'Oh!' Babylon smiled. 'I should not like to guess. He has had unique opportunities
- opportunities.'
'Should you consider twenty thousand an extraordinary sum under the circumstances?'
'Not at all. Has he been confiding in you?'
'Somewhat. I have dismissed him.'
'You have dismissed him?'
'Why not?'
'There is no reason why not. But I have felt inclined to dismiss him for the past ten years, and never found courage to do it.'
'It was a perfectly simple proceeding, I assure you. Before I had done with him, I rather liked the fellow.'
'Miss Spencer and Jules - both gone in one day!' mused Felix Babylon.
'And no one to take their places,' said Racksole. 'And yet the hotel continues its way!'
But when Racksole reached the Grand Babylon he found that Miss Spencer's chair in the bureau was occupied by a stately and imperious girl, dressed becomingly in black.
'Heavens, Nella!' he cried, going to the bureau. 'What are you doing here?'
'I am taking Mis Spencer's place. I want to help you with your hotel, Dad. I fancy I shall make an excellent hotel clerk. I have arranged with a Miss Selina Smith, one of the typists in the office, to put me up to all the tips and tricks, and I shall do very well.'
'But look here, Helen Racksole. We shall have the whole of London talking about this thing - the greatest of all American heiresses a hotel clerk! And I came here for quiet and rest!'
'I suppose it was for the sake of quiet and rest that you bought the hotel, Papa?'
'You would insist on the steak,' he retorted. 'Get out of this, on the instant.'
'Here I am, here to stay,' said Nella, and deliberately laughed at her parent.
Just then the face of a fair-haired man of about thirty years appeared at the bureau window. He was very well-dressed, very aristocratic in his pose, and he seemed rather angry.
He looked fixedly at Nella and started back.
'Ach!' he exclaimed. 'You!'
'Yes, your Highness, it is indeed I. Father, this is his Serene Highness Prince Aribert of Posen - one of our most esteemed customers.'
'You know my name, Fraulein?' the new-comer murmured in German.
'Certainly, Prince,' Nella replied sweetly. 'You were plain Count Steenbock last spring in Paris - doubtless travelling incognito - '
'Silence,' he entreated, with a wave of the hand, and his forehead went as white as paper.
5. What Occurred To Reginald Dimmock
IN another moment they were all three talking quite nicely, and with at any rate an appearance of being natural. Prince Aribert became suave, even deferential to Nella, and more friendly towards Nella's father than their respective positions demanded. The latter amused himself by studying this sprig of royalty, the first with whom he had ever come into contact. He decided that the young fellow was personable enough, 'had no frills on him,'
and would make an exceptionally good commercial traveller for a first-class firm.
Such was Theodore Racksole's preliminary estimate of the man who might one day be the reigning Grand Duke of Posen.
It occurred to Nella, and she smiled at the idea, that the bureau of the hotel was scarcely the correct place in which to receive this august young man. There he stood, with his head half-way through the bureau window, negligently leaning against the woodwork, just as though he were a stockbroker or the manager of a New York burlesque company.
'Is your Highness travelling quite alone?' she asked.
'By a series of accidents I am,' he said. 'My equerry was to have met me at Charing Cross, but he failed to do so - I cannot imagine why.'
'Mr Dimmock?' questioned Racksole.
'Yes, Dimmock. I do not remember that he ever missed an appointment before.
You know him? He has been here?'
'He dined with us last night,' said Racksole - 'on Nella's invitation,' he added maliciously; 'but to-day we have seen nothing of him. I know, however, that he has engaged the State apartments, and also a suite adjoining the State apartments - No. 55. That is so, isn't it, Nella?'
'Yes, Papa,' she said, having first demurely examined a ledger. 'Your Highness would doubtless like to be conducted to your room - apartments I mean.' Then Nella laughed deliberately at the Prince, and said, 'I don't know who is the proper person to conduct you, and that's a fact. The truth is that Papa and I are rather raw yet in the hotel line. You see, we only bought the place last night.'
'You have bought the hotel!' exclaimed the Prince.
'That's so,' said Racksole.
'And Felix Babylon has gone?'
