‘A Hungarian,’ Phyllis said, ‘I never met a Hungarian. Sometimes I think I will work through the nationalities like a girl I knew decided to go through the religions. But gave up at the Occultists.’

‘Why?’

‘She simply got scared. They buried a man alive, one Saturday afternoon, over at Balmoral.’

When old Huthnance came out of his office.

‘Miss Slattery,’ he asked, ‘where is that Dewhurst policy?’

He was rather a sweetie really.

‘Oh yes,’ Miss Slattery said. ‘I was checking.’

‘What is there to check?’ Huthnance asked.

‘Well,’ Miss Slattery said.

And Huthnance smiled. He was still at the smiling stage.

Thursday evenings Miss Slattery kept for Tibby Szabo. She would go there Saturdays too, usually staying over till Sunday, when they would breakfast in the continental style.

There was the Saturday Miss Slattery decided to give Tibby Szabo a treat. Domesticity jacked her up on her heels; she was full of secrecy and little ways.

When Tibbý asked:

‘Faht is zet?’

‘What is what?’

‘Zet stench! Zet blue smoke you are mecking in my kitchenette. Faht are you prepurring?’

‘That is a baked dinner,’ Miss Slattery answered. ‘A leg of lamb, with pumpkin and two other veg.’

‘Lemb?’ cried Tibby Szabo. ‘Lemb! It stinks. Nefer in Budapest did lemb so much as cross ze doorways.’

And he opened the oven, and tossed the leg into the Harbour.

Miss Slattery cried then, or sat, rather, making her handkerchief into a ball.

Tibby Szabo prepared himself a snack. He had Paprikawurst, a breast of cold paprika chicken, paprikas in oil, paprika in cream cheese, and finally, she suspected, paprika.

‘Eat!’ he advised.

‘A tiny crumb would choke me.’

‘You are not crying?’ he asked through some remains of paprika.

‘I was thinking,’ she replied.

‘So! Sink-ing!’

Afterwards he made love to her, and because she had chosen love, she embraced it with a sad abandon, on the mink coverlet, under the glass sky.

Once, certainly, she sat up and said:

‘It is all so carnal!’

‘You use zeese intellectual veuords.’

He had the paprika chicken in his teeth.

There was the telephone, too, with which Miss Slattery had to contend.

‘Igen! Igen! IGEN!’ Tibby Szabo would shout, and bash the receiver on somebody anonymous.

‘All this iggy stuff!’ she said.

It began to get on her nerves.

‘Demn idiots!’ Tibby Szabo complained.

‘How do you make your money, Tib?’ Miss Slattery asked, picking at the mink coverlet.

‘I am Hoongahrian,’ he said. ‘It come to me over ze telephown.’

Presently Szabo Tibor announced he was on his way to inspect several properties he owned around the city.

He had given her a key, at least, so that she might come and go.

‘And you have had keys cut,’ she asked, ‘for all these other women, for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, in all these other flats?’

How he laughed.

‘At least a real Witz! An Australian Witz!’ he said on going.

It seemed no time before he returned.

‘Faht,’ he said, ‘you are still here?’