Chapter VII: Part 7

‘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 it as entirely unofficial and not to talk about it. You understand? I dare say you will have no cause to regret having obliged Mr Racksole.’

‘I think I grasp the situation,’ said Hazell, with a slight smile.

‘And, by the way,’ added the high official, ‘although the business is unofficial, it might be well if you wore your official overcoat. See?’

‘Decidedly,’ said Hazell; ‘I should have done so in any case.’

‘And now, Mr Hazell,’ said Racksole, ‘will you do me the pleasure of lunching with me? If you agree, I should like to lunch at the place you usually frequent.’

So it came to pass that Theodore Racksole and George Hazell, outdoor clerk in the Customs, lunched together at ‘Thomas’s Chop-House’, in the city of London, upon mutton-chops and coffee. The millionaire soon discovered that he had got hold of a keen-witted man and a person of much insight.

‘Tell me,’ said Hazell, when they had reached the cigarette stage, ‘are the magazine writers anything like correct?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Racksole, mystified.

‘Well, you’re a millionaire--“one of the best”, I believe. One often sees articles on and interviews with millionaires, which describe their private railroad cars, their steam yachts on the Hudson, their marble stables, and so on, and so on. Do you happen to have those things?’

‘I have a private car on the New York Central, and I have a two thousand ton schooner-yacht--though it isn’t on the Hudson. It happens just now to be on East River. And I am bound to admit that the stables of my uptown place are fitted with marble.’ Racksole laughed.

‘Ah!’ said Hazell. ‘Now I can believe that I am lunching with a millionaire.

It’s strange how facts like those--unimportant in themselves--appeal to the imagination. You seem to me a real millionaire now. You’ve given me some personal information; I’ll give you some in return. I earn three hundred a year, and perhaps sixty pounds a year extra for overtime. I live by myself in two rooms in Muscovy Court. I’ve as much money as I need, and I always do exactly what I like outside office. As regards the office, I do as little work as I can, on principle--it’s a fight between us and the Commissioners who shall get the best. They try to do us down, and we try to do them down--it’s pretty even on the whole. All’s fair in war, you know, and there ain’t no ten commandments in a Government office.’

Racksole laughed. ‘Can you get off this afternoon?’ he asked.

‘Certainly,’ said Hazell; ‘I’ll get one of my pals to sign on for me, and then I shall be free.’

‘Well,’ said Racksole, ‘I should like you to come down with me to the Grand Babylon. Then we can talk over my little affair at length. And may we go on your boat? I want to meet your crew.’

‘That will be all right,’ Hazell remarked. ‘My two men are the idlest, most soul-less chaps you ever saw. They eat too much, and they have an enormous appetite for beer; but they know the river, and they know their business, and they will do anything within the fair game if they are paid for it, and aren’t asked to hurry.’

That night, just after dark, Theodore Racksole embarked with his new friend George Hazell in one of the black-painted Customs wherries, manned by a crew of two men--both the later freemen of the river, a distinction which carries with it certain privileges unfamiliar to the mere landsman. It was a cloudy and oppressive evening, not a star showing to illumine the slow tide, now just past its flood. The vast forms of steamers at anchor--chiefly those of the General Steam Navigation and the Aberdeen Line--heaved themselves high out of the water, straining sluggishly at their mooring buoys. On either side the naked walls of warehouses rose like grey precipices from the stream, holding forth quaint arms of steam-cranes. To the west the Tower Bridge spanned the river with its formidable arch, and above that its suspended footpath--a hundred and fifty feet from earth.

Down towards the east and the Pool of London a forest of funnels and masts was dimly outlined against the sinister sky. Huge barges, each steered by a single man at the end of a pair of giant oars, lumbered and swirled down-stream at all angles. Occasionally a tug snorted busily past, flashing its red and green signals and dragging an unwieldy tail of barges in its wake. Then a Margate passenger steamer, its electric lights gleaming from every porthole, swerved round to anchor, with its load of two thousand fatigued excursionists. Over everything brooded an air of mystery--a spirit and feeling of strangeness, remoteness, and the inexplicable. As the broad flat little boat bobbed its way under the shadow of enormous hulks, beneath stretched hawsers, and past buoys covered with green slime, Racksole could scarcely believe that he was in the very heart of London--the most prosaic city in the world. He had a queer idea that almost anything might happen in this seeming waste of waters at this weird hour of ten o’clock. It appeared incredible to him that only a mile or two away people were sitting in theatres applauding farces, and that at Cannon Street Station, a few yards off, other people were calmly taking the train to various highly respectable suburbs whose names he was gradually learning. He had the uplifting sensation of being in another world which comes to us sometimes amid surroundings violently different from our usual surroundings. The most ordinary noises--of men calling, of a chain running through a slot, of a distant siren-- translated themselves to his ears into terrible and haunting sounds, full of portentous significance. He looked over the side of the boat into the brown water, and asked himself what frightful secrets lay hidden in its depth. Then he put his hand into his hip-pocket and touched the stock of his Colt revolver--that familiar substance comforted him.

