Chapter 3

MR REGINALD DIMMOCK proved himself, despite his extreme youth, to be a
man of the world and of experiences, and a practised talker.
Conversation between him and Nella Racksole seemed never to flag. They
chattered about St Petersburg, and the ice on the Neva, and the tenor at
the opera who had been exiled to Siberia, and the quality of Russian
tea, and the sweetness of Russian champagne, and various other aspects
of Muscovite existence. Russia exhausted, Nella lightly outlined her own
doings since she had met the young man in the Tsar’s capital, and this
recital brought the topic round to London, where it stayed till the
final piece of steak was eaten. Theodore Racksole noticed that Mr
Dimmock gave very meagre information about his own movements, either
past or future. He regarded the youth as a typical hanger-on of Courts,
and wondered how he had obtained his post of companion to Prince Aribert
of Posen, and who Prince Aribert of Posen might be. The millionaire
thought he had once heard of Posen, but he wasn’t sure; he rather
fancied it was one of those small nondescript German States of which
five-sixths of the subjects are Palace officials, and the rest charcoal-
burners or innkeepers. Until the meal was nearly over, Racksole said
little--perhaps his thoughts were too busy with Jules’ wink to Mr
Dimmock, but when ices had been followed by coffee, he decided that it
might be as well, in the interests of the hotel, to discover something
about his daughter’s friend. He never for an instant questioned her
right to possess her own friends; he had always left her in the most
amazing liberty, relying on her inherited good sense to keep her out of
mischief; but, quite apart from the wink, he was struck by Nella’s
attitude towards Mr Dimmock, an attitude in which an amiable scorn was
blended with an evident desire to propitiate and please.

‘Nella tells me, Mr Dimmock, that you hold a confidential position with
Prince Aribert of Posen,’ said Racksole. ‘You will pardon an American’s
ignorance, but is Prince Aribert a reigning Prince--what, I believe, you
call in Europe, a Prince Regnant?’

‘His Highness is not a reigning Prince, nor ever likely to be,’ answered
Dimmock. ‘The Grand Ducal Throne of Posen is occupied by his Highness’s
nephew, the Grand Duke Eugen.’

‘Nephew?’ cried Nella with astonishment.

‘Why not, dear lady?’

‘But Prince Aribert is surely very young?’

‘The Prince, by one of those vagaries of chance which occur sometimes in
the history of families, is precisely the same age as the Grand Duke.
The late Grand Duke’s father was twice married. Hence this youthfulness
on the part of an uncle.’

‘How delicious to be the uncle of someone as old as yourself! But I
suppose it is no fun for Prince Aribert. I suppose he has to be
frightfully respectful and obedient, and all that, to his nephew?’

‘The Grand Duke and my Serene master are like brothers. At present, of
course, Prince Aribert is nominally heir to the throne, but as no doubt
you are aware, the Grand Duke will shortly marry a near relative of the
Emperor’s, and should there be a family--’ Mr Dimmock stopped and
shrugged his straight shoulders. ‘The Grand Duke,’ he went on, without
finishing the last sentence, ‘would much prefer Prince Aribert to be his
successor. He really doesn’t want to marry. Between ourselves, strictly
between ourselves, he regards marriage as rather a bore. But, of course,
being a German Grand Duke, he is bound to marry. He owes it to his
country, to Posen.’

‘How large is Posen?’ asked Racksole bluntly.

‘Father,’ Nella interposed laughing, ‘you shouldn’t ask such
inconvenient questions. You ought to have guessed that it isn’t
etiquette to inquire about the size of a German Dukedom.’

‘I am sure,’ said Dimmock, with a polite smile, ‘that the Grand Duke is
as much amused as anyone at the size of his territory. I forget the
exact acreage, but I remember that once Prince Aribert and myself walked
across it and back again in a single day.’

‘Then the Grand Duke cannot travel very far within his own dominions?
You may say that the sun does set on his empire?’

‘It does,’ said Dimmock.

‘Unless the weather is cloudy,’ Nella put in. ‘Is the Grand Duke content
always to stay at home?’

‘On the contrary, he is a great traveller, much more so than Prince
Aribert.

I may tell you, what no one knows at present, outside this hotel, that
his Royal Highness the Grand Duke, with a small suite, will be here to-
morrow.’

