Aldous knew Lovak, the Hungarian.
Through Lovak he had found the key that had unlocked for him many curious and interesting things associated with that powerful Left Arm of the Empire Builders--the Slav.

Except for a sprinkling of Germans, a few Italians, and now and then a Greek or Swiss, only the Slavs filled Lovak's place!--Slavs from all the Russias and the nations south: the quick and chattering Polak; the thick-set, heavy-jowled Croatian; the silent and dangerous-eyed Lithuanian.

All came in for Lovak's wonderful soup, which he sold in big yellow bowls at ten cents a bowl--soup of barley, rice, and cabbage, of beef and mutton, of everything procurable out of which soup could be made, and, whether of meat or vegetable, smelling to heaven of garlic.
Fifty men were eating when Aldous went in, devouring their soup with the utter abandon and joy of the Galician, so that the noise they made was like the noise of fifty pigs at fifty troughs.

Now and then DeBar, the half-breed, came here for soup, and Aldous searched quickly for him.

He was turning to go when his friend, Lovak, came to him.