The Saint straightened up.
It had been a good evening; and he had no regrets. The game was worth playing for its own sake, to him: the prizes came welcomely, but they weren't everything. And no one knew better than he that you couldn't win all the time. There were chances that couldn't be reckoned with in advance; and the duplicity of Mr. Watkins was one of those. But for that, he would have played his hand faultlessly, out-bluffed and out-manoeuvred the Carney-Runce combination in a fair field, and made as clean a job of it as anything else he had done. But that single unexpected factor had turned the scale just enough to bring the bluff to a showdown, as unexpected factors always would. And yet Peter Quentin saw the Saint was smiling.
"I think that's a good idea," said the Saint.
Between Philip Carney and George Runce flashed one blank glance; but their mouths remained closed.
"Perhaps there's another room we could go to," said the sergeant, almost genially; and Mrs. Dempster-Craven inclined her head like a queen dismissing a distasteful odour.
"Watkins will show you to the library."
Simon turned on his heel and led the way towards the door, with Mr. Watkins still gripping his arms; but as his path brought him level with Kate Allfield he stopped and smiled down at her.
"I think you're a great gal."
His voice sounded a trifle strange. And then, before two hundred shocked and startled eyes, including those of Lord and Lady Bredon, the Honourable Celia Mallard, three baronets, and the aspiring Mrs. Dempster-Craven herself, he laid his hands gently on her shoulders and kissed her outrageously on the mouth; and in the silence of appalled aristocracy which followed that performance made his stately exit.
"How the devil did you get away with it?" asked Peter Quentin weakly, as they drove away in a taxi an hour later. "I was fairly sweating blood all the time you were being stripped."