The Grand Babylon Hote

by Arnold Bennett

  'But you could get it?' she asked again.

  'If there's a million in London I guess I could handle it,' he replied.

  'Well, Dad,' and she put her arms round his neck, 'you've just got to go out and fix it. See? It's for me. I've never asked you for anything really big before. But I do now. And I want it so badly.'

  He stared at her. 'I award you the prize,' he said, at length. 'You deserve it for colossal and immense coolness. Now you can tell me the true inward meaning of all this rigmarole. What is it?'

  'I want it for Prince Eugen,' she began, at first hesitatingly, with pauses.

  'He's ruined unless he can get a million to pay off his debts. He's dreadfully in love with a Princess, and he can't marry her because of this.

  Her parents wouldn't allow it. He was to have got it from Sampson Levi, but he arrived too late - owing to Jules.'

  'I know all about that - perhaps more than you do. But I don't see how it affects you or me.'

  'The point is this, Dad,' Nella continued. 'He's tried to commit 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 s
ettled, 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.'

  30. 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 acount 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 d
eparted 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.'