Next to the saloon is the pantry, which includes a wine cabinet, J. E. Hall bottle-cooling unit, a Stills Café set and ample cupboard space.

“In the daytimes, he fixes things for people,” I said, “and in return they keep him sandwiched and coffeed.”

But you heed me no more than a goss-hawk minds a yellow yoldring.

The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare.