'Mr Levi,' he said, 'if you
do not place the money in my hands to-morrow you will ruin one
of the oldest of reigning families, and, incidentally, you will alter
the map of Europe. You are not keeping faith, and I had relied on
you.'
'Pardon me, your Highness,' said little Levi, rising in resentment, 'it
is not I who have not kept faith. I beg to repeat that the money is
no longer at my disposal, and to bid your Highness good morning.'
And Mr Sampson Levi left the audience chamber with an
awkward, aggrieved bow. It was a scene characteristic of the end
of the nineteenth century - an overfed, commonplace, pursy little
man who had been born in a Brixton semi-detached villa, and
whose highest idea of pleasure was a Sunday up the river in an
expensive electric launch, confronting and utterly routing, in a
hotel belonging to an American millionaire, the representative of a
race of men who had fingered every page of European history for
centuries, and who still, in their native castles, were surrounded
with every outward circumstance of pomp and power.
'Aribert,' said Prince Eugen, a little later, 'you were right. It is all
over. I have only one refuge - '
'You don't mean - ' Aribert stopped, dumbfounded.
'Yes, I do,' he said quickly. 'I can manage it so that it will look like
an accident.'
Chapter Twenty-One THE RETURN OF F?LIX BABYLON
ON the evening of Prince Eugen's fateful interview with Mr
Sampson Levi, Theodore Racksole was wandering somewhat
aimlessly and uneasily about the entrance hail and adjacent
corridors of the Grand Babylon.
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