o also was his hair-dye.... And,
lastly, when the riddle of existence had become too much for your
curiosity, Hugo would sell you a pistol by means of which you could
solve it. And he would bury you in a manner first-class, second-class,
or third-class, according to your deserts.

And all these feats Hugo managed to organize within the compass of four
floors, a basement, and a sub-basement. Above, were five floors of
furnished and unfurnished flats. 'Will people of wealth consent to live
over a shop?' he had asked himself in considering the possibilities of
his palace, and he had replied, 'Yes, if the shop is large enough and
the rents are high enough.' He was right. His flats were the most
sumptuous and the most preposterously expensive in London; and they
were never tenantless. One man paid two thousand a year for a furnished
suite. But what a furnished suite! The flats had a separate and
spectacular entrance on the eastern facade of the building, with a foyer
that was always brilliantly lighted, and elevators that rose and sank
without intermission day or night. And on the ninth floor was a special
restaurant, with prices to match the rents, and a roof garden, where one
of Hugo's orchestras played every fine summer evening, except Sundays.
(The County Council, mistrusting this aerial combination of music and
moonbeams, had granted its license only on the condition that customers
should have one night in which to recover from the doubtful influences
of the other six.) The restaurant and the roof-garden were a resort
excessively fashionable during the season. The garden gave an excellent
view of the dome, where Hugo lived. But few persons knew that he lived
there; in some matters he was very secretive.

That very sultry morning Hugo brooded over the face of his establishment
like a spirit doomed to perpetual motion. For more than two hours he
threaded ceaselessly the long galleries where the usual daily crowds of
customers, sales-people, shopwalkers, inspectors, sub-managers,
managers, and private detectives of both sexes, moved with a strange and
unaccustomed languor in a drowsy atmosphere which no system of
ventilation could keep below 75 deg. Fahrenheit. None but the chiefs of
departments had the right to address him as he passed; such was the
rule. He deviated into the counting-house, where two hundred typewriters
made their music, and into the annexe containing the stables and
coach-houses, where scores of vans a