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

limply over the left arm of his chair; the Prince’s arms hung straight and lifeless; his eyes were closed; he was unconscious.

“Hans!” murmured Aribert. “Hans! What is this?”

XXV The Steam Launch

Mr. Tom Jackson’s notion of making good his escape from the hotel by means of a steam launch was an excellent one, so far as it went, but Theodore Racksole, for his part, did not consider that it went quite far enough.

Theodore Racksole opined, with peculiar glee, that he now had a tangible and definite clue for the catching of the Grand Babylon’s ex-waiter. He knew nothing of the Port of London, but he happened to know a good deal of the far more complicated, though somewhat smaller, Port of New York, and he was sure there ought to be no extraordinary difficulty in getting hold of Jules’ steam launch. To those who are not thoroughly familiar with it the River Thames and its docks, from London Bridge to Gravesend, seems a vast and uncharted wilderness of craft⁠—a wilderness in which it would be perfectly easy to hide even a three-master successfully. To such people the idea of looking for a steam launch on the river would be about equivalent to the idea of looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. But the fact is, there are hundreds of men between St. Katherine’s Wharf and Blackwall who literally know the Thames as the suburban householder knows his back-garden⁠—who can recognize thousands of ships and put a name to them at a distance of half a mile, who are informed as to every movement of vessels on the great stream, who know all the captains, all the engineers, all the lightermen, all the pilots, all the licensed watermen, and all the unlicensed scoundrels from the Tower to Gravesend, and a lot further. By these experts of the Thames the slightest unusual event on the water is noticed and discussed⁠—a wherry cannot change hands but they will guess shrewdly upon the price paid and the intentions of the new owner with regard to it. They have a habit of watching the river for the mere interest of the sight, and they talk about everything like housewives gathered of an evening round the cottage door. If the first mate of a Castle Liner gets the sack they will be able to tell you what he said to the captain, what the old man said to him, and what both said to the Board, and having finished off that affair they will cheerfully turn to discussing whether Bill Stevens sank his barge outside the West Indian No. 2 by accident or on purpose.

Theodore Racksole had no satisfactory means of identifying the steam launch which carried away Mr. Tom Jackson. The sky had clouded over soon after midnight, and there was also a slight mist, and he had only been able to make out that it was a low craft, about sixty feet long, probably painted black. He had personally kept a watch all through the night on vessels going upstream, and during the next morning he had a man to take his place who warned him whenever a steam launch went towards Westminster. At noon, after his conversation with Prince Aribert, he went down the river in a hired rowboat as far as the Custom House, and poked about everywhere, in search of any vessel which could by any possibility be the one he was in search of.

But he found nothing. He was, therefore, tolerably sure that the mysterious launch lay somewhere below the Custom House. At the Custom House stairs, he landed, and asked for a very high official⁠—an official inferior only to a Commissioner⁠—whom he had entertained once in New York, and who had met him in London on business at Lloyd’s. In the large but dingy office of this great man a long conversation took place⁠—a conversation in which Racksole had to exercise a certain amount of persuasive power, and which ultimately ended in the high official ringing his bell.

“Desire Mr. Hazell⁠—room No. 332⁠—to speak to me,” said the official to the boy who answered the summons, and then, turning to Racksole: “I need hardly repeat, my dear Mr. Racksole, that this is strictly unofficial.”

“Agreed, of course,” said Racksole.

Mr. Hazell entered. He was a young man of about thirty, dressed in blue serge, with a pale, keen face, a brown moustache and a rather handsome brown beard.

“Mr. Hazell,” said the high official, “let me introduce you to Mr. Theodore Racksole⁠—you will doubtless be familiar with his name. Mr. Hazell,” he went on to Racksole, “is one of our outdoor staff⁠—what we call an examining officer. Just now he is doing night duty. He has a boat on the river and a couple of men, and the right to board and examine any craft whatever. What Mr. Hazell and his crew don’t know about the Thames between here and Gravesend isn’t knowledge.”

“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Racksole simply, and they shook hands.

Racksole observed with satisfaction that Mr. Hazell was entirely at his ease.

“Now, Hazell,” the high official continued, “Mr. Racksole wants you to help in a little private expedition on the river tonight. I will give you a night’s leave. I sent for you partly because I thought you would enjoy the affair and partly because I think I can rely on you to regard it as entirely unofficial and not to talk about it. You understand? I dare say you will have no cause to regret having obliged Mr. Racksole.”

“I think I grasp the situation,” said Hazell, with a slight smile.

“And, by the way,” added the high official, “although the business is unofficial, it might be well if you wore your official overcoat. See?”

“Decidedly,” said Hazell; “I should have done so in any case.”

“And now, Mr. Hazell,” said Racksole, “will you do me the pleasure of lunching with me? If you agree, I should like to lunch at the place you usually frequent.”

So it came to pass that Theodore Racksole and George Hazell, outdoor clerk in the Customs,