Отель «Гранд Вавилон» / The Grand Babylon hotel

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, Fräulein?’ 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.

Chapter Five. 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.