SHOT! A PARIS STORY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 3, Issue 253, 4 December 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

SHOT! A PARIS STORY.

" He's been shot; over a hundred spit* have been shot at Vincennes and La Muette." This Frenchman was speaking ol an hotel manager I used to know a little (writes G. Ward Price from Pans to the "Daily Mail"). His hotel is off the Champs Elysees, a place of soft carpets and inlaid wood, marble and. palmis. He was on e of those suave, self-possessed German or Austrian hotel managers who make on you an uncanny impression of omniscience.

They speak every European tongue without a trace of faltering; they know the name of the best hotel and are personally acquainted with its manager in every city in Europe. They can give you detailed directions for the most complicated journey without opening a single time-table, and their information is right to the last particle; they know at what station the dining-car is put on, and thev impress upon you that the train leaves Kleinstadt-am-Fluss 20 minutes earlier this month than the time mentioned in the time-table. That is how I .remember ham, always in a frock coat whatever the season, whatever the hour of day or night; always wearing the diamond nin that a travelling monarch rave him; always alert though unobtrusive; known ot nil his guests, familiar with none. Certainly, if we had stopped to think about it, we should have realised that there was one side of his life ot which we saw nothing. He was rich, they said; he owned other hotels in ran* and Switzerland. Was he married ? No one knew or even troubled to ask; it was enough that whenever you came to the hotel he was there, with the same wonderful memory for your name ana everything about you, the same silent smooth efficiency. „ ... He has been shot, they say. Possiblv it is only another of the exaggerated stories that arc passed from mouth to mouth in this imaginative city or cafes and concierges and. gossip. Certainly no disappeaerd immediately war begaai; guests and staff were turned out at an hour's notice and the hotel itself is now empty and guarded par police.

PAGE BOYS DISCOVERY. We shall know what became of the manager perhaps after the war. It was one of the page boys of the hotel, they say, who, in a boy's way, got out of his attic window on to the roof. He scrambled about in great glee for a while, climbing on to the ridges of the gables and looking over the house tops right away to the green Bois. At last he came to the turret that stards at the corner of the roof—one of tins© little ornamental cupolas that architects out on to hotels to gratify the hotel proprietor's sense of graceful design a ,hmg like a pepper castor, summon n ted by «* tall flagstaff, which is stayed agauist wind by a circle of stout wire ropes ; winning down to the roof. . There is a door in the side of the capola with a ladder leading up to it, and the sight of a closed door in a turret is enough to fire the curiosity of any boy. Up the ladder scrambled the little page pushed upen the door—and then started back in astonishment. Instead ot lieins an empty space there were instruments and coils of wire and wheels. The man sitting at the table had a telephone receiver clamped over his head, and as the door opened no swumr round with a startled word. Penitently the frightened little boy stood there stammering apologies. He had recognised the chief o the hotel staff. The manager seized the boy angrily by the sh'ouidcr. What business Had he there? Mat did ho mean by disturbing important experiments.' Oy down at once, you little rascal and il you sav a word about this without m permission there'll be trouble ahead toi scared, the "petit groom" scurried away. It was some days beto o he told anyone of his strange discover of the manager in the cupola with the mysterious coils of wire and telephone receiver. But gradually, first.to another page boy then through all the servantsof the hotel, the story spread \nd at last one Frenchman who heard it, more alert than the rest, reflected that there was talk of war between France and Germany, and took the trouble to go round to the police sta--1 Nothing apparently happened. Bui the military governor ot Pans had been told of the incident, and from windows in houses round the hotel discreet held glasses were watching the unobtrusive little turret. Then there came the Ger man declaration of war and the next morning several detectives in plain clothes drove up to the hotel. They crossed the broad hall with its lofty gleaming "marble walls, to the manager'seffice. At his rich mahogany desk sat the manager, snruce. self-pos-sessed, capable as ever. "You have »>eeii using a secret wireless apparatus on Jie roaf of your hotel tor the purpose ot conveying messages to me enemy, imi are arrested as a spy." tome ot the detectives were driving away with Hum prisoner a moment later. lira rest stayed to make arrangements tor mimediate closing of the hote'. And since then tne manager has not been seen by anyone. Only from every side you hear the same story A courtmartial sitting in one of the big barrack forts round Paris, and the next day a firing party in the moat, and facing it. the hotel manager, a convicted spy. Is this the true story of h:s disappearance I can only say that it is what everyone in Paris will tell you. War is a grim business.