er for Buenos Ayres and the
south. The first was only a small trading boat; the other a tramp
steamer of three thousand five hundred tons. The first, after inquiry,
we dismissed from consideration. To the agents of the second we repaired
in hot haste. It was just possible we had the key to the mystery in our
hands.

"No," said the clerk, who waited upon us, in response to our inquiries,
"I am quite sure no fresh hand was taken on board in Rio, and I am
equally certain that she carried no passengers."

So minute and searching were our inquiries that it was well-nigh
midnight before we had finished them. As on the previous occasions, Max
had disappeared without, apparently, leaving a clue of any sort behind,
to tell us of his whereabouts.

Next morning we were early at work again. By mid-day we had visited all
the principal hotels, and many of less repute, had made inquiries at the
various labour offices, at the railway stations, had interrogated the
police and harbour officials, but still without success.

All that afternoon we continued our inquiries, on the day following
also, and so on, day after day, for upwards of a month. In Mr.
Brockford's company I scoured the country in railway trains, on
horseback, and on foot. But always with the same result.

Feeling certain at last that he must have left Brazil, I bade Brockford
and Montezma, both of whom were most assiduous in the help they rendered
me, good-bye, and proceeded to Buenos Ayres. I could hear nothing of
him, however, in the Argentine Republic. Thence, almost heartbroken, I
caught the mail steamer and returned to England, once more to confess
myself a failure.

CHAPTER XIV.

Having described to you the failure of my attempt to find Max in Rio, I
will now continue the record of his adventures, as narrated by himself
in his diary, from the moment that he caught sight of me in the cab _en
route_ for Senor Montezma's office. Scarcely conscious of what he was
doing, he had gained the pavement once more, muttering, as he did so,
"Good heavens! Paul is searching for me. What am I to do?" A frantic
desire to hasten after me and speak to me, so his diary confesses, took
possession of him, but he put it away from him. He knew that to do so
would only be to re-open the old wound, and later on to draw him back to
the life he had made up his mind never to lead again. Consequently, he
walked, even faster than before, in the opposite direction to which he
had