Spalding departed on his errand, and walking thoughtfully to the telephone, Tony asked the girl at the Exchange for Lady Jocelyn's number. After waiting for several minutes, he was informed by a contemptuous voice that it was engaged, and hanging up the receiver he sat down at an old oak writing-table which filled up one of the bay windows. Then, selecting a piece of paper and a pencil, he wrote the following note to Guy. MY DEAR GUY: I wish you wouldn't get up at such ridiculous hours. It's a very unhealthy habit, and apart from that you brush all the dew off the lawn, and leave me without any one to ask advice from. I wanted your advice this morning badly. In the first place when I woke up, I got the enclosed letter from Captain Simmons. I don't know how it strikes you, but it looks fishy to me--very fishy. I have never heard of any one called Hemmingway, and I have no recollection of writing such instructions on one of my cards. Of course I might have done it when I was slightly intoxicated, but then I haven't been even slightly intoxicated for quite a long time. There are one or two pleasant fools among my friends, but no one I can think of who would be quite such an idiot as to try and break up the engines of the _Betty_. The alternative is what you might call an ugly one--Da Freitas! It hardly seems possible, especially in view of my other news which I am going to tell you in a moment, and yet who the devil else could it be? If he has really dropped on to our notion of taking Isabel away, it's a serious business--so serious that I am going to motor down to Southampton straight away and find out all I can. Of course it isn't the least likely that Da Freitas would have shown up in the business himself, but I might get some useful information out of Simmons, and anyway I can at least make certain that everything will be all right for us on Thursday. My other news comes from Congosta. In spite of all the bitter and unkind things you have said about him, he turned up here faithfully this morning to report progress. It was some report too. According to him the whole of Livadia by this time ought to be up to its ankles in gore. Things began to move two days ago, and although there has been nothing in the English papers yet, the odds are that the entire crowd of them--Royalists, Franciscans, and Republicans--are now pleasantly and usefully occupied in slitting each other's throats. Of course I asked him at once about Pedro and Da Freitas. They haven't left England yet, but it seems that they have bought Lord Northfield's steam yacht, the _Vivid_--and a beauty she is too--and that she is lying in the Thames ready to push off at a moment's notice. I admit that this doesn't look as if they could have had anything to do with the _Betty_ affair, and yet it would a devilish odd coincidence if anyone had tried such a trick. Besides, who on earth would try it? Everybody loves me--apart from Da Freitas and Jennings.