"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!"