Chapter VI: Part 6

You have been worrying about nothing.’

‘Have you forgotten about Reginald Dimmock?’

‘I remember you said that he had died.’

‘I said nothing of the sort. I said that he had been assassinated. That was part of it, my poor Eugen.’

‘Pooh!’ said Eugen. ‘I don’t believe he was assassinated. And as for Sampson Levi, I will bet you a thousand marks that he and I come to terms this morning, and that the million is in my hands before I leave London.’ Aribert shook his head.

‘You seem to be pretty sure of Mr Levi’s character. Have you had much to do with him before?’

‘Well,’ Eugen hesitated a second, ‘a little. What young man in my position hasn’t had something to do with Mr Sampson Levi at one time or another?’

‘I haven’t,’ said Aribert.

‘You! You are a fossil.’ He rang a silver bell. ‘Hans! I will receive Mr Sampson Levi.’

Whereupon Aribert discreetly departed, and Prince Eugen sat down in the great velvet chair, and began to look at the papers which Hans had previously placed upon the table.

‘Good morning, your Royal Highness,’ said Sampson Levi, bowing as he entered. ‘I trust your Royal Highness is well.’

‘Moderately, thanks,’ returned the Prince.

In spite of the fact that he had had as much to do with people of Royal blood as any plain man in Europe, Sampson Levi had never yet learned how to be at ease with these exalted individuals during the first few minutes of an interview. Afterwards, he resumed command of himself and his faculties, but at the beginning he was invariably flustered, scarlet of face, and inclined to perspiration.

‘We will proceed to business at once,’ said Prince Eugen. ‘Will you take a seat, Mr Levi?’

‘I thank your Royal Highness.’

‘Now as to that loan which we had already practically arranged--a million, I think it was,’ said the Prince airily.

‘A million,’ Levi acquiesced, toying with his enormous watch chain.

‘Everything is now in order. Here are the papers and I should like to finish the matter up at once.’

‘Exactly, your Highness, but--’

‘But what? You months ago expressed the warmest satisfaction at the security, though I am quite prepared to admit that the security, is of rather an unusual nature. You also agreed to the rate of interest. It is not everyone, Mr Levi, who can lend out a million at 5-1/2 per cent. And in ten years the whole amount will be paid back. I--er--I believe I informed you that the fortune of Princess Anna, who is about to accept my hand, will ultimately amount to something like fifty millions of marks, which is over two million pounds in your English money.’ Prince Eugen stopped. He had no fancy for talking in this confidential manner to financiers, but he felt that circumstances demanded it.

‘You see, it’s like this, your Royal Highness,’ began Mr Sampson Levi, in his homely English idiom. ‘It’s like this. I said I could keep that bit of money available till the end of June, and you were to give me an interview here before that date. Not having heard from your Highness, and not knowing your Highness’s address, though my German agents made every inquiry, I concluded, that you had made other arrangements, money being so cheap this last few months.’

‘I was unfortunately detained at Ostend,’ said Prince Eugen, with as much haughtiness as he could assume, ‘by--by important business. I have made no other arrangements, and I shall have need of the million. If you will be so good as to pay it to my London bankers--’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Mr Sampson Levi, with a tremendous and dazzling air of politeness, which surprised even himself, ‘but my syndicate has now lent the money elsewhere. It’s in South America--I don’t mind telling your Highness that we’ve lent it to the Chilean Government.’

‘Hang the Chilean Government, Mr Levi,’ exclaimed the Prince, and he went white. ‘I must have that million. It was an arrangement.’

‘It was an arrangement, I admit,’ said Mr Sampson Levi, ‘but your Highness broke the arrangement.’

There was a long silence.

‘Do you mean to say,’ began the Prince with tense calmness, ‘that you are not in a position to let me have that million?’

‘I could let your Highness have a million in a couple of years’ time.’

The Prince made a gesture of annoyance. ‘Mr Levi,’ he said, ‘if you do not place the money in my hands to-morrow you will ruin one of the oldest of reigning families, and, incidentally, you will alter the map of Europe. You are not keeping faith, and I had relied on you.’

‘Pardon me, your Highness,’ said little Levi, rising in resentment, ‘it is not I who have not kept faith. I beg to repeat that the money is no longer at my disposal, and to bid your Highness good morning.’

And Mr Sampson Levi left the audience chamber with an awkward, aggrieved bow. It was a scene characteristic of the end of the nineteenth century- -an overfed, commonplace, pursy little man who had been born in a Brixton semi-detached villa, and whose highest idea of pleasure was a Sunday up the river in an expensive electric launch, confronting and utterly routing, in a hotel belonging to an American millionaire, the representative of a race of men who had fingered every page of European history for centuries, and who still, in their native castles, were surrounded with every outward circumstance of pomp and power.

‘Aribert,’ said Prince Eugen, a little later, ‘you were right. It is all over. I have only one refuge--’

‘You don’t mean--’ Aribert stopped, dumbfounded.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said quickly. ‘I can manage it so that it will look like an accident.’

Chapter Twenty-One THE RETURN OF FÉLIX BABYLON

ON the evening of Prince Eugen’s fateful interview with Mr Sampson Levi, Theodore Racksole was wandering somewhat aimlessly and uneasily about the entrance hall and adjacent corridors of the Grand Babylon. He had returned from Ostend only a day or two previously, and had endeavoured with all his might to forget the affair which had carried him there--to regard it, in fact, as done with. But he found himself unable to do so. In vain he remarked, under his breath, that there were some things which were best left alone: if his experience as a manipulator of markets, a contriver of gigantic schemes in New York, had taught him anything at all, it should surely have taught him that. Yet he could not feel reconciled to such a position. The mere presence of the princes in his hotel roused the fighting instincts of this man, who had never in his whole career been beaten. He had, as it were, taken up arms on their side, and if the princes of Posen would not continue their own battle, nevertheless he, Theodore Racksole, wanted to continue it for them. To a certain extent, of course, the battle had been won, for Prince Eugen had been rescued from an extremely difficult and dangerous position, and the enemy--consisting of Jules, Rocco, Miss Spencer, and perhaps others--had been put to flight. But that, he conceived, was not enough; it was very far from being enough. That the criminals, for criminals they decidedly were, should still be at large, he regarded as an absurd anomaly. And there was another point: he had said nothing to the police of all that had occurred. He disdained the police, but he could scarcely fail to perceive that if the police should by accident gain a clue to the real state of the case he might be placed rather awkwardly, for the simple reason that in the eyes of the law it amounted to a misdemeanour to conceal as much as he had concealed. He asked himself, for the thousandth time, why he had adopted a policy of concealment from the police, why he had become in any way interested in the Posen matter, and why, at this present moment, he should be so anxious to prosecute it further? To the first two questions he replied, rather lamely, that he had been influenced by Nella, and also by a natural spirit of adventure; to the third he replied that he had always been in the habit of carrying things through, and was now actuated by a mere childish, obstinate desire to carry this one through. Moreover, he was splendidly conscious of his perfect ability to carry it through. One additional impulse he had, though he did not admit it to himself, being by nature adverse to big words, and that was an abstract love of justice, the Anglo-Saxon’s deep-found instinct for helping the right side to conquer, even when grave risks must thereby be run, with no corresponding advantage.

