He Walked Around the Horses

This tale is based on an authenticated, documented fact. A man vanished— right out of this world. And where he went— In November 1809, an Englishman named Benjamin Bathurst vanished, inexplicably and utterly. He was en route to Hamburg from Vienna, where he had been serving as his government's envoy to the court of what Napoleon had left of the Austrian Empire. At an inn in Perleburg, in Prussia, while examining a change of horses for his coach, he casually stepped out of sight of his secretary and his valet. He was not seen to leave the inn yard. He was not seen again, ever....