The next day he put my point of view to Bottiger, and I think they decided to give gentler enthusiasm a trial. If they did, it proved barren of results.
One evening I was returning their hospitality to Angel and myself during the black fortnight when I had been short of money, by giving them a dinner at the Savoy, and they came to it in very poor tempers. Chelubai was fuming; Bottiger was brick-red with fury. It came out that they had fallen victims to Sir Reginald Blackthwaite; they had in turn been his partner at bridge for two rubbers. Sir Reginald Blackthwaite is the club bore, and probably the worst bridge player in Europe. He is a round, tubby man of forty-five, provided with an inexhaustible fund of tedious anecdote. He insists on thrusting his victims into corners and flooding their dazed brains with his interminable views on the fiscal question. He suffers, too, from that debased form of humor which finds expression in punning, and he greets each of its efforts with a bleating gurgle, which in him does duty for a laugh.
Chelubai and Bottiger burst out upon us together with the recital of the horrible fate which had befallen them. There was nothing Sir Reginald had not done. He had revoked, he had trumped their best cards, he had declared spades when he should have declared no trumps, he had