‘In London?’ asked Nella.

‘Yes.’

‘In this hotel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh! How lovely!’

‘That is why your humble servant is here to-night--a sort of advance
guard.’

‘But I understood,’ Racksole said, ‘that you were--er--attached to
Prince Aribert, the uncle.’

‘I am. Prince Aribert will also be here. The Grand Duke and the Prince
have business about important investments connected with the Grand
Duke’s marriage settlement.... In the highest quarters, you understand.’

‘For so discreet a person,’ thought Racksole, ‘you are fairly
communicative.’ Then he said aloud: ‘Shall we go out on the terrace?’

As they crossed the dining-room Jules stopped Mr Dimmock and handed him
a letter. ‘Just come, sir, by messenger,’ said Jules.

Nella dropped behind for a second with her father. ‘Leave me alone with
this boy a little--there’s a dear parent,’ she whispered in his ear.

‘I am a mere cypher, an obedient nobody,’ Racksole replied, pinching her
arm surreptitiously. ‘Treat me as such. Use me as you like. I will go
and look after my hotel’ And soon afterwards he disappeared.

Nella and Mr Dimmock sat together on the terrace, sipping iced drinks.
They made a handsome couple, bowered amid plants which blossomed at the
command of a Chelsea wholesale florist. People who passed by remarked
privately that from the look of things there was the beginning of a
romance in that conversation. Perhaps there was, but a more intimate
acquaintance with the character of Nella Racksole would have been
necessary in order to predict what precise form that romance would take.

Jules himself served the liquids, and at ten o’clock he brought another
note. Entreating a thousand pardons, Reginald Dimmock, after he had
glanced at the note, excused himself on the plea of urgent business for
his Serene master, uncle of the Grand Duke of Posen. He asked if he
might fetch Mr Racksole, or escort Miss Racksole to her father. But Miss
Racksole said gaily that she felt no need of an escort, and should go to
bed. She added that her father and herself always endeavoured to be
independent of each other.

Just then Theodore Racksole had found his way once more into Mr
Babylon’s private room. Before arriving there, however, he had
discovered that in some mysterious manner the news of the change of
proprietorship had worked its way down to the lowest strata of the
hotel’s cosmos. The corridors hummed with it, and even under-servants
were to be seen discussing the thing, just as though it mattered to
them.

‘Have a cigar, Mr Racksole,’ said the urbane Mr Babylon, ‘and a mouthful
of the oldest cognac in all Europe.’

In a few minutes these two were talking eagerly, rapidly. Felix Babylon
was astonished at Racksole’s capacity for absorbing the details of hotel
management. And as for Racksole he soon realized that Felix Babylon must
be a prince of hotel managers. It had never occurred to Racksole before
that to manage an hotel, even a large hotel, could be a specially
interesting affair, or that it could make any excessive demands upon the
brains of the manager; but he came to see that he had underrated the
possibilities of an hotel. The business of the Grand Babylon was
enormous. It took Racksole, with all his genius for organization,
exactly half an hour to master the details of the hotel laundry-work.
And the laundry-work was but one branch of activity amid scores, and not
a very large one at that. The machinery of checking supplies, and of
establishing a mean ratio between the raw stuff received in the kitchen
and the number of meals served in the salle à manger and the private
rooms, was very complicated and delicate. When Racksole had grasped it,
he at once suggested some improvements, and this led to a long
theoretical discussion, and the discussion led to digressions, and then
Felix Babylon, in a moment of absent-mindedness, yawned.

Racksole looked at the gilt clock on the high mantelpiece.

‘Great Scott!’ he said. ‘It’s three o’clock. Mr Babylon, accept my
apologies for having kept you up to such an absurd hour.’

‘I have not spent so pleasant an evening for many years. You have let me
ride my hobby to my heart’s content. It is I who should apologize.’

Racksole rose.

‘I should like to ask you one question,’ said Babylon. ‘Have you ever
had anything to do with hotels before?’

‘Never,’ said Racksole.

‘Then you have missed your vocation. You could have been the greatest of
all hotel-managers. You would have been greater than me, and I am
unequalled, though I keep only one hotel, and some men have half a
dozen. Mr Racksole, why have you never run an hotel?’

‘Heaven knows,’ he laughed, ‘but you flatter me, Mr Babylon.’

