The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett (good story books to read txt) 📕

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 tomorrow 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 semidetached 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.”

XXI 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