Henry Northcote

Northcote made no further show of resistance to the inevitable, but accompanied the excited clerks into Fleet Street. The window of his room abutting on to it had already attracted the notice of the crowd that thronged its pavements. By the time he had crossed to the other side of the road and had taken up his stand with the knot of spectators that was rapidly assembling at the end of a bystreet, the smoke had increased considerably in volume.

“Not much doubt about there being a fire,” was the verdict of those around him.

The bunch of witnesses in the side street increased every instant. Persons riding on the outsides of the omnibuses stood up to look. Policemen on point-duty came out of the press of the traffic to gaze with concern and inquiry at the smoke which now was belching forth in a black mass.

“Must ha’ begun in the chimbley,” said one of Northcote’s neighbors, a man without a collar. “That’s soot.”

“It’s Pearmain’s Hotel,” said another.

“No,” said a third, “it’s Shepherd’s Inn.”

“If it’s Shepherd’s Inn it will take it all,” said a fourth. “It has been condemned by the County Council for the past two years. It is so crazy it can hardly stand up in a gale.”

“It is rotten and rat-ridden from top to bottom. It must be five hundred years old.”

“Five ’undred me leg,” said the man without a collar. “It ain’t more than two.”

“Lord Bacon lived in it, anyway.”

“Wot if he did? I tell you it ain’t more than two.”

The controversialist spat on the pavement authoritatively, and those who surrounded him, who knew he was wrong, deferred to his opinion humbly.

“There’s the flame,” said a quiet man excitedly. “Why don’t they bring the engines?”

“They want it to get a firm ’old,” said the man without a collar, “so that they can put it out in style.”

“They will have something to go at when they do come,” said a nervous man, who wore spectacles. “There it goes through the roof. Look, look, see that!”

There could be no measure of uncertainty as to the power the fire had acquired already. Smoke and flame were pouring and leaping out of the windows and through the old red tiles into the dull December sky. A stern joy held Northcote as he gazed. Every instant of delay increased his chance. It needed a holocaust to ensure his safety. He derived that thrill of impersonal satisfaction which visits a good craftsman when a work is placed before him which has been adequately planned and executed.

“The engines ought to have been round from Fenchurch Street afore now,” said one, whose mustache bristled like that of a county councillor.

“Fenchurch Street, did yer sye?” said the man without a collar. “Lord love me, they’ll send ’em round from ’Olborn.”

“They are taking a lifetime about it,” said the nervous man in a voice of intense anxiety.

However, at that moment there sounded a curious rattle of warning; policemen came running up, and immediately afterwards came the first of the engines. The crowd was now dense and the traffic was impeded. In the next few moments it had been stopped altogether and diverted into side streets. By now a large posse of constables had appeared, and they succeeded in clearing a space in which the firemen could carry out their operations. Before the hose had been placed in position two other engines had arrived.

Northcote had managed to place himself in an admirable situation among the excited throng; and although those in front of him were somewhat roughly thrust back by the police, he was able to maintain his coign of vantage. By the time the first spray of water had been flung upon the conflagration, it had not only burnt through his room into the story beneath, but also it had spread some twenty yards along the tiles.

“If it takes to burning down, it will be awkward,” said a voice near him.

“How it is spreading! They will find it difficult to keep it off the hotel.”

Northcote, in the midst of the frenzy of destruction that possessed him, now grew conscious that a hand had gripped his arm. He managed to turn his head sideways and discovered that his old schoolfellow, Hutton, was standing next to him.

“This crazy old hole has been waiting for this,” said Hutton. “It burns like tinder. If there are any poor devils who keep there, I pity them.”

“I’m one,” said Northcote quietly.

“Well, I call that really bad luck,” said his old schoolfellow fervently. “Upon my word, it will take the whole place.”

“Job’s comforter,” said Northcote.

“I say though, it is a blaze! By Jove, it has got into the hotel! It will take half Fleet Street if they don’t look out.”

“More engines,” said Northcote with satisfaction, as their hideous rattles pierced the air. “Well, they will all be wanted.”

