'Mr Sleszak and I will meet,' said Racksole.

'Not in this world,' said Jules quickly. 'He is dead. I heard only last night—just before our little tussle.'

There was a silence.

'It is well,' said Racksole at length. 'Prince Eugen lives, despite all plots. After all, justice is done.'

'Mr Racksole is here, but he can see no one, Miss.' The words came from behind the door, and the voice was the commissionaire's. Racksole started up, and went towards the door.

'Nonsense,' was the curt reply, in feminine tones. 'Move aside instantly.'

The door opened, and Nella entered. There were tears in her eyes.

'Oh! Dad,' she exclaimed, 'I've only just heard you were in the hotel. We looked for you everywhere. Come at once, Prince Eugen is dying—' Then she saw the man sitting on the bed, and stopped.

Later, when Jules was alone again, he remarked to himself, 'I may get that hundred thousand.'



Chapter Twenty-Eight THE STATE BEDROOM ONCE MORE

WHEN, immediately after the episode of the bottle of Romanee-Conti in the State dining-room, Prince Aribert and old Hans found that Prince Eugen had sunk in an unconscious heap over his chair, both the former thought, at the first instant, that Eugen must have already tasted the poisoned wine. But a moment's reflection showed that this was not possible. If the Hereditary Prince of Posen was dying or dead, his condition was due to some other agency than the Romanee-Conti. Aribert bent over him, and a powerful odour from the man's lips at once disclosed the cause of the disaster: it was the odour of laudanum. Indeed, the smell of that sinister drug seemed now to float heavily over the whole table. Across Aribert's mind there flashed then the true explanation. Prince Eugen, taking advantage of Aribert's attention being momentarily diverted; and yielding to a sudden impulse of despair, had decided to poison himself, and had carried out his intention on the spot.

The laudanum must have been already in his pocket, and this fact went to prove that the unfortunate Prince had previously contemplated such a proceeding, even after his definite promise. Aribert remembered now with painful vividness his nephew's words: 'I withdraw my promise. Observe that—I withdraw it.' It must have been instantly after the utterance of that formal withdrawal that Eugen attempted to destroy himself.

'It's laudanum, Hans,' Aribert exclaimed, rather helplessly.

'Surely his Highness has not taken poison?' said Hans. 'It is impossible!'

'I fear it is only too possible,' said the other. 'It's laudanum. What are we to do? Quick, man!'

'His Highness must be roused, Prince. He must have an emetic. We had better carry him to the bedroom.'

They did, and laid him on the great bed; and then Aribert mixed an emetic of mustard and water, and administered it, but without any effect. The sufferer lay motionless, with every muscle relaxed. His skin was ice-cold to the touch, and the eyelids, half-drawn, showed that the pupils were painfully contracted.

'Go out, and send for a doctor, Hans. Say that Prince Eugen has been suddenly taken ill, but that it isn't serious. The truth must never be known.'

'He must be roused, sire,' Hans said again, as he hurried from the room.

Aribert lifted his nephew from the bed, shook him, pinched him, flicked him cruelly, shouted at him, dragged him about, but to no avail. At length he desisted, from mere physical fatigue, and laid the Prince back again on the bed. Every minute that elapsed seemed an hour. Alone with the unconscious organism in the silence of the great stately chamber, under the cold yellow glare of the electric lights, Aribert became a prey to the most despairing thoughts. The tragedy of his nephew's career forced itself upon him, and it occurred to him that an early and shameful death had all along been inevitable for this good-natured, weak-purposed, unhappy child of a historic throne. A little good fortune, and his character, so evenly balanced between right and wrong, might have followed the proper path, and Eugen might have figured at any rate with dignity on the European stage. But now it appeared that all was over, the last stroke played. And in this disaster Aribert saw the ruin of his own hopes. For Aribert would have to occupy his nephew's throne, and he felt instinctively that nature had not cut him out for a throne. By a natural impulse he inwardly rebelled against the prospect of monarchy. Monarchy meant so much for which he knew himself to be entirely unfitted. It meant a political marriage, which means a forced marriage, a union against inclination. And then what of Nella—Nella!

Hans returned. 'I have sent for the nearest doctor, and also for a specialist,' he said.

