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

“What is that?” asked the millionaire sharply.

“That is merely a ventilation grating. Good ventilation is absolutely essential.”

“Looks broken, doesn’t it?” Racksole suggested and then, putting a finger quickly on Babylon’s shoulder, “there’s someone in the cellar. Can’t you hear breathing, down there, behind that bin?”

The two men stood tense and silent for a while, listening, under the ray of the single electric light in the ceiling. Half the cellar was involved in gloom. At length Racksole walked firmly down the central passageway between the bins and turned to the corner at the right.

“Come out, you villain!” he said in a low, well-nigh vicious tone, and dragged up a cowering figure.

He had expected to find a man, but it was his own daughter, Nella Racksole, upon whom he had laid angry hands.

“Well, Father,” Nella greeted her astounded parent. “You should make sure that you have got hold of the right person before you use all that terrible muscular force of yours. I do believe you have broken my shoulder bone.” She rubbed her shoulder with a comical expression of pain, and then stood up before the two men. The skirt of her dark grey dress was torn and dirty, and the usually trim Nella looked as though she had been shot down a canvas fire-escape. Mechanically she smoothed her frock, and gave a straightening touch to her hair.

“Good evening, Miss Racksole,” said Félix Babylon, bowing formally. “This is an unexpected pleasure.” Félix’s drawing-room manners never deserted him upon any occasion whatever.

“May I inquire what you are doing in my wine cellar, Nella Racksole?” said the millionaire a little stiffly. He was certainly somewhat annoyed at having mistaken his daughter for a criminal; moreover, he hated to be surprised, and upon this occasion he had been surprised beyond any ordinary surprise; lastly, he was not at all pleased that Nella should be observed in that strange predicament by a stranger.

“I will tell you,” said Nella. “I had been reading rather late in my room⁠—the night was so close. I heard Big Ben strike half-past twelve, and then I put the book down, and went out on to the balcony of my window for a little fresh air before going to bed. I leaned over the balcony very quietly⁠—you will remember that I am on the third floor now⁠—and looked down below into the little sunk yard which separates the wall of the hotel from Salisbury Lane. I was rather astonished to see a figure creeping across the yard. I knew there was no entrance into the hotel from that yard, and besides, it is fifteen or twenty feet below the level of the street. So I watched. The figure went close up against the wall, and disappeared from my view. I leaned over the balcony as far as I dared, but I couldn’t see him. I could hear him, however.”

“What could you hear?” questioned Racksole sharply.

“It sounded like a sawing noise,” said Nella; “and it went on for quite a long time⁠—nearly a quarter of an hour, I should think⁠—a rasping sort of noise.”

“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 Félix, 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. ‘Good night, 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 someone. 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 Félix, bowing again, and absently