The Grand Babylon Hôtel
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