into the seven-by-twelve living room. There was
a cheap radio, a worn sofa, two more folding chairs and a big typing
table. The rug on the floor had been patched together. Then he
breathed more easily. Over the back of one of the chairs was a sports
jacket which he recognized as his own. He jerked it up suddenly and
began going through the pockets, but they had already been emptied.

It didn't matter--he no longer cared why he should be in a place so
totally unlike any his usually neat habits would have led him to. It
was his.

Then, as he came into the bedroom, he hesitated. It was smaller than
the living room, with a bed that took up half of one wall, and two
dressers jammed into the remaining space. One corner held a cardboard
closet--and hanging on the hook was a man's raincoat and hat, both at
least five sizes too big for him. His eyes darted about, to find a
strange mixture of things he remembered as his and possessions which
he would never have owned. On one of the dressers was a small
traveling case, filled with the cosmetics and appliances which only a
woman would use.

He jerked open the closet, and his nose told him before his eyes that
it held only female clothing! Yet on the shelf his old hat rested
happily.

He could make no sense of it--the place looked as if several people
lived in it, and yet it wasn't really fitted for anyone to spend his
whole time there. There was none of the accumulation of property that
would fit any permanent residence. He went out of the bedroom, passing
the typewriter desk. The typewriter was an old, standard Olympia--a
German machine he'd refitted with the Dvorak keyboard which he had
learned for greater efficiency. He was sure nobody else would want it.

The dishes were dusty, and there was no food in the ice-box.

* * * * *

Now, though, it began to fit--a place where it was convenient to stop
in, but not a place to live. And perhaps he had been in the habit of
lending it to others. Though why he shouldn't have used his own
apartment was something he still couldn't understand.

But it was possible there was no record of this place.

He began shucking off his shirt as he went back through the living
room--until the marks on the rug caught his eyes. Something heavy had
rested there recently--there had been other desks about, or heavily
laden tables. And a bit of paper under the sofa could only have come
from one of the complicated compu