CHAPTER Eleven THE COURT PAWNBROKER.
'MR SAMPSON LEVI wishes to see you, sir.' These words, spoken by a servant to Theodore Racksole, aroused the millionaire from a reverie which had been the reverse of pleasant.

The fact was, and it is necessary to insist on it, that Mr Racksole, owner of the Grand Babylon Hotel, was by no means in a state of self-satisfaction.

A mystery had attached itself to his hotel, and with all his acumen and knowledge of things in general he was unable to solve that mystery.

He laughed at the fruitless efforts of the police, but he could not honestly say that his own efforts had been less barren.

The public was talking, for, after all, the disappearance of poor Dimmock's body had got noised abroad in an indirect sort of way, and Theodore Racksole did not like the idea of his impeccable hotel being the subject of sinister rumours.