Chapter Seven NELLA AND THE PRINCE

IT appeared impossible to Theodore Racksole that so cumbrous an article
as a corpse could be removed out of his hotel, with no trace, no hint,
no clue as to the time or the manner of the performance of the deed.
After the first feeling of surprise, Racksole grew coldly and severely
angry. He had a mind to dismiss the entire staff of the hotel. He
personally examined the night-watchman, the chambermaids and all other
persons who by chance might or ought to know something of the affair;
but without avail. The corpse of Reginald Dimmock had vanished
utterly--disappeared like a fleshless spirit.

Of course there were the police. But Theodore Racksole held the police
in sorry esteem. He acquainted them with the facts, answered their
queries with a patient weariness, and expected, nothing whatever from
that quarter. He also had several interviews with Prince Aribert
of Posen, but though the Prince was suavity itself and beyond doubt
genuinely concerned about the fate of his dead attendant, yet it seemed
to Racksole that he was keeping something back, that he hesitated to
say all he knew. Racksole, with characteristic insight, decided that the
death of Reginald Dimmock was only a minor event, which had occurred,
as it were, on the fringe of some far more profound mystery. And,
therefore, he decided to wait, with his eyes very wide open, until
something else happened that would throw light on the business. At the
moment he took only one measure--he arranged that the theft of Dimmock's
body should not appear in the newspapers. It is astonishing how well a
secret can be kept, when the possessors of the secret are handled with
the proper mixture of firmness and persuasion. Racksole managed this
very neatly. It was a complicated job, and his success in it rather
pleased him.

At the same time he was conscious of being temporarily worsted by an
unknown group of schemers, in which he felt convinced that Jules was an
important item. He could scarcely look Nella in the eyes. The girl had
evidently expected him to unmask this conspiracy at once, with a single
stroke of the millionaire's magic wand. She was thoroughly accustomed,
in the land of her birth, to seeing him achieve impossible feats. Over
there he was a 'boss'; men trembled before his name; when he wished a
thing to happen--well, it happened; if he desired to know a thing, he
just knew it. But here, in London, Theodore Racksole was not