“Did you drug me in the Edgecombe Hotel in Plymouth a week ago and then go through my pockets, and did you the same evening burgle my house, break open my safe, and mishandle my servants?”
It was not exactly a tactful question, but Price answered it cheerfully and without hesitation.
“Not in person, but I admit my agents did these things. For these also I am anxious to apologize.”
“Your apologies won’t prevent your having a lengthened acquaintance with the inside of a prison,” Cheyne snarled, his rage flickering up at the recollection of his injuries. “How do your confederates come to be interested?”
“Bought,” the other admitted sweetly. “I had no other way of getting help. I have paid them twenty pounds on account and they will get a thousand guineas each if my claim is upheld.”
“A self-confessed thief and crook as well as a liar! And you expect me to believe in your good intentions towards Arnold Price!”
An unpleasant look passed across the other’s face, but he spoke calmly.
“That may be all very well and very true if you like, but it doesn’t advance the situation. The question now is: Are you prepared to hand over the letter? Nothing else seems to me to matter.”
“Why did you not come to me like an ordinary honest man and tell me your story? What induced you to launch out into all this complicated network of crime?”
Price smiled whimsically.
“Well, you might surely guess that,” he answered. “Suppose you had refused to give me the letter, how was I to know that you would not have put it beyond my reach? I couldn’t take the risk.”
“Suppose I refuse to give it to you now?”
“You won’t, Mr. Cheyne. No one in your position could. Circumstances are too strong for you, and you can hand it over and retain your honor absolutely untarnished. I do not wish to urge you to a decision. If you would prefer to take today to think it over, by all means do so. I sent the wire to Mrs. Cheyne shortly before six last night, so she will not be uneasy about you.”
Though the words were politely spoken, the threat behind them was unmistakable and fell with sinister intent on the listener’s ears. Rapidly Cheyne considered the situation. This ruffian was right. No one in such a situation could resist indefinitely. It was true he could refuse his consent at the moment, but the question would come up again and again until at last he would have to give way. He knew it, and he felt that unless there was a strong chance of victory, he could not stand the hours of suffering which a further refusal would entail. No, bitter as the conclusion was, he felt he must for the moment admit defeat, trusting later to getting his own back. He turned back to Price.
“I haven’t got the letter here. I can only get it for you if you put me ashore.”
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.”
Seeing there was no help for it, Cheyne wrote the letter. Price read it carefully, then sealed it in its envelope. Immediately after he handed through the panel a tumbler of whisky and water, then hurried off, saying he was going to dispatch the letter and bring Cheyne his breakfast.
Oh, the unspeakable delight of that drink! Cheyne thought he had never before experienced any sensation approaching it in satisfaction. He swallowed it in great gulps, and when in a few moments
