A blue sign with gilded letters beckoned me, and I paused to read it.  The Touring Club of France recommended to the passing stranger the Hotel of the Three Kings.  Here I was, then.  From the street a dark, arched, stone passage of distinctly moyen-age flavor led me into a courtyard paved with great square cobbles, round the four sides of which were built the walls of the inn.  Winding, somewhat crazy-looking, stone staircases ran up to the galleries from which the bedroom doors informally opened; vines, as yet leafless, wreathed the gray walls and framed the shuttered windows; before me I glimpsed a kitchen with a magnificent oaken ceiling and a medieval fireplace in which a fire roared redly; and at my right yawned what had doubtless been a stable once upon a time, but with the advent of the motor, had become a primitive garage.

I took the liberty of peering inside.  Eureka!  There, resting comfortably from its day’s labors, stood a dark-blue automobile.  If this was not the motor that had brought Miss Falconer from the rue St.-Dominique, it was its twin.

“You’ll notice it’s alone, though,” I told myself.  “Where’s the gray car?”

My mood was grumpy in the extreme.  The inn was charming, but I knew from sad experience that no place combines all attractions, and that a spot so picturesque as this would probably lack running water and electric light.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur!”

A buxom, smiling, bare-armed woman had emerged from the kitchen door.  She was plainly the hostess.  I set down my bag and removed my hat.

“Madame,” I responded, “I wish you a good evening.  I desire a room for the night in the Hotel of the Three Kings.”

“To accommodate monsieur,” she assured me warmly, “will be a pleasure.  Monsieur is an artist without doubt?”

I wanted to say “Et tu, Brute!” but I didn’t.  When one came to think of it, I had no very good reason to advance for having appeared at Bleau.  It wasn’t the sort of place into which one would drop from the skies by pure chance, either.  I was lucky to find a ready-made explanation.

“But assuredly,” said I.

She disappeared into the kitchen, returned immediately with a candle, and led me up the stone staircase on the left of the courtyard, talking volubly all the while.

“We have had many artists here,” she declared; “many friends of monsieur, doubtless.  Since monsieur is of that fine profession, his room will be but four francs daily; his dinner, three francs; his little breakfast, a franc alone.”

“Madame,” I responded, “it is plain that the high cost of living, which terrorizes my country, does not exist at Bleau.”

Equally plain, I thought pessimistically, was the explanation.  My saddest forebodings were realized; if the name of the hotel meant anything and three kings ever tarried here, that conjunction of sovereigns had put up with housing of a distinctly primitive sort.  My room was clean, I acknowledged thankfully, but that was all I could say for it.  I eyed the bowl and pitcher gloomily, the hard-looking bed, the tiny square of carpeting in the center of the stone floor.