The Man who had Spiders by Roger Dee _All too modestly, we feel, has Roger Dee tried to shrug off his undoubted kinship to Saki--that master of whimsical fantasy supreme--in this ebulliently breathtaking excursion into a realm as darkly mysterious as it is irresistibly enchanting. Adrian’s spiders may make your flesh crawl. But we predict you’ll like Adrian himself quite as much as did Mr. Marcus, and rejoice in his triumph._ =There is probably more than one way of curing a tragic addiction to alcohol. But Adrian’s way was as shuddery as a smiling Medusa.= When Mr. Marcus, who had sold novelties to novelty shops for forty years and so had lost the capacity for astonishment at human unpredictability, returned to Maysville on the 8:04 train for his regular April week of selling, he went at once to Mrs. Ponder’s boarding house and found Kitty playing Delibes on the living-room piano. It was almost like coming home, Mr. Marcus thought with an uncharacteristic twinge of nostalgia. He paused for a moment in the doorway, suitcase and sample bag and his inevitable parcel of books in hand, to listen. Tender was the word for Kitty, with her cool, sure touch on the Delibes theme and her clear blind eyes and her nestling of fair hair that just brushed her shoulders. And wasted, Mr. Marcus thought, with all the beauty and the talent of her shunted to obscurity in the dingy gentility of her mother’s menage. If he were thirty years younger-- Mr. Marcus cut the thought dead. _If you were thirty years younger, Marcus_, he told himself with dry cynicism, _you’d travel and sell novelties. Just as you did thirty years ago._ Kitty sensed his presence with the near-tactile acuity of the blind and let the Delibes theme trail off in a random tinkle. “It’s only I, Miss Kitty,” Mr. Marcus said. “The old man who sells loaded cigars to idiots.” She turned on the piano bench, pleased at his coming but nevertheless disappointed. “Oh, Mr. Marcus. I thought at first you were Adrian.” “Adrian?” She laughed, a sound as light and clear as the vanished music. “Adrian Hall, our new boarder. He’s only been with us a week.” A week. Seven days, Mr. Marcus thought, and her face could light up so at the sound of his step? When Kitty smiled it was impossible to think that her eyes could not see him. “You’re thinking that my interest is unusual, and you’re quite right. But Adrian is an unusual man, Mr. Marcus.” “I’m sure he is,” Mr. Marcus said cautiously. “I’ll have to meet him.” The prospect pleased her. “You were always nice to me and Jay Kirby because I’m blind and Jay has fits, but you never noticed anyone else. You’ll notice Adrian. You’ll like him.” “I’m sure I shall,” Mr. Marcus said. Her eagerness made him feel old and tired and somehow resentful. The books and bags grew heavy in his hands. “I was just going upstairs to see if my room--”