Mr. Montague. He was a far-seeing man, and to him the topographical
advantages of the theater were enormous. It was further from a
fire-station than any other building of the same insurance value
in London, even without having regard to the mystery which enveloped
its whereabouts. Often after a good dinner he would lean comfortably
back in his chair and see in the smoke of his cigar a vision of the
Windsor Theater blazing merrily, while distracted firemen galloped madly
all over London, vainly endeavoring to get some one to direct them to
the scene of the conflagration. So Mr. Montague bought the theater for
a mere song, and prepared to get busy.

Unluckily for him, the representatives of the various fire offices with
which he had effected his policies got busy first. The generous fellows
insisted upon taking off his shoulders the burden of maintaining the
fireman whose permanent presence in a theater is required by law.
Nothing would satisfy them but to install firemen of their own and pay
their salaries. This, to a man in whom the instincts of the phoenix
were so strongly developed as they were in Mr. Montague, was distinctly
disconcerting. He saw himself making no profit on the deal--a thing
which had never happened to him before.

And then Roland Bleke occurred, and Mr. Montague's belief that his race
was really chosen was restored. He sold the Windsor Theater to Roland
for twenty-five thousand pounds. It was fifteen thousand pounds more
than he himself had given for it, and this very satisfactory profit
mitigated the slight regret which he felt when it came to transferring
to Roland the insurance policies. To have effected policies amounting
to rather more than seventy thousand pounds on a building so
notoriously valueless as the Windsor Theater had been an achievement of
which Mr. Montague was justly proud, and it seemed sad to him that so