CHAPTER VIII
The "Titania" Sails
Filled with the deepest apprehensions concerning the fate of his chum, Bobby Beverley was not content to think. He acted.
As it was yet early in the morning, and a Sunday, there were no signs of activity in the yacht-yard. The night watchman, his duties over with the rising of the sun, had taken himself home; the watchkeepers on board the various craft were still sleeping soundly in the knowledge that there was no pressing need for them to turn out.
Slipping over the side, Beverley gained the wharf. There were no signs of a struggle, and the hoar-frost that covered the tarred planking was destitute of human or canine foot-prints. Only a number of triangular marks on the white covering showed that sea-birds had been waddling about the jetty.
Suddenly Beverley caught sight of a crumpled paper that had wedged in a projection of a heap of rusty iron. It was the telegraph-form that Villiers had gone ashore to receive when he was struck down by a cowardly blow. On it were the words:—
"Harborough, yacht Titania. Cannot keep appointment Monday. Will Tuesday same time suit?
"Heatherington."
"H'm; no postmark," commented Bobby. "Looks like a plant. Wonder if this has anything to do with Villiers' absence?"
Folding the crumpled paper, Beverley placed it carefully in his pocket-book. Then, making his way across the encumbered yard, he stopped outside the manager's office. As he expected, the door was locked securely, but Beverley was not going to stick at trifles.
With a piece of iron-bar he deliberately smashed a pane of glass. Then inserting his hand through the jagged pane he shot back the window-catch. It was then an easy matter to gain admittance.
He lifted the receiver of the telephone, and in less than a minute and a half he had secured a trunk-call to Thalassa Towers.
"Hallo!" exclaimed a faint and indistinct voice.
"That Harborough?" inquired Bobby. "Beverley speaking."
"No, I'm Claverhouse, old bean," was the reply. "Why this activity on the Sabbath morn? Anything wrong?"
"Yes," replied Beverley. "Jack's missing—Jack Villiers. Eh? what's that? No, I didn't say—Oh! Dash it all, they've cut me off."
He replaced the receiver and again rang up the exchange, demanding peremptorily why the interruption had occurred.
"You must have cut yourself off," replied the operator. "Stand by."
Bobby "stood by" for another five minutes—minutes that passed with leaden feet.
"There's no reply," came the matter-of-fact voice of the exchange operator. "This is Andover speaking."
"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.
"I don't see why Villiers was singled out for rough treatment," observed Harborough. "He had no personal enemies, had he?"
Beverley shook his head.
"Not to my knowledge," he replied. "Jack is one of the best, absolutely."
"Perhaps you were the intended victim," suggested Claverhouse.
"Oh!" ejaculated Harborough. "I won't contradict your supposal; but on what grounds, might I ask, do you make your assumption?"
"The faked message was addressed to you," replied Alec.
"Perhaps you're right," replied Harborough thoughtfully. "But it doesn't say much for the other fellows' intelligence department—mistaking Villiers for me. However, we must inform the police."
"The police?" echoed Beverley, bearing in mind Sir Hugh's reluctance on a previous occasion to communicate with the law.
"Unfortunately, yes," replied the baronet. "It is regrettable from a professional point of view, but we owe it to Jack Villiers. Hallo! The Geier has gone."
The Swedish-owned tramp had vanished from her accustomed berth. In her place lay a vessel very similar, even to the funnel-markings.
"Suppose you didn't notice her go down stream, Beverley?" inquired Harborough.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Bobby. "A tramp like her went out this morning—the Zug of Malmo."
"Possibly the same old hooker," commented Harborough. "Well, let's make for the police-station."
Three days passed. The mystery of Jack Villiers' disappearance remained unsolved. A police-inspector called upon Kristian Borgen in his office, but the Swede gave a complete explanation of his movements. It was true, he stated, that the Geier was bought by his firm and that her name was changed to Zug—a fact advertised beforehand in the press according to the requirements of the British Mercantile Shipping Act. The Zug had sailed for the Baltic and was due at Stockholm on the 30th inst. Her clearance-papers were quite in order.
The inspector, fully convinced that he had been put on a false trail, shook hands with Borgen, apologizing for having inconvenienced him, to which the amiable Swede replied that it was no inconvenience whatsoever, and that he was only too happy at all times to assist the law of the land that had offered him a temporary home.
Meanwhile there was no cessation of activity in the work of fitting out the Titania. Everyone on board realized that Villiers would have wished it so. But there was a feeling of depression that it was impossible to shake off. The uncertainty of Jack Villiers' fate, on the eve of what promised to be a successful enterprise, cast a shadow of gloom upon the proceedings.
The day of the Titania's departure having been fixed, Harborough saw no insurmountable reason for postponing it, and the rest of the crew agreed with him.
"If Villiers does turn up," he explained, "he can join us anywhere between here and Singapore; and delay will only mean increasing risks on the score of bad weather, to say nothing of the possibility of our rivals turning up before us."
So at 9 a.m., early in the month of November, the yacht Titania, Hugh Harborough, Master, slipped her moorings, and at a modest six knots dropped down Southampton Water on her long voyage to the Pacific. There were two absentees from her full complement, Jack Villiers was one, the other was Dick Beverley. An epidemic of mumps was raging in the school, and a swollen face intervened between Dick and a visit to the enchanting South Seas.