“I say, though,” said his companion, with the growing excitement of his surroundings communicating itself to him, “this is going to be really awful. It has got down another story, and it is certainly in the hotel, and if they don’t look out it will be in the bank.”

Although half a dozen engines had arrived by this time and the supply of water was copious, the fire had spread on all sides with such alarming rapidity that the liquid sheets that were flung upon it seemed only to increase the virulence of the flames. The surrounding buildings were all more or less decrepit, while the old inn itself had not the slightest resistance to offer to the flames. The whole of its quadrangular roof, most of which lay behind, appeared, as far as the onlookers could discern, by now to be involved.

“There is something strange, fascinating, exhilarating,” said Northcote with a thrill of exaltation in his voice, “in witnessing a really great fire. The fire of London must have been the finest sight the world ever saw.”

“You don’t appear to mind very much about your rooms, I must say,” said his companion. “If I were looking on at the destruction of my goods and chattels and the roof that protects my head, I don’t think I should be able to raise much enthusiasm for the spectacle.”

“It will probably take half Fleet Street. What is my wretched little attic in comparison with that?”

“Somehow in the circumstances I don’t think I could play the philosopher myself.”

“It is all up with the hotel,” said Northcote. “It will be into a few of these newspaper offices before long. Conceive a holocaust that places the press of England in danger! Ha, ha, there goes the roof of my room!”

“Why, that is where the fire began! You don’t mean to say the fire began in your room?”

“Yes, that is where the fire began.”

“No! How did it begin? Were you in it when it started?”

“Yes, I was in it when it started.”

“No!”

“I started it myself.”

“Did you overturn a lamp? Or did it begin in the chimney?”

“Well, if you must know,” said Northcote, “you shall hear the true facts. A lady called upon me last evening, and very kindly stayed the night. But this morning when I wanted to turn her out she refused to go. And further, she showed temper and made herself distinctly objectionable. Therefore I lost patience with her, and being a man of my hands I twisted her neck. But when I had managed to do that—by Jove, it is into the bank! we shall soon be able to reckon the damage by a cool million and it has only just begun!—but when I had managed to twist her neck, the question arose how to get rid of her remains. You see to have her unvirtuous person found in my room would not help this career at the bar I am just about to begin. How could I get rid of the body, that was the question? Now mark the really fertile mind of genius. Why not burn down the whole place? And that, you see, is exactly what I have done, although I will admit the idea is a plagiary from that excellent old author, Charles Lamb. You remember his Chinaman who burnt down the house of his parents every time he wanted to eat roast pig?”

“Well, North, you have a pretty mind, I must say,” said his companion to whom this recital, in the circumstances which attended it, had afforded keen amusement. “But you were always a bit of a lunatic at school. Now if you had tried to persuade me that you had insured your furniture, and that you had fired your place to keep out an execution, I might have tried to swallow it.”

“That is mediocrity all over, my son,” said Northcote, linking his arm through that of his companion. “It is always craving for hard facts. It cries aloud for hard facts; they are the staff of its life, its daily bread, but you have only to present hard facts to it in a somewhat unconventional form—my God, look at the bank!—in a somewhat unconventional form, and it flings them back in your face and asks you what you take it for.”

“My dear old lunatic, what are you talking about?”

“Merely this. Your alternative of the insurance company and the furniture is ingenious but lacking in comprehensiveness. The insurance company would, after the fashion of insurance companies, have insisted on an investigation into the cause of the disaster; they might even have preferred a charge against me to save themselves a few wretched shillings; litigation would almost certainly have ensued—there goes the roof of the hotel!—and litigation which touches myself is the last thing I should be willing to risk.”

“All this is very elaborate, North, but it is hardly convincing. Why are you so unwilling to risk litigation when your whole life—and a rather important one I expect—will be bound up in it?”

“The less my name is associated in the public mind with any shady transaction the better for my career.”

“A point of honor, North. You always had the reputation at school of being rather nice about it.”

“To be frank, it is a point of expedience, my son. Henceforward you will find the notorious ‘Cad’ Northcote without fear and without stain.”

“Why?”

“Why! Because one of these days they will make him a judge.”

THE END.