The oarsmen had instructions to drop slowly down to the Pool, as the wide reach below the Tower is called. These two men had not been previously informed of the precise object of the expedition, but now that they were safely afloat Hazell judged it expedient to give them some notion of it. ‘We expect to come across a rather suspicious steam launch,’ he said. ‘My friend here is very anxious to get a sight of her, and until he has seen her nothing definite can be done.’

‘What sort of a craft is she, sir?’ asked the stroke oar, a fat-faced man who seemed absolutely incapable of any serious exertion.

‘I don’t know,’ Racksole replied; ‘but as near as I can judge, she’s about sixty feet in length, and painted black. I fancy I shall recognize her when I see her.’

‘Not much to go by, that,’ exclaimed the other man curtly. But he said no more. He, as well as his mate, had received from Theodore Racksole one English sovereign as a kind of preliminary fee, and an English sovereign will do a lot towards silencing the natural sarcastic tendencies and free speech of a Thames waterman.

‘There’s one thing I noticed,’ said Racksole suddenly, ‘and I forgot to tell you of it, Mr Hazell. Her screw seemed to move with a rather irregular, lame sort of beat.’

Both watermen burst into a laugh.

‘Oh,’ said the fat rower, ‘I know what you’re after, sir--it’s Jack Everett’s launch, commonly called “Squirm”. She’s got a four-bladed propeller, and one blade is broken off short.’

‘Ay, that’s it, sure enough,’ agreed the man in the bows. ‘And if it’s her you want, I seed her lying up against Cherry Gardens Pier this very morning.’

‘Let us go to Cherry Gardens Pier by all means, as soon as possible,’

Racksole said, and the boat swung across stream and then began to creep down by the right bank, feeling its way past wharves, many of which, even at that hour, were still busy with their cranes, that descended empty into the bellies of ships and came up full. As the two watermen gingerly manoeuvred the boat on the ebbing tide, Hazell explained to the millionaire that the ‘Squirm’ was one of the most notorious craft on the river. It appeared that when anyone had a nefarious or underhand scheme afoot which necessitated river work Everett’s launch was always available for a suitable monetary consideration. The ‘Squirm’ had got itself into a thousand scrapes, and out of those scrapes again with safety, if not precisely with honour. The river police kept a watchful eye on it, and the chief marvel about the whole thing was that old Everett, the owner, had never yet been seriously compromised in any illegal escapade. Not once had the officer of the law been able to prove anything definite against the proprietor of the ‘Squirm’, though several of its quondam hirers were at that very moment in various of Her Majesty’s prisons throughout the country. Latterly, however, the launch, with its damaged propeller, which Everett consistently refused to have repaired, had acquired an evil reputation, even among evil-doers, and this fraternity had gradually come to abandon it for less easily recognizable craft.

‘Your friend, Mr Tom Jackson,’ said Hazell to Racksole, ‘committed an error of discretion when he hired the “Squirm”. A scoundrel of his experience and calibre ought certainly to have known better than that. You cannot fail to get a clue now.’

By this time the boat was approaching Cherry Gardens Pier, but unfortunately a thin night-fog had swept over the river, and objects could not be discerned with any clearness beyond a distance of thirty yards. As the Customs boat scraped down past the pier all its occupants strained eyes for a glimpse of the mysterious launch, but nothing could be seen of it. The boat continued to float idly down-stream, the men resting on their oars.

Then they narrowly escaped bumping a large Norwegian sailing vessel at anchor with her stem pointing down-stream. This ship they passed on the port side. Just as they got clear of her bowsprit the fat man cried out excitedly, ‘There’s her nose!’ and he put the boat about and began to pull back against the tide. And surely the missing ‘Squirm’ was comfortably anchored on the starboard quarter of the Norwegian ship, hidden neatly between the ship and the shore. The men pulled very quietly alongside.

Chapter Twenty-Six THE NIGHT CHASE AND THE MUDLARK

‘I’LL board her to start with,’ said Hazell, whispering to Racksole. ‘I’ll make out that I suspect they’ve got dutiable goods on board, and that will give me a chance to have a good look at her.’

Dressed in his official overcoat and peaked cap, he stepped, rather jauntily as Racksole thought, on to the low deck of the launch. ‘Anyone aboard?’

Racksole heard him cry out, and a woman’s voice answered. ‘I’m a Customs examining officer, and I want to search the launch,’ Hazell shouted, and then disappeared down into the little saloon amidships, and Racksole heard no more. It seemed to the millionaire that Hazell had been gone hours, but at length he returned.

‘Can’t find anything,’ he said, as he jumped into the boat, and then privately to Racksole: ‘There’s a woman on board. Looks as if she might coincide with your description of Miss Spencer. Steam’s up, but there’s no engineer. I asked where the engineer was, and she inquired what business that was of mine, and requested me to get through with my own business and clear off. Seems rather a smart sort. I poked my nose into everything, but I saw no sign of any one else. Perhaps we’d better pull away and lie near for a bit, just to see if anything queer occurs.’

‘You’re quite sure he isn’t on board?’ Racksole asked.

‘Quite,’ said Hazell positively: ‘I know how to search a vessel. See this,’ and he handed to Racksole a sort of steel skewer, about two feet long, with a wooden handle. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is one of the Customs’ aids to searching.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t do to go on board and carry off the lady?’ Racksole suggested doubtfully.

‘Well,’ Hazell began, with equal doubtfulness, ‘as for that--’

‘Where’s ‘e orf?’ It was the man in the bows who interrupted Hazell.

Following the direction of the man’s finger, both Hazell and Racksole saw with more or less distinctness a dinghy slip away from the forefoot of the Norwegian vessel and disappear downstream into the mist.

‘It’s Jules, I’ll swear,’ cried Racksole. ‘After him, men. Ten pounds apiece if we overtake him!’

‘Lay down to it now, boys!’ said Hazell, and the heavy Customs boat shot out in pursuit.

‘This is going to be a lark,’ Racksole remarked.

‘Depends on what you call a lark,’ said Hazell; ‘it’s not much of a lark tearing down midstream like this in a fog. You never know when you mayn’t be in kingdom come with all these barges knocking around. I expect that chap hid in the dinghy when he first caught sight of us, and then slipped his painter as soon as I’d gone.’

The boat was moving at a rapid pace with the tide. Steering was a matter of luck and instinct more than anything else. Every now and then Hazell, who held the lines, was obliged to jerk the boat’s head sharply round to avoid a barge or an anchored vessel. It seemed to Racksole that vessels were anchored all over the stream. He looked about him anxiously, but for a long time he could see nothing but mist and vague nautical forms. Then suddenly he said, quietly enough, ‘We’re on the right road; I can see him ahead.

We’re gaining on him.’ In another minute the dinghy was plainly visible, not twenty yards away, and the sculler--sculling frantically now--was unmistakably Jules--Jules in a light tweed suit and a bowler hat.

‘You were right,’ Hazell said; ‘this is a lark. I believe I’m getting quite excited. It’s more exciting than playing the trombone in an orchestra. I’ll run him down, eh?--and then we can drag the chap in from the water.’

Racksole nodded, but at that moment a barge, with her red sails set, stood out of the fog clean across the bows of the Customs boat, which narrowly escaped instant destruction. When they got clear, and the usual interchange of calm, nonchalant swearing was over, the dinghy was barely to be discerned in the mist, and the fat man was breathing in such a manner that his sighs might almost have been heard on the banks. Racksole wanted violently to do something, but there was nothing to do; he could only sit supine by Hazell’s side in the stern-sheets. Gradually they began again to overtake the dinghy, whose one-man crew was evidently tiring. As they came up, hand over fist, the dinghy’s nose swerved aside, and the tiny craft passed down a water-lane between two anchored mineral barges, which lay black and deserted about fifty yards from the Surrey shore. ‘To starboard,’ said Racksole. ‘No, man!’

Hazell replied; ‘we can’t get through there. He’s bound to come out below; it’s only a feint. I’ll keep our nose straight ahead.’

