The Grand Babylon Hôtel
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.’
Chapter Thirty 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 account 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 departed 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.’
Aribert made no reply. The two men shook hands in silence, and then it
happened that Nella entered the room.
That night, after dinner, Racksole and his friend Felix Babylon were
walking together on the terrace of the Grand Babylon Hôtel.
Felix had begun the conversation.
‘I suppose, Racksole,’ he had said, ‘you aren’t getting tired of the
Grand Babylon?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I am getting tired of doing without it. A thousand times since
I sold it to you I have wished I could undo the bargain. I can’t bear
idleness. Will you sell?’
‘I might,’ said Racksole, ‘I might be induced to sell.’
‘What will you take, my friend?’ asked Felix
‘What I gave,’ was the quick answer.
‘Eh!’ Felix exclaimed. ‘I sell you my hotel with Jules, with Rocco, with
Miss Spencer. You go and lose all those three inestimable servants, and
then offer me the hotel without them at the same price! It is
monstrous.’ The little man laughed heartily at his own wit.
‘Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘we will not quarrel about the price. I accept
your terms.’
And so was brought to a close the complex chain of events which had
begun when Theodore Racksole ordered a steak and a bottle of Bass at the
table d’hôte of the Grand Babylon Hôtel.