I write you in great trouble of mind, not trusting this letter to the Russian post-office, but sending it by an English captain to be posted in London. Two days ago Jack Lamont disappeared; a disappearance as complete as if he had never existed. The night before last, about ten o’clock, I thought I heard him come into his shop below my room. Sometimes he works there till daylight, and as, when absorbed in his experiments, he does not relish interruptions, even from me, I go on with my reading until he comes upstairs. Toward eleven o’clock I thought I heard slight sounds of a scuffle, and a smothered cry. I called out to him, but received no answer. Taking a candle, I went downstairs, but everything was exactly as usual, the doors locked, and not even a bench overturned. I called aloud, but only the echo of this barn of a room replied. I lit the gas and made a more intelligent search, but with no result. I unlocked the door, and stood out in the street, which was quite silent and deserted. I began to doubt that I had heard anything at all, for, as I have told you, my nerves lately have been rather prone to the jumps. I sat up all night waiting for him, but he did not come. Next day I went, as had been previously arranged, to the Foreign Office, but was kept waiting in an anteroom for two hours, and then told that the Minister could not see me. I met a similar repulse at the Admiralty. I dined alone at the restaurant Jack and I frequent, but saw nothing of him. This morning he has not returned, and I am at my wit’s end, not in the least knowing what to do. It is useless for me to appeal to the embassy of my country, for, Jack being a Russian, it has no jurisdiction. The last letter I received from you was tampered with. The newspaper extract you spoke of was not there, and one of the sheets of the letter was missing. Piffling business, I call it, this interfering with private correspondence. Such was the last letter that Alan Drummond was ever to send to Dorothy Amhurst. CHAPTER XI --THE SNOW SUMMER waned; the evenings became chill, although the sun pretended at noon that its power was undiminished. Back to town from mountain and sea shore filtered the warm-weather idlers, but no more letters came from St. Petersburg to the hill by the Hudson. So far as our girls were concerned, a curtain of silence had fallen between Europe and America.