"So am I," Bobby growled through his shut teeth. "Come back in the morning, Sally. Beatrix may need you. I'd go with you now; but I dare not leave things."
But Lorimer's eye was upon them.
"Wha' now, Sally?" he asked jovially. "Bobby been making a bad pun, that you look so savage?"
Sally hesitated. For one instant, she eyed her host as if he had been a scorpion that had crawled across her path. Then she controlled herself, and her voice took on its customary mocking drawl.
"No; I only feel savage because I know you must have set the clocks ahead. Just see! It is high time we all were going home, and you know I always hate to start."
Lorimer glanced at the clock on the mantel. Then he turned to the man behind his chair.
"Stop tha' clock!" he commanded. "We can' have anybody talk 'bout going home yet. Night's only jus' begun, an' there's quarts more champagne. Beatrix did n' wan' us to have any; but I don' believe in being stingy."
Sally had already risen, and one or two other women, casting furtive, apologetic glances towards Beatrix, were hurriedly following Sally's example. In the slight confusion, it seemed to Thayer that his chance had come, and he took it. Unfortunately, however, for the once he had reckoned without his man. He had kept careful count of the glasses which Lorimer had emptied since he had sat down at the table, and he knew that the danger limit was not far distant. In fact, the danger limit was already passed. Thayer had had no means of taking into account the glasses which Lorimer had slyly emptied, during his short absence from the room before they had gone to the table. The mischief was already done. The slightest shock which could disturb Lorimer's present mood would be sufficient to destroy his whole mental balance past any possibility of restoration. Thayer's error in judgment promptly furnished the shock.
Lorimer had turned again to the butler at the back of his chair.
"Fill thish up," he demanded, as he pointed to his glass.