"They wouldn't dare put their noses into a poor man's club," said Brummer; and the other man asked: "Why should we be forced to drink, if we don't want to?"
"I always do want to," said Lord Charles. "I want a whisky and soda now as much as I ever wanted anything in my life. You'll join me, Mr. Howard?"
But I declined. There were limits.
"Why do they insist upon your drinking?" I asked.
"Oh, because it's a club, and the wine-merchants have been kicking up a row lately. They say the supply is beginning to exceed the demand;[20] that we're getting abstemious, but I'm sure I don't know where they get their information from. Now then—you've led a spade, Brummer. Very good. I put on the ace. I play out Dummy's seven diamonds and his two other aces; put myself in with a small club, and make my king, queen, and knave—grand slam."
He put his cards down on the table, and Brummer and his partner, after looking at them suspiciously, accepted the inevitable, and proceeded to add up the score.
We had won two hundred and thirty-four points, and quite a pleasant feeling came over me as I contemplated receiving that number of pounds.
But my satisfaction was short-lived. To my unspeakable horror, I saw Lord Charles cheerfully handing over bank notes and gold to the stockbroker, and realised that I was expected to do the same to the odious Brummer. I ought to have anticipated it. If you won at anything in Upsidonia, of course, you paid out money; if you lost, you received it.
What was I to do? In my distress I mumbled something about having thought that the points were a pound a hundred, and then a gleam of relief came to me when it struck me that Brummer would be better pleased than anything at my omitting to pay him, especially as he had bitterly complained at his want of luck in losing the rubber, as ill-bred players always do, and had made himself intensely disagreeable to his partner for losing a possible trick at an earlier point of the game.