‘You have bought the hotel!’ exclaimed the Prince.
‘He is going, if he has not already gone.’
‘Ah! I see,’ said the Prince; ‘this is one of your American “strokes”. You have bought to sell again, is that not it? You are on your holidays, but you cannot resist making a few thousands by way of relaxation. I have heard of such things.’
‘We sha’n’t sell again, Prince, until we are tired of our bargain. Sometimes we tire very quickly, and sometimes we don’t. It depends--eh? What?’
Racksole broke off suddenly to attend to a servant in livery who had quietly entered the bureau and was making urgent mysterious signs to him.
‘If you please, sir,’ the man by frantic gestures implored Mr Theodore Racksole to come out.
‘Pray don’t let me detain you, Mr Racksole,’ said the Prince, and therefore the proprietor of the Grand Babylon departed after the servant, with a queer, curt little bow to Prince Aribert.
‘Mayn’t I come inside?’ said the Prince to Nella immediately the millionaire had gone.
‘Impossible, Prince,’ Nella laughed. ‘The rule against visitors entering this bureau is frightfully strict.’
‘How do you know the rule is so strict if you only came into possession last night?’
‘I know because I made the rule myself this morning, your Highness.’
‘But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk to you.’
‘Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or as the friend--the acquaintance--whom I knew in Paris last year?’
‘As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.’
‘And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to your apartments?’
‘Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here soon.’
‘Then we will have tea served in father’s private room--the proprietor’s private room, you know.’
Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and behaved generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever it might concern that she was a young woman of business instincts and training, and then she stepped down from her chair of office, emerged from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led Prince Aribert to the Louis XV chamber in which her father and Felix Babylon had had their long confabulation on the previous evening.
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ she asked her companion, as she poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for a moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a young man of sane, healthy, instincts, he could think of nothing for the moment except her loveliness.