The Grand Babylon Hôtel
someone might walk up Salisbury Lane and catch me in the act of
negotiating those railings, but no one did, and I surmounted them, with
no worse damage than a torn skirt. I crossed the yard on tiptoe, and I
found that in the wall, close to the ground and almost exactly under my
window, there was an iron grating, about one foot by fourteen inches. I
suspected, as there was no other ironwork near, that the mysterious
visitor must have been sawing at this grating for private purposes of
his own. I gave it a good shake, and I was not at all surprised that a
good part of it came off in my hand, leaving just enough room for a
person to creep through. I decided that I would creep through, and now
wish I hadn’t. I don’t know, Mr Babylon, whether you have ever tried to
creep through a small hole with a skirt on. Have you?’
‘I have not had that pleasure,’ said little Felix, bowing again, and
absently taking up a bottle which lay to his hand.
‘Well, you are fortunate,’ the imperturbable Nella resumed. ‘For quite
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