d in facsimile of large rectangles of gray stone, and
the usual telephone memorandum for the usual Mrs. J. F. Smith (who
abides in all lodging houses) tucked into the frame of the mirror.
Will Mrs. Smith please call Stockton 6771, it said. A carpeted stair
with a fine old mahogany balustrade rose into the dimness. Aubrey, who
was thoroughly familiar with lodgings, knew instinctively that the
fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps would be creakers. A soft
musk sweetened the warm, torpid air: he divined that someone was
toasting marshmallows over a gas jet. He knew perfectly well that
somewhere in the house would be a placard over a bathtub with the
legend: Please leave this tub as you would wish to find it. Roger
Mifflin would have said, after studying the hall, that someone in the
house was sure to be reading the poems of Rabbi Tagore; but Aubrey was
not so caustic.

Mrs. Schiller came up the basement stairs, followed by a small pug dog.
She was warm and stout, with a tendency to burst just under the
armpits. She was friendly. The pug made merry over Aubrey's ankles.

"Stop it, Treasure!" said Mrs. Schiller.

"Can I get a room here?" asked Aubrey, with great politeness.

"Third floor front's the only thing I've got," she said. "You don't
smoke in bed, do you? The last young man I had burned holes in three
of my sheets----"

Aubrey reassured her.

"I don't give meals."

"That's all right," said Aubrey. "Suits me."

"Five dollars a week," she said.

"May I see it?"

Mrs. Schiller brightened the gas and led the way upstairs. Treasure
skipped up the treads beside her. The sight of the six feet ascending
together amused Aubrey. The fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps
creaked, as he had guessed they would. On the landing of the second
storey a transom gushed orange light. Mrs. Schiller was secretly
pleased at not having to augment the gas on that landing. Under the
transom and behind a door Aubrey could hear someone having a bath, with
a great sloshing of water. He wondered irreverently whether it was
Mrs. J. F. Smith. At any rate (he felt sure), it was some experienced
habitue of lodgings, who knew that about five-thirty in the afternoon
is the best time for a bath--before cooking supper and the homecoming
ablutions of other tenants have exhausted the hot water boiler.

They climbed one more flight. The room was small, occupying half the
third-floor frontage. A large window open