After many minutes he opened his eyes and started up. "I've got it!" he cried, and, picking up the half-burned cigarette from the floor, threw it carelessly into the fireplace.
Then he sat down at his table, drew out a sheet of paper and a map of the city of Paris, and began to make a series of drawings and calculations that occupied him far into the night.
CHAPTER XIII
IT was nearly ten o'clock when the taxicab containing Grace Duvall stopped alongside the road, at a point some four miles beyond the city, in the direction of Versailles. She had been unable to give the driver the exact location at which she desired to be put down, but had directed him to drive on until she told him to stop.
The spot was quite familiar to her, owing to the hours she had spent in the vicinity with the searching party the day before.
The taxicab driver seemed rather surprised to see her alight at this somewhat lonely spot; but he shrugged his shoulders with true Parisian indifference, pocketed the tip she gave him, and drove rapidly off in the darkness.
Left to herself by the roadside, Grace began to fear that she had, after all, done a rather foolish thing. Now that she was here, she hardly knew how to begin.
All about her she saw the dark outlines of cottages among the trees, with here and there a straggling light which betokened some household late in getting to bed. The country people in this vicinity—growers of flowers and vegetables or dairymen for the most part—were asleep with their cows about the time that Paris began to dine.