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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 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 urbane 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.
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