'Rather strange about Miss Spencer's departure, is it not?' suggested Racksole.
'It is remarkable, sir.'
'You are aware, of course, that Mr Babylon has transferred all his interests in this hotel to me?'
'I have been informed to that effect, sir.'
'I suppose you know everything that goes on in the hotel, Jules?'
'As the head waiter, sir, it is my business to keep a general eye on things.'
'You speak very good English for a foreigner, Jules.'
'For a foreigner, sir! I am an Englishman, a Hertfordshire man born and bred.
Perhaps my name has misled you, sir. I am only called Jules because the head waiter of any really high-class hotel must have either a French or an Italian name.'
'I see,' said Racksole. 'I think you must be rather a clever person, Jules.'
'That is not for me to say, sir.'
'How long has the hotel enjoyed the advantage of your services?'
'A little over twenty years.'
'That is a long time to be in one place. Don't you think it's time you got out of the rut? You are still young, and might make a reputation for yourself in another and wider sphere.'
Racksole looked at the man steadily, and his glance was steadily returned.
'You aren't satisfied with me, sir?'
'To be frank, Jules, I think - I think you - er - wink too much. And I think that it is regrettable when a head waiter falls into a habit of taking white ribbons from the handles of bedroom doors at three in the morning.'
Jules started slightly.
'I see how it is, sir. You wish me to go, and one pretext, if I may use the term, is as good as another. Very well, I can't say that I'm surprised. It sometimes happens that there is incompatibility of temper between a hotel proprietor and his head waiter, and then, unless one of them goes, the hotel is likely to suffer. I will go, Mr Racksole. In fact, I had already thought of giving notice.'
The millionaire smiled appreciatively. 'What wages do you require in lieu of notice? It is my intention that you leave the hotel within an hour.'
'I require no wages in lieu of notice, sir. I would scorn to accept anything. And I will leave the hotel in fifteen minutes.'
'Good-day, then. You have my good wishes and my admiration, so long as you keep out of my hotel.'
Racksole got up. 'Good-day, sir. And thank you.'
'By the way, Jules, it will be useless for you to apply to any other first-rate European hotel for a post, because I shall take measures which will ensure the rejection of any such application.'
'Without discussing the question whether or not there aren't at least half a dozen hotels in London alone that would jump for joy at the chance of getting me,'
answered Jules, 'I may tell you, sir, that I shall retire from my profession.'
'Really! You will turn your brains to a different channel.'
'No, sir. I shall take rooms in Albemarle Street or Jermyn Street, and just be content to be a man-about-town. I have saved some twenty thousand pounds - a mere trifle, but sufficient for my needs, and I shall now proceed to enjoy it.
Pardon me for troubling you with my personal affairs. And good-day again.'
That afternoon Racksole went with Felix Babylon first to a firm of solicitors in the City, and then to a stockbroker, in order to carry out the practical details of the purchase of the hotel.
'I mean to settle in England,' said Racksole, as they were coming back. 'It is the only country - ' and he stopped.
'The only country?'
'The, only country where you can invest money and spend money with a feeling of security. In the United States there is nothing worth spending money on, nothing to buy. In France or Italy, there is no real security.'
'But surely you are a true American?' questioned Babylon.
'I am a true American,' said Racksole, 'but my father, who began by being a bedmaker at an Oxford college, and ultimately made ten million dollars out of iron in Pittsburg - my father took the wise precaution of having me educated in England. I had my three years at Oxford, like any son of the upper middle class!
It did me good. It has been worth more to me than many successful speculations.
It taught me that the English language is different from, and better than, the American language, and that there is something - I haven't yet found out exactly what - in English life that Americans will never get. Why,' he added, 'in the United States we still bribe our judges and our newspapers. And we talk of the eighteenth century as though it was the beginning of the world. Yes, I shall transfer my securities to London. I shall build a house in Park Lane, and I shall buy some immemorial country seat with a history as long as the A. T. and S.
railroad, and I shall calmly and gradually settle down. D'you know - I am rather a good-natured man for a millionaire, and of a social disposition, and yet I haven't six real friends in the whole of New York City. Think of that!'
'And I,' said Babylon, 'have no friends except the friends of my boyhood in Lausanne. I have spent thirty years in England, and gained nothing but a perfect knowledge of the English language and as much gold coin as would fill a rather large box.'
These two plutocrats breathed a simultaneous sigh.
'Talking of gold coin,' said Racksole, 'how much money should you think Jules has contrived to amass while he has been with you?'
'Oh!' Babylon smiled. 'I should not like to guess. He has had unique opportunities
- opportunities.'
'Should you consider twenty thousand an extraordinary sum under the circumstances?'
'Not at all. Has he been confiding in you?'
'Somewhat. I have dismissed him.'
'You have dismissed him?'
'Why not?'
'There is no reason why not. But I have felt inclined to dismiss him for the past ten years, and never found courage to do it.'
'It was a perfectly simple proceeding, I assure you. Before I had done with him, I rather liked the fellow.'
'Miss Spencer and Jules - both gone in one day!' mused Felix Babylon.
