two hotels in it, they are not fashionable hotels. It is just a
backwater.

In shape Arundell Street is exactly like one of those flat stone
jars in which Italian wine of the cheaper sort is stored. The
narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a
small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at
present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are
always just going to be pulled down in the name of progress to
make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that
fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability stand
for generations to come.

They provide single rooms of moderate size, the bed modestly
hidden during the day behind a battered screen. The rooms contain
a table, an easy-chair, a hard chair, a bureau, and a round tin
bath, which, like the bed, goes into hiding after its useful work
is performed. And you may rent one of these rooms, with breakfast
thrown in, for five dollars a week.

Ashe Marson had done so. He had rented the second-floor front of
Number Seven.

Twenty-six years before this story opens there had been born to
Joseph Marson, minister, and Sarah his wife, of Hayling,
Massachusetts, in the United States of America, a son. This son,
christened Ashe after a wealthy uncle who subsequently
double-crossed them by leaving his money to charities, in due
course proceeded to Harvard to study for the ministry. So far as
can be ascertained from contemporary records, he did not study a