“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.