He was turning these things over in his mind as he walked about the vast hotel on that evening of the last day in July. The Society papers had been stating for a week past that London was empty, but, in spite of the Society papers, London persisted in seeming to be just as full as ever. The Grand Babylon was certainly not as crowded as it had been a month earlier, but it was doing a very passable business. At the close of the season the gay butterflies of the social community have a habit of hovering for a day or two in the big hotels before they flutter away to castle and country-house, meadow and moor, lake and stream. The great basket-chairs in the portico were well filled by old and middle-aged gentlemen engaged in enjoying the varied delights of liqueurs, cigars, and the full moon which floated so serenely above the Thames. Here and there a pretty woman on the arm of a cavalier in immaculate attire swept her train as she turned to and fro in the promenade of the terrace. Waiters and uniformed commissionaires and gold-braided doorkeepers moved noiselessly about; at short intervals the chief of the doorkeepers blew his shrill whistle and hansoms drove up with tinkling bell to take away a pair of butterflies to some place of amusement or boredom; occasionally a private carriage drawn by expensive and self-conscious horses put the hansoms to shame by its mere outward glory. It was a hot night, a night for the summer woods, and save for the vehicles there was no rapid movement of any kind. It seemed as though the world--the world, that is to say, of the Grand Babylon--was fully engaged in the solemn processes of digestion and small-talk. Even the long row of the Embankment gas-lamps, stretching right and left, scarcely trembled in the still, warm, caressing air. The stars overhead looked down with many blinkings upon the enormous pile of the Grand Babylon, and the moon regarded it with bland and changeless face; what they thought of it and its inhabitants cannot, unfortunately, be recorded. What Theodore Racksole thought of the moon can be recorded: he thought it was a nuisance. It somehow fascinated his gaze with its silly stare, and so interfered with his complex meditations. He glanced round at the well- dressed and satisfied people--his guests, his customers. They appeared to ignore him absolutely.

Probably only a very small percentage of them had the least idea that this tall spare man, with the iron-grey hair and the thin, firm, resolute face, who wore his American-cut evening clothes with such careless ease, was the sole proprietor of the Grand Babylon, and possibly the richest man in Europe. As has already been stated, Racksole was not a celebrity in England.

The guests of the Grand Babylon saw merely a restless male person, whose restlessness was rather a disturber of their quietude, but with whom, to judge by his countenance, it would be inadvisable to remonstrate. Therefore Theodore Racksole continued his perambulations unchallenged, and kept saying to himself, ‘I must do something.’ But what? He could think of no course to pursue.

At last he walked straight through the hotel and out at the other entrance, and so up the little unassuming side street into the roaring torrent of the narrow and crowded Strand. He jumped on a Putney bus, and paid his fair to Putney, fivepence, and then, finding that the humble occupants of the vehicle stared at the spectacle of a man in evening dress but without a dustcoat, he jumped off again, oblivious of the fact that the conductor jerked a thumb towards him and winked at the passengers as who should say, ‘There goes a lunatic.’ He went into a tobacconist’s shop and asked for a cigar. The shopman mildly inquired what price.

‘What are the best you’ve got?’ asked Theodore Racksole.

‘Five shillings each, sir,’ said the man promptly.

‘Give me a penny one,’ was Theodore Racksole’s laconic request, and he walked out of the shop smoking the penny cigar. It was a new sensation for him.

He was inhaling the aromatic odours of Eugène Rimmel’s establishment for the sale of scents when a gentleman, walking slowly in the opposite direction, accosted him with a quiet, ‘Good evening, Mr Racksole.’ The millionaire did not at first recognize his interlocutor, who wore a travelling overcoat, and was carrying a handbag. Then a slight, pleased smile passed over his features, and he held out his hand.

‘Well, Mr Babylon,’ he greeted the other, ‘of all persons in the wide world you are the man I would most have wished to meet.’

‘You flatter me,’ said the little Anglicized Swiss.

‘No, I don’t,’ answered Racksole; ‘it isn’t my custom, any more than it’s yours. I wanted to have a real good long yarn with you, and lo! here you are! Where have you sprung from?’

‘From Lausanne,’ said Felix Babylon. ‘I had finished my duties there, I had nothing else to do, and I felt homesick. I felt the nostalgia of London, and so I came over, just as you see,’ and he raised the handbag for Racksole’s notice. ‘One toothbrush, one razor, two slippers, eh?’ He laughed. ‘I was wondering as I walked along where I should stay--me, Felix Babylon, homeless in London.’

‘I should advise you to stay at the Grand Babylon,’ Racksole laughed back.

‘It is a good hotel, and I know the proprietor personally.’

‘Rather expensive, is it not?’ said Babylon.

‘To you, sir,’ answered Racksole, ‘the inclusive terms will be exactly half a crown a week. Do you accept?’

‘I accept,’ said Babylon, and added, ‘You are very good, Mr Racksole.’

They strolled together back to the hotel, saying nothing in particular, but feeling very content with each other’s company.

‘Many customers?’ asked Felix Babylon.

