Five days later Usk and Helene, with their diminished retinue, were landing at Trieste, after eagerly seizing upon the papers brought out by the boats which boarded the steamer outside the harbour. When they left Beyrout, no news had arrived concerning the disappearance of Count Mortimer beyond the Queen’s telegram, but in these European papers it was the sensation of the hour. The circumstances appeared equally simple and perplexing. The Count, with his secretary and valet, had left the Pannonian railway at its termination on the eastern border of the Illyrian Provinces, and, like other travellers, hired a carriage to convey him across the debatable land which was owned by Roum, partially occupied by Pannonia, and unceasingly coveted both by Dardania and Mœsia. The Roumi Government had refused persistently, and from its own point of view wisely, to allow any railway to be built across this strip of territory, but there was a carriage road, kept in good order by Pannonian military engineers, which connected the Pannonian railway system on the western border with that of Mœsia on the east. Quitting Novigrad in Illyria, the party had arrived safely at a posting-station bearing the uneuphonious name of Klotsch, situated near the point at which the main road into Dardania crossed, almost at right angles, that which joined the two railways. Here, while the horses were changed, the travellers alighted for dinner, only to find when the meal was over that their driver had got drunk. The landlord volunteered to provide another, but he had to be sought for in the village, and Count Mortimer, who was obviously impatient at the delay, decided to walk on with his secretary, and allow the carriage, with the valet and the luggage, to overtake him. It was a long light summer evening, and he was anxious to reach the Mœsian frontier that night. The carriage started about a quarter of an hour later, but the driver and the valet were astonished to find that they did not come up with the walkers, although the horses were fresh and the road good. In ever-increasing astonishment they drove the whole way to the customs-station on the Mœsian border without meeting any one, and learned there that Count Mortimer and his companion had not arrived. The valet became immediately very much excited, and demanded a force of gendarmes from the Pannonian frontier-post, in order to go back and make a thorough search on both sides of the road for his master, who, he declared, must have been waylaid and murdered. The officer in charge of the post received the demand with contempt and some resentment, for the road was regarded as particularly safe, but the valet’s earnestness, and his declaration that he believed his master had enemies who would stick at nothing to get him out of the way, induced him to send a patrol with torches to search the roadsides as far as Klotsch. Messengers were also sent along the road which led into the Dardanian highlands, to inquire