Preston did not answer. His lips were tightly closed. Then, as if to distract attention from what Hopford had just said, he produced his cigar case and passed it round.
Yootha was very anxious to see, as she put it, “everything in Paris worth seeing,” from the Bastille to the Ambassadeurs and the Cascade, and from the Louvre to the Palais de Versailles, so during the next few days Preston devoted himself to her entirely. The art galleries in particular appealed to her, also the Quartier Latin with its queer little streets of cobble stones and its stuffy but picturesque old-world houses of which she had so often heard. Exhibitions like the Grand Guignol and the Café de la Mort, on the other hand, she detested.
Hopford and Llanvar had dined with them once, and afterwards Hopford’s friend on Le Matin had piloted them all to various interesting night-haunts of which English folk visiting Paris for the most part know nothing. He had also taken them into curious caverns below the Rue de la Harpe and streets in its vicinity, and shown them the houses there propped up from below with enormous wooden beams where the arches built over those old quarries have given way.
“But how come there to be quarries here at all?” Yootha had asked in surprise.
The representative of Le Matin had evidently expected the question, for at once he had entered into a long explanation about how, when Paris was first built, stones for building purposes had been quarried out in the immediate neighborhood; how the City had gradually reached the edge of those quarries, and how, in order to be able to continue to extend the City, it had been necessary to arch the quarries over and then erect buildings on the arches themselves.
“Of course the good folk who live in those houses above our heads,” he laughed as he pointed upward, “have no idea that their houses are propped up from below, and some day they may get the surprise of their lives by finding themselves and their houses suddenly swallowed up in the bowels of the earth.”
It was late when finally they had all separated. Then Hopford, on arriving at Rue des Petits Champs, had found a blue telegram awaiting him. It came from his chief, who said Hopford must return at once.
“I have most important news for you,” the message had ended.