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

“But why?” asked Racksole, more mystified than ever. “Why should you trouble to embalm the poor chap’s corpse?”

“Can’t you see? Doesn’t it strike you? That corpse has to be taken care of. It contains, or rather, it did contain, very serious evidence against some person or persons unknown to the police. It may be necessary to move it about from place to place. A corpse can’t be hidden for long; a corpse betrays itself. One couldn’t throw it in the Thames, for it would have been found inside twelve hours. One couldn’t bury it⁠—it wasn’t safe. The only thing was to keep it handy and movable, ready for emergencies. I needn’t inform you that, without embalming, you can’t keep a corpse handy and movable for more than four or five days. It’s the kind of thing that won’t keep. And so it was suggested that I should embalm it, and I did. Mind you, I still objected to the murder, but I couldn’t go back on a colleague, you understand. You do understand that, don’t you? Well, here you are, and here it is, and that’s all.”

Rocco leaned back in his chair as though he had said everything that ought to be said. He closed his eyes to indicate that so far as he was concerned the conversation was also closed. Theodore Racksole stood up.

“I hope,” said Rocco, suddenly opening his eyes, “I hope you’ll call in the police without any delay. It’s getting late, and I don’t like going without my night’s rest.”

“Where do you suppose you’ll get a night’s rest?” Racksole asked.

“In the cells, of course. Haven’t I told you I know when I’m beaten. I’m not so blind as not to be able to see that there’s at any rate a prima facie case against me. I expect I shall get off with a year or two’s imprisonment as accessory after the fact⁠—I think that’s what they call it. Anyhow, I shall be in a position to prove that I am not implicated in the murder of this unfortunate nincompoop.” He pointed, with a strange, scornful gesture of his elbow, to the bed. “And now, shall we go? Everyone is asleep, but there will be a policeman within call of the watchman in the portico. I am at your service. Let us go down together, Mr. Racksole. I give you my word to go quietly.”

“Stay a moment,” said Theodore Racksole curtly; “there is no hurry. It won’t do you any harm to forego another hour’s sleep, especially as you will have no work to do tomorrow. I have one or two more questions to put to you.”

“Well?” Rocco murmured, with an air of tired resignation, as if to say, “What must be must be.”

“Where has Dimmock’s corpse been during the last three or four days, since he⁠—died?”

“Oh!” answered Rocco, apparently surprised at the simplicity of the question. “It’s been in my room, and one night it was on the roof; once it went out of the hotel as luggage, but it came back the next day as a case of Demerara sugar. I forget where else it has been, but it’s been kept perfectly safe and treated with every consideration.”

“And who contrived all these manoeuvres?” asked Racksole as calmly as he could.

“I did. That is to say, I invented them and I saw that they were carried out. You see, the suspicions of your police obliged me to be particularly spry.”

“And who carried them out?”

“Ah! that would be telling tales. But I don’t mind assuring you that my accomplices were innocent accomplices. It is absurdly easy for a man like me to impose on underlings⁠—absurdly easy.”

“What did you intend to do with the corpse ultimately?” Racksole pursued his inquiry with immovable countenance.

“Who knows?” said Rocco, twisting his beautiful moustache. “That would have depended on several things⁠—on your police, for instance. But probably in the end we should have restored this mortal clay”⁠—again he jerked his elbow⁠—“to the man’s sorrowing relatives.”

“Do you know who the relatives are?”

“Certainly. Don’t you? If you don’t I need only hint that Dimmock had a Prince for his father.”

“It seems to me,” said Racksole, with cold sarcasm, “that you behaved rather clumsily in choosing this bedroom as the scene of your operations.”

“Not at all,” said Rocco. “There was no other apartment so suitable in the whole hotel. Who would have guessed that anything was going on here? It was the very place for me.”

“I guessed,” said Racksole succinctly.

“Yes, you guessed, Mr. Racksole. But I had not counted on you. You are the only smart man in the business. You are an American citizen, and I hadn’t reckoned to have to deal with that class of person.”

“Apparently I frightened you this afternoon?”

“Not in the least.”

“You were not afraid of a search?”

“I knew that no search was intended. I knew that you were trying to frighten me. You must really credit me with a little sagacity and insight, Mr. Racksole. Immediately you began to talk to me in the kitchen this afternoon I felt you were on the track. But I was not frightened. I merely decided that there was no time to be lost⁠—that I must act quickly. I did act quickly, but, it seems, not quickly enough. I grant that your rapidity exceeded mine. Let us go downstairs, I beg.”

Rocco rose and moved towards the door. With an instinctive action Racksole rushed forward and seized him by the shoulder.

“No tricks!” said Racksole. “You’re in my custody and don’t forget it.”

Rocco turned on his employer a look of gentle, dignified scorn. “Have I not informed you,” he said, “that I have the intention of going quietly?”

Racksole felt almost ashamed for the moment. It flashed across him that a man can be great, even in crime.

“What an ineffable fool you were,” said Racksole, stopping him at the threshold, “with your talents, your unique talents, to get yourself mixed up in an affair of this kind. You are ruined. And, by Jove! you were