What if they were playing Peter's game?
A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.
Again, there was that other maxim of Peter's which had helped me when I had been a roadman.

'If you are playing a part, you will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are it.' That would explain the game of tennis.

Those chaps didn't need to act, they just turned a handle and passed into another life, which came as naturally to them as the first.

It sounds a platitude, but Peter used to say that it was the big secret of all the famous criminals.
It was now getting on for eight o'clock, and I went back and saw Scaife to give him his instructions.

I arranged with him how to place his men, and then I went for a walk, for I didn't feel up to any dinner.