That this was a victory for Price was evident, but the young man showed no elation. He carefully avoided anything in the nature of a taunt, and spoke in a quiet, businesslike way.
“We might be able to arrange that. Where is the letter?”
“At my bank in Dartmouth.”
“Then the matter is quite simple. All you have to do is to write to the manager to send the letter to an address I shall give you. Directly you do so you shall have the best food and drink on the launch, and directly the letter is in our hands you will be put ashore close to your home.”
Cheyne still hesitated.
“I’ll do it provided you can prove to me your statements. How am I to know that you will keep your word? How am I to know that you won’t get the letter and then murder me?”
“I’m afraid you can’t know that. I would gladly prove it to you, but you must see that it’s just not possible. I give you my solemn word of honor and you’ll have to accept it because there is nothing else you can do.”
Cheyne demurred further, but as Price showed signs of retreating and leaving him to think it over until the evening, he hastily agreed to write the letter. Immediately the electric light came on in his cabin and Price passed in a couple of sheets of notepaper and envelopes. Cheyne gazed at them in surprise. They were of a familiar silurian gray and the sheets bore in tiny blue embossed letters the words “Warren Lodge, Dartmouth, S. Devon.”
“Why, it’s my own paper,” he exclaimed, and Price with a smile admitted that in view of some development like the present, his agents had taken the precaution to annex a few sheets when paying their call to Cheyne’s home.
“If you will ask your manager to send the letter to Herbert Taverner, Esq., Royal Hotel, Weymouth, it will meet the case. Taverner is my agent, and as soon as it is in his hands I will set you ashore at Johnson’s wharf.”