‘I? Flatter? You do not know me. I flatter no one, except, perhaps, now
and then an exceptionally distinguished guest. In which case I give
suitable instructions as to the bill.’

‘Speaking of distinguished guests, I am told that a couple of German
princes are coming here to-morrow.’

‘That is so.’

‘Does one do anything? Does one receive them formally--stand bowing in
the entrance-hall, or anything of that sort?’

‘Not necessarily. Not unless one wishes. The modern hotel proprietor is
not like an innkeeper of the Middle Ages, and even princes do not expect
to see him unless something should happen to go wrong. As a matter of
fact, though the Grand Duke of Posen and Prince Aribert have both
honoured me by staying here before, I have never even set eyes on them.
You will find all arrangements have been made.’

They talked a little longer, and then Racksole said good night. ‘Let me
see you to your room. The lifts will be closed and the place will be
deserted.

As for myself, I sleep here,’ and Mr Babylon pointed to an inner door.

‘No, thanks,’ said Racksole; ‘let me explore my own hotel unaccompanied.
I believe I can discover my room.’ When he got fairly into the passages,
Racksole was not so sure that he could discover his own room. The number
was 107, but he had forgotten whether it was on the first or second
floor.

Travelling in a lift, one is unconscious of floors. He passed several
lift-doorways, but he could see no glint of a staircase; in all self-
respecting hotels staircases have gone out of fashion, and though hotel
architects still continue, for old sakes’ sake, to build staircases,
they are tucked away in remote corners where their presence is not
likely to offend the eye of a spoiled and cosmopolitan public. The hotel
seemed vast, uncanny, deserted. An electric light glowed here and there
at long intervals. On the thick carpets, Racksole’s thinly-shod feet
made no sound, and he wandered at ease to and fro, rather amused, rather
struck by the peculiar senses of night and mystery which had suddenly
come over him. He fancied he could hear a thousand snores peacefully
descending from the upper realms. At length he found a staircase, a very
dark and narrow one, and presently he was on the first floor. He soon
discovered that the numbers of the rooms on this floor did not get
beyond seventy. He encountered another staircase and ascended to the
second floor. By the decoration of the walls he recognized this floor as
his proper home, and as he strolled through the long corridor he
whistled a low, meditative whistle of satisfaction. He thought he heard
a step in the transverse corridor, and instinctively he obliterated
himself in a recess which held a service-cabinet and a chair. He did
hear a step. Peeping cautiously out, he perceived, what he had not
perceived previously, that a piece of white ribbon had been tied round
the handle of the door of one of the bedrooms. Then a man came round the
corner of the transverse corridor, and Racksole drew back. It was Jules-
-Jules with his hands in his pockets and a slouch hat over his eyes, but
in other respects attired as usual.

Racksole, at that instant, remembered with a special vividness what
Felix Babylon had said to him at their first interview. He wished he had
brought his revolver. He didn’t know why he should feel the desirability
of a revolver in a London hotel of the most unimpeachable fair fame, but
he did feel the desirability of such an instrument of attack and
defence. He privately decided that if Jules went past his recess he
would take him by the throat and in that attitude put a few plain
questions to this highly dubious waiter. But Jules had stopped. The
millionaire made another cautious observation. Jules, with infinite
gentleness, was turning the handle of the door to which the white ribbon
was attached. The door slowly yielded and Jules disappeared within the
room. After a brief interval, the night-prowling Jules reappeared,
closed the door as softly as he had opened it, removed the ribbon,
returned upon his steps, and vanished down the transverse corridor.

‘This is quaint,’ said Racksole; ‘quaint to a degree!’

It occurred to him to look at the number of the room, and he stole
towards it.

‘Well, I’m d--d!’ he murmured wonderingly.

The number was 111, his daughter’s room! He tried to open it, but the
door was locked. Rushing to his own room, No. 107, he seized one of a
pair of revolvers (the kind that are made for millionaires) and followed
after Jules down the transverse corridor. At the end of this corridor
was a window; the window was open; and Jules was innocently gazing out
of the window. Ten silent strides, and Theodore Racksole was upon him.

‘One word, my friend,’ the millionaire began, carelessly waving the
revolver in the air. Jules was indubitably startled, but by an admirable
exercise of self-control he recovered possession of his faculties in a
second.