‘Very tolerable,’ said Racksole, assuming as much of the air of the professional hotel proprietor as he could. ‘I think I may say in the storekeeper’s phrase, that if there is any business about I am doing it.

To-night the people are all on the terrace in the portico--it’s so confoundedly hot--and the consumption of ice is simply enormous--nearly as large as it would be in New York.’

‘In that case,’ said Babylon politely, ‘let me offer you another cigar.’

‘But I have not finished this one.’

‘That is just why I wish to offer you another one. A cigar such as yours, my good friend, ought never to be smoked within the precincts of the Grand Babylon, not even by the proprietor of the Grand Babylon, and especially when all the guests are assembled in the portico. The fumes of it would ruin any hotel.’

Theodore Racksole laughingly lighted the Rothschild Havana which Babylon gave him, and they entered the hotel arm in arm. But no sooner had they mounted the steps than little Felix became the object of numberless greetings. It appeared that he had been highly popular among his quondam guests. At last they reached the managerial room, where Babylon was regaled on a chicken, and Racksole assisted him in the consumption of a bottle of Heidsieck Monopole, Carte d’Or.

‘This chicken is almost perfectly grilled,’ said Babylon at length. ‘It is a credit to the house. But why, my dear Racksole, why in the name of Heaven did you quarrel with Rocco?’

‘Then you have heard?’

‘Heard! My dear friend, it was in every newspaper on the Continent. Some journals prophesied that the Grand Babylon would have to close its doors within half a year now that Rocco had deserted it. But of course I knew better. I knew that you must have a good reason for allowing Rocco to depart, and that you must have made arrangements in advance for a substitute.’

‘As a matter of fact, I had not made arrangements in advance,’ said Theodore Racksole, a little ruefully; ‘but happily we have found in our second sous-chef an artist inferior only to Rocco himself. That, however, was mere good fortune.’

‘Surely,’ said Babylon, ‘it was indiscreet to trust to mere good fortune in such a serious matter?’

‘I didn’t trust to mere good fortune. I didn’t trust to anything except Rocco, and he deceived me.’

‘But why did you quarrel with him?’

‘I didn’t quarrel with him. I found him embalming a corpse in the State bedroom one night--’

‘You what?’ Babylon almost screamed.

‘I found him embalming a corpse in the State bedroom,’ repeated Racksole in his quietest tones.

The two men gazed at each other, and then Racksole replenished Babylon’s glass.

‘Tell me,’ said Babylon, settling himself deep in an easy chair and lighting a cigar.

And Racksole thereupon recounted to him the whole of the Posen episode, with every circumstantial detail so far as he knew it. It was a long and complicated recital, and occupied about an hour. During that time little Felix never spoke a word, scarcely moved a muscle; only his small eyes gazed through the bluish haze of smoke. The clock on the mantelpiece tinkled midnight.

‘Time for whisky and soda,’ said Racksole, and got up as if to ring the bell; but Babylon waved him back.

‘You have told me that this Sampson Levi had an audience of Prince Eugen to-day, but you have not told me the result of that audience,’ said Babylon.

‘Because I do not yet know it. But I shall doubtless know to-morrow. In the meantime, I feel fairly sure that Levi declined to produce Prince Eugen’s required million. I have reason to believe that the money was lent elsewhere.’

‘H’m!’ mused Babylon; and then, carelessly, ‘I am not at all surprised at that arrangement for spying through the bathroom of the State apartments.’

‘Why are you not surprised?’

‘Oh!’ said Babylon, ‘it is such an obvious dodge--so easy to carry out. As for me, I took special care never to involve myself in these affairs. I knew they existed; I somehow felt that they existed. But I also felt that they lay outside my sphere. My business was to provide board and lodging of the most sumptuous kind to those who didn’t mind paying for it; and I did my business. If anything else went on in the hotel, under the rose, I long determined to ignore it unless it should happen to be brought before my notice; and it never was brought before my notice. However, I admit that there is a certain pleasurable excitement in this kind of affair and doubtless you have experienced that.’

‘I have,’ said Racksole simply, ‘though I believe you are laughing at me.’

