beastly place."

"It is a singularly beastly place. We went into one of the houses."

"They're pretty bad."

"Who owns them?"

"I don't know. Probably some millionaire. Those tenement houses
are about as paying an investment as you can have."

"Hasn't anybody ever tried to do anything about them?"

"Not so far as I know. It's pretty difficult to get at these
fellows, you see. But they're fierce, aren't they, those houses!"

"What," asked Psmith, "is the precise difficulty of getting at
these merchants?"

"Well, it's this way. There are all sorts of laws about the places,
but any one who wants can get round them as easy as falling off a
log. The law says a tenement house is a building occupied by more
than two families. Well, when there's a fuss, all the man has to do
is to clear out all the families but two. Then, when the inspector
fellow comes along, and says, let's say, 'Where's your running
water on each floor? That's what the law says you've got to have,
and here are these people having to go downstairs and out of doors
to fetch their water supplies,' the landlord simply replies,
'Nothing doing. This isn't a tenement house at all. There are only
two families here.' And when the fuss has blown over, back come the