"Well.... If you're sure—" she said.
"Positive!" he said, though his voice sounded oddly weak. There was a reddish glow in the room from the tiny window. "Now ... please ... go...." His voice faded.
"All right," she smiled, closing the door. "Pleasant dreams."
The only answer was a scuffling of feet and a muffled slamming sound. Mrs. Tibbets cocked her head, shrugged, and went back upstairs.
She was worried about her new roomer.
Two weeks later, she was still worried. She felt it was her responsibility, in a way, to keep him healthy. After all, if he got sick, might not the local authorities protest her renting out such a damp, germ-breeding place?
She was too worried to even share in Mrs. Leonetti's misgivings about the mysterious attacks in the neighborhood. Mrs. Leonetti was afraid to go out at night, what with the mounting number of men and women found pale-faced and incoherent in their beds in the mornings, though now and then they'd be found upon the grass in the park, or slumped in a doorway on the main street. The police were calling them "attacks" because the word was ambiguous enough to refer either to a malefactor of some sort or just a poor state of the victims' health.
It was Mrs. Tibbets' opinion that it was just "something that was going 'round." She thought of it hardly at all, unless Mrs. Leonetti brought the topic up. Mostly, she was worried about Mister Thobal. Perhaps he was getting whatever was laying these others low. He certainly didn't look very healthy.
"Vitamin deficiency," said Mrs. Leonetti, in reply to a query of Mrs. Tibbets. "He's-a no got the right vitamins. I'm-a read in a medical story in a magazine. It's-a called a vitamin deficiency."