Explore "The Man who Would not Play Cards" by H.C. McNeile on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Thanks very much, but as I told you before -- I don't play cards."
The speaker, a tall, bronzed man whose clear eye and slightly weather-beaten face proclaimed him to be no dweller in cities, paused at the smoking-room door, and stared, a little deliberately, at the man who had just accosted him. It was the second time that day that this same gentleman had endeavoured to rope him into a game of poker -- "just small stakes, you know" -- and Hugh Massingham disliked being asked things twice. Almost as much as, in this particular case, he disliked the appearance of the asker.