‘Sir?’ said Jules.

‘I just want to be informed, what the deuce you were doing in No. 111 a
moment ago.’

‘I had been requested to go there,’ was the calm response.

‘You are a liar, and not a very clever one. That is my daughter’s room.
Now--out with it, before I decide whether to shoot you or throw you into
the street.’

‘Excuse me, sir, No. 111 is occupied by a gentleman.’

‘I advise you that it is a serious error of judgement to contradict me,
my friend. Don’t do it again. We will go to the room together, and you
shall prove that the occupant is a gentleman, and not my daughter.’

‘Impossible, sir,’ said Jules.

‘Scarcely that,’ said Racksole, and he took Jules by the sleeve. The
millionaire knew for a certainty that Nella occupied No. 111, for he had
examined the room with her, and himself seen that her trunks and her maid and
herself had arrived there in safety. ‘Now open the door,’ whispered
Racksole, when they reached No.111.

‘I must knock.’

‘That is just what you mustn’t do. Open it. No doubt you have your pass-
key.’

Confronted by the revolver, Jules readily obeyed, yet with a deprecatory
gesture, as though he would not be responsible for this outrage against
the decorum of hotel life. Racksole entered. The room was brilliantly
lighted.

‘A visitor, who insists on seeing you, sir,’ said Jules, and fled.

Mr Reginald Dimmock, still in evening dress, and smoking a cigarette,
rose hurriedly from a table.

‘Hello, my dear Mr Racksole, this is an unexpected--ah--pleasure.’

‘Where is my daughter? This is her room.’

‘Did I catch what you said, Mr Racksole?’

‘I venture to remark that this is Miss Racksole’s room.’

‘My good sir,’ answered Dimmock, ‘you must be mad to dream of such a
thing.

Only my respect for your daughter prevents me from expelling you
forcibly, for such an extraordinary suggestion.’

A small spot half-way down the bridge of the millionaire’s nose turned
suddenly white.

‘With your permission,’ he said in a low calm voice, ‘I will examine the
dressing-room and the bath-room.’

‘Just listen to me a moment,’ Dimmock urged, in a milder tone.

‘I’ll listen to you afterwards, my young friend,’ said Racksole, and he
proceeded to search the bath-room, and the dressing-room, without any
result whatever. ‘Lest my attitude might be open to misconstruction, Mr
Dimmock, I may as well tell you that I have the most perfect confidence
in my daughter, who is as well able to take care of herself as any woman
I ever met, but since you entered it there have been one or two rather
mysterious occurrences in this hotel. That is all.’ Feeling a draught of
air on his shoulder, Racksole turned to the window. ‘For instance,’ he
added, ‘I perceive that this window is broken, badly broken, and from
the outside.

Now, how could that have occurred?’

‘If you will kindly hear reason, Mr Racksole,’ said Dimmock in his best
diplomatic manner, ‘I will endeavour to explain things to you. I
regarded your first question to me when you entered my room as being
offensively put, but I now see that you had some justification.’ He
smiled politely. ‘I was passing along this corridor about eleven
o’clock, when I found Miss Racksole in a difficulty with the hotel
servants. Miss Racksole was retiring to rest in this room when a large
stone, which must have been thrown from the Embankment, broke the
window, as you see. Apart from the discomfort of the broken window, she
did not care to remain in the room. She argued that where one stone had
come another might follow. She therefore insisted on her room being
changed. The servants said that there was no other room available with a
dressing-room and bath-room attached, and your daughter made a point of
these matters. I at once offered to exchange apartments with her. She
did me the honour to accept my offer. Our respective belongings were
moved--and that is all. Miss Racksole is at this moment, I trust, asleep
in No. 124.’

Theodore Racksole looked at the young man for a few seconds in silence.

There was a faint knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ said Racksole loudly.

Someone pushed open the door, but remained standing on the mat. It was
Nella’s maid, in a dressing-gown.

‘Miss Racksole’s compliments, and a thousand excuses, but a book of hers
was left on the mantelshelf in this room. She cannot sleep, and wishes
to read.’

‘Mr Dimmock, I tender my apologies--my formal apologies,’ said Racksole,
when the girl had gone away with the book. ‘Good night.’

‘Pray don’t mention it,’ said Dimmock suavely--and bowed him out.