"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?"
Leila nodded, and lighted another cigarette.
"All right," continued Mortimer impatiently; "you and Agatha won't start before one. And if you think Plank had better go, why, we'll be back here in time."
"That means you won't be back at all," observed his wife coolly; "and it's good policy for Beverly to go where he's asked. Can't you turn in and sleep, now, and amuse your friend Desmond to-morrow night?"
"No, I can't. What a fool I'd be to let a chance slip when I feel like a winner!"
"You never feel otherwise when you gamble," said Leila.
"Yes, I do," he retorted peevishly. "I can tell almost every time what the cards are going to do to me. Leila, go to sleep. We'll be back here for you by one, or half past."
"Look here, Leroy," began Plank, "there's one thing I can't stand for, and that's this continual loss of sleep. If I go with you I'll not be fit to go to the Pages."
"What a farmer you are!" sneered Mortimer. "I believe you roost on the foot-board of your bed, like a confounded turkey. Come on! You'd better begin training, you know. People in this town are not going to stand for the merry ploughboy game, you see!"
But Plank was shrewdly covering his principal reason for declining; he had too often "temporarily" assisted Mortimer at Desmond's and Burbank's, when Mortimer, cleaned out and unable to draw against a balance non-existent, had plucked him by the sleeve from the faro table with the breathless request for a loan.