‘By no means,’ Babylon replied. ‘Now what, if I may ask the question, is going to be your next step?’

‘That is just what I desire to know myself,’ said Theodore Racksole.

‘Well,’ said Babylon, after a pause, ‘let us begin. In the first place, it is possible you may be interested to hear that I happened to see Jules to-day.’

‘You did!’ Racksole remarked with much calmness. ‘Where?’

‘Well, it was early this morning, in Paris, just before I left there. The meeting was quite accidental, and Jules seemed rather surprised at meeting me. He respectfully inquired where I was going, and I said that I was going to Switzerland. At that moment I thought I was going to Switzerland. It had occurred to me that after all I should be happier there, and that I had better turn back and not see London any more. However, I changed my mind once again, and decided to come on to London, and accept the risks of being miserable there without my hotel. Then I asked Jules whither he was bound, and he told me that he was off to Constantinople, being interested in a new French hotel there. I wished him good luck, and we parted.’

‘Constantinople, eh!’ said Racksole. ‘A highly suitable place for him, I should say.’

‘But,’ Babylon resumed, ‘I caught sight of him again.’

‘Where?’

‘At Charing Cross, a few minutes before I had the pleasure of meeting you.

Mr Jules had not gone to Constantinople after all. He did not see me, or I should have suggested to him that in going from Paris to Constantinople it is not usual to travel via London.’

‘The cheek of the fellow!’ exclaimed Theodore Racksole. ‘The gorgeous and colossal cheek of the fellow!’

Chapter Twenty-Two IN THE WINE CELLARS OF THE GRAND BABYLON

‘DO you know anything of the antecedents of this Jules,’ asked Theodore Racksole, helping himself to whisky.

‘Nothing whatever,’ said Babylon. ‘Until you told me, I don’t think I was aware that his true name was Thomas Jackson, though of course I knew that it was not Jules. I certainly was not aware that Miss Spencer was his wife, but I had long suspected that their relations were somewhat more intimate than the nature of their respective duties in the hotel absolutely demanded. All that I do know of Jules--he will always be called Jules--is that he gradually, by some mysterious personal force, acquired a prominent position in the hotel. Decidedly he was the cleverest and most intellectual waiter I have ever known, and he was specially skilled in the difficult task of retaining his own dignity while not interfering with that of other people.

I’m afraid this information is a little too vague to be of any practical assistance in the present difficulty.’

‘What is the present difficulty?’ Racksole queried, with a simple air.

‘I should imagine that the present difficulty is to account for the man’s presence in London.’

‘That is easily accounted for,’ said Racksole.

‘How? Do you suppose he is anxious to give himself up to justice, or that the chains of habit bind him to the hotel?’

‘Neither,’ said Racksole. ‘Jules is going to have another try--that’s all.’

‘Another try at what?’

‘At Prince Eugen. Either at his life or his liberty. Most probably the former this time; almost certainly the former. He has guessed that we are somewhat handicapped by our anxiety to keep Prince Eugen’s predicament quite quiet, and he is taking advantage, of that fact. As he already is fairly rich, on his own admission, the reward which has been offered to him must be enormous, and he is absolutely determined to get it. He has several times recently proved himself to be a daring fellow; unless I am mistaken he will shortly prove himself to be still more daring.’

‘But what can he do? Surely you don’t suggest that he will attempt the life of Prince Eugen in this hotel?’

‘Why not? If Reginald Dimmock fell on mere suspicion that he would turn out unfaithful to the conspiracy, why not Prince Eugen?’

‘But it would be an unspeakable crime, and do infinite harm to the hotel!’

‘True!’ Racksole admitted, smiling. Little Felix Babylon seemed to brace himself for the grasping of his monstrous idea.

‘How could it possibly be done?’ he asked at length.

‘Dimmock was poisoned.’

‘Yes, but you had Rocco here then, and Rocco was in the plot. It is conceivable that Rocco could have managed it--barely conceivable. But without Rocco I cannot think it possible. I cannot even think that Jules would attempt it. You see, in a place like the Grand Babylon, as probably I needn’t point out to you, food has to pass through so many hands that to poison one person without killing perhaps fifty would be a most delicate operation. Moreover, Prince Eugen, unless he has changed his habits, is always served by his own attendant, old Hans, and therefore any attempt to tamper with a cooked dish immediately before serving would be hazardous in the extreme.’

