whose principal delusion was that the public was pining for a constant
supply of the Higher Drama, and more especially those specimens of
the Higher Drama which flowed practically without cessation from the
restless pen of the insane old gentleman himself, the Windsor Theater
had passed from hand to hand with the agility of a gold watch in a
gathering of race-course thieves. The one anxiety of the unhappy man who
found himself, by some accident, in possession of the Windsor Theater,
was to pass it on to somebody else. The only really permanent tenant it
ever had was the representative of the Official Receiver.

Various causes were assigned for the phenomenal ill-luck of the theater,
but undoubtedly the vital objection to it as a Temple of Drama lay in
the fact that nobody could ever find the place where it was hidden.
Cabmen shook their heads on the rare occasions when they were asked to
take a fare there. Explorers to whom a stroll through the Australian
bush was child's-play, had been known to spend an hour on its trail and
finish up at the point where they had started.

It was precisely this quality of elusiveness which had first attracted
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. Mont