The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 11 (February 1, 1936)
The Bridge Wrecker
The Bridge Wrecker.
No, gentlemen! An adviser never kicks his wife's shins under the table. His revenge is more subtle than that; he simply goes on living.
But he is at his best when the hand has been played and the agony of post-bridge arithmetic is over. The problem of how five claims to four aces can be substantiated is still rankling when he gets in his first punch.
“Now, look here!” he says, grabbing a fist-full of cards and squirting them in all directions. “If you'd led the two to dummy and taken it with your queen and thrown away your four and not trumped your own trick and led to strength through weakness and not reniegged and kept your ace until you'd played your king you would have gone down by only five instead of six. If—–”
“Good heavens!” says somebody. “Who would have dreamt that it's half past twelve?”
And then, while the ladies retire to put on their hats and coats until 1.15 a.m., the host wrestles with his conscience as to whether a host would, under certain circumstances, be justified in slipping rat-exterminator into a guest's whisky.
And so, take my advice—–. But, no! You never will.