“We’ve been playing bowls,” added Bill, “and talking, and⁠—and playing bowls. Ripping night, isn’t it?”

But he left the rest of the conversation, as they wandered back to the house, to Antony. He wanted to think. There seemed to be no doubt now that Cayley was a villain. Bill had never been familiar with a villain before. It didn’t seem quite fair of Cayley, somehow; he was taking rather a mean advantage of his friends. Lot of funny people there were in the world⁠—funny people with secrets. Look at Tony, that first time he had met him in a tobacconist’s shop. Anybody would have thought he was a tobacconist’s assistant. And Cayley. Anybody would have thought that Cayley was an ordinary decent sort of person. And Mark. Dash it! one could never be sure of anybody. Now, Robert was different. Everybody had always said that Robert was a shady fellow.

187