The Grand Babylon Hotel, Arnold Bennett [ereader ebook .txt] 📗

me that you cannot have dined yet, and might prefer to deal with minor questions after dinner.”

“I have not dined,” said the millionaire, with emphasis, “and in that connection will you do me a favour? Will you send for Mr. Rocco?”

“You wish to see him, naturally.”

“I do,” said the millionaire, and added, “about my dinner.”

“Rocco is a great man,” murmured Mr. Babylon as he touched the bell, ignoring the last words. “My compliments to Mr. Rocco,” he said to the page who answered his summons, “and if it is quite convenient I should be glad to see him here for a moment.”

“What do you give Rocco?” Racksole inquired.

“Two thousand a year and the treatment of an ambassador.”

“I shall give him the treatment of an ambassador and three thousand.”

“You will be wise,” said Félix Babylon.

At that moment Rocco came into the room, very softly⁠—a man of forty, thin, with long, thin hands, and an inordinately long brown silky moustache.

“Rocco,” said Félix Babylon, “let me introduce Mr. Theodore Racksole, of New York.”

“Sharmed,” said Rocco, bowing. “Ze⁠—ze, vat you call it, millionaire?”

“Exactly,” Racksole put in, and continued quickly: “Mr. Rocco, I wish to acquaint you before any other person with the fact that I have purchased the Grand Babylon Hotel. If you think well to afford me the privilege of retaining your services I shall be happy to offer you a remuneration of three thousand a year.”

“Tree, you said?”

“Three.”

“Sharmed.”

“And now, Mr. Rocco, will you oblige me very much by ordering a plain beefsteak and a bottle of Bass to be served by Jules⁠—I particularly desire Jules⁠—at table No. 17 in the dining-room in ten minutes from now? And will you do me the honour of lunching with me tomorrow?”

Mr. Rocco gasped, bowed, muttered something in French, and departed.

Five minutes later the buyer and seller of the Grand Babylon Hotel had each signed a curt document, scribbled out on the hotel notepaper. Félix Babylon asked no questions, and it was this heroic absence of curiosity, of surprise on his part, that more than anything else impressed Theodore Racksole. How many hotel proprietors in the world, Racksole asked himself, would have let that beefsteak and Bass go by without a word of comment.

“From what date do you wish the purchase to take effect?” asked Babylon.

“Oh,” said Racksole lightly, “it doesn’t matter. Shall we say from tonight?”

“As you will. I have long wished to retire. And now that the moment has come⁠—and so dramatically⁠—I am ready. I shall return to Switzerland. One cannot spend much money there, but it is my native land. I shall be the richest man in Switzerland.” He smiled with a kind of sad amusement.

“I suppose you are fairly well off?” said Racksole, in that easy familiar style of his, as though the idea had just occurred to him.

“Besides what I shall receive from you, I have half a million invested.”

“Then you will be nearly a millionaire?”

Félix Babylon nodded.

“I congratulate you, my dear sir,” said Racksole, in the tone of a judge addressing a newly-admitted barrister. “Nine hundred thousand pounds, expressed in francs, will sound very nice⁠—in Switzerland.”

“Of course to you, Mr. Racksole, such a sum would be poverty. Now if one might guess at your own wealth?” Félix Babylon was imitating the other’s freedom.

“I do not know, to five millions or so, what I am worth,” said Racksole, with sincerity, his tone indicating that he would have been glad to give the information if it were in his power.

“You have had anxieties, Mr. Racksole?”

“Still have them. I am now holiday-making in London with my daughter in order to get rid of them for a time.”

“Is the purchase of hotels your notion of relaxation, then?”

Racksole shrugged his shoulders. “It is a change from railroads,” he laughed.

“Ah, my friend, you little know what you have bought.”

“Oh! yes I do,” returned Racksole; “I have bought just the first hotel in the world.”

“That is true, that is true,” Babylon admitted, gazing meditatively at the antique Persian carpet. “There is nothing, anywhere, like my hotel. But you will regret the purchase, Mr. Racksole. It is no business of mine, of course, but I cannot help repeating that you will regret the purchase.”

“I never regret.”

“Then you will begin very soon⁠—perhaps tonight.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the Grand Babylon is the Grand Babylon. You think because you control a railroad, or an ironworks, or a line of steamers, therefore you can control anything. But no. Not the Grand Babylon. There is something about the Grand Babylon⁠—” He threw up his hands.

“Servants rob you, of course.”

“Of course. I suppose I lose a hundred pounds a week in that way. But it is not that I mean. It is the guests. The guests are too⁠—too distinguished. The great ambassadors, the great financiers, the great nobles, all the men that move the world, put up under my roof. London is the centre of everything, and my hotel⁠—your hotel⁠—is the centre of London. Once I had a King and a Dowager Empress staying here at the same time. Imagine that!”

“A great honour, Mr. Babylon. But wherein lies the difficulty?”

“Mr. Racksole,” was the grim reply, “what has become of your shrewdness⁠—that shrewdness which has made your fortune so immense that even you cannot calculate it? Do you not perceive that the roof which habitually shelters all the force, all the authority of the world, must necessarily also shelter nameless and numberless plotters, schemers, evildoers, and workers of mischief? The thing is as clear as day⁠—and as dark as night. Mr. Racksole, I never know by whom I am surrounded. I never know what is going forward. Only sometimes I get hints, glimpses of strange acts and strange secrets. You mentioned my servants. They are almost all good servants, skilled, competent. But what are they besides? For anything I know my fourth sub-chef may be an agent of some European government. For anything I know my invaluable Miss Spencer may be in the pay of a court dressmaker or a Frankfort banker. Even Rocco may be someone else in addition to Rocco.”

“That makes it all the more interesting,”