The Clue Of The New Pin (ePub)

Excerpt: The establishment of Yeh Ling was just between the desert of Reed Street, and the sown of that great and glittering thoroughfare which is theatreland. The desert graduated down from the respectable, if gloomy, houses where innumerable milliners, modistes and dentists had their signs before the doors and their workrooms and clinics on divers landings, to the howling wilderness of Bennet Street, and in this particular case the description often applied so lightly is aptly and faithfully affixed, for Bennet Street howled by day and howled in a shriller key by night. Its roadway was a playground for the progeny of this prolific neighbourhood, and a ?ring? in which all manner of local blood-feuds were settled by waist-bare men, whilst their slatternly women squealed their encouragement or vocalized their apprehensions Yeh Ling?s restaurant had begun at the respectable end of the street and he had specialized in strange Chinese dishes. Later it had crept nearer and nearer to The Lights, one house after another having been acquired by the unhappy looking oriental, its founder. Then, with a rush, it arrived on the main street, acquired a rich but sedate facia, a French chef and a staff of Italian waiters under the popular Signor Maciduino, most urban of maitres d?hotel, and because of gilded and visible tiles, became ?The Golden Roof.? Beneath those tiles it was a place of rosewood panelling and soft shaded lights. There was a gilded elevator to carry you to the first and second floors where the private dining-rooms were?these had doors of plate glass, curtained diaphanously. Yeh Ling thought that this was carrying respectability a little too far, but his patron was adamant on the matter.