And they went on, the fat man pounding away, with a face which glistened even in the thick gloom. It was an empty dinghy which emerged from between the two barges and went drifting and revolving down towards Greenwich.

The fat man gasped a word to his comrade, and the Customs boat stopped dead.

‘’E’s all right,’ said the man in the bows. ‘If it’s ‘im you want, ‘e’s on one o’ them barges, so you’ve only got to step on and take ‘im orf.’

‘That’s all,’ said a voice out of the depths of the nearest barge, and it was the voice of Jules, otherwise known as Mr Tom Jackson.

‘’Ear ‘im?’ said the fat man smiling. ‘’E’s a good ‘un, ‘e is. But if I was you, Mr Hazell, or you, sir, I shouldn’t step on to that barge so quick as all that.’

They backed the boat under the stem of the nearest barge and gazed upwards.

‘It’s all right,’ said Racksole to Hazell; ‘I’ve got a revolver. How can I clamber up there?’

‘Yes, I dare say you’ve got a revolver all right,’ Hazell replied sharply.

‘But you mustn’t use it. There mustn’t be any noise. We should have the river police down on us in a twinkling if there was a revolver shot, and it would be the ruin of me. If an inquiry was held the Commissioners wouldn’t take any official notice of the fact that my superior officer had put me on to this job, and I should be requested to leave the service.’

‘Have no fear on that score,’ said Racksole. ‘I shall, of course, take all responsibility.’

‘It wouldn’t matter how much responsibility you took,’ Hazell retorted; ‘you wouldn’t put me back into the service, and my career would be at an end.’

‘But there are other careers,’ said Racksole, who was really anxious to lame his ex-waiter by means of a judiciously-aimed bullet. ‘There are other careers.’

‘The Customs is my career,’ said Hazell, ‘so let’s have no shooting. We’ll wait about a bit; he can’t escape. You can have my skewer if you like’--and he gave Racksole his searching instrument. ‘And you can do what you please, provided you do it neatly and don’t make a row over it.’

For a few moments the four men were passive in the boat, surrounded by swirling mist, with black water beneath them, and towering above them a half-loaded barge with a desperate and resourceful man on board. Suddenly the mist parted and shrivelled away in patches, as though before the breath of some monster. The sky was visible; it was a clear sky, and the moon was shining. The transformation was just one of those meteorological quick-changes which happen most frequently on a great river.

‘That’s a sight better,’ said the fat man. At the same moment a head appeared over the edge of the barge. It was Jules’ face--dark, sinister and leering.

‘Is it Mr Racksole in that boat?’ he inquired calmly; ‘because if so, let Mr Racksole step up. Mr Racksole has caught me, and he can have me for the asking. Here I am.’ He stood up to his full height on the barge, tall against the night sky, and all the occupants of the boat could see that he held firmly clasped in his right hand a short dagger. ‘Now, Mr Racksole, you’ve been after me for a long time,’ he continued; ‘here I am. Why don’t you step up? If you haven’t got the pluck yourself, persuade someone else to step up in your place ... the same fair treatment will be accorded to all.’ And Jules laughed a low, penetrating laugh.

He was in the midst of this laugh when he lurched suddenly forward.

‘What’r’ you doing of aboard my barge? Off you goes!’ It was a boy’s small shrill voice that sounded in the night. A ragged boy’s small form had appeared silently behind Jules, and two small arms with a vicious shove precipitated him into the water. He fell with a fine gurgling splash. It was at once obvious that swimming was not among Jules’ accomplishments. He floundered wildly and sank. When he reappeared he was dragged into the Customs boat. Rope was produced, and in a minute or two the man lay ignominiously bound in the bottom of the boat. With the aid of a mudlark--a mere barge boy, who probably had no more right on the barge than Jules himself--Racksole had won his game. For the first time for several weeks the millionaire experienced a sensation of equanimity and satisfaction. He leaned over the prostrate form of Jules, Hazell’s professional skewer in his hand.

‘What are you going to do with him now?’ asked Hazell.

‘We’ll row up to the landing steps in front of the Grand Babylon. He shall be well lodged at my hotel, I promise him.’

Jules spoke no word.

Before Racksole parted company with the Customs man that night Jules had been safely transported into the Grand Babylon Hôtel and the two watermen had received their £10 apiece.

‘You will sleep here?’ said the millionaire to Mr George Hazell. ‘It is late.’