'And no one to take their places,' said Racksole. 'And yet the hotel continues its way!'
But when Racksole reached the Grand Babylon he found that Miss Spencer's chair in the bureau was occupied by a stately and imperious girl, dressed becomingly in black.
'Heavens, Nella!' he cried, going to the bureau. 'What are you doing here?'
'I am taking Mis Spencer's place. I want to help you with your hotel, Dad. I fancy I shall make an excellent hotel clerk. I have arranged with a Miss Selina Smith, one of the typists in the office, to put me up to all the tips and tricks, and I shall do very well.'
'But look here, Helen Racksole. We shall have the whole of London talking about this thing - the greatest of all American heiresses a hotel clerk! And I came here for quiet and rest!'
'I suppose it was for the sake of quiet and rest that you bought the hotel, Papa?'
'You would insist on the steak,' he retorted. 'Get out of this, on the instant.'
'Here I am, here to stay,' said Nella, and deliberately laughed at her parent.
Just then the face of a fair-haired man of about thirty years appeared at the bureau window. He was very well-dressed, very aristocratic in his pose, and he seemed rather angry.
He looked fixedly at Nella and started back.
'Ach!' he exclaimed. 'You!'
'Yes, your Highness, it is indeed I. Father, this is his Serene Highness Prince Aribert of Posen - one of our most esteemed customers.'
'You know my name, Fräulein?' the new-comer murmured in German.
'Certainly, Prince,' Nella replied sweetly. 'You were plain Count Steenbock last spring in Paris - doubtless travelling incognito - '
'Silence,' he entreated, with a wave of the hand, and his forehead went as white as paper.
5. What Occurred To Reginald Dimmock
IN another moment they were all three talking quite nicely, and with at any rate an appearance of
being natural. Prince Aribert became suave, even deferential to Nella, and more friendly towards Nella's father than their respective positions demanded. The latter amused himself by studying this sprig of royalty, the first with whom he had ever come into contact. He decided that the young fellow was personable enough, 'had no frills on him,'
and would make an exceptionally good commercial traveller for a first-class firm.
Such was Theodore Racksole's preliminary estimate of the man who might one day be the reigning Grand Duke of Posen.
It occurred to Nella, and she smiled at the idea, that the bureau of the hotel was scarcely the correct place in which to receive this august young man. There he stood, with his head half-way through the bureau window, negligently leaning against the woodwork, just as though he were a stockbroker or the manager of a New York burlesque company.
'Is your Highness travelling quite alone?' she asked.
'By a series of accidents I am,' he said. 'My equerry was to have met me at Charing Cross, but he failed to do so - I cannot imagine why.'
'Mr Dimmock?' questioned Racksole.
'Yes, Dimmock. I do not remember that he ever missed an appointment before.
You know him? He has been here?'
'He dined with us last night,' said Racksole - 'on Nella's invitation,' he added maliciously; 'but to-day we have seen nothing of him. I know, however, that he has engaged the State apartments, and also a suite adjoining the State apartments - No. 55. That is so, isn't it, Nella?'
'Yes, Papa,' she said, having first demurely examined a ledger. 'Your Highness would doubtless like to be conducted to your room - apartments I mean.' Then Nella laughed deliberately at the Prince, and said, 'I don't know who is the proper person to conduct you, and that's a fact. The truth is that Papa and I are rather raw yet in the hotel line. You see, we only bought the place last night.'
'You have bought the hotel!' exclaimed the Prince.
'That's so,' said Racksole.
'And Felix Babylon has gone?'
'He is going, if he has not already gone.'
'Ah! I see,' said the Prince; 'this is one of your American "strokes". You have bought to sell again, is that not it? You are on your holidays, but you cannot resist making a few thousands by way of relaxation. I have heard of such things.'
'We sha'n't sell again, Prince, until we are tired of our bargain. Sometimes we tire very quickly, and sometimes we don't. It depends - eh? What?'
Racksole broke off suddenly to attend to a servant in livery who had quietly entered the bureau and was making urgent mysterious signs to him.
'If you please, sir,' the man by frantic gestures implored Mr Theodore Racksole to come out.
'Pray don't let me detain you, Mr Racksole,' said the Prince, and therefore the proprietor of the Grand Babylon departed after the servant, with a queer, curt little bow to Prince Aribert.
'Mayn't I come inside?' said the Prince to Nella immediately the millionaire had gone.
'Impossible, Prince,' Nella laughed. 'The rule against visitors entering this bureau is frightfully strict.'
'How do you know the rule is so strict if you only came into possession last night?'
'I know because I made the rule myself this morning, your Highness.'
'But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk to you.'
'Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or as the friend - the acquaintance -
whom I knew in Paris' last year?'
'As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.'
'And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to your apartments?'
'Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here soon.'
'Then we will have tea served in father's private room - the proprietor's private room, you know.'
'Good!' he said.
Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and behaved generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever it might concern that she was a young woman of business instincts and training, and then she stepped down from her chair of office, emerged from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led Prince Aribert to the Louis XV chamber in which her father and Felix Babylon had had their long confabulation on the previous evening.
