The Grand Babylon Hôtel
‘Do that to-morrow morning, then, if necessary,’ said Racksole, and
departed.
It was then about one o’clock a.m. The millionaire retired to bed--not
his own bed, but a bed on the seventh storey. He did not, however, sleep
very long. Shortly after dawn he was wide awake, and thinking busily
about Jules.
He was, indeed, very curious to know Jules’ story, and he determined, if
the thing could be done at all, by persuasion or otherwise, to extract
it from him. With a man of Theodore Racksole’s temperament there is no
time like the present, and at six o’clock, as the bright morning sun
brought gaiety into the window, he dressed and went upstairs again to
the eighth storey. The commissionaire sat stolid, but alert on his
chair, and, at the sight of his master, rose and saluted.
‘Anything happened?’ Racksole asked.
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Servants say anything?’
‘Only a dozen or so of ‘em are up yet, sir. One of ‘em asked what I was
playing at, and so I told her I was looking after a bull bitch and a
litter of pups that you was very particular about, sir.’
‘Good,’ said Racksole, as he unlocked the door and entered the room. All
was exactly as he had left it, except that Jules who had been lying on
his back, had somehow turned over and was now lying on his face. He
gazed silently, scowling at the millionaire. Racksole greeted him and
ostentatiously took a revolver from his hip-pocket and laid it on the
dressing-table. Then he seated himself on the dressing-table by the side
of the revolver, his legs dangling an inch or two above the floor.
‘I want to have a talk to you, Jackson,’ he began.
‘You can talk to me as much as you like,’ said Jules. ‘I shan’t
interfere, you may bet on that.’
‘I should like you to answer some questions.’
‘That’s different,’ said Jules. ‘I’m not going to answer any questions
while I’m tied up like this. You may bet on that, too.’
‘It will pay you to be reasonable,’ said Racksole.
‘I’m not going to answer any questions while I’m tied up.’
‘I’ll unfasten your legs, if you like,’ Racksole suggested politely,
‘then you can sit up. It’s no use you pretending you’ve been
uncomfortable, because I know you haven’t. I calculate you’ve been
treated very handsomely, my son. There you are!’ and he loosened the
lower extremities of his prisoner from their bonds. ‘Now I repeat you
may as well be reasonable. You may as well admit that you’ve been fairly
beaten in the game and act accordingly. I was determined to beat you, by
myself, without the police, and I’ve done it.’
‘You’ve done yourself,’ retorted Jules. ‘You’ve gone against the law. If
you’d had any sense you wouldn’t have meddled; you’d have left
everything to the police. They’d have muddled about for a year or two,
and then done nothing. Who’s going to tell the police now? Are you? Are
you going to give me up to ‘em, and say, “Here, I’ve caught him for
you”. If you do they’ll ask you to explain several things, and then
you’ll look foolish. One crime doesn’t excuse another, and you’ll find
that out.’
With unerring insight, Jules had perceived exactly the difficulty of
Racksole’s position, and it was certainly a difficulty which Racksole
did not attempt to minimize to himself. He knew well that it would have
to be faced. He did not, however, allow Jules to guess his thoughts.
‘Meanwhile,’ he said calmly to the other, ‘you’re here and my prisoner.
You’ve committed a variegated assortment of crimes, and among them is
murder. You are due to be hung. You know that. There is no reason why I
should call in the police at all. It will be perfectly easy for me to
finish you off, as you deserve, myself. I shall only be carrying out
justice, and robbing the hangman of his fee. Precisely as I brought you
into the hotel, I can take you out again. A few days ago you borrowed or
stole a steam yacht at Ostend. What you have done with it I don’t know,
nor do I care. But I strongly suspect that my daughter had a narrow
escape of being murdered on your steam yacht. Now I have a steam yacht
of my own. Suppose I use it as you used yours! Suppose I smuggle you on
to it, steam out to sea, and then ask you to step off it into the ocean
one night. Such things have been done.
Such things will be done again. If I acted so, I should at least, have
the satisfaction of knowing that I had relieved society from the incubus
of a scoundrel.’
‘But you won’t,’ Jules murmured.
‘No,’ said Racksole steadily, ‘I won’t--if you behave yourself this
morning. But I swear to you that if you don’t I will never rest till you
are dead, police or no police. You don’t know Theodore Racksole.’
‘I believe you mean it,’ Jules exclaimed, with an air of surprised
interest, as though he had discovered something of importance.
‘I believe I do,’ Racksole resumed. ‘Now listen. At the best, you will
be given up to the police. At the worst, I shall deal with you myself.
With the police you may have a chance--you may get off with twenty
years’ penal servitude, because, though it is absolutely certain that
you murdered Reginald Dimmock, it would be a little difficult to prove
the case against you. But with me you would have no chance whatever. I
have a few questions to put to you, and it will depend on how you answer
them whether I give you up to the police or take the law into my own
hands. And let me tell you that the latter course would be much simpler
for me. And I would take it, too, did I not feel that you were a very
clever and exceptional man; did I not have a sort of sneaking admiration
for your detestable skill and ingenuity.’
‘You think, then, that I am clever?’ said Jules. ‘You are right. I am. I
should have been much too clever for you if luck had not been against
me.
You owe your victory, not to skill, but to luck.’
‘That is what the vanquished always say. Waterloo was a bit of pure luck
for the English, no doubt, but it was Waterloo all the same.’