‘With pleasure,’ said Hazell. The next morning he found a sumptuous breakfast awaiting him, and in his table-napkin was a Bank of England note for a hundred pounds. But, though he did not hear of them till much later, many things had happened before Hazell consumed that sumptuous breakfast.

Chapter Twenty-Seven THE CONFESSION OF MR TOM JACKSON

IT happened that the small bedroom occupied by Jules during the years he was head-waiter at the Grand Babylon had remained empty since his sudden dismissal by Theodore Racksole. No other head-waiter had been formally appointed in his place; and, indeed, the absence of one man--even the unique Jules--could scarcely have been noticed in the enormous staff of a place like the Grand Babylon. The functions of a head-waiter are generally more ornamental, spectacular, and morally impressive than useful, and it was so at the great hotel on the Embankment. Racksole accordingly had the excellent idea of transporting his prisoner, with as much secrecy as possible, to this empty bedroom. There proved to be no difficulty in doing so; Jules showed himself perfectly amenable to a show of superior force.

Racksole took upstairs with him an old commissionaire who had been attached to the outdoor service of the hotel for many years--a grey- haired man, wiry as a terrier and strong as a mastiff. Entering the bedroom with Jules, whose hands were bound, he told the commissionaire to remain outside the door.

Jules’ bedroom was quite an ordinary apartment, though perhaps slightly superior to the usual accommodation provided for servants in the caravanserais of the West End. It was about fourteen by twelve. It was furnished with a bedstead, a small wardrobe, a small washstand and dressing-table, and two chairs. There were two hooks behind the door, a strip of carpet by the bed, and some cheap ornaments on the iron mantelpiece. There was also one electric light. The window was a little square one, high up from the floor, and it looked on the inner quadrangle.

The room was on the top storey--the eighth--and from it you had a view sheer to the ground. Twenty feet below ran a narrow cornice about a foot wide; three feet or so above the window another and wider cornice jutted out, and above that was the high steep roof of the hotel, though you could not see it from the window. As Racksole examined the window and the outlook, he said to himself that Jules could not escape by that exit, at any rate. He gave a glance up the chimney, and saw that the flue was far too small to admit a man’s body.

Then he called in the commissionaire, and together they bound Jules firmly to the bedstead, allowing him, however, to lie down. All the while the captive never opened his mouth--merely smiled a smile of disdain. Finally Racksole removed the ornaments, the carpet, the chairs and the hooks, and wrenched away the switch of the electric light. Then he and the commissionaire left the room, and Racksole locked the door on the outside and put the key in his pocket.

‘You will keep watch here,’ he said to the commissionaire, ‘through the night. You can sit on this chair. Don’t go to sleep. If you hear the slightest noise in the room blow your cab-whistle; I will arrange to answer the signal. If there is no noise do nothing whatever. I don’t want this talked about, you understand. I shall trust you; you can trust me.’

‘But the servants will see me here when they get up to-morrow,’ said the commissionaire, with a faint smile, ‘and they will be pretty certain to ask what I’m doing of up here. What shall I say to ‘em?’

‘You’ve been a soldier, haven’t you?’ asked Racksole.

‘I’ve seen three campaigns, sir,’ was the reply, and, with a gesture of pardonable pride, the grey-haired fellow pointed to the medals on his breast.

‘Well, supposing you were on sentry duty and some meddlesome person in camp asked you what you were doing--what should you say?’

‘I should tell him to clear off or take the consequences, and pretty quick too.’

‘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 night--just before our little tussle.’

There was a silence.

‘It is well,’ said Racksole at length. ‘Prince Eugen lives, despite all plots. After all, justice is done.’

‘Mr Racksole is here, but he can see no one, Miss.’ The words came from behind the door, and the voice was the commissionaire’s. Racksole started up, and went towards the door.

‘Nonsense,’ was the curt reply, in feminine tones. ‘Move aside instantly.’

The door opened, and Nella entered. There were tears in her eyes.

‘Oh! Dad,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve only just heard you were in the hotel. We looked for you everywhere. Come at once, Prince Eugen is dying--’ Then she saw the man sitting on the bed, and stopped.

