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

I tell you⁠—if you’ll put your cards on the table, I’ll do ditto with mine.”

“Agreed,” said Mr. Sampson Levi. “I’ll begin by explaining my interest in your hotel. I have been expecting to receive a summons from a certain Prince Eugen of Posen to attend him here, and that summons hasn’t arrived. It appears that Prince Eugen hasn’t come to London at all. Now, I could have taken my dying davy that he would have been here yesterday at the latest.”

“Why were you so sure?”

“Question for question,” said Levi. “Let’s clear the ground first, Mr. Racksole. Why did you buy this hotel? That’s a conundrum that’s been puzzling a lot of our fellows in the City for some days past. Why did you buy the Grand Babylon? And what is the next move to be?”

“There is no next move,” answered Racksole candidly, “and I will tell you why I bought the hotel; there need be no secret about it. I bought it because of a whim.” And then Theodore Racksole gave this little Jew, whom he had begun to respect, a faithful account of the transaction with Mr. Félix Babylon. “I suppose,” he added, “you find a difficulty in appreciating my state of mind when I did the deal.”

“Not a bit,” said Mr. Levi. “I once bought an electric launch on the Thames in a very similar way, and it turned out to be one of the most satisfactory purchases I ever made. Then it’s a simple accident that you own this hotel at the present moment?”

“A simple accident⁠—all because of a beefsteak and a bottle of Bass.”

“Um!” grunted Mr. Sampson Levi, stroking his triple chin.

“To return to Prince Eugen,” Racksole resumed. “I was expecting His Highness here. The State apartments had been prepared for him. He was due on the very afternoon that young Dimmock died. But he never came, and I have not heard why he has failed to arrive; nor have I seen his name in the papers. What his business was in London, I don’t know.”

“I will tell you,” said Mr. Sampson Levi, “he was coming to arrange a loan.”

“A State loan?”

“No⁠—a private loan.”

“Whom from?”

“From me, Sampson Levi. You look surprised. If you’d lived in London a little longer, you’d know that I was just the person the Prince would come to. Perhaps you aren’t aware that down Throgmorton Street way I’m called ‘The Court Pawnbroker,’ because I arrange loans for the minor, second-class Princes of Europe. I’m a stockbroker, but my real business is financing some of the little Courts of Europe. Now, I may tell you that the Hereditary Prince of Posen particularly wanted a million, and he wanted it by a certain date, and he knew that if the affair wasn’t fixed up by a certain time here he wouldn’t be able to get it by that certain date. That’s why I’m surprised he isn’t in London.”

“What did he need a million for?”

“Debts,” answered Sampson Levi laconically.

“His own?”

“Certainly.”

“But he isn’t thirty years of age?”

“What of that? He isn’t the only European Prince who has run up a million of debts in a dozen years. To a Prince the thing is as easy as eating a sandwich.”

“And why has he taken this sudden resolution to liquidate them?”

“Because the Emperor and the lady’s parents won’t let him marry till he has done so! And quite right, too! He’s got to show a clean sheet, or the Princess Anna of Eckstein-Schwartzburg will never be Princess of Posen. Even now the Emperor has no idea how much Prince Eugen’s debts amount to. If he had⁠—!”

“But would not the Emperor know of this proposed loan?”

“Not necessarily at once. It could be so managed. Twig?” Mr. Sampson Levi laughed. “I’ve carried these little affairs through before. After marriage it might be allowed to leak out. And you know the Princess Anna’s fortune is pretty big! Now, Mr. Racksole,” he added, abruptly changing his tone, “where do you suppose Prince Eugen has disappeared to? Because if he doesn’t turn up today he can’t have that million. Today is the last day. Tomorrow the money will be appropriated, elsewhere. Of course, I’m not alone in this business, and my friends have something to say.”

“You ask me where I think Prince Eugen has disappeared to?”

“I do.”

“Then you think it’s a disappearance?”

Sampson Levi nodded. “Putting two and two together,” he said, “I do. The Dimmock business is very peculiar⁠—very peculiar, indeed. Dimmock was a left-handed relation of the Posen family. Twig? Scarcely anyone knows that. He was made secretary and companion to Prince Aribert, just to keep him in the domestic circle. His mother was an Irishwoman, whose misfortune was that she was too beautiful. Twig?” (Mr. Sampson Levi always used this extraordinary word when he was in a communicative mood.) “My belief is that Dimmock’s death has something to do with the disappearance of Prince Eugen. The only thing that passes me is this: Why should anyone want to make Prince Eugen disappear? The poor little Prince hasn’t an enemy in the world. If he’s been ‘copped,’ as they say, why has he been ‘copped?’ It won’t do anyone any good.”

“Won’t it?” repeated Racksole, with a sudden flash.

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Levi.

“I mean this: Suppose some other European pauper Prince was anxious to marry Princess Anna and her fortune, wouldn’t that Prince have an interest in stopping this loan of yours to Prince Eugen? Wouldn’t he have an interest in causing Prince Eugen to disappear⁠—at any rate, for a time?”

Sampson Levi thought hard for a few moments.

“Mr. Theodore Racksole,” he said at length, “I do believe you have hit on something.”

XII Rocco and Room No. 111

On the afternoon of the same day⁠—the interview just described had occurred in the morning⁠—Racksole was visited by another idea, and he said to himself that he ought to have thought of it before. The conversation with Mr. Sampson Levi had continued for a considerable time, and the two men had exchanged various notions, and agreed to meet again, but the theory