at present attached to the Imperial
Headquarter Staff at St Petersburg. Captain Vollmar, in addition to
being a brilliant young officer, is also a scion of two of the
wealthiest and most aristocratic families in Russia.

"It is now fully established that on the evening of the 6th of this
month--that is to say, nearly three weeks ago--the Prince and his
two guests returned after a long day in the forest, and that the
Prince retired to rest very shortly before supper. From that day to
this he has never been seen, either at home or in society. What
makes the disappearance more strangely striking is the fact that
the Prince, who is Colonel of the 28th Pommeranian Regiment, did
not put in an appearance at the recent review in the Kaiserhof when
the German Emperor held his usual inspection. Although it was
obvious that His Majesty was both puzzled and annoyed by his
absence, no official explanation of it has been given, and all
information on the subject is rigidly withheld. Our own comes from
a personal friend, and, as far as it goes, may be absolutely relied
upon."

For some reason or other, which, after his recent experiences, he
thought it would be as well not to try and fathom for the present, these
few paragraphs made a strangely persistent impression on him. When he
got home he gave his evening papers as usual to his daughter, and at
dinner the Zastrow mystery was the chief, in fact almost the only, topic
of conversation.

"Yes, it certainly is very extraordinary," said Nitocris. "The papers
make mysteries enough out of the disappearance, of the most everyday,
insignificant persons, who were probably only running away from their
debts or their domestic troubles, but for a real Prince to utterly
vanish like this--that certainly looks like a little more than an
ordinary mystery. And I suppose," she went on, after a little interval
of silence, "if there really has been foul play--I mean, granted that
Prince Charming, as all the Society papers got to call him, has been
spirited away for some hidden reason of State or politics and is never
intended to see the light of day again, who knows how many secrets may
be connected with this affair which might be like matches in a powder
magazine? And--Oh yes--why, Dad, it was this same Prince Zastrow who has
been mentioned by most of the best European papers as the only possible
Elective Tsar of