Later, when Jules was alone again, he remarked to himself, ‘I may get that hundred thousand.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight THE STATE BEDROOM ONCE MORE

WHEN, immediately after the episode of the bottle of Romanée-Conti in the State dining-room, Prince Aribert and old Hans found that Prince Eugen had sunk in an unconscious heap over his chair, both the former thought, at the first instant, that Eugen must have already tasted the poisoned wine. But a moment’s reflection showed that this was not possible. If the Hereditary Prince of Posen was dying or dead, his condition was due to some other agency than the Romanée-Conti. Aribert bent over him, and a powerful odour from the man’s lips at once disclosed the cause of the disaster: it was the odour of laudanum. Indeed, the smell of that sinister drug seemed now to float heavily over the whole table. Across Aribert’s mind there flashed then the true explanation. Prince Eugen, taking advantage of Aribert’s attention being momentarily diverted; and yielding to a sudden impulse of despair, had decided to poison himself, and had carried out his intention on the spot.

The laudanum must have been already in his pocket, and this fact went to prove that the unfortunate Prince had previously contemplated such a proceeding, even after his definite promise. Aribert remembered now with painful vividness his nephew’s words: ‘I withdraw my promise. Observe that--I withdraw it.’ It must have been instantly after the utterance of that formal withdrawal that Eugen attempted to destroy himself.

‘It’s laudanum, Hans,’ Aribert exclaimed, rather helplessly.

‘Surely his Highness has not taken poison?’ said Hans. ‘It is impossible!’

‘I fear it is only too possible,’ said the other. ‘It’s laudanum. What are we to do? Quick, man!’

‘His Highness must be roused, Prince. He must have an emetic. We had better carry him to the bedroom.’

They did, and laid him on the great bed; and then Aribert mixed an emetic of mustard and water, and administered it, but without any effect. The sufferer lay motionless, with every muscle relaxed. His skin was ice-cold to the touch, and the eyelids, half-drawn, showed that the pupils were painfully contracted.

‘Go out, and send for a doctor, Hans. Say that Prince Eugen has been suddenly taken ill, but that it isn’t serious. The truth must never be known.’

‘He must be roused, sire,’ Hans said again, as he hurried from the room.

Aribert lifted his nephew from the bed, shook him, pinched him, flicked him cruelly, shouted at him, dragged him about, but to no avail. At length he desisted, from mere physical fatigue, and laid the Prince back again on the bed. Every minute that elapsed seemed an hour. Alone with the unconscious organism in the silence of the great stately chamber, under the cold yellow glare of the electric lights, Aribert became a prey to the most despairing thoughts. The tragedy of his nephew’s career forced itself upon him, and it occurred to him that an early and shameful death had all along been inevitable for this good-natured, weak-purposed, unhappy child of a historic throne. A little good fortune, and his character, so evenly balanced between right and wrong, might have followed the proper path, and Eugen might have figured at any rate with dignity on the European stage. But now it appeared that all was over, the last stroke played. And in this disaster Aribert saw the ruin of his own hopes. For Aribert would have to occupy his nephew’s throne, and he felt instinctively that nature had not cut him out for a throne. By a natural impulse he inwardly rebelled against the prospect of monarchy. Monarchy meant so much for which he knew himself to be entirely unfitted. It meant a political marriage, which means a forced marriage, a union against inclination. And then what of Nella--Nella!

Hans returned. ‘I have sent for the nearest doctor, and also for a specialist,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Aribert. ‘I hope they will hurry.’ Then he sat down and wrote a card. ‘Take this yourself to Miss Racksole. If she is out of the hotel, ascertain where she is and follow her. Understand, it is of the first importance.’

Hans bowed, and departed for the second time, and Aribert was alone again.

He gazed at Eugen, and made another frantic attempt to rouse him from the deadly stupor, but it was useless. He walked away to the window: through the opened casement he could hear the tinkle of passing hansoms on the Embankment below, whistles of door-keepers, and the hoot of steam tugs on the river. The world went on as usual, it appeared. It was an absurd world.

He desired nothing better than to abandon his princely title, and live as a plain man, the husband of the finest woman on earth.... But now!...

Pah! How selfish he was, to be thinking of himself when Eugen lay dying. Yet--Nella!

The door opened, and a man entered, who was obviously the doctor. A few curt questions, and he had grasped the essentials of the case. ‘Oblige me by ringing the bell, Prince. I shall want some hot water, and an able-bodied man and a nurse.’

‘Who wants a nurse?’ said a voice, and Nella came quietly in. ‘I am a nurse,’ she added to the doctor, ‘and at your orders.’