'Good,' said Aribert. 'I hope they will hurry.' Then he sat down and wrote a card. 'Take this yourself to Miss Racksole. If she is out of the hotel, ascertain where she is and follow her. Understand, it is of the first importance.'

Hans bowed, and departed for the second time, and Aribert was alone again.

He gazed at Eugen, and made another frantic attempt to rouse him from the deadly stupor, but it was useless. He walked away to the window: through the opened casement he could hear the tinkle of passing hansoms on the Embankment below, whistles of door-keepers, and the hoot of steam tugs on the river. The world went on as usual, it appeared. It was an absurd world.

He desired nothing better than to abandon his princely title, and live as a plain man, the husband of the finest woman on earth.... But now!...

Pah! How selfish he was, to be thinking of himself when Eugen lay dying. Yet—Nella!

The door opened, and a man entered, who was obviously the doctor. A few curt questions, and he had grasped the essentials of the case. 'Oblige me by ringing the bell, Prince. I shall want some hot water, and an able-bodied man and a nurse.'

'Who wants a nurse?' said a voice, and Nella came quietly in. 'I am a nurse,' she added to the doctor, 'and at your orders.'

The next two hours were a struggle between life and death. The first doctor, a specialist who followed him, Nella, Prince Aribert, and old Hans formed, as it were, a league to save the dying man. None else in the hotel knew the real seriousness of the case. When a Prince falls ill, and especially by his own act, the precise truth is not issued broadcast to the universe.

According to official intelligence, a Prince is never seriously ill until he is dead. Such is statecraft.

The worst feature of Prince Eugen's case was that emetics proved futile.

Neither of the doctors could explain their failure, but it was only too apparent. The league was reduced to helplessness. At last the great specialist from Manchester Square gave it out that there was no chance for Prince Eugen unless the natural vigour of his constitution should prove capable of throwing off the poison unaided by scientific assistance, as a drunkard can sleep off his potion. Everything had been tried, even to artificial respiration and the injection of hot coffee. Having emitted this pronouncement, the great specialist from Manchester Square left. It was one o'clock in the morning. By one of those strange and futile coincidences which sometimes startle us by their subtle significance, the specialist met Theodore Racksole and his captive as they were entering the hotel. Neither had the least suspicion of the other's business.

In the State bedroom the small group of watchers surrounded the bed. The slow minutes filed away in dreary procession. Another hour passed. Then the figure on the bed, hitherto so motionless, twitched and moved; the lips parted.

'There is hope,' said the doctor, and administered a stimulant which was handed to him by Nella.

In a quarter of an hour the patient had regained consciousness. For the ten thousandth time in the history of medicine a sound constitution had accomplished a miracle impossible to the accumulated medical skill of centuries.

In due course the doctor left, saying that Prince Eugen was 'on the high road to recovery,' and promising to come again within a few hours. Morning had dawned. Nella drew the great curtains, and let in a flood of sunlight.

Old Hans, overcome by fatigue, dozed in a chair in a far corner of the room.

The reaction had been too much for him. Nella and Prince Aribert looked at each other. They had not exchanged a word about themselves, yet each knew what the other had been thinking. They clasped hands with a perfect understanding. Their brief love-making had been of the silent kind, and it was silent now. No word was uttered. A shadow had passed from over them, but only their eyes expressed relief and joy.

'Aribert!' The faint call came from the bed. Aribert went to the bedside, while Nella remained near the window.

'What is it, Eugen?' he said. 'You are better now.'

'You think so?' murmured the other. 'I want you to forgive me for all this, Aribert. I must have caused you an intolerable trouble. I did it so clumsily; that is what annoys me. Laudanum was a feeble expedient; but I could think of nothing else, and I daren't ask anyone for advice. I was obliged to go out and buy the stuff for myself. It was all very awkward.

But, thank goodness, it has not been ineffectual.'

'What do you mean, Eugen? You are better. In a day or so you will be perfectly recovered.'

