I shook the Paris edition of the Daily Mail in front of him.
"How the devil can we dodge trailers?" I demanded. "I just picked up this paper, and look at what I see on the front page."
There under a two-line head was the following announcement:
"Lieut. Col. Lord Chesby, D.S.O., accompanied by Mr. Nikka Zaranko, the famous violinist, and Mr. John Nash, an American friend, crossed on the Calais boat yesterday and arrived in Paris last night. Lord Chesby recently succeeded to the title under circumstances of very tragic interest."
"There's only one thing to do," said Hugh. "Where's Watkins? We'll collect him, and book for the first train to Marseilles. They'll expect us to go direct by the Orient Express."
CHAPTER X
STOLE AWAY
We rather prided ourselves on our cleverness as we sat back in a reserved compartment of the Lyons-Mediterranean Express, and watched the Tour Eiffel fade against the sky. We had moved with considerable celerity. First, we had loaded ourselves and baggage into waiting taxis in front of the hotel. Then we had driven in these to the Gare de l'Est, dodged in and out of that whirlpool of life, and reëntered two other taxis, which we had directed in a reasonless jaunt through the central district of Paris.
Then Nikka and I had left Hugh and Watkins with the taxis in a side-street near the Madeleine, and bought the tickets at Cook's. We had returned to the taxis by a roundabout route, and resumed our crazy progress from one side of the river to the other and back again, now crawling up the slopes of Montmartre, now threading the narrow ways of the Isle du Cite, now buried in the depths of the Quartier, now spinning through the Bois. We had lunched at a roadhouse, and returned to the station just in time to climb aboard the train. And finally, instead of risking the separation entailed by patronage of the wagons lit, we had elected to seclude ourselves in a single compartment and sleep as best we could.
Hugh voiced the sentiments of three of us, when he stretched out his legs and exclaimed: