"Wonderful!" said the pale man. "I'll take it."
"You will?" she said, with considerable surprise.
"Yes. I'm--I'm a sort of nature-lover. We're all brothers, really. The
cat, the bat, the rat, the spider, the maggot...."
"Well," said Mrs. Tibbets, with a sniff, "it'll be like Old Home Week
for you in my cellar, then. It's this way," she said, leading him out
into the kitchen.
* * * * *
She had to fumble with a ring of keys before she found the one that
opened the stiff metal padlock on the cellar door. "Haven't been
down here in months," she said with a little laugh, flicking on the
lightswitch, and preceding him down the stairs. He followed wordlessly
past the heaped cartons of odd bits of junk, past the furnace--unused
during the summer months--and to a small room (really hardly more than
a bin) at the rear of the cellar.
Mrs. Tibbets reddened in embarrassment as she opened the crooked door
of plain, unsanded boards. "Used to be used for coal, before I had oil
heat put in," she said, apologetically, hoping he wouldn't mind the
crust of grime that covered the tiny cellar window near the top of the
flaking brick wall. The place had a rather repulsive wet, yeasty smell
to it.
Her new tenant, however, seemed very content. Almost ecstatic. "And
what is this?" he said, indicating a short flight of stairs just
outside the door of his room.
"Oh, that leads to the backyard," said Mrs. Tibbets. "Hasn't been
unlocked in years," she said, indicating the slope of the sturdy cellar
doors at the head of the stone stairway.
"It will do nicely, thank you," said Vandor, rubbing his white hands
briskly together. "Yes, it will be ideal. I shall move my things in
tonight."
"Through there?" she asked. "I'm not even sure what I've done with the
key...."
"Do not worry. I have a way with locks," he smiled.
* * * * *
That _smile_, she thought, it makes me all queasy inside.
"Well," she said, trying to brush off the mildewed folding cot in the
corner of the room and raising a cloud of fleas from the damp dust on
the mattress, "all right. It'll be ten dollars a week."
Vandor Thobal made a short, snappy bow, and clicked his heels slightly.
"Of course," he said, reaching inside his cloak, and coming out with a
crisp new bill. "This should take care of it for awhile."
Mrs. Tibbets adjusted her glasses in the dim cellar and looked at the
bill. "Five hundred dollars?" she said, with a little squeak in her
voice. "Why, that's almost a year's rent!"
"Am I to understand there is a limit to my stay?" asked Vandor.
"Why, no," she said, quickly. "It's just that--I mean--Nobody gives a
year's--No, of course not. No limit at all. Stay as long as you like."
A little giddy at her good fortune, she rushed upstairs, and had
automatically almost locked the cellar door when she remembered that
her new tenant was still downstairs. "You don't have anything of value
down there, do you?" she called, leaning over the stairs from the
kitchen door. "I mean, you have no way of locking your room...."
There was no answer.
"Mister Thobal?" she called, a little less heartily.
Still no answer.
Finally, cautiously, she made her way back down to the tiny room at the
back of the cellar. It was empty.
"Mister Tho-bal!" she sing-songed, peering around in the semi-gloom of
the shadowy cellar. She went to the short flight of stone stairs and
looked up at the slanting cellar doors. Hesitantly, she reached up a
hand toward them and gave a tiny shove.
The doors flew outward with a loud slamming noise, and she gasped and
drew back. Vandor was standing there above her, silhouetted against the
night sky, his eyes glowing redly and nostrils flaring as he saw her
there. He was carrying a large, ugly wooden box in his arms.
"Oh!" she said. "Is that your luggage?"
"... Yes. My--er--trunk," he said, starting slowly downstairs, with his
burden, nearly as wide as the stone steps. Mrs. Tibbets stepped aside
to let him pass, and as he did so, entering through the door to his
room, a tiny trickle of dirt sprinkled on the floor from under the edge
of the box's lid.
* * * * *
"Goodness gracious!" she said, following him into his room curiously,
"Whatever have you got in there? It seems so odd."
Vandor set the box against the cellar wall and turned to her, his face
white and angry. "Madam, that is my own personal business, if you don't
mind!"
Mrs. Tibbets shrugged. "Well, I just saw a dribble of dirt coming out
of it, and thought perhaps I could sweep it out for you--"
Vandor's face went--if anything--whiter. "_No!_" he roared, in an
almost terrified voice. "I--I mean, that won't be necessary. It's
_supposed_ to be full of earth. I--I'm a sort of--of botanist. I grow
things."
"Hmmph," Mrs. Tibbets sniffed. "You won't be able to grow anything but
mushrooms, down here!"
"That's just what I _do_ grow," he said, with a smile of relief,
bringing his long pointed canines into view. "Horticulture.... Nothing
like it."
"I s'pose not," said his landlady, starting out of his room. "I'll come
down tomorrow and kind of straighten things up a little for you, while
you're at work. The place certainly needs it."
"_No!_" he said, adding hastily, "I work _nights_. I usually sleep
during the day."
"Oh, then I wouldn't want to disturb your sleep," said Mrs. Tibbets,
at the foot of the stairs. "I'll wait until you go to work, and _then_
I'll--"
"Please!" Vandor approached her, his hands spread wide in supplication.
"I like everything _just_ as it is!"
"Well, it's your room ..." she sighed, starting upstairs. "If there's
anything I can do--"
"There _is_ something," said Vandor. "Will you please replace the
padlock on the door in your kitchen? I'll be using the cellar door, if
you don't mind, as a sort of private entrance...."
Mrs. Tibbets hesitated, then thought of the five hundred dollar
advance, and smiled. "Certainly. Do as you like, Mister Thobal.
Goodnight."
"Goodnight," said Vandor.
"Oh," she said, at the top of the stairs, "did I tell you that you have
kitchen privileges? Perhaps I should leave the padlock off the door
just in case...."
"I never _eat_--at the place I live," he said. "I usually dine _out_.
Thank you just the same."
"Very well," she said a little tartly, and exited to the kitchen and
re-padlocked the door. She was just snapping the padlock shut when Mrs.
Leonetti entered the kitchen.
"Something is the matter, Meesus Teebuts?" asked her roomer, setting a
bag of groceries on the table.
"Oh, just a new roomer," smiled Mrs. Tibbets. "I'm worried about him.
He looks so sickly. I wonder if I should have rented him that room.
Liable to catch his death of pneumonia."
"Pah. Always you worry too much," said Mrs. Leonetti. "If it's not the
one thing, it's the other."
"But the cellar ..." said Mrs. Tibbets, with a little shiver. "It's so
_damp_."
"He's-a live in the _cellar_?"
"He--He seemed to _prefer_ it."
Mrs. Leonetti shrugged, and began putting away her purchases in the
refrigerator. "Well, if he likes, he likes. I'm-a have an uncle once,
he likes to live in the attic and fly kites from-a the window."
"It takes all kinds, I guess," said Mrs. Tibbets.
"Sure it does," said Mrs. Leonetti, dismissing the subject. "Say, I'm-a
gonna make a big pot spaghett'. Maybe you can-a bring him a plate. Warm
him up good."
"That's a wonderful idea!" said Mrs. Tibbets. "But--" her face fell.
"He'll probably be going to work. He works nights."
Mrs. Leonetti shrugged. "Is okay. I cook fast. If he's-a there when you
go down, you give him. If he's-a _no_ there, you eat yourself. Okay?"
"A fine idea," Mrs. Tibbets smiled.
* * * * *
An hour later, Mrs. Tibbets tiptoed down into the cellar, with a
steaming covered dish in her hands. She knocked on the door of Vandor's
room, but there was no response.
"Oh, I've missed him," she complained aloud. "But maybe he's just
stepped out for cigarettes or something. I can leave it for him."
She set the dish on the closed lid of the wooden box, and went back
into the cellar proper, searching in the heaped cartons until she found
a blank sheet of paper.
"Dear Mister Thobal," she scribbled, "if this has gotten cold when you
return, feel free to use the stove to heat it up. Mrs. Leonetti, one
of your fellow roomers, made it. It's really quite good, if you like
Italian food. It's got a bit too much _garlic_ in it for my taste."
Smiling, she signed the note, and went back upstairs.
She was awakened just before dawn by a hand upon her shoulder, shaking
her violently. She sat up in bed, very startled, and flicked on the
bedside lamp.
"_Mis_ter Thobal!" she said in horror, drawing the bed-clothes about
her, "How _dare_ you come into a lady's _bedroom_ at--" she consulted
her alarm clock "--at four in the _morning_, and--"
"Mrs. Tibbets!" he interrupted in an anguished voice that went straight
to her woman's heart, "would you _kindly_ come down to my room and
remove that _garlic_-stinking thing from my _cof_--my horticulture box?"
"At four in the morning?" she said, testily.
"Look--" he said, quivering with some emotion she could not fathom,
"Dawn will be breaking soon, and I'd _like_ to be asleep when it does.
I can't sleep at all once it's bright out."
"Well," she said, slipping into her flannel robe despite her
misgivings, "can't you remove it yourself?"
"No--" he said, miserably, "I'm _allergic_ to garlic. I appreciate the
thought, but would you please remove that plate from my room. The very
redolence of that odor, even when you've taken it away, will make me
ill for the rest of the day. _Please_ hurry!"