'I am dying,' said Eugen quietly. 'Do not be deceived. I die because I wish to die. It is bound to be so. I know by the feel of my heart. In a few hours it will be over. The throne of Posen will be yours, Aribert. You will fill it more worthily than I have done. Don't let them know over there that I poisoned myself. Swear Hans to secrecy; swear the doctors to secrecy; and breathe no word yourself. I have been a fool, but I do not wish it to be known that I was also a coward. Perhaps it is not cowardice; perhaps it is courage, after all—courage to cut the knot. I could not have survived the disgrace of any revelations, Aribert, and revelations would have been sure to come. I have made a fool of myself, but I am ready to pay for it. We of Posen—we always pay—everything except our debts. Ah! those debts! Had it not been for those I could have faced her who was to have been my wife, to have shared my throne. I could have hidden my past, and begun again. With her help I really could have begun again. But Fate has been against me—always! always! By the way, what was that plot against me, Aribert? I forget, I forget.'

His eyes closed. There was a sudden noise. Old Hans had slipped from his chair to the floor. He picked himself up, dazed, and crept shamefacedly out of the room.

Aribert took his nephew's hand.

'Nonsense, Eugen! You are dreaming. You will be all right soon. Pull yourself together.'

'All because of a million,' the sick man moaned. 'One miserable million English pounds. The national debt of Posen is fifty millions, and I, the Prince of Posen, couldn't borrow one. If I could have got it, I might have held my head up again. Good-bye, Aribert.... Who is that girl?'

Aribert looked up. Nella was standing silent at the foot of the bed, her eyes moist. She came round to the bedside, and put her hand on the patient's heart. Scarcely could she feel its pulsation, and to Aribert her eyes expressed a sudden despair.

At that moment Hans re-entered the room and beckoned to her.

'I have heard that Herr Racksole has returned to the hotel,' he whispered, 'and that he has captured that man Jules, who they say is such a villain.'

Several times during the night Nella inquired for her father, but could gain no knowledge of his whereabouts. Now, at half-past six in the morning, a rumour had mysteriously spread among the servants of the hotel about the happenings of the night before. How it had originated no one could have determined, but it had originated.

'Where is my father?' Nella asked of Hans.

He shrugged his shoulders, and pointed upwards. 'Somewhere at the top, they say.'

Nella almost ran out of the room. Her interruption of the interview between Jules and Theodore Racksole has already been described. As she came downstairs with her father she said again, 'Prince Eugen is dying—but I think you can save him.'

'I?' exclaimed Theodore.

'Yes,' she repeated positively. 'I will tell you what I want you to do, and you must do it.'



Chapter Twenty-Nine THEODORE IS CALLED TO THE RESCUE

AS Nella passed downstairs from the top storey with her father—the lifts had not yet begun to work—she drew him into her own room, and closed the door.

'What's this all about?' he asked, somewhat mystified, and even alarmed by the extreme seriousness of her face.

'Dad,' the girl began, 'you are very rich, aren't you? very, very rich?' She smiled anxiously, timidly. He did not remember to have seen that expression on her face before. He wanted to make a facetious reply, but checked himself.

'Yes,' he said, 'I am. You ought to know that by this time.'

'How soon could you realize a million pounds?'

'A million—what?' he cried. Even he was staggered by her calm reference to this gigantic sum. 'What on earth are you driving at?'

'A million pounds, I said. That is to say, five million dollars. How soon could you realize as much as that?'

'Oh!' he answered, 'in about a month, if I went about it neatly enough. I could unload as much as that in a month without scaring Wall Street and other places. But it would want some arrangement.'

'Useless!' she exclaimed. 'Couldn't you do it quicker, if you really had to?'

'If I really had to, I could fix it in a week, but it would make things lively, and I should lose on the job.'

'Couldn't you,' she persisted, 'couldn't you go down this morning and raise a million, somehow, if it was a matter of life and death?'

He hesitated. 'Look here, Nella,' he said, 'what is it you've got up your sleeve?'

'Just answer my question, Dad, and try not to think that I'm a stark, staring lunatic.'

'I rather expect I could get a million this morning, even in London. But it would cost pretty dear. It might cost me fifty thousand pounds, and there would be the dickens of an upset in New York—a sort of grand universal slump in my holdings.'

'Why should New York know anything about it?'

'Why should New York know anything about it!' he repeated. 'My girl, when anyone borrows a million sovereigns the whole world knows about it. Do you reckon that I can go up to the Governors of the Bank of England and say, "Look here, lend Theodore Racksole a million for a few weeks, and he'll give you an IOU and a covering note on stocks"?'

