Apparently he had been mistaken; for the young man, arrested by his signals, gave back a blank stare from eyes grown suddenly speechless, and then, turning on his heels, disappeared double-quick down a side-street. The Professor, thrown back into his habitual uncertainty, wavered over the question of pursuit; but the taxi was still moving forward, and before he could decide what to do it had worked its way through a throng of gaping people and drawn up before a gate surmounted by the well-remembered _Arcadie_. “There you are!” the chauffeur gestured, with the air of a parent humouring a spoilt child. _There he was!_ The Professor started to jump out, and pushing through the crowd was confronted with a smoking ruin. The garden gate, under its lying inscription, led straight into chaos; and behind where _Arcadie_ had stood, other houses, blank unknown houses, were also shouldering up to gape at the disaster. “But this is not the place!” remonstrated the Professor. “This is a house that has burnt down!” “_Parbleu_,” replied the chauffeur, still humouring him. The Professor’s temples were bursting. “But was it—_was_ it—was _this_ the Hotel _Arcadie_?” The chauffeur shrugged again and pointed to the name. “When—did it burn?” “Early yesterday.” “And the landlady—the person who kept it?” “_Ah, ça...._” “But how, in the name of pity, can I find out?” The chauffeur seemed moved by his distress. “Let Monsieur reassure himself. There was no loss of life. If Monsieur had friends or relations....” The Professor waved away the suggestion. “We could, of course, address ourselves to the police,” the chauffeur continued. The police! The mere sound of the word filled his hearer with dismay. Explain to the police about that money? How could he—and in his French? He turned cold at the idea, and in his dread of seeing himself transported to the _commissariat_ by the too-sympathetic driver, he hurriedly paid the latter off, and remained alone gazing through the gate at the drenched and smoking monument of his folly. The money—try to get back the money? It had seemed almost hopeless before; now the attempt could only expose him to all the mysterious perils of an alien law. He saw himself interrogated, investigated, his passport seized, his manuscript confiscated, and every hope of rational repose and work annihilated for months to come. He felt himself curiously eyed by the policeman who was guarding the ruins, and turned from the scene of the disaster almost as hurriedly as the young man whom he had taken—no doubt erroneously—for Taber Tring. Having reached another quarter of the town, he sat down on a bench to take stock of his situation. It was exactly what he had done two days before when, on arriving at Monte Carlo, he had found that he had missed the motorbus; and the associations of ideas once more came to his rescue.