The Grand Babylon Hote

by Arnold Bennett

  '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.

  24. 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?'

  '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 st
uff; 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.