'But you could get it?' she asked again.

'If there's a million in London I guess I could handle it,' he replied.

'Well, Dad,' and she put her arms round his neck, 'you've just got to go out and fix it. See? It's for me. I've never asked you for anything really big before. But I do now. And I want it so badly.'

He stared at her. 'I award you the prize,' he said, at length. 'You deserve it for colossal and immense coolness. Now you can tell me the true inward meaning of all this rigmarole. What is it?'

'I want it for Prince Eugen,' she began, at first hesitatingly, with pauses.

'He's ruined unless he can get a million to pay off his debts. He's dreadfully in love with a Princess, and he can't marry her because of this.

Her parents wouldn't allow it. He was to have got it from Sampson Levi, but he arrived too late—owing to Jules.'

'I know all about that—perhaps more than you do. But I don't see how it affects you or me.'

'The point is this, Dad,' Nella continued. 'He's tried to commit suicide—he's so hipped. Yes, real suicide. He took laudanum last night. It didn't kill him straight off—he's got over the first shock, but he's in a very weak state, and he means to die. And I truly believe he will die. Now, if you could let him have that million, Dad, you would save his life.'

Nella's item of news was a considerable and disconcerting surprise to Racksole, but he hid his feelings fairly well.

'I haven't the least desire to save his life, Nell. I don't overmuch respect your Prince Eugen. I've done what I could for him—but only for the sake of seeing fair play, and because I object to conspiracies and secret murders.

It's a different thing if he wants to kill himself. What I say is: Let him.

Who is responsible for his being in debt to the tune of a million pounds? He's only got himself and his bad habits to thank for that. I suppose if he does happen to peg out, the throne of Posen will go to Prince Aribert. And a good thing, too! Aribert is worth twenty of his nephew.'

'That's just it, Dad,' she said, eagerly following up her chance. 'I want you to save Prince Eugen just because Aribert—Prince Aribert—doesn't wish to occupy the throne. He'd much prefer not to have it.'

'Much prefer not to have it! Don't talk nonsense. If he's honest with himself, he'll admit that he'll be jolly glad to have it. Thrones are in his blood, so to speak.'

'You are wrong, Father. And the reason is this: If Prince Aribert ascended the throne of Posen he would be compelled to marry a Princess.'

'Well! A Prince ought to marry a Princess.'

'But he doesn't want to. He wants to give up all his royal rights, and live as a subject. He wants to marry a woman who isn't a Princess.'

'Is she rich?'

'Her father is,' said the girl. 'Oh, Dad! can't you guess? He—he loves me.' Her head fell on Theodore's shoulder and she began to cry.

The millionaire whistled a very high note. 'Nell!' he said at length. 'And you? Do you sort of cling to him?'

'Dad,' she answered, 'you are stupid. Do you imagine I should worry myself like this if I didn't?' She smiled through her tears. She knew from her father's tone that she had accomplished a victory.

'It's a mighty queer arrangement,' Theodore remarked. 'But of course if you think it'll be of any use, you had better go down and tell your Prince Eugen that that million can be fixed up, if he really needs it. I expect there'll be decent security, or Sampson Levi wouldn't have mixed himself up in it.'

'Thanks, Dad. Don't come with me; I may manage better alone.'

She gave a formal little curtsey and disappeared. Racksole, who had the talent, so necessary to millionaires, of attending to several matters at once, the large with the small, went off to give orders about the breakfast and the remuneration of his assistant of the evening before, Mr George Hazell. He then sent an invitation to Mr Felix Babylon's room, asking that gentleman to take breakfast with him. After he had related to Babylon the history of Jules' capture, and had a long discussion with him upon several points of hotel management, and especially as to the guarding of wine-cellars, Racksole put on his hat, sallied forth into the Strand, hailed a hansom, and was driven to the City. The order and nature of his operations there were, too complex and technical to be described here.

When Nella returned to the State bedroom both the doctor and the great specialist were again in attendance. The two physicians moved away from the bedside as she entered, and began to talk quietly together in the embrasure of the window.

'A curious case!' said the specialist.

'Yes. Of course, as you say, it's a neurotic temperament that's at the bottom of the trouble. When you've got that and a vigorous constitution working one against the other, the results are apt to be distinctly curious.