Jules yawned elaborately. ‘What do you want to know?’ he inquired, with
politeness.
‘First and foremost, I want to know the names of your accomplices inside
this hotel.’
‘I have no more,’ said Jules. ‘Rocco was the last.’
‘Don’t begin by lying to me. If you had no accomplice, how did you
contrive that one particular bottle of Romanée-Conti should be served to
his Highness Prince Eugen?’
‘Then you discovered that in time, did you?’ said Jules. ‘I was afraid
so.
Let me explain that that needed no accomplice. The bottle was topmost in
the bin, and naturally it would be taken. Moreover, I left it sticking
out a little further than the rest.’
‘You did not arrange, then, that Hubbard should be taken ill the night
before last?’
‘I had no idea,’ said Jules, ‘that the excellent Hubbard was not
enjoying his accustomed health.’
‘Tell me,’ said Racksole, ‘who or what is the origin of your vendetta
against the life of Prince Eugen?’
‘I had no vendetta against the life of Prince Eugen,’ said Jules, ‘at
least, not to begin with. I merely undertook, for a consideration, to
see that Prince Eugen did not have an interview with a certain Mr
Sampson Levi in London before a certain date, that was all. It seemed
simple enough. I had been engaged in far more complicated transactions
before. I was convinced that I could manage it, with the help of Rocco
and Em--and Miss Spencer.’
‘Is that woman your wife?’
‘She would like to be,’ he sneered. ‘Please don’t interrupt. I had
completed my arrangements, when you so inconsiderately bought the hotel.
I don’t mind admitting now that from the very moment when you came
across me that night in the corridor I was secretly afraid of you,
though I scarcely admitted the fact even to myself then. I thought it
safer to shift the scene of our operations to Ostend. I had meant to
deal with Prince Eugen in this hotel, but I decided, then, to intercept
him on the Continent, and I despatched Miss Spencer with some
instructions. Troubles never come singly, and it happened that just then
that fool Dimmock, who had been in the swim with us, chose to prove
refractory. The slightest hitch would have upset everything, and I was
obliged to--to clear him off the scene. He wanted to back out--he had a
bad attack of conscience, and violent measures were essential. I regret
his untimely decease, but he brought it on himself. Well, everything was
going serenely when you and your brilliant daughter, apparently
determined to meddle, turned up again among us at Ostend. Only twenty-
four hours, however, had to elapse before the date which had been
mentioned to me by my employers. I kept poor little Eugen for the
allotted time, and then you managed to get hold of him. I do not deny
that you scored there, though, according to my original instructions,
you scored too late. The time had passed, and so, so far as I knew, it
didn’t matter a pin whether Prince Eugen saw Mr Sampson Levi or not. But
my employers were still uneasy. They were uneasy even after little Eugen
had lain ill in Ostend for several weeks. It appears that they feared
that even at that date an interview between Prince Eugen and Mr Sampson
Levi might work harm to them. So they applied to me again. This time
they wanted Prince Eugen to be--em--finished off entirely. They offered
high terms.’
‘What terms?’
‘I had received fifty thousand pounds for the first job, of which Rocco
had half. Rocco was also to be made a member of a certain famous
European order, if things went right. That was what he coveted far more
than the money--the vain fellow! For the second job I was offered a
hundred thousand. A tolerably large sum. I regret that I have not been
able to earn it.’
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ asked Racksole, horror-struck by this calm
confession, in spite of his previous knowledge, ‘that you were offered a
hundred thousand pounds to poison Prince Eugen?’
‘You put it rather crudely,’ said Jules in reply. ‘I prefer to say that
I was offered a hundred thousand pounds if Prince Eugen should die
within a reasonable time.’
‘And who were your damnable employers?’
‘That, honestly, I do not know.’
‘You know, I suppose, who paid you the first fifty thousand pounds, and
who promised you the hundred thousand.’
‘Well,’ said Jules, ‘I know vaguely. I know that he came via Vienna
from--em--Bosnia. My impression was that the affair had some bearing,
direct or indirect, on the projected marriage of the King of Bosnia. He
is a young monarch, scarcely out of political leading-strings, as it
were, and doubtless his Ministers thought that they had better arrange
his marriage for him. They tried last year, and failed because the
Princess whom they had in mind had cast her sparkling eyes on another
Prince. That Prince happened to be Prince Eugen of Posen. The Ministers
of the King of Bosnia knew exactly the circumstances of Prince Eugen.
They knew that he could not marry without liquidating his debts, and
they knew that he could only liquidate his debts through this Jew,
Sampson Levi. Unfortunately for me, they ultimately wanted to make too
sure of Prince Eugen. They were afraid he might after all arrange his
marriage without the aid of Mr Sampson Levi, and so--well, you know the
rest.... It is a pity that the poor little innocent King of Bosnia can’t
have the Princess of his Ministers’ choice.’
‘Then you think that the King himself had no part in this abominable
crime?’
‘I think decidedly not.’
‘I am glad of that,’ said Racksole simply. ‘And now, the name of your
immediate employer.’
‘He was merely an agent. He called himself Sleszak--S-l-e-s-z-a-k. But I
imagine that that wasn’t his real name. I don’t know his real name. An
old man, he often used to be found at the Hôtel Ritz, Paris.’
‘Mr Sleszak and I will meet,’ said Racksole.
‘Not in this world,’ said Jules quickly. ‘He is dead. I heard only last