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

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.”

XXIX 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 I.O.U. 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