"Oh, _all_ right, _all_ right," she said, huffily, leading the way
downstairs, with Vandor Thobal looming after her like an ominous black
cloud.
"Well, I hope you're happier now," she said, holding the plate in
her hands as she stood outside the door of Vandor's tiny room. "If
the smell is going to bother you, I can bring you down a bottle of
Airwick--"
"No, please," he protested, his white face tinged with greenish gray.
"You've done enough already. Just--" he darted an anxious glance behind
him, where the grimy windowpane was beginning to glow pink, "Just go
upstairs and padlock the door. I've got to get to _sleep_!"
"Maybe if I brought you some flowers--" she began.
"No!" he wailed. "No Airwick, no flowers, _nothing_! I'll be getting
along fine, if you'll just leave!"
"Well.... If you're sure--" she said.
"Positive!" he said, though his voice sounded oddly weak. There was
a reddish glow in the room from the tiny window. "Now ... please ...
go...." His voice faded.
"All right," she smiled, closing the door. "Pleasant dreams."
The only answer was a scuffling of feet and a muffled slamming sound.
Mrs. Tibbets cocked her head, shrugged, and went back upstairs.
She was worried about her new roomer.
* * * * *
Two weeks later, she was still worried. She felt it was her
responsibility, in a way, to keep him healthy. After all, if he got
sick, might not the local authorities protest her renting out such a
damp, germ-breeding place?
She was too worried to even share in Mrs. Leonetti's misgivings about
the mysterious attacks in the neighborhood. Mrs. Leonetti was afraid
to go out at night, what with the mounting number of men and women
found pale-faced and incoherent in their beds in the mornings, though
now and then they'd be found upon the grass in the park, or slumped in
a doorway on the main street. The police were calling them "attacks"
because the word was ambiguous enough to refer either to a malefactor
of some sort or just a poor state of the victims' health.
It was Mrs. Tibbets' opinion that it was just "something that was going
'round." She thought of it hardly at all, unless Mrs. Leonetti brought
the topic up. Mostly, she was worried about Mister Thobal. Perhaps _he_
was getting whatever was laying these others low. He certainly didn't
_look_ very healthy.
"Vitamin deficiency," said Mrs. Leonetti, in reply to a query of Mrs.
Tibbets. "He's-a no got the right vitamins. I'm-a read in a medical
story in a magazine. It's-a called a vitamin deficiency."
"Don't see how I can help him, then," sighed Mrs. Tibbets. "No way to
get vitamins to the man if he doesn't eat his meals here."
She brooded and worried about the state of her roomer's health until
she could think of nothing else. She rarely saw him. Only the few times
she went down into the cellar to "get something" she "needed" from one
of the cartons did she see him. He never, after that first night, came
into the upstairs part of the house at all.
"He could be sick, dead, or dying," she said to herself. "And I'd never
find out until the five hundred dollars was used up. It's my _duty_ to
check on him."
So every so often, making some excuse or other, she'd go downstairs
and rummage through the dusty cartons there, hoping for a glimpse of
him, still alive. But he never came out of the room by day, and at
nightfall, she wasn't quite up to facing him in the darkened cellar
alone.
When an entire week had passed without her so much as catching a
glimpse of him, she couldn't stand it any longer.
"I'll just peep into his room, quietly, and see if he's all right,"
she said to herself.
But just to be on the safe side, she waited till almost sunset. "That
way," she assured herself, "if I _do_ waken him, it'll be about time
for him to get up for work anyhow."
* * * * *
Being as silent as she could, she crept down into the cellar, and
cautiously opened the door of his room. The cot was still folded, up
against the wall.
"How strange," she said, entering the room. There was nothing there to
show the room's occupancy except his wooden box against the far wall
under the window.
"I wonder--" she said, half-aloud, "where he's gone to?"
At that moment, the sun went down, and the lid of the box opened up.
"Yipe!" said Mrs. Tibbets, as Vandor Thobal sat up in the box. His
hands arrested themselves in the process of brushing the soil from his
cloak.
"What are you doing in here!?" he demanded.
"What are _you_ doing _there_?" she countered, folding her arms.
Vandor swallowed, then seemed to think of something. "The mushrooms,"
he explained, rising to his awesome full height before her, the tiny
clods of earth rolling off his cloak back into the box. "They--They
need heat, you see. It's rather chilly here in the cellar at night, and
so, I've taken to sleeping in there, hoping my body heat will suffice
to help them grow."
"I never heard of such a thing!" said Mrs. Tibbets.
"Did you never hear of a chicken incubating an egg?" he said smoothly.