'What do you want to talk to me about?' she asked her companion, as she poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for a moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a young man of sane, healthy, instincts, he could think of nothing for the moment except her loveliness.
Nella was indeed beautiful that afternoon. The beauty of even the most beautiful woman ebbs and flows from hour to hour. Nella's this afternoon was at the flood.
Vivacious, alert, imperious, and yet ineffably sweet, she seemed to radiate the very joy and exuberance of life.
'I have forgotten,' he said.
'You have forgotten! That is surely very wrong of you? You gave me to understand that it was something terribly important. But of course I knew it couldn't be, because no man, and especially no Prince, ever discussed anything really important with a woman.'
'Recollect, Miss Racksole, that this aftemoon, here, I am not the Prince.'
'You are Count Steenbock, is that it?'
He started. 'For you only,' he said, unconsciously lowering his voice. 'Miss Racksole, I particularly wish that no one here should know that I was in Paris last spring.'
'An affair of State?' she smiled.
'An affair of State,' he replied soberly. 'Even Dimmock doesn't know. It was strange that we should be fellow guests at that quiet out-of-the-way hotel -
strange but delightful. I shall never forget that rainy afternoon that we spent together in the Museum of the Trocadéro. Let us talk about that.'
'About the rain, or the museum?'
'I shall never forget that afternoon,' he repeated, ignoring the lightness of her question.
'Nor I,' she murmured corresponding to his mood.
'You, too enjoyed it?' he said eagerly.
'The sculptures were magnificent,' she replied, hastily glancing at the ceiling.
'Ah! So they were! Tell me, Miss Racksole, how did you discover my identity.'
'I must not say,' she answered. 'That is my secret. Do not seek to penetrate it.
Who knows what horrors you might discover if you probed too far?' She laughed, but she laughed alone. The Prince remained pensive - as it were brooding.
'I never hoped to see you again,' he said.
'Why not?'
'One never sees again those whom one wishes to see.'
'As for me, I was perfectly convinced that we should meet again.'
'Why?'
'Because I always get what I want.'
'Then you wanted to see me again?'
'Certainly. You interested me extremely. I have never met another man who could talk so well about sculpture as the Count Steenbock.'
'Do you really always get what you want, Miss Racksole?'
'Of course.'
'That is because your father is so rich, I suppose?'
'Oh, no, it isn't!' she said. 'It's simply because I always do get what I want. It's got nothing to do with Father at all.'
'But Mr Racksole is extremely wealthy?'
'Wealthy isn't the word, Count. There is no word. It's positively awful the amount of dollars poor Papa makes. And the worst of it is he can't help it.
He told me once that when a man had made ten millions no power on earth could stop those ten millions from growing into twenty. And so it continues.
I spend what I can, but I can't come near coping with it; and of course Papa is no use whatever at spending.'
'And you have no mother?'
'Who told you I had no mother?' she asked quietly.
'I - er - inquired about you,' he said, with equal candour and humility.
'In spite of the fact that you never hoped to see me again?'
'Yes, in spite of that.'
'How funny!' she said, and
lapsed into a meditative silence.
'Yours must be a wonderful existence,' said the Prince. 'I envy you.'
'You envy me - what? My father's wealth?'
'No,' he said; 'your freedom and your responsibilities.'
'I have no responsibilities,' she remarked.
'Pardon me,' he said; 'you have, and the time is coming when you will feel them.'
'I'm only a girl,' she murmured with sudden simplicity. 'As for you, Count, surely you have sufficient responsibilities of your own?'
'I?' he said sadly. 'I have no responsibilties. I am a nobody - a Serene Highness who has to pretend to be very important, always taking immense care never to do anything that a Serene Highness ought not to do. Bah!'
'But if your nephew, Prince Eugen, were to die, would you not come to the throne, and would you not then have these responsibilities which you so much desire?'
'Eugen die?' said Prince Aribert, in a curious tone. 'Impossible. He is the perfection of health. In three months he will be married. No, I shall never be anything but a Serene Highness, the most despicable of God's creatures.'
'But what about the State secret which you mentioned? Is not that a responsibility?'
'Ah!' he said. 'That is over. That belongs to the past. It was an accident in my dull career. I shall never be Count Steenbock again.'
'Who knows?' she said. 'By the way, is not Prince Eugen coming here to-day? Mr Dimmock told us so.'
'See!' answered the Prince, standing up and bending over her. 'I am going to confide in you. I don't know why, but I am.'
'Don't betray State secrets,' she warned him, smiling into his face.
But just then the door of the room was unceremoniously opened.
'Go right in,' said a voice sharply. It was Theodore Racksole's. Two men entered, bearing a prone form on a stretcher, and Racksole followed them.
Nella sprang up. Racksole stared to see his daughter.
'I didn't know you were in here, Nell. Here,' to the two men, 'out again.'
'Why!' exclaimed Nella, gazing fearfully at the form on the stretcher, 'it's Mr Dimmock!'
'It is,' her father acquiesced. 'He's dead,' he added laconically. 'I'd have broken it to you more gently had I known. Your pardon, Prince.' There was a pause.
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