Those Society ladies who wished to retain or regain their good looks--and they formed a large majority--were well acquainted with that fantastic little shop, although their husbands and lovers and brothers and fathers did not dream of its existence. The police knew, but the police said nothing--partly because Madame Coralie skilfully kept on the right side of the law, and partly for the excellent reason that many of her clients were the wives and daughters, sisters, cousins, and aunts of the men who governed. Madame Coralie was blatantly respectable, and if she _did_ supplement her acknowledged business by telling fortunes, and lending money, and arranging assignations and smothering scandals, she always acted so discreetly that no one in authority could say a word. Vice in this instance aped Virtue by assuming a modest demeanour.
Although coloured a bright pink, the shop really presented a demure appearance, as if unwilling to thrust itself into notice. Clients sometimes suggested that it should be painted as grey as a warship, since that unobtrusive hue was more in keeping with its necessary secrecy; but Madame Coralie held--and not unreasonably--that the flamboyant front was an excellent clue to the whereabouts of her business premises. Any lady told by a friend to go to the pink shop in Walpole Lane had no difficulty in finding her destination. The house, with its glaring tint, looked like a single peony in a colourless winter field, and just hinted sufficient publicity to lure customers into its perfumed seclusion. To womankind it was as a candle to many moths, and they all flocked round it with eagerness. And to do Madame Coralie justice, none of the moths were ever burnt, or even singed--she knew her business too well to risk any catastrophe which might attract the attention of Scotland Yard.
The ground floor of the building, decorated in a picturesque Saracenic fashion, and draped with oddly-patterned Eastern hangings, looked very much like an ordinary drawing-room, though somewhat more artistic and striking. Its polished floor was strewn with Persian praying-mats, while both ceiling and walls were painted in vivid colours with arabesque fancies, interspersed with poetic sentences from the poems of Sadi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam, written in flowery Turkish script. Broad divans of pink silk filled in various alcoves, masked by pierced horse-shoe arches of thin white-painted wood. In the centre bubbled a tiny fountain from a basin of snowy marble, and round this were Turkish stools of black wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, convenient to small tables adorned with ivory. The broad, low windows looking out on to the lane were hidden by fluted curtains of pink silk, interwoven with silver thread, and the light filtering through these being somewhat dim, even at noon, artificial illumination was supplied by many Moorish lamps fed with perfumed oil.