I might have answered that I held a watching brief, but that's the sort of clever reply one doesn't think of till afterwards. And yet it absolutely summed up my position; I was watching, and with a diffidence that gradually, as the affair proceeded, developed into rather dissatisfied disgust. For, as I had feared, the whole thing was almost a fiasco. Terry was sheerly defenceless against Severn; he couldn't think or talk a quarter as fast; he had none of the arts of suavity or blandness; he could only sit there, minute after minute, in a sort of dogged, stupefied silence.... Really, it was no fight at all; it was merely Severn giving a free exhibition of himself.

Perhaps you have heard Severn defending a difficult case in a court of law. He rises quickly to his feet, all smiles and courtesy to everybody; he talks calmly and suavely for a few moments, just to give the prosecution time to reflect what a charming man he is; and then, quite suddenly, he says something unexpected. Perhaps he startles by some unguessed admission, or brings forth a new and unlooked-for item of evidence. But anyhow, after politely upsetting most of the ideas you already have, he proceeds, still politely, to build up in you the ideas he wants you to have. And that is the way he earns his hundreds of pounds a week.

You can picture him, therefore, striding into the lounge of the Andrassy, bestowing on everybody a charming smile, ordering drinks, offering cigars, remarking on the hot weather, and generally, in fact, behaving as if he hadn't a ghost of an idea what we wanted him for. And you can picture Terry, clenching his hands with a queer sort of nervous firmness, declining the drink and the cigar, and going straight ahead to the vital question—was this woman, this Greek dancer, Severn's mistress?

Terry was too nervous to lead up to the question gradually. And Severn was too clever to lead down from it gradually. He answered, as sharply and instantly as a pistol-shot: "Yes. And what of it?"

II

Well, what of it? What could be said by either of us? Severn had won the first round and was fresh as ever after it, while his adversary was driven to the ropes by the suddenness rather than the strength of the blow. It was, indeed, an utterly impossible contest, for while Terry's attitude was rock-still, Severn moved his arguments continually and bewilderingly about in all directions and with all velocities. There was nowhere to grip hold, and besides, Severn was the wicked animal that, when attacked, defends itself. When, for instance, Terry asked if Helen knew what was happening, Severn answered: "Why should she know? She doesn't tell me all her private affairs." And when I ventured to point out that there was really no parallel at all between her private affairs and this one of his, he turned on me with the lightning retort: "Well, you ought to know her private affairs, Hilton, if anybody does. You ought to know why she hasn't spoken to you for years, and won't even have you in the house.... She won't tell me, anyway."

It was a good shot, and it made the second round his as well as the first. Terry, I could see, was utterly bewildered by the revelation; and I, naturally, was nonplussed. In the interval Severn went serenely on with his little game of turning the argument upside down and inside out. It was a fascinating display of dialectic, but I wasn't in the mood to admire it; I wondered why he didn't say: "Look here, I've had enough of this discussion. My own affairs are my own, and you can both clear out and be damned to you." Perhaps he didn't say that because he was enjoying himself so much better arguing.

The interview had begun at half-past eight, and soon after nine I reminded him of his train to Warsaw. And then, with a bland smile, he replied: "Oh, never mind that. I'm not going to Warsaw or anywhere else just yet. It was only a blind to get me away from your valued, but in the circumstances, rather undesirable company.... Have another drink, will you?"

I declined one perhaps curtly, and he ordered one for himself. Then he went on, lighting another cigar and making himself thoroughly comfortable: "D'you know, you fellows seems so infernally interested in my affairs that I've half a mind to tell you the whole damn truth about them...."

III