But as it was, all he could get on the cheap little set his uncle had left behind was a faint gray herringbone pattern-- He straightened up with the kettle in his hand, listening. It was almost as though somebody was knocking at the door. "That's crazy," Mooney said out loud after a moment. He poured the water over the tea bag, tearing a little corner off the paper tag on the end of the string to mark the fact that this was the second cup he had made with the bag. He had found he could get three cups out of a single bag, but even loaded with sugar, the fourth cup was no longer very good. Still, he had carefully saved all the used, dried-out bags against the difficult future day when even the tea would be gone. That was going to be one bad day for Howard Mooney. Rap, tap. It really was someone at the door! Not knocking, exactly, but either kicking at it or striking it with a stick. Mooney pulled his jacket tight around him and walked out into the frigid living room, not quite so frigid as his heart. "Damn!" he said. "Damn, damn!" What Mooney knew for sure was that nothing good could be coming in that door for him. It might be a policeman from Sea Bright, wondering about the light in the house; it might be a member of his uncle's family. It was even possible that one of the stockholders who had put up the money for that unfortunate venture into frozen-food club management had tracked him down as far as the Jersey shore. It could be almost anything or anybody, but it couldn't be good. All the same, Mooney hadn't expected it to turn out to be a tall, lean man with angry pale eyes, wearing a silvery sort of leotard. * * * * * "I come in," said the angry man, and did. Mooney slammed the door behind him. Too bad, but he couldn't keep it open, even if it was conceding a sort of moral right to enter to the stranger; he couldn't have all that cold air coming in to dilute his little bubble of warmth. "What the devil do you want?" Mooney demanded. The angry man looked about him with an expression of revulsion. He pointed to the kitchen. "It is warmer. In there?" "I suppose so. What do--" But the stranger was already walking into the kitchen. Mooney scowled and started to follow, and stopped, and scowled even more. The stranger was leaving footprints behind him, or anyway some kind of marks that showed black on the faded summer rug. True, he was speckled with snow, but--that much snow? The man was drenched. It looked as though he had just come out of the ocean.