"I say!" exclaimed Beverley in desperation. "Can you send an express messenger to Thalassa Towers?" "Sorry," was the calm reply. "You must try a post office. It opens at nine on Sundays." Beverley replaced the receiver with a vicious bang. Then he rang up again, this time obtaining a call to the yard-manager's private house. That functionary's temper was far from amiable when he found himself called from his bed, in the early hours of a chilly late-autumn morning, to receive a bald announcement from the intruder's own lips that the latter had deliberately broken a window in the office and had temporarily installed himself. "There's no need to bring a policeman along with you," added Beverley reassuringly, "but come as soon as possible. No, I've disturbed nothing. There's no cause for alarm as far as you are concerned." Bobby replaced the instrument and sat down in the padded-leather arm-chair, the while keeping a look-out upon the _Titania_. In about twenty minutes the manager arrived, unkempt and unshorn. To him Beverley explained the situation, requesting that someone could be sent either in a car or on a motor-cycle to inform Sir Hugh Harborough of the grave news. "Have you informed the police?" asked the manager, the while covertly glancing round the room to assure himself that nothing had been tampered with. "I'd rather wait till I've seen Sir Hugh," replied Bobby. "Of course the whole thing may turn out to be a mare's nest; but the dog----" "Where is the dog?" asked the manager. "On the mud--dead." "Wouldn't it be as well to recover the body," suggested the now interested man. "That might afford some information. I'll hang on here." Beverley fell in with the idea. Procuring a boat-hook from the yacht, he succeeded in recovering the Aberdeen's body and laid it on the raft. Just as he had completed the task there came the hoot of a car, and a minute later Harborough appeared accompanied by Claverhouse, O'Loghlin, Fontayne, Swaine, and Trevear. Harborough had received a portion of Bobby's telephonic message, from which he concluded that something was amiss; and without delay the six men drove at record speed to Southampton. "Something decidedly wrong," declared Harborough, as he descended to the raft and examined the body of his pet. The dog's mouth was inflamed and discoloured. Death had been caused not by drowning but by poison. Beverley handed his chief the telegram. "Fake," declared Harborough promptly. "I know no one of the name of Heatherington; still less have I an appointment with him. I'd like to meet the fellow who composed this," he added. A thorough examination of the _Titania_ resulted in nothing of a suspicious nature being discovered. Assuming on the strength of the faked telegram and the poisoned dog that there had been an attempt at murder, kidnapping, or sabotage, there was nothing on board to justify the assumption that an effort had been made to injure the vessel.