VISITORS TRAPPED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 753, 28 August 1929, Page 9

VISITORS TRAPPED

IMPRISONED IN ARC DE TRIOMPHE CITY-WIDE HUNT FOR KEYS Five visitors who went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe late one afternoon were so taken with the view from the platform, which is 150 ft. up, that they failed to hear the guardian announcing closing time. The guardian also failed to notice the visitors. He went down the staircase. locked the door behind him, put the key in his pocket, and went home. It was about half-past seven when the five visitors descended and found themselves prisoners in the famous monument. They knocked as hard as they could at the door, hut there was ho one to answer. Some of the members of the party went up again and shouted from the top, but nobody either saw or heard them. It was an hour later when a policeman on duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier heard the knocking at the door and communicated with the prisoners. , But they were far from being at the end of their troubles. The policeman sent one of liis colleagues to the nearest police station; but the commissary there had neither the key nor the address of the guardian. The latter was eventually obtained by means of a telephone call to the Ministry of Fine Arts; and the commissary sent for the guardian. But the man had gone out to dinner in the suburbs, at an address which was not known to his concierge. As the lock of the door of the Arc de Triomphe is a special one, no other locksmith but the one who works for the Ministry of Fine Arts, and who made the lock, could open it.

This man was sent for, but he, too, was out tor dinner. Finally he was discovered at a friend’s house, and about ten o’clock in the evening the imprisoned visitors were set free.