“But you won it.”
“I'm tired of winning it. It is all I ever do win... from you.”
Her pretty head was wreathed in smoke. She tipped the ashes from the cigarette's end, watching them fall to powder on the rug.
“I don't know what you mean,” he persisted doggedly.
“Don't you? I don't believe I do, either. There are intervals in my career which might prove eloquent if I opened my lips. But I don't, except to make floating rings and cabalistic signs out of cigarette smoke. Can you read their meaning? Look! There goes one, and there's another, and another—all twisting and uncurling into hieroglyphics. They are very significant; they might tell you a lot of things, if you would only translate them. But you haven't the key—have you?”
There was a heavy, jarring step in the main living-room, and Mortimer's bulk darkened the doorway.
“Entrez, mon ami,” nodded Leila, glancing up. “Where is Agatha?”
“I'm going to Desmond's,” he grunted, ignoring his wife's question; “do you want to try it again, Beverly?”
“I can't make Leila take her own winnings,” said Plank, holding out the signed but unfilled cheque to Mortimer, who took it and scrutinised it for a moment, rubbing his heavy, inflamed eyes; then, gesticulating, the cheque fluttering in his puffy fingers:
“Come on,” he insisted. “I've a notion that I can give Desmond a whirl that he won't forget in a hurry. Agatha's asleep; she's going to that ball—where is it?” he demanded, turning on his wife. “Yes, yes; the Page blow-out. You're going, I suppose?”