"What do you mean—your own boat?" Draconmeyer demanded.
He was, perhaps, the first to realise the situation. Richard thrust his hands into his pockets and sat upon the edge of the table.
"Seems to me," he remarked, "that you gentlemen have made some sort of a mistake. Where do you think you are, anyway?"
"On board Schwann's yacht, the Christabel," Selingman replied.
Richard shook his head.
"Not a bit of it," he assured them. "This is the steam-yacht, Minnehaha, which brought me over from New York, and of which I am most assuredly the owner. Now I come to think of it," he went on, "there was another yacht leaving the harbour at the same time. Can't have happened that you boarded the wrong boat, eh?"
Mr. Grex was icily calm, but there was menace of the most dangerous sort in his look and manner.
"Nothing of that sort was possible," he declared, "as you are, without doubt, perfectly well aware. It appears to me that this is a deliberate plot. The yacht which I and my friends thought that we were boarding to-night was the Christabel, which my servant had instructions to hire from Schwann of Monaco. I await some explanation from you, sir, as to your purpose in sending your pinnace to the landing-stage of the Villa Mimosa and deliberately misleading us as to our destination?"
"Well, I don't know that I've got much to say about that," Richard replied easily.
"You are offering us no explanation?" Selingman demanded.