, in an angry rush of words. 'I did what I promised to do. I enticed him here, and you've got him safe in your vile cellar, poor little man, and you won't give me a paltry thousand francs.'
'You have already had your price.' The words were Miss Spencer's. They fell cold and calm on the night air.
'I want another thousand.'
'I haven't it.'
'Then we'll see.'
Prince Aribert heard a rustle of flying skirts; then another movement - a door banged, and the beam of light through the aperture of the window suddenly disappeared. He pushed the window wide open. The room was in darkness, and apparently empty.
'Now for that lantern of yours,' he said eagerly to Theodore Racksole, after he had translated to him the conversation of the two women, Racksole produced the dark lantern from the capacious pocket of his dust coat, and lighted it. The ray flashed about the ground.
'What is it?' exclaimed Prince Aribert with a swift cry, pointing to the ground. The lantern threw its light on a perpendicular grating at their feet, through which could be discerned a cellar. They both knelt down, and peered into the subterranean chamber. On a broken chair a young man sat listlessly with closed eyes, his head leaning heavily forward on his chest.
In the feeble light of the lantern he had the livid and ghastly appearance of a corpse.
'Who can it be?' said Racksole.
'It is Eugen,' was the Prince's low answer.
17. The Release Of Prince Eugen
'EUGEN,' Prince Aribert called softly. At the sound of his own name the young man in the cellar feebly raised his head and stared up at the grating which separated him from his two rescuers. But his features showed no recognition. He gazed in an aimless, vague, silly manner for a few seconds, his eyes blinking under the glare of the lantern, and then his head slowly drooped again on to his chest. He was dressed in a dark tweed travelling suit, and Racksole observed that one sleeve - the left - was torn across the upper part of the cuff, and that there were stains of dirt on the left shoulder. A soiled linen collar, which had lost all its starch and was half unbuttoned, partially encircled the captive's neck; his brown boots were unlaced; a cap, a handkerchief, a portion of a watch-chain, and a few gold coins lay on the floor. Racksole flashed the lantern into the corners of the cellar, but he could discover no other furniture except the chair on which the Hereditary Prince of Posen sat and a small deal table on which were a plate and a cup.
'Eugen,' cried Prince Aribert once more, but this time his forlorn nephew made no response whatever, and then Aribert added in a low voice to Racksole: 'Perhaps he cannot see us clearly.'
'But he must surely recognize your voice,' said Racksole, in a hard, gloomy tone.
There was a pause, and the two men above ground looked at each other hesitatingly. Each knew that they must enter that cellar and get Prince Eugen out of it, and each was somehow afraid to take the next step.
'Thank God he is not dead!' said Aribert.
'He may be worse than dead!' Racksole replied.
'Worse than - What do you mean?'
'I mean - he may be mad.'
'Come,' Aribert almost shouted, with a sudden access of energy - a wild impulse for action. And, snatching the lantern from Racksole, he rushed into the dark room where they had heard the conversation of Miss Spencer and the lady in the red hat. For a moment Racksole did not stir from the threshold of the window.
'Come,' Prince Aribert repeated, and there was an imperious command in his utterance. 'What are you afraid of?'
'I don't know,' said Racksole, feeling stupid and queer; 'I don't know.'
Then he marched heavily after Prince Aribert into the room. On the mantelpiece were a couple of candles which had been blown out, and in a mechanical, unthinking way, Racksole lighted them, and the two men glanced round the room. It presented no peculiar features: it was just an ordinary room, rather small, rather mean, rather shabby, with an ugly wallpaper and ugly pictures in ugly frames. Thrown over a chair was a man's evening-dress jacket. The door was closed. Prince Aribert turned the knob, but he could not open it.
'It's locked,' he said. 'Evidently they know we're here.'
'Nonsense,' said Racksole brusquely; 'how can they know?' And, taking hold of the knob, he violently shook the door, and it opened. 'I told you it wasn't locked,'
he added, and this small success of opening the door seemed to steady the man.
It was a curious psychological effect, this terrorizing (for it amounted to that) of two courageous full-grown men by the mere apparition of a helpless creature in a cellar. Gradually they both recovered from it. The next moment they were out in the passage which led to the front door of the house. The front door stood open.
They looked into the street, up and down, but there was not a soul in sight. The street, lighted by three gas-lamps only, seemed strangely sinister and mysterious.
'She has gone, that's clear,' said Racksole, meaning the woman with the red hat.
'And Miss Spencer after her, do you think?' questioned Aribert.
'No. She would stay. She would never dare to le
ave. Let us find the cellar steps.'
The cellar steps were happily not difficult to discover, for in moving a pace backwards Prince Aribert had a narrow escape of precipitating himself to the bottom of them. The lantern showed that they were built on a curve.
Silently Racksole resumed possession of the lantern and went first, the Prince close behind him. At the foot was a short passage, and in this passage crouched the figure of a woman. Her eyes threw back the rays of the lantern, shining like a cat's at midnight. Then, as the men went nearer, they saw that it was Miss Spencer who barred their way. She seemed half to kneel on the stone floor, and in one hand she held what at first appeared to be a dagger, but which proved to be nothing more romantic than a rather long bread-knife.
'I heard you, I heard you,' she exclaimed. 'Get back; you mustn't come here.'
There was a desperate and dangerous look on her face, and her form shook with scarcely controlled passionate energy.
'Now see here, Miss Spencer,' Racksole said calmly, 'I guess we've had enough of this fandango. You'd better get up and clear out, or we'll just have to drag you off.'
He went calmly up to her, the lantern in his hand. Without another word she struck the knife into his arm, and the lantern fell extinguished. Racksole gave a cry, rather of angry surprise than of pain, and retreated a few steps. In the darkness they could still perceive the glint of her eyes.
'I told you you mustn't come here,' the woman said. 'Now get back.'
Racksole positively laughed. It was a queer laugh, but he laughed, and he could not help it. The idea of this woman, this bureau clerk, stopping his progress and that of Prince Aribert by means of a bread-knife aroused his sense of humour. He struck a match, relighted the candle, and faced Miss Spencer once more.
'I'll do it again,' she said, with a note of hard resolve.
'Oh, no, you won't, my girl,' said Racksole; and he pulled out his revolver, cocked it, raised his hand.
'Put down that plaything of yours,' he said firmly.
'No,' she answered.
The Grand Babylon Hote Page 12