Do you consider there is any hope, Sir Charles?'

'If I had seen him when he recovered consciousness I should have said there was hope. Frankly, when I left last night, or rather this morning, I didn't expect to see the Prince alive again—let alone conscious, and able to talk. According to all the rules of the game, he ought to get over the shock to the system with perfect ease and certainty. But I don't think he will. I don't think he wants to. And moreover, I think he is still under the influence of suicidal mania. If he had a razor he would cut his throat. You must keep his strength up. Inject, if necessary. I will come in this afternoon. I am due now at St James's Palace.' And the specialist hurried away, with an elaborate bow and a few hasty words of polite reassurances to Prince Aribert.

When he had gone Prince Aribert took the other doctor aside. 'Forget everything, doctor,' he said, 'except that I am one man and you are another, and tell me the truth. Shall you be able to save his Highness? Tell me the truth.'

'There is no truth,' was the doctor's reply. 'The future is not in our hands, Prince.'

'But you are hopeful? Yes or no.'

The doctor looked at Prince Aribert. 'No!' he said shortly. 'I am not. I am never hopeful when the patient is not on my side.'

'You mean—?'

'I mean that his Royal Highness has no desire to live. You must have observed that.'

'Only too well,' said Aribert.

'And you are aware of the cause?'

Aribert nodded an affirmative.

'But cannot remove it?'

'No,' said Aribert. He felt a touch on his sleeve. It was Nella's finger.

With a gesture she beckoned him towards the ante-room.

'If you choose,' she said, when they were alone, 'Prince Eugen can be saved.

I have arranged it.'

'You have arranged it?' He bent over her, almost with an air of alarm. 'Go and tell him that the million pounds which is so necessary to his happiness will be forthcoming. Tell him that it will be forthcoming today, if that will be any satisfaction to him.'

'But what do you mean by this, Nella?'

'I mean what I say, Aribert,' and she sought his hand and took it in hers.

'Just what I say. If a million pounds will save Prince Eugen's life, it is at his disposal.'

'But how—how have you managed it? By what miracle?'

'My father,' she replied softly, 'will do anything that I ask him. Do not let us waste time. Go and tell Eugen it is arranged, that all will be well.

Go!'

'But we cannot accept this—this enormous, this incredible favour. It is impossible.'

'Aribert,' she said quickly, 'remember you are not in Posen holding a Court reception. You are in England and you are talking to an American girl who has always been in the habit of having her own way.'

The Prince threw up his hands and went back in to the bedroom. The doctor was at a table writing out a prescription. Aribert approached the bedside, his heart beating furiously. Eugen greeted him with a faint, fatigued smile.

'Eugen,' he whispered, 'listen carefully to me. I have news. With the assistance of friends I have arranged to borrow that million for you. It is quite settled, and you may rely on it. But you must get better. Do you hear me?'

Eugen almost sat up in bed. 'Tell me I am not delirious,' he exclaimed.

'Of course you aren't,' Aribert replied. 'But you mustn't sit up. You must take care of yourself.'

'Who will lend the money?' Eugen asked in a feeble, happy whisper.

'Never mind. You shall hear later. Devote yourself now to getting better.'

The change in the patient's face was extraordinary. His mind seemed to have put on an entirely different aspect. The doctor was startled to hear him murmur a request for food. As for Aribert, he sat down, overcome by the turmoil of his own thoughts. Till that moment he felt that he had never appreciated the value and the marvellous power of mere money, of the lucre which philosophers pretend to despise and men sell their souls for. His heart almost burst in its admiration for that extraordinary Nella, who by mere personal force had raised two men out of the deepest slough of despair to the blissful heights of hope and happiness. 'These Anglo-Saxons,' he said to himself, 'what a race!'

By the afternoon Eugen was noticeably and distinctly better. The physicians, puzzled for the third time by the progress of the case, announced now that all danger was past. The tone of the announcement seemed to Aribert to imply that the fortunate issue was due wholly to unrivalled medical skill, but perhaps Aribert was mistaken. Anyhow, he was in a most charitable mood, and prepared to forgive anything.

'Nella,' he said a little later, when they were by themselves again in the ante-chamber, 'what am I to say to you? How can I thank you? How can I thank your father?'

