All the Five Find-Outers have had flu this Christmas holiday so it doesn t seem as if anything exciting could happen. But then a strange robbery where nothing seems to have been taken occurs. Mr Fellows whose house was robbed seems to have run out in the night & thrown a bundle into the river. A man with a scarred face is seen poking in the river & the children come across some strangely small children s clothes. It turns out the clothes belong to a ventriloquist s dummy & the ventriloquist who Mr Fellows assisted was working for the secret service. An important message is hidden in the clothes
- but the scarred man has stolen them. All but the one most important item
- a shoe with a false heel containing the message that Buster the dog had kept to gnaw.