The Man Upstairs

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At dawn Mrs. Collins slowly climbed the stairs to her lodger’s room on the second floor, bringing him his hot shaving water. That was the only way it could be supplied; there was no hot running water in her decrepit old house. Daybreak came late these bleak winter mornings. Outside the town was still fast asleep and the streets were dark. A chill, tomblike silence hung over the house; her creaking tread on the worn staircase was the only sound that broke it. She knocked at the door and waited.

He’d lodged with her for over ten years now, ever since — well, ever since Jerry, her stepbrother, had had that trouble and been put away. If it wasn’t for him, old Mr. Davis, she would have lost the very roof over her head, battered and tumble-down as it was. The pittance he paid her for his room each week was her sole means of subsistence. People said he was a miser. They asked her if it was true that he had a large sum of money hidden away up there in the room with him. She didn’t know for sure. But even if she had, she wouldn’t have told them about it. He was her only friend.

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