Then Arthur Masters struck in, “I suppose there will be likely to be a good deal of hustling and possibly violence before we can count on getting clear away?”
“I don’t apprehend,” said Brentin, “there will be much of either; though, of course, we can’t expect the affair will pass off quite so quietly as an ordinary social lunch-party. We may, for instance, have to knock a few people down. Surely English gentlemen are not afraid of having to do that?”
“It is not a question of fear,” Masters haughtily replied. “I’m not thinking of that.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried that snipe Parsons.
“I am thinking of the ladies of our party.”
“There’s a very pretty girl here,” Parsons ventured. “I wish she could be persuaded—”
Forsyth nudged him, while I cried “Order!” savagely.
“There will be ladies in our party,” Masters went on. “It would be a terrible thing if they were to be frightened or in any way injured.”
“I yield to no man,” declaimed Brentin, “in my chivalrous respect for the sex. But there are certain places and times when the presence of ladies is highly undesirable. The Casino rooms at Monte Carlo, when we are about to raid them, is one. That’s the reason which has determined me to leave Mrs. Brentin behind, in complete ignorance of what we are about to do. I do not presume to dictate to other gentlemen what their course of action should be, but I must say our chances of success will be enormously magnified if no ladies are permitted to be of the party.”
“Hear! Hear!” murmured Hines, who from a certain gruffness of manner is no particular favorite with the sex.