The Grand Babylon Hotel - Arnold Bennett (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📗

salute with her arm. The officer of the bridge of the Swallow hailed the yacht, but the man at the wheel offered no reply. In another minute the Swallow was nothing but a blot in the distance.

Nella tried to sit straight in the deck-chair, but she found herself unable to do so. Throwing off the rug which covered her, she discovered that she had been tied to the chair by means of a piece of broad webbing. Instantly she was alert, awake, angry; she knew that her perils were not over; she felt that possibly they had scarcely yet begun. Her lazy contentment, her dreamy sense of peace and repose, vanished utterly, and she steeled herself to meet the dangers of a grave and difficult situation.

Just at that moment a man came up from below. He was a man of forty or so, clad in irreproachable blue, with a peaked yachting cap. He raised the cap politely.

“Good morning,” he said. “Beautiful sunrise, isn’t it?” The clever and calculated insolence of his tone cut her like a lash as she lay bound in the chair. Like all people who have lived easy and joyous lives in those fair regions where gold smoothes every crease and law keeps a tight hand on disorder, she found it hard to realize that there were other regions where gold was useless and law without power. Twenty-four hours ago she would have declared it impossible that such an experience as she had suffered could happen to anyone; she would have talked airily about civilization and the nineteenth century, and progress and the police. But her experience was teaching her that human nature remains always the same, and that beneath the thin crust of security on which we good citizens exist the dark and secret forces of crime continue to move, just as they did in the days when you couldn’t go from Cheapside to Chelsea without being set upon by thieves. Her experience was in a fair way to teach her this lesson better than she could have learnt it even in the bureaux of the detective police of Paris, London, and St. Petersburg.

“Good morning,” the man repeated, and she glanced at him with a sullen, angry gaze.

“You!” she exclaimed, “You, Mr. Thomas Jackson, if that is your name! Loose me from this chair, and I will talk to you.” Her eyes flashed as she spoke, and the contempt in them added mightily to her beauty. Mr. Thomas Jackson, otherwise Jules, erstwhile head waiter at the Grand Babylon, considered himself a connoisseur in feminine loveliness, and the vision of Nella Racksole smote him like an exquisite blow.

“With pleasure,” he replied. “I had forgotten that to prevent you from falling I had secured you to the chair;” and with a quick movement he unfastened the band. Nella stood up, quivering with fiery annoyance and scorn.

“Now,” she said, fronting him, “what is the meaning of this?”

“You fainted,” he replied imperturbably. “Perhaps you don’t remember.”

The man offered her a deck-chair with a characteristic gesture. Nella was obliged to acknowledge, in spite of herself, that the fellow had distinction, an air of breeding. No one would have guessed that for twenty years he had been an hotel waiter. His long, lithe figure, and easy, careless carriage seemed to be the figure and carriage of an aristocrat, and his voice was quiet, restrained, and authoritative.

“That has nothing to do with my being carried off in this yacht of yours.”

“It is not my yacht,” he said, “but that is a minor detail. As to the more important matter, forgive me that I remind you that only a few hours ago you were threatening a lady in my house with a revolver.”

“Then it was your house?”

“Why not? May I not possess a house?” He smiled.

“I must request you to put the yacht about at once, instantly, and take me back.” She tried to speak firmly.

“Ah!” he said, “I am afraid that’s impossible. I didn’t put out to sea with the intention of returning at once, instantly.” In the last words he gave a faint imitation of her tone.

“When I do get back,” she said, “when my father gets to know of this affair, it will be an exceedingly bad day for you, Mr. Jackson.”

“But supposing your father doesn’t hear of it⁠—”

“What?”

“Supposing you never get back?”

“Do you mean, then, to have my murder on your conscience?”

“Talking of murder,” he said, “you came very near to murdering my friend, Miss Spencer. At least, so she tells me.”

“Is Miss Spencer on board?” Nella asked, seeing perhaps a faint ray of hope in the possible presence of a woman.

“Miss Spencer is not on board. There is no one on board except you and myself and a small crew⁠—a very discreet crew, I may add.”

“I will have nothing more to say to you. You must take your own course.”

“Thanks for the permission,” he said. “I will send you up some breakfast.”

He went to the saloon stairs and whistled, and a Negro boy appeared with a tray of chocolate. Nella took it, and, without the slightest hesitation, threw it overboard. Mr. Jackson walked away a few steps and then returned.

“You have spirit,” he said, “and I admire spirit. It is a rare quality.”

She made no reply. “Why did you mix yourself up in my affairs at all?” he went on. Again she made no reply, but the question set her thinking: why had she mixed herself up in this mysterious business? It was quite at variance with the usual methods of her gay and butterfly existence to meddle at all with serious things. Had she acted merely from a desire to see justice done and wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of adventure? Or was it, perhaps, the desire to be of service to His Serene Highness Prince Aribert? “It is no fault of mine that you are in this fix,” Jules continued. “I didn’t bring you into it. You brought yourself into it. You and your father⁠—you have been moving