'You had better not thank my father,' she said. 'Dad will affect to regard the thing as a purely business transaction, as, of course, it is. As for me, you can—you can—'

'Well?'

'Kiss me,' she said. 'There! Are you sure you've formally proposed to me, mon prince?'

'Ah! Nell!' he exclaimed, putting his arms round her again. 'Be mine! That is all I want!'

'You'll find,' she said, 'that you'll want Dad's consent too!'

'Will he make difficulties? He could not, Nell—not with you!'

'Better ask him,' she said sweetly.

A moment later Racksole himself entered the room. 'Going on all right?' he enquired, pointing to the bedroom. 'Excellently,' the lovers answered together, and they both blushed.

'Ah!' said Racksole. 'Then, if that's so, and you can spare a minute, I've something to show you, Prince.'



Chapter Thirty CONCLUSION

'I'VE a great deal to tell you, Prince,' Racksole began, as soon as they were out of the room, 'and also, as I said, something to show you. Will you come to my room? We will talk there first. The whole hotel is humming with excitement.'

'With pleasure,' said Aribert.

'Glad his Highness Prince Eugen is recovering,' Racksole said, urged by considerations of politeness.

'Ah! As to that—' Aribert began. 'If you don't mind, we'll discuss that later, Prince,' Racksole interrupted him.

They were in the proprietor's private room.

'I want to tell you all about last night,' Racksole resumed, 'about my capture of Jules, and my examination of him this morning.' And he launched into a full account of the whole thing, down to the least details. 'You see,' he concluded, 'that our suspicions as to Bosnia were tolerably correct. But as regards Bosnia, the more I think about it, the surer I feel that nothing can be done to bring their criminal politicians to justice.'

'And as to Jules, what do you propose to do?'

'Come this way,' said Racksole, and led Aribert to another room. A sofa in this room was covered with a linen cloth. Racksole lifted the cloth—he could never deny himself a dramatic moment—and disclosed the body of a dead man.

It was Jules, dead, but without a scratch or mark on him.

'I have sent for the police—not a street constable, but an official from Scotland Yard,' said Racksole.

'How did this happen?' Aribert asked, amazed and startled. 'I understood you to say that he was safely immured in the bedroom.'

'So he was,' Racksole replied. 'I went up there this afternoon, chiefly to take him some food. The commissionaire was on guard at the door. He had heard no noise, nothing unusual. Yet when I entered the room Jules was gone.

He had by some means or other loosened his fastenings; he had then managed to take the door off the wardrobe. He had moved the bed in front of the window, and by pushing the wardrobe door three parts out of the window and lodging the inside end of it under the rail at the head of the bed, he had provided himself with a sort of insecure platform outside the window. All this he did without making the least sound. He must then have got through the window, and stood on the little platform. With his fingers he would just be able to reach the outer edge of the wide cornice under the roof of the hotel. By main strength of arms he had swung himself on to this cornice, and so got on to the roof proper. He would then have the run of the whole roof.

At the side of the building facing Salisbury Lane there is an iron fire-escape, which runs right down from the ridge of the roof into a little sunk yard level with the cellars. Jules must have thought that his escape was accomplished. But it unfortunately happened that one rung in the iron escape-ladder had rusted rotten through being badly painted. It gave way, and Jules, not expecting anything of the kind, fell to the ground. That was the end of all his cleverness and ingenuity.'

As Racksole ceased, speaking he replaced the linen cloth with a gesture from which reverence was not wholly absent.