‘Granted,’ said Racksole. ‘The wine, however, might be more easily got at.

Had you thought of that?’

‘I had not,’ Babylon admitted. ‘You are an ingenious theorist, but I happen to know that Prince Eugen always has his wine opened in his own presence. No doubt it would be opened by Hans. Therefore the wine theory is not tenable, my friend.’

‘I do not see why,’ said Racksole. ‘I know nothing of wine as an expert, and I very seldom drink it, but it seems to me that a bottle of wine might be tampered with while it was still in the cellar, especially if there was an accomplice in the hotel.’

‘You think, then, that you are not yet rid of all your conspirators?’

‘I think that Jules might still have an accomplice within the building.’

‘And that a bottle of wine could be opened and recorked without leaving any trace of the operation?’ Babylon was a trifle sarcastic.

‘I don’t see the necessity of opening the bottle in order to poison the wine,’ said Racksole. ‘I have never tried to poison anybody by means of a bottle of wine, and I don’t lay claim to any natural talent as a poisoner, but I think I could devise several ways of managing the trick. Of course, I admit I may be entirely mistaken as to Jules’ intentions.’

‘Ah!’ said Felix Babylon. ‘The wine cellars beneath us are one of the wonders of London. I hope you are aware, Mr Racksole, that when you bought the Grand Babylon you bought what is probably the finest stock of wines in England, if not in Europe. In the valuation I reckoned them at sixty thousand pounds. And I may say that I always took care that the cellars were properly guarded. Even Jules would experience a serious difficulty in breaking into the cellars without the connivance of the wine-clerk, and the wine-clerk is, or was, incorruptible.’

‘I am ashamed to say that I have not yet inspected my wines,’ smiled Racksole; ‘I have never given them a thought. Once or twice I have taken the trouble to make a tour of the hotel, but I omitted the cellars in my excursions.’

‘Impossible, my dear fellow!’ said Babylon, amused at such a confession, to him--a great connoisseur and lover of fine wines--almost incredible. ‘But really you must see them to-morrow. If I may, I will accompany you.’

‘Why not to-night?’ Racksole suggested, calmly.

‘To-night! It is very late: Hubbard will have gone to bed.’

‘And may I ask who is Hubbard? I remember the name but dimly.’

‘Hubbard is the wine-clerk of the Grand Babylon,’ said Felix, with a certain emphasis. ‘A sedate man of forty. He has the keys of the cellars. He knows every bottle of every bin, its date, its qualities, its value. And he’s a teetotaler. Hubbard is a curiosity. No wine can leave the cellars without his knowledge, and no person can enter the cellars without his knowledge. At least, that is how it was in my time,’ Babylon added.

‘We will wake him,’ said Racksole.

‘But it is one o’clock in the morning,’ Babylon protested.

‘Never mind--that is, if you consent to accompany me. A cellar is the same by night as by day. Therefore, why not now?’

Babylon shrugged his shoulders. ‘As you wish,’ he agreed, with his indestructible politeness.

‘And now to find this Mr Hubbard, with his key of the cupboard,’ said Racksole, as they walked out of the room together. Although the hour was so late, the hotel was not, of course, closed for the night. A few guests still remained about in the public rooms, and a few fatigued waiters were still in attendance. One of these latter was despatched in search of the singular Mr Hubbard, and it fortunately turned out that this gentleman had not actually retired, though he was on the point of doing so. He brought the keys to Mr Racksole in person, and after he had had a little chat with his former master, the proprietor and the ex- proprietor of the Grand Babylon Hôtel proceeded on their way to the cellars.

These cellars extend over, or rather under, quite half the superficial areas of the whole hotel--the longitudinal half which lies next to the Strand.

