Y uncle, Colonel Jeremy Sundown, was a strange man. He was also old and my only relative. Every Sunday at three o'clock I would call at his Club: but, though, if ever I made excuse, he was greatly annoyed, when I came he treated me with rudeness and would always forgo his tea, lest he should have to pay for mine as well.
I must frankly confess that for a long time my attention to him was interested, for I believed him to be rich; but my worldly wisdom was presently suitably served, for one day he bluntly requested the loan of fifty pounds. I am glad to remember that I quickly wrote him a cheque and that I had the decency thereafter to be more punctilious about visiting him. Indeed, I once or twice went so far as to ask him to dine with me, but he each time refused. Three more small loans I made him, but he plainly disliked asking me to lend him money and never referred to the matter of paying me back.
Then, one day, I heard he had died on the steps of his Club; and two days later I learned that he had left me three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
I had always declared that, if ever I became a rich man, I would lead a life of complete and impregnable idleness: but, after six months of leisure in the South of France, I could bear this condition no longer and wrote desperately to George Lustre, who was a City solicitor and an old friend of mine, asking him to keep his eyes open for any suitable job.
To my delight, he replied by return of post, saying that my letter had been timely, for that he had waiting at that moment a singular piece of work, for which, said he, I can find no takers at all, because, as luck will have it, it is a rich man's job.
That was enough for me; and, telling my servants to follow, I set out for London forthwith.
So it fell out that at eight o'clock on a fine July evening I ran into Blois, with dust lying on my face and tar dripping from the wings of my new Rolls-Royce. I was healthily tired, for, leaving at dawn, I had come from Grasse in the day. And that is a long journey.
I left my dressing-case at The Hotel and drove to a garage where I knew they would care for the car. Then I walked back to the hotel and half an hour later sat down to a decent meal.
When this was over, I was almost too tired to smoke, and, after a cigarette, I defied the law of digestion and went to bed.
I had given careful instructions that I was not to be called and was fully expecting to sleep for ten or twelve hours; but no more than three had gone by before I was awakened by the violent clamour of a powerful electric gong.
For some moments I heard it in my dreams, but at last I opened my eyes.
The hotel was on fire.
Within and without the building, everybody present seemed to have lost their wits: I never have heard such an outcry, and, what with the noise which the guests and staff made negotiating passages and stairs, the howls of the crowd which had already collected in the street, the shrieks of frightened women and the deafening persistence of the gong, anyone might have thought that the end of the world was at hand. Yet there seemed to me to be no imminent danger, for, though I could smell the smoke, I could hear no sound of the fire and, when I looked out of mj window, there were no flames to be seen. Moreover, the electric light was still working; so I put on a coat and some trousers and, thrusting all else that I had into my dressing-case, left my room and made my way down to the hall.
I believe I was the last person to leave the hotel, and, as I gained the street, for the first time a glow appeared in the windows of a chamber upon the first floor.
Even then the building could most certainly have been saved, but the firemen did not arrive, and the police, who had formed a cordon, refused to permit anyone else to enter or re-enter the house.
In vain the luckless proprietor begged to be allowed to return and empty his safe: in vain a tall American insisted that it would take him less than one minute to fetch his wife's jewels: in vain I collected six porters and declared that, armed with buckets, we alone could get the fire under in a quarter of an hour. The answer was always the same. 'It is too late now. You should not have left the house.'
It was an outrageous business: but that is the way of France, and, since Fire waits for no man, by the time the brigade arrived, the building was doomed.
The hotel stood well back from the street in a sort of place, and I was standing, with my back to the front of a shop, immediately opposite, watching the conflagration, when I became aware of a girl who was standing beside me doing the same.