"Don't see how I can help him, then," sighed Mrs. Tibbets. "No way to get vitamins to the man if he doesn't eat his meals here."
She brooded and worried about the state of her roomer's health until she could think of nothing else. She rarely saw him. Only the few times she went down into the cellar to "get something" she "needed" from one of the cartons did she see him. He never, after that first night, came into the upstairs part of the house at all.
"He could be sick, dead, or dying," she said to herself. "And I'd never find out until the five hundred dollars was used up. It's my duty to check on him."
So every so often, making some excuse or other, she'd go downstairs and rummage through the dusty cartons there, hoping for a glimpse of him, still alive. But he never came out of the room by day, and at nightfall, she wasn't quite up to facing him in the darkened cellar alone.
When an entire week had passed without her so much as catching a glimpse of him, she couldn't stand it any longer.
"I'll just peep into his room, quietly, and see if he's all right," she said to herself.
But just to be on the safe side, she waited till almost sunset. "That way," she assured herself, "if I do waken him, it'll be about time for him to get up for work anyhow."
Being as silent as she could, she crept down into the cellar, and cautiously opened the door of his room. The cot was still folded, up against the wall.
"How strange," she said, entering the room. There was nothing there to show the room's occupancy except his wooden box against the far wall under the window.