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“Eh?” said Lenox, at last looking up. “Oh, no, Graham-no, thank you, I’m quite all right. ”

“Will you take your lunch here in the library, sir?”

“No,” said Lenox. “Thanks, I’m having lunch in the City, actually. I shall be glad to get on the other side of these four walls. ”

“Indeed, sir,” said Graham. He paused before adding, “I am in the hall if you require anything. ”

“Thank you,” said Lenox.

Graham withdrew then, and Lenox sighed. Well! he thought to himself. If Graham had noticed, it had gone too far. He would have to stop worrying and go to lunch with his brother. Standing with a decisive air, Lenox patted the pockets of his jacket and went through the double doors of the library out into the hallway.

“Graham, will you call out the carriage, please? I think I’ll leave now. ”

“Of course, sir. ”

“I’ll be waiting at Chaffanbrass’s while they rub down the horses. ”

“Yes, sir,” Graham said as he began to walk downstairs. “It shouldn’t be longer than a quarter of an hour. ”

In the front hall, Lenox took his overcoat down from its peg and pulled his umbrella out of its stand. Then he took a breath, ducked outside into the rain, and crossed the street, dodging several hansom cabs and a landau with no inconsiderable agility to get to the bookshop. He pulled open the door and saw the proprietor.

“Mr.

“Mr. Lenox!” said Mr. Chaffanbrass, beaming at him from behind a small counter. “Happy anniversary!”

“Oh?”

“The fire!”

“Ah, of course. ”

As it happened, that very day, September 2, was the two hundredth anniversary of the Great Fire of 1666; what had started as a minor conflagration at the Pudding Lane bakery of Thomas Farriner, baker to Charles II, eventually consumed four-fifths of central London. By some miracle only a handful of people had died-the traditional count was reckoned at eight-but thirteen thousand buildings and nearly a hundred churches had vanished. Of the eighty thousand residents of the city, seventy thousand were left homeless. In a year that was already being heralded in some parts as the apocalypse because it contained the Number of the Beast, 666, few needed persuading in the first heady hours after the three-day blaze that the world was at an end.

“And yet,” said Lenox, “my grandfather always said the fire did our city two great services. ”

“What do you mean?”

“For one thing, it allowed Wren to build his fifty churches, as well as St. Paul’s Cathedral. The fire is the reason we live in such a beautiful city, Mr. Chaffanbrass. ”

“And the second reason?”

“Do you know how many people died of the plague in 1665?”

“How many?”

“About sixty-five thousand, and that despite two-thirds of Londoners leaving the city. The fire killed so many rats and fleas, leveled so many derelict buildings, that in the end it probably saved tens of thousands of lives. ”

Ruminatively, Mr. Chaffanbrass said, “Perhaps it’s received a bad press, then. ”

“Perhaps,” Lenox agreed. “Still, it would be better all around if it didn’t happen again. Incidentally, has my copy of Pickwick come in yet?”