proprietor with an awkward affair on his hands. For a fraction of a
second he wished he had never bought the Grand Babylon.

A quarter of an hour later Prince Aribert, Theodore Racksole, a doctor,
and an inspector of police were in the Prince's reception-room. They
had just come from an ante-chamber, in which lay the mortal remains of
Reginald Dimmock.

'Well?' said Racksole, glancing at the doctor.

The doctor was a big, boyish-looking man, with keen, quizzical eyes.

'It is not heart disease,' said the doctor.

'Not heart disease?'

'No.'

'Then what is it?' asked the Prince.

'I may be able to answer that question after the post-mortem,' said the
doctor. 'I certainly can't answer it now. The symptoms are unusual to a
degree.'

The inspector of police began to write in a note-book.

Chapter Six IN THE GOLD ROOM

AT the Grand Babylon a great ball was given that night in the Gold Room,
a huge saloon attached to the hotel, though scarcely part of it, and
certainly less exclusive than the hotel itself. Theodore Racksole knew
nothing of the affair, except that it was an entertainment offered by
a Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi to their friends. Who Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi
were he did not know, nor could anyone tell him anything about them
except that Mr Sampson Levi was a prominent member of that part of the
Stock Exchange familiarly called the Kaffir Circus, and that his wife
was a stout lady with an aquiline nose and many diamonds, and that they
were very rich and very hospitable. Theodore Racksole did not want a
ball in his hotel that evening, and just before dinner he had almost a
mind to issue a decree that the Gold Room was to be closed and the ball
forbidden, and Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi might name the amount of damages
suffered by them. His reasons for such a course were threefold--first,
he felt depressed and uneasy; second, he didn't like the name of Sampson
Levi; and, third, he had a desire to show these so-called plutocrats
that their wealth was nothing to him, that they could not do what they
chose with Theodore Racksole, and that for two pins Theodore Racksole
would buy them up, and the whole Kaffir Circus to boot. But something
warned him that though such a high-handed proceeding might be tolerated
in America, that land of freedom, it would never be tolerated in
England. He felt instinctively that in England there are things you
can't do, and that this particular thing was one of them. So the ball