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 XXXIX

WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT STAIN

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."