Diana Winthrop and her mother, Mrs. Winthrop, arrive at the Medeleine Hotel one night in Paris in 1899, shortly before the opening of the World Exposition. Though the city is crowded, they secure a room. Mrs. Winthrop is utterly exhausted and ill from their trip from Bombay. They are re taken to Room 342 where a doctor is summoned. Curiously, he sends Diana to his wife for medicine, saying he has no phone at home. Diana waits for two hours for the medicine, but upon her return she is met by complete bafflement. Everyone--clerk, porter, maid, insist she has not been at the hotel and that Room 342 has been rented for several days. No one, it seems, has ever seen her--or her mother--before. watch