One late afternoon a couple of years ago a plane was sited about 70 miles out of the Orly airport in Paris. It was a private plane of medium size and nobody was in it, nobody at all, the plane keeping its course steadily toward Paris was flying itself. Why was it empty, who had been flying it and why and in what circumstances had they left it? Well thereby hangs a tale…

Script written by Orson Welles and subsequently used for his 1955 film, Mr Arkadin.