When the grave had closed over the dark and tempestuous career of Tom Jackson, once the pride of the Grand Babylon, there was little trouble for the people whose adventures we have described. Miss Spencer, that yellow-haired, faithful slave and attendant of a brilliant scoundrel, was never heard of again. Possibly to this day she survives, a mystery to her fellow-creatures, in the pension of some cheap foreign boarding-house. As for Rocco, he certainly was heard of again. Several years after the events set down, it came to the knowledge of Felix Babylon that the unrivalled Rocco had reached Buenos Aires, and by his culinary skill was there making the fortune of a new and splendid hotel. Babylon transmitted the information to Theodore Racksole, and Racksole might, had he chosen, have put the forces of the law in motion against him. But Racksole, seeing that everything pointed to the fact that Rocco was now pursuing his vocation honestly, decided to leave him alone. The one difficulty which Racksole experienced after the demise of Jules—and it was a difficulty which he had, of course, anticipated—was connected with the police. The police, very properly, wanted to know things. They desired to be informed what Racksole had been doing in the Dimmock affair, between his first visit to Ostend and his sending for them to take charge of Jules' dead body. And Racksole was by no means inclined to tell them everything. Beyond question he had transgressed the laws of England, and possibly also the laws of Belgium; and the moral excellence of his motives in doing so was, of course, in the eyes of legal justice, no excuse for such conduct. The inquest upon Jules aroused some bother; and about ninety-and-nine separate and distinct rumours. In the end, however, a compromise was arrived at. Racksole's first aim was to pacify the inspector whose clue, which by the way was a false one, he had so curtly declined to follow up. That done, the rest needed only tact and patience. He proved to the satisfaction of the authorities that he had acted in a perfectly honest spirit, though with a high hand, and that substantial justice had been done. Also, he subtly indicated that, if it came to the point, he should defy them to do their worst. Lastly, he was able, through the medium of the United States Ambassador, to bring certain soothing influences to bear upon the situation.

One afternoon, a fortnight after the recovery of the Hereditary Prince of Posen, Aribert, who was still staying at the Grand Babylon, expressed a wish to hold converse with the millionaire. Prince Eugen, accompanied by Hans and some Court officials whom he had sent for, had departed with immense eclat, armed with the comfortable million, to arrange formally for his betrothal.

Touching the million, Eugen had given satisfactory personal security, and the money was to be paid off in fifteen years.

'You wish to talk to me, Prince,' said Racksole to Aribert, when they were seated together in the former's room.

'I wish to tell you,' replied Aribert, 'that it is my intention to renounce all my rights and titles as a Royal Prince of Posen, and to be known in future as Count Hartz—a rank to which I am entitled through my mother.

Also that I have a private income of ten thousand pounds a year, and a chateau and a town house in Posen. I tell you this because I am here to ask the hand of your daughter in marriage. I love her, and I am vain enough to believe that she loves me. I have already asked her to be my wife, and she has consented. We await your approval.'

'You honour us, Prince,' said Racksole with a slight smile, 'and in more ways than one, May I ask your reason for renouncing your princely titles?'

'Simply because the idea of a morganatic marriage would be as repugnant to me as it would be to yourself and to Nella.'

'That is good.' The Prince laughed. 'I suppose it has occurred to you that ten thousand pounds per annum, for a man in your position, is a somewhat small income. Nella is frightfully extravagant. I have known her to spend sixty thousand dollars in a single year, and have nothing to show for it at the end. Why! she would ruin you in twelve months.'

'Nella must reform her ways,' Aribert said.

'If she is content to do so,' Racksole went on, 'well and good! I consent.'

'In her name and my own, I thank you,' said Aribert gravely.

'And,' the millionaire continued, 'so that she may not have to reform too fiercely, I shall settle on her absolutely, with reversion to your children, if you have any, a lump sum of fifty million dollars, that is to say, ten million pounds, in sound, selected railway stock. I reckon that is about half my fortune. Nella and I have always shared equally.'

Aribert made no reply. The two men shook hands in silence, and then it happened that Nella entered the room.

That night, after dinner, Racksole and his friend Felix Babylon were walking together on the terrace of the Grand Babylon Hotel.

Felix had begun the conversation.

'I suppose, Racksole,' he had said, 'you aren't getting tired of the Grand Babylon?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because I am getting tired of doing without it. A thousand times since I sold it to you I have wished I could undo the bargain. I can't bear idleness. Will you sell?'

'I might,' said Racksole, 'I might be induced to sell.'

'What will you take, my friend?' asked Felix

'What I gave,' was the quick answer.

'Eh!' Felix exclaimed. 'I sell you my hotel with Jules, with Rocco, with Miss Spencer. You go and lose all those three inestimable servants, and then offer me the hotel without them at the same price! It is monstrous.' The little man laughed heartily at his own wit. 'Nevertheless,' he added, 'we will not quarrel about the price. I accept your terms.'

And so was brought to a close the complex chain of events which had begun when Theodore Racksole ordered a steak and a bottle of Bass at the table d'hote of the Grand Babylon Hotel.

THE END