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

And Jules laughed a low, penetrating laugh.

He was in the midst of this laugh when he lurched suddenly forward.

“What’r’ you doing of aboard my barge? Off you goes!” It was a boy’s small shrill voice that sounded in the night. A ragged boy’s small form had appeared silently behind Jules, and two small arms with a vicious shove precipitated him into the water. He fell with a fine gurgling splash. It was at once obvious that swimming was not among Jules’ accomplishments. He floundered wildly and sank. When he reappeared he was dragged into the Customs boat. Rope was produced, and in a minute or two the man lay ignominiously bound in the bottom of the boat. With the aid of a mudlark⁠—a mere barge boy, who probably had no more right on the barge than Jules himself⁠—Racksole had won his game. For the first time for several weeks the millionaire experienced a sensation of equanimity and satisfaction. He leaned over the prostrate form of Jules, Hazell’s professional skewer in his hand.

“What are you going to do with him now?” asked Hazell.

“We’ll row up to the landing steps in front of the Grand Babylon. He shall be well lodged at my hotel, I promise him.”

Jules spoke no word.

Before Racksole parted company with the Customs man that night Jules had been safely transported into the Grand Babylon Hotel and the two watermen had received their £10 apiece.

“You will sleep here?” said the millionaire to Mr. George Hazell. “It is late.”

“With pleasure,” said Hazell. The next morning he found a sumptuous breakfast awaiting him, and in his table-napkin was a Bank of England note for a hundred pounds. But, though he did not hear of them till much later, many things had happened before Hazell consumed that sumptuous breakfast.

XXVII The Confession of Mr. Tom Jackson

It happened that the small bedroom occupied by Jules during the years he was headwaiter at the Grand Babylon had remained empty since his sudden dismissal by Theodore Racksole. No other headwaiter had been formally appointed in his place; and, indeed, the absence of one man⁠—even the unique Jules⁠—could scarcely have been noticed in the enormous staff of a place like the Grand Babylon. The functions of a headwaiter are generally more ornamental, spectacular, and morally impressive than useful, and it was so at the great hotel on the Embankment. Racksole accordingly had the excellent idea of transporting his prisoner, with as much secrecy as possible, to this empty bedroom. There proved to be no difficulty in doing so; Jules showed himself perfectly amenable to a show of superior force.

Racksole took upstairs with him an old commissionaire who had been attached to the outdoor service of the hotel for many years⁠—a grey-haired man, wiry as a terrier and strong as a mastiff. Entering the bedroom with Jules, whose hands were bound, he told the commissionaire to remain outside the door.

Jules’ bedroom was quite an ordinary apartment, though perhaps slightly superior to the usual accommodation provided for servants in the caravanserais of the West End. It was about fourteen by twelve. It was furnished with a bedstead, a small wardrobe, a small washstand and dressing-table, and two chairs. There were two hooks behind the door, a strip of carpet by the bed, and some cheap ornaments on the iron mantelpiece. There was also one electric light. The window was a little square one, high up from the floor, and it looked on the inner quadrangle.

The room was on the top storey⁠—the eighth⁠—and from it you had a view sheer to the ground. Twenty feet below ran a narrow cornice about a foot wide; three feet or so above the window another and wider cornice jutted out, and above that was the high steep roof of the hotel, though you could not see it from the window. As Racksole examined the window and the outlook, he said to himself that Jules could not escape by that exit, at any rate. He gave a glance up the chimney, and saw that the flue was far too small to admit a man’s body.

Then he called in the commissionaire, and together they bound Jules firmly to the bedstead, allowing him, however, to lie down. All the while the captive never opened his mouth⁠—merely smiled a smile of disdain. Finally Racksole removed the ornaments, the carpet, the chairs and the hooks, and wrenched away the switch of the electric light. Then he and the commissionaire left the room, and Racksole locked the door on the outside and put the key in his pocket.

“You will keep watch here,” he said to the commissionaire, “through the night. You can sit on this chair. Don’t go to sleep. If you hear the slightest noise in the room blow your cab-whistle; I will arrange to answer the signal. If there is no noise do nothing whatever. I don’t want this talked about, you understand. I shall trust you; you can trust me.”

“But the servants will see me here when they get up tomorrow,” said the commissionaire, with a faint smile, “and they will be pretty certain to ask what I’m doing of up here. What shall I say to ’em?”

“You’ve been a soldier, haven’t you?” asked Racksole.

“I’ve seen three campaigns, sir,” was the reply, and, with a gesture of pardonable pride, the grey-haired fellow pointed to the medals on his breast.

“Well, supposing you were on sentry duty and some meddlesome person in camp asked you what you were doing⁠—what should you say?”

“I should tell him to clear off or take the consequences, and pretty quick too.”

“Do that tomorrow morning, then, if necessary,” said Racksole, and departed.

It was then about one o’clock a.m. The millionaire retired to bed⁠—not his own bed, but a bed on the seventh storey. He did not, however, sleep very long. Shortly after dawn he was wide awake, and thinking busily about Jules.

He was, indeed, very curious to know Jules’ story, and he determined, if the thing could be done at