Five minutes later the buyer and seller of the Grand Babylon Hotel
had each signed a curt document, scribbled out on the hotel
note-paper. Felix Babylon asked no questions, and it was this
heroic absence of curiosity, of surprise on his part, that more than
anything else impressed Theodore Racksole. How many hotel
proprietors in the world, Racksole asked himself, would have let
that beef-steak and Bass go by without a word of comment.
'From what date do you wish the purchase to take effect?' asked
Babylon.
'Oh,' said Racksole lightly, 'it doesn't matter. Shall we say from
to-night?'
'As you will. I have long wished to retire. And now that the
moment has come - and so dramatically - I am ready. I shall return
to Switzerland. One cannot spend much money there, but it is my
native land. I shall be the richest man in Switzerland.' He smiled
with a kind of sad amusement.
'I suppose you are fairly well off?' said Racksole, in that easy
familiar style of his, as though the idea had just occurred to him.
'Besides what I shall receive from you, I have half a million
invested.'
'Then you will be nearly a millionaire?'
Felix Babylon nodded.
'I congratulate you, my dear sir,' said Racksole, in the tone of a
judge addressing a newly-admitted barrister. 'Nine hundred
thousand pounds, expressed in francs, will sound very nice - in
Switzerland.'
'Of course to you, Mr Racksole, such a sum would be poverty.
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