"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?" Mrs. Tibbets sighed, and nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid it does." "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.