MACKESY. I go twenty better. DOONE. Bloated Croesus of the Bar! I say fifty. Jervoise, what do you say? Hi! Wake up! JERVOISE. Eh? What's that? What's that? CURTISS. We want a hundred rupees from you. You're a bachelor drawing a gigantic income, and there's a man in a hole. JERVOISE. What man? Any one dead? BLAYNE. No, but he'll die if you don't give the hundred. Here! Here's a peg-voucher. You can see what we've signed for, and Anthony's man will come round to-morrow to collect it. So there will be no trouble. JERVOISE. (Signing.) One hundred, E. M. J. There you are (feebly). It isn't one of your jokes, is it? BLAYNE. No, it really _is_ wanted. Anthony, you were the biggest poker-winner last week, and you've defrauded the tax-collector too long. Sign! ANTHONY. Let's see. Three fifties and a seventy--two twenty--three twenty--say four hundred and twenty. That'll give him a month clear at the Hills. Many thanks, you men. I'll send round the _chaprassi_ tomorrow. CURTISS. You must engineer his taking the stuff, and of course you mustn't-- ANTHONY. Of course. It would never do. He'd weep with gratitude over his evening drink. BLAYNE. That's just what he would do, damn him. Oh! I say, Anthony, you pretend to know everything. Have you heard about Gaddy? ANTHONY. No. Divorce Court at last? BLAYNE. Worse. He's engaged! ANTHONY. How much? He _can't_ be! BLAYNE. He _is_. He's going to be married in a few weeks. Markyn told me at the Judge's this evening. It's _pukka_. ANTHONY. You don't say so? Holy Moses! There'll be a shine in the tents of Kedar. CURTISS. 'Regiment cut up rough, think you? ANTHONY. 'Don't know anything about the Regiment. MACKESY. It is bigamy, then? ANTHONY. Maybe. Do you mean to say that you men have forgotten, or is there more charity in the world than I thought? DOONE. You don't look pretty when you are trying to keep a secret. You bloat. Explain. ANTHONY. Mrs. Herriott! BLAYNE. (_After a long pause, to the room generally._) It's my notion that we are a set of fools. MACKESY. Nonsense. _That_ business was knocked on the head last season. Why, young Mallard-- ANTHONY. Mallard was a candlestick, paraded as such. Think awhile. Recollect last season and the talk then. Mallard or no Mallard, did Gaddy ever talk to any other woman? CURTISS. There's something in that. It _was_ slightly noticeable now you come to mention it. But she's at Naini Tal and he's at Simla. ANTHONY. He had to go to Simla to look after a globetrotter relative of his--a person with a title. Uncle or aunt. BLAYNE. And there he got engaged. No law prevents a man growing tired of a woman. ANTHONY. Except that he mustn't do it till the woman is tired of him. And the Herriott woman was not that. CURTISS. She may be now. Two months of Naini Tal work wonders.