"Can you post this?" he asked.
"You passed t'box quarter mile back," said the landlord.
"Half-a-crown if you'll take it yourself."
"All right, sir. But there's no stamp in the house."
"Post it without," said Dick, well pleased.
He laid down his knife and fork.
"Walkin'?" inquired the landlord. "Then you'd better take path across t'moor. I'll show'ee."
Alone on the heath, Dick felt he had at last a few minutes to consider his position. Plans must come with events. Though besieged still by the fear which had haunted him throughout the night, he found comfort, however indefinite, in the daylight. Time was everything; but if he were indeed in time, it was well to have the day before him.
The letter to his brother, which he had posted in York at three o'clock in the morning, though it gave the address of the man he was hunting, could not, any more than that which he had just entrusted to the landlord of "The Coach and Horses," reach Scotland Yard in time to bring help in the immediate danger which he foresaw—danger which he would never have run the risk of bringing upon Amaryllis Caldegard but for his conviction of that worse peril threatening her. He was, indeed, sure that his course, rash as it would be accounted in the event of failure, offered the best, and perhaps the only chance of taking home with him an Amaryllis as happy and full of laughter as he had known on the road between Oxford and Chesham.
Twenty minutes' walking led him up a sharp rise to the level of the road, from which he looked down into the corresponding hollow on the other side. And there he saw what the little man of "The Coach and Horses" had described: a long, low stone house of two stories, facing south-west; windows neatly curtained, and fitted—an exotic touch—with persiennes; gravelled walks and smooth grass plots, a tree or two, shrubs and a few garden saplings; a garage big enough for one car which would look bigger than its envelope as it came out; and a pretentious gate—suburban villa half-heartedly aping country house—guarding the drive.