"We've just three now for 'Preference,' and if you go kiting off to town Hamil and I will be forced into double dummy, and that's a horrible mental strain on a man--isn't it, Hamil ?" "I _could_ use the long-distance telephone," said Malcourt pensively.
"Well, for the love of Mike go and do it!" shouted Portlaw, "and let me try to enjoy this Andelys cheese." So Malcourt sauntered out through the billiard-room, leaving an aromatic trail of cigarette smoke in his wake; and he closed all the intervening doors--why, he himself could not have explained.
He was absent a long time.

Portlaw had terminated the table ceremony, and now, ensconced among a dozen fat cushions by the fire, a plump cigar burning fragrantly between his curiously clean-cut and sharply chiselled lips, he sat enthroned, majestically digesting; and his face of a Greek hero, marred by heavy flesh, had become almost somnolent in its expression of well-being and corporeal contentment.
"I don't know what I'd do without Louis," he said sleepily.

"He keeps my men hustling, he answers for everything on the bally place, he's so infernally clever that he amuses me and my guests, he's on the job every minute.

It would be devilishly unpleasant for me if I lost him....

And I'm always afraid of it....