_She was just a sweet, kind-hearted old landlady
who couldn't keep her nose out of other people's
business. This was very unfortunate for Mr. Thobal._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Science Fiction Stories December 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mrs. Tibbets was a worrier. When it rained, she worried about people
caught outside without umbrellas. When the sun shone, she worried about
the corn crop that might need water. At band concerts, she worried
about the deaf people who were missing the music. If it thundered,
she worried for the hearing of people with good ears. No matter what
happened, she found something to get worried about. As long as she was
worried, she was content.
Her husband had been dead ten years when Mrs. Tibbets realized that she
had a twelve-bedroom house for just herself alone, and began to worry
about people who had no place to live. So she put an ad into the papers
offering her home as lodging for any who could afford the modest price
she asked for the rooms (her husband had left her very little money,
and this worried her, too).
After eleven of the rooms were filled--leaving the remaining room for
herself--the price of the ad in the paper began to worry her, so she
called and had it taken out. Then she settled herself comfortably in
the living room, and, in her new role as landlady, began to worry about
collecting the weekly rent.
The sun had just set, and Mrs. Tibbets had just turned on the lights in
the living room--and begun to worry about the electric bill--when the
door-chimes sounded.
"It could be a telegram with bad news," thought Mrs. Tibbets, worrying
herself toward the door. "Or the police are here to arrest one of the
tenants. Or some desperate criminal has come here to murder us all.
Or--"
At this juncture, she opened the door.
She found herself looking up into the sad-eyed, pale face of a man
who stood at least six-feet-six inches tall, couldn't have weighed
less than two hundred pounds, and was rather startlingly garbed in an
ankle-length opera cloak with a flame-colored silk lining.
"I've come about a room," he said, in an enthralling baritone voice,
with just the smallest hint of a foreign accent bending the syllables.
"My name," he added, with a toothy smile, "is Thobal. Vandor Thobal."
* * * * *
Mrs. Tibbets found herself smiling back, despite the queer goosefleshy
feeling she got all over when she saw the length and sharpness of his
canines. There was a numbing sort of heat in his deep-set, burning eyes
that made her feel rather weak and helpless.
"I'm afraid--" she said, and almost left those two words as her
complete statement, "--I'm afraid that I've rented all the rooms. I
just had the ad taken out of the paper today."
"Surely you have something ..." he insisted, coming inside her hall and
closing the door behind him. He made no move to remove his cloak. "All
I require is a place to sleep...."
"I'm so terribly sorry, but I--" Mrs. Tibbets began to worry about
Mister Thobal, all at once. What if she turned him away, and he were
found in the morning, huddled frozen in an alley somewhere. The fact
that it was mid-July didn't stop her mental image of frosty death.
Then she brightened. "Perhaps ... I wouldn't show this to anybody,
ordinarily, because it's really a terrible sort of place, but I _do_
have a very small room. However, I should warn you: It's down in the
cellar."
"Ah!" said Vandor Thobal, his eyes flashing scarlet. "Does it have
mice? Cobwebs? Mold?"