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

appreciated the value and the marvellous power of mere money, of the lucre which philosophers pretend to despise and men sell their souls for. His heart almost burst in its admiration for that extraordinary Nella, who by mere personal force had raised two men out of the deepest slough of despair to the blissful heights of hope and happiness. “These Anglo-Saxons,” he said to himself, “what a race!”

By the afternoon Eugen was noticeably and distinctly better. The physicians, puzzled for the third time by the progress of the case, announced now that all danger was past. The tone of the announcement seemed to Aribert to imply that the fortunate issue was due wholly to unrivalled medical skill, but perhaps Aribert was mistaken. Anyhow, he was in a most charitable mood, and prepared to forgive anything.

“Nella,” he said a little later, when they were by themselves again in the antechamber, “what am I to say to you? How can I thank you? How can I thank your father?”

“You had better not thank my father,” she said. “Dad will affect to regard the thing as a purely business transaction, as, of course, it is. As for me, you can⁠—you can⁠—”

“Well?”

“Kiss me,” she said. “There! Are you sure you’ve formally proposed to me, mon prince?”

“Ah! Nell!” he exclaimed, putting his arms round her again. “Be mine! That is all I want!”

“You’ll find,” she said, “that you’ll want Dad’s consent too!”

“Will he make difficulties? He could not, Nell⁠—not with you!”

“Better ask him,” she said sweetly.

A moment later Racksole himself entered the room. “Going on all right?” he enquired, pointing to the bedroom. “Excellently,” the lovers answered together, and they both blushed.

“Ah!” said Racksole. “Then, if that’s so, and you can spare a minute, I’ve something to show you, Prince.”

XXX Conclusion

“I’ve a great deal to tell you, Prince,” Racksole began, as soon as they were out of the room, “and also, as I said, something to show you. Will you come to my room? We will talk there first. The whole hotel is humming with excitement.”

“With pleasure,” said Aribert.

“Glad his Highness Prince Eugen is recovering,” Racksole said, urged by considerations of politeness.

“Ah! As to that⁠—” Aribert began. “If you don’t mind, we’ll discuss that later, Prince,” Racksole interrupted him.

They were in the proprietor’s private room.

“I want to tell you all about last night,” Racksole resumed, “about my capture of Jules, and my examination of him this morning.” And he launched into a full account of the whole thing, down to the least details. “You see,” he concluded, “that our suspicions as to Bosnia were tolerably correct. But as regards Bosnia, the more I think about it, the surer I feel that nothing can be done to bring their criminal politicians to justice.”

“And as to Jules, what do you propose to do?”

“Come this way,” said Racksole, and led Aribert to another room. A sofa in this room was covered with a linen cloth. Racksole lifted the cloth⁠—he could never deny himself a dramatic moment⁠—and disclosed the body of a dead man.

It was Jules, dead, but without a scratch or mark on him.

“I have sent for the police⁠—not a street constable, but an official from Scotland Yard,” said Racksole.

“How did this happen?” Aribert asked, amazed and startled. “I understood you to say that he was safely immured in the bedroom.”

“So he was,” Racksole replied. “I went up there this afternoon, chiefly to take him some food. The commissionaire was on guard at the door. He had heard no noise, nothing unusual. Yet when I entered the room Jules was gone. He had by some means or other loosened his fastenings; he had then managed to take the door off the wardrobe. He had moved the bed in front of the window, and by pushing the wardrobe door three parts out of the window and lodging the inside end of it under the rail at the head of the bed, he had provided himself with a sort of insecure platform outside the window. All this he did without making the least sound. He must then have got through the window, and stood on the little platform. With his fingers he would just be able to reach the outer edge of the wide cornice under the roof of the hotel. By main strength of arms he had swung himself on to this cornice, and so got on to the roof proper. He would then have the run of the whole roof. At the side of the building facing Salisbury Lane there is an iron fire-escape, which runs right down from the ridge of the roof into a little sunk yard level with the cellars. Jules must have thought that his escape was accomplished. But it unfortunately happened that one rung in the iron escape-ladder had rusted rotten through being badly painted. It gave way, and Jules, not expecting anything of the kind, fell to the ground. That was the end of all his cleverness and ingenuity.”

As Racksole ceased, speaking he replaced the linen cloth with a gesture from which reverence was not wholly absent.

When the grave had closed over the dark and tempestuous career of Tom Jackson, once the pride of the Grand Babylon, there was little trouble for the people whose adventures we have described. Miss Spencer, that yellow-haired, faithful slave and attendant of a brilliant scoundrel, was never heard of again. Possibly to this day she survives, a mystery to her fellow-creatures, in the pension of some cheap foreign boardinghouse. As for Rocco, he certainly was heard of again. Several years after the events set down, it came to the knowledge of Félix Babylon that the unrivalled Rocco had reached Buenos Aires, and by his culinary skill was there making the fortune of a new and splendid hotel. Babylon transmitted the information to Theodore Racksole, and Racksole might, had he chosen, have put the forces of the law in motion against him. But Racksole, seeing that everything pointed to