Owing to the fact that the ground slopes sharply from the Strand to the river, the Grand Babylon is, so to speak, deeper near the Strand than it is near the Thames. Towards the Thames there is, below the entrance level, a basement and a sub-basement. Towards the Strand there is basement, sub-basement, and the huge wine cellars beneath all. After descending the four flights of the service stairs, and traversing a long passage running parallel with the kitchen, the two found themselves opposite a door, which, on being unlocked, gave access to another flight of stairs. At the foot of this was the main entrance to the cellars. Outside the entrance was the wine-lift, for the ascension of delicious fluids to the upper floors, and, opposite, Mr Hubbard’s little office. There was electric light everywhere.

Babylon, who, as being most accustomed to them, held the bunch of keys, opened the great door, and then they were in the first cellar--the first of a suite of five. Racksole was struck not only by the icy coolness of the place, but also by its vastness. Babylon had seized a portable electric handlight, attached to a long wire, which lay handy, and, waving it about, disclosed the dimensions of the place. By that flashing illumination the subterranean chamber looked unutterably weird and mysterious, with its rows of numbered bins, stretching away into the distance till the radiance was reduced to the occasional far gleam of the light on the shoulder of a bottle. Then Babylon switched on the fixed electric lights, and Theodore Racksole entered upon a personally- conducted tour of what was quite the most interesting part of his own property.

To see the innocent enthusiasm of Felix Babylon for these stores of exhilarating liquid was what is called in the North ‘a sight for sair een’.

He displayed to Racksole’s bewildered gaze, in their due order, all the wines of three continents--nay, of four, for the superb and luscious Constantia wine of Cape Colony was not wanting in that most catholic collection of vintages. Beginning with the unsurpassed products of Burgundy, he continued with the clarets of Médoc, Bordeaux, and Sauterne; then to the champagnes of Ay, Hautvilliers, and Pierry; then to the hocks and moselles of Germany, and the brilliant imitation champagnes of Main, Neckar, and Naumburg; then to the famous and adorable Tokay of Hungary, and all the Austrian varieties of French wines, including Carlowitz and Somlauer; then to the dry sherries of Spain, including purest Manzanilla, and Amontillado, and Vino de Pasto; then to the wines of Malaga, both sweet and dry, and all the ‘Spanish reds’ from Catalonia, including the dark ‘Tent’ so often used sacramentally; then to the renowned port of Oporto. Then he proceeded to the Italian cellar, and descanted upon the excellence of Barolo from Piedmont, of Chianti from Tuscany, of Orvieto from the Roman States, of the ‘Tears of Christ’ from Naples, and the commoner Marsala from Sicily. And so on, to an extent and with a fullness of detail which cannot be rendered here.

At the end of the suite of cellars there was a glazed door, which, as could be seen, gave access to a supplemental and smaller cellar, an apartment about fifteen or sixteen feet square.

‘Anything special in there?’ asked Racksole curiously, as they stood before the door, and looked within at the seined ends of bottles.

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Babylon, almost smacking his lips, ‘therein lies the cream of all.’

‘The best champagne, I suppose?’ said Racksole.

‘Yes,’ said Babylon, ‘the best champagne is there--a very special Sillery, as exquisite as you will find anywhere. But I see, my friend, that you fall into the common error of putting champagne first among wines. That distinction belongs to Burgundy. You have old Burgundy in that cellar, Mr Racksole, which cost me--how much do you think?--eighty pounds a bottle.

Probably it will never be drunk,’ he added with a sigh. ‘It is too expensive even for princes and plutocrats.’

‘Yes, it will,’ said Racksole quickly. ‘You and I will have a bottle up to-morrow.’

‘Then,’ continued Babylon, still riding his hobby-horse, ‘there is a sample of the Rhine wine dated 1706 which caused such a sensation at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. There is also a singularly glorious Persian wine from Shiraz, the like of which I have never seen elsewhere. Also there is an unrivalled vintage of Romanée-Conti, greatest of all modern Burgundies. If I remember right Prince Eugen invariably has a bottle when he comes to stay here. It is not on the hotel wine list, of course, and only a few customers know of it. We do not precisely hawk it about the dining-room.’

‘Indeed!’ said Racksole. ‘Let us go inside.’

They entered the stone apartment, rendered almost sacred by the preciousness of its contents, and Racksole looked round with a strangely intent and curious air. At the far side was a grating, through which came a feeble light.

