How are Thaddeus Sholto and his home described? What is the purpose or possible effect of this description? - (Sign of four novel)

At the end
of chapter three, Holmes and Watson arrive at what the author calls a "questionable and
forbidding neighbourhood." Watson describes a line of dark brick houses, most of which are
uninhabited, illuminated only by the gaudy public houses on the street corner. They stop at the
only house with a light on and knock on the door.

In the next chapter,
entitled "The Story of the Bald-headed Man," they enter what Watson calls a
"sordid and common passage, ill-lit and worse furnished." They continue into another
room, Watson calls an apartment, which as he says "looked as out of place as a diamond of
the first water in a setting of brass." In comparison, to the hallway it is luxurious;
decorated in a fashion inspired by the east. Expensive tapestries, curtains, and tiger skins are
draped over the walls, oriental vases sit on sills, a huge hookah stands on a mat in the corner
and a dove-shaped lamp hangs from the centre of the room. Watson says the carpet is so soft that
his feet sink into it "as into a bed of moss."

Thaddeus Sholto is
standing up to greet them. Watson describes him as a small man with a line of red hair skirting
around a shining bald scalp and a set of irregular yellow teeth that he is so conscious of he
tries to hide them with his hand. Despite his appearance, Watson says he is only 30 years
old.

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