"Martin-Smith told me this morning he'd got a level hundred on Lopez."
Tony put down the empty glass. "Ah well," he said, "he can afford to lose it."
There was a short pause.
"You seem confident, Sir Antony," remarked the Marquis in his suave voice. "Perhaps you would like to back your opinion a little further. I don't know much about this sort of thing, as I said just now, but I am prepared to support our man if only from patriotic motives."
"Anything you care to suggest, Marquis," said Tony indifferently.
"Shall we say a couple of hundred, then?"
Tony nodded, and booked the bet on his shirt cuff.
"I must be off now," he said. "I suppose you and the King will be at the Albert Hall to-night?"
The Marquis shook his head. "I do not think His Majesty intends to be present. As for me—" he again shrugged his shoulders—"I grow old for such frivolities."
"Well, till to-morrow then," said Tony.