The Prince of the Captivity: The Epilogue to a Romance

by Sydney C. Grier

“Because she has reason to distrust Dardania, probably. It’s quite possible that our friend the Dowager Princess has allies there still.”

“You are puzzling Helene,” said Usk. “She doesn’t know all the ins and outs of the family differences.”

“Oh, I know that Cousin Ottilie was very angry about Aunt Ernestine’s marriage, and said horrid things about the dear Count,” said Helene; and then the subject dropped, as Philippa suggested that it was time to pack.

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 whether the two men had taken the wrong turning and gone that way by mistake; but neither at the one country-seat which stood in the neighbourhood, nor in any of the poor hamlets along the road, had anything been seen of them. The country-house belonged to Prince Valerian Pelenko, a cousin of the Prince of Dardania, and he himself, travelling to “Europe,” had passed through Klotsch with his attendants shortly after the carriage had started. He had not met it, for it would have passed the cross-road before his carriage turned into the main highway, and most certainly he had not met the missing men, for his attendants would have been sure to report at the posting-station the astonishing sight of two “European” gentlemen walking unattended along the road. Extraordinary as it seemed, there was no doubt that Count Mortimer and his secretary had disappeared as completely as though they had not been, and that the disappearance had taken place on the high road and almost in broad daylight. There were no signs of a struggle, and tentative suggestions of a landslip, or a fall over a steep place on the edge of the road, were scouted at once, for there was absolutely not the slightest indication of either. The English papers, taking up Count Mortimer’s cause with a vigour they had seldom displayed during his career, were drawing parallels between his disappearance and that of the unfortunate Mr Benjamin Bathurst in the early years of the nineteenth century, and hinting that as similar influences were in all probability at work, the fate of the one was likely to remain, like that of the other, an unsolved mystery. The Neustrian, Scythian, and Roumi papers, relying on the known antipathy of their respective Governments to the Pannonian occupation of the Illyrian Provinces, were urgent and eloquent in their representations that Pannonia had now conclusively proved herself unfitted to discharge her duties, since she could not even protect travellers on the high road. The Pannonian papers, unable to deny the facts, took refuge in the assertion that Count Mortimer’s disappearance was purely voluntary. For reasons of his own he had made up his mind to vanish, and he had done so, and who could be held responsible for the doings of a man whose pride it had always been to baffle and astonish the rest of Europe? This was the state of things at present. Queen Ernestine, in the deepest grief and anxiety, was at Novigrad, where Lord Caerleon had joined her as fast as steam could bring him from England, and they were making a comprehensive search throughout the whole district, aided by the best detectives that money could procure.

“It looks hopeless!” said Usk despondently to Helene, as they walked up the quay at Trieste. “One almost wonders—— Now then, where are you going to?” The words were addressed to a loutish youth, apparently a dockyard loafer of the usual type, who had lurched up against him; but as the man withdrew with a surly apology, Usk found a piece of paper in his hand. Guessing that it contained some secret information, he unfolded one of the newspapers he had bought, as if to look at the page again, and laid the paper against it. “Look here, Helene!” he said.

Helene glanced quickly at the scrap of writing.

“When you leave Trieste this afternoon, watch out for me. I shall be fooling around at the depot with a camera, and I don’t want to have you seem to know me. Get into talk with me the way you would with a stranger, for I must speak to you.—Hicks.”

“This gentleman is some English peer of your acquaintance?” said Helene, looking respectfully at the signature.

Usk smothered a laugh. “Not exactly,” he said. “He’s the American newspaper man you’ve heard so much about, and a real good fellow. If you’ll excuse me, Nell, I’ll light a cigar.”

“A long way round!” said Helene, as he twisted the paper into a roll, and striking a match, set light to it, instead of lighting the cigar with the match.