‘What is that?’ asked the millionaire sharply.

‘That is merely a ventilation grating. Good ventilation is absolutely essential.’

‘Looks broken, doesn’t it?’ Racksole suggested and then, putting a finger quickly on Babylon’s shoulder, ‘there’s someone in the cellar. Can’t you hear breathing, down there, behind that bin?’

The two men stood tense and silent for a while, listening, under the ray of the single electric light in the ceiling. Half the cellar was involved in gloom. At length Racksole walked firmly down the central passage-way between the bins and turned to the corner at the right.

‘Come out, you villain!’ he said in a low, well-nigh vicious tone, and dragged up a cowering figure.

He had expected to find a man, but it was his own daughter, Nella Racksole, upon whom he had laid angry hands.

Chapter Twenty-Three FURTHER EVENTS IN THE CELLAR

‘WELL, Father,’ Nella greeted her astounded parent. ‘You should make sure that you have got hold of the right person before you use all that terrible muscular force of yours. I do believe you have broken my shoulder bone.’ She rubbed her shoulder with a comical expression of pain, and then stood up before the two men. The skirt of her dark grey dress was torn and dirty, and the usually trim Nella looked as though she had been shot down a canvas fire-escape. Mechanically she smoothed her frock, and gave a straightening touch to her hair.

‘Good evening, Miss Racksole,’ said Felix Babylon, bowing formally. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure.’ Felix’s drawing-room manners never deserted him upon any occasion whatever.

‘May I inquire what you are doing in my wine cellar, Nella Racksole?’ said the millionaire a little stiffly He was certainly somewhat annoyed at having mistaken his daughter for a criminal; moreover, he hated to be surprised, and upon this occasion he had been surprised beyond any ordinary surprise; lastly, he was not at all pleased that Nella should be observed in that strange predicament by a stranger.

‘I will tell you,’ said Nella. ‘I had been reading rather late in my room--the night was so close. I heard Big Ben strike half-past twelve, and then I put the book down, and went out on to the balcony of my window for a little fresh air before going to bed. I leaned over the balcony very quietly--you will remember that I am on the third floor now--and looked down below into the little sunk yard which separates the wall of the hotel from Salisbury Lane. I was rather astonished to see a figure creeping across the yard. I knew there was no entrance into the hotel from that yard, and besides, it is fifteen or twenty feet below the level of the street. So I watched. The figure went close up against the wall, and disappeared from my view. I leaned over the balcony as far as I dared, but I couldn’t see him. I could hear him, however.’

‘What could you hear?’ questioned Racksole sharply.

‘It sounded like a sawing noise,’ said Nella; ‘and it went on for quite a long time--nearly a quarter of an hour, I should think--a rasping sort of noise.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you come and warn me or someone else in the hotel?’ asked Racksole.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Dad,’ she replied sweetly. ‘I had got interested in it, and I thought I would see it out myself. Well, as I was saying, Mr. Babylon,’ she continued, addressing her remarks to Felix, with a dazzling smile, ‘that noise went on for quite a long time. At last it stopped, and the figure reappeared from under the wall, crossed the yard, climbed up the opposite wall by some means or other, and so over the railings into Salisbury Lane. I felt rather relieved then, because I knew he hadn’t actually broken into the hotel. He walked down Salisbury Lane very slowly. A policeman was just coming up. “Goodnight, officer,” I heard him say to the policeman, and he asked him for a match. The policeman supplied the match, and the other man lighted a cigarette, and proceeded further down the lane. By cricking your neck from my window, Mr Babylon, you can get a glimpse of the Embankment and the river. I saw the man cross the Embankment, and lean over the river wall, where he seemed to be talking to some one. He then walked along the Embankment to Westminster and that was the last I saw of him. I waited a minute or two for him to come back, but he didn’t come back, and so I thought it was about time I began to make inquiries into the affair. I went downstairs instantly, and out of the hotel, through the quadrangle, into Salisbury Lane, and I looked over those railings. There was a ladder on the other side, by which it was perfectly easy--once you had got over the railings--to climb down into the yard. I was horribly afraid lest 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 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?’