‘Well, Father, you surely didn’t expect to keep yourself out of the papers. Besides, as regards newspapers, you ought to be glad you aren’t in New York. Just fancy what the dear old Herald would have made out of a little transaction like yours of last night.’
‘That’s true,’ assented Racksole. ‘But it’ll be all over New York to-morrow morning, all the same. The worst of it is that Babylon has gone off to Switzerland.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t know. Sudden fancy, I guess, for his native heath.’
‘What difference does it make to you?’
‘None. Only I feel sort of lonesome. I feel I want someone to lean up against in running this hotel.’
‘Father, if you have that feeling you must be getting ill.’
‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I admit it’s unusual with me. But perhaps you haven’t grasped the fact, Nella, that we’re in the middle of a rather queer business.’
‘You mean about poor Mr Dimmock?’
‘Partly Dimmock and partly other things. First of all, that Miss Spencer, or whatever her wretched name is, mysteriously disappears. Then there was the stone thrown into your bedroom. Then I caught that rascal Jules conspiring with Dimmock at three o’clock in the morning. Then your precious Prince Aribert arrives without any suite—which I believe is a most peculiar and wicked thing for a Prince to do—and moreover I find my daughter on very intimate terms with the said Prince. Then young Dimmock goes and dies, and there is to be an inquest; then Prince Eugen and his suite, who were expected here for dinner, fail to turn up at all—’