The back room on the third floor chapter 1

Henry Stubben was born in New York, USA. He holds a Doctor of Literature degree and once won the “Top Ten Best Novelists in New York” award. *The Back Room on the Third Floor* is a work created by Henry in 1997. It is highly dramatic with a tortuous plot, truly an excellent piece.

One evening, a young man went door to door ringing the bells. At the twelfth house, after the bell rang, Mrs. Purdy, the landlady, came to open the door. The young man asked if she had a room for rent. Mrs. Purdy said there was a back room on the third floor, and the young man followed her upstairs.

“This is the room,” said Mrs. Purdy, the landlady. “It’s a very nice room. Some very particular people have lived here – they never caused any trouble and always paid the rent on time. Miss Ruth stayed for three months. She acted in light comedies. Many of my tenants are in the entertainment industry.”

The young man rented the room and paid a week’s rent in advance. As Mrs. Purdy was about to leave, the young man asked, “Do you remember a girl named Kelly among your tenants? She probably sang on stage. She had fair skin, was of medium height, slender, with golden – red hair, and there was a very attractive and beautiful mole on the left side of her eyebrow.”

“No, I don’t remember that name. Those in the performing arts change their names as often as they change rooms. They come and go, and it’s hard to keep track. No, I can’t recall that name.” Mrs. Purdy seemed eager to end this conversation.

For five months, the young man kept asking, but all he got were the same negative answers.

He had spent a lot of time. During the day, he went to theater managers, agents, and choirs to inquire; at night, he mingled with the audience to look for her. He had searched in theaters with star – studded shows and also in seedy music halls. Although he was worried about finding Miss Kelly in such places, he didn’t want to miss any possible place where he might find her.

The young man was deeply in love with Miss Kelly and was determined to find her. He was convinced that after she disappeared from home, she must be hiding somewhere in this city.

One afternoon, the young man was lying in bed. Suddenly, he jumped up and looked around as if someone had called him, because he suddenly smelled a strong fragrance of osmanthus in the room. The intense aroma of osmanthus came with the wind, unmistakably. He stretched out his arms to embrace the fragrance. In an instant, all his senses were in a mess, and the young man couldn’t help shouting, “Miss Kelly lived in this room!”

The young man turned around and started searching. Where on earth did this intoxicating osmanthus fragrance, the fragrance she loved and was unique to her, come from?

The young man rummaged through the dresser drawers thoroughly and then searched the cracks in the walls and the corners, but he found no trace that Miss Kelly might have lived there.

Just when the young man was about to despair, he suddenly thought of Mrs. Purdy, the landlady. So he ran downstairs from the haunted – feeling room and came to the door with a sliver of light showing. Mrs. Purdy came to open the door. The young man tried his best to control his excitement and said, “Please tell me, madam, who lived in that room before I came?”

“Sure, sir. I can tell you again. Before, it was Mr. and Mrs. Ruth and Mooney. As I’ve said, Miss Ruth, an actress, later became Mrs. Mooney. My house has always had a good reputation. Their marriage certificate was framed and hung on a nail…”

The young man urgently asked, “What kind of woman was Miss Ruth – I mean, what did she look like? Did she have an attractive mole on the left side of her eyebrow?”

“Miss Ruth had black hair. She was short and fat, with a smiling face. There was no mole. She moved out a week ago, last Tuesday.”

It seemed that Miss Ruth couldn’t be the same person as Miss Kelly.

After a moment of silence, the young man asked again, “Then, who lived here before Miss Ruth?”

“Well, there was a single man in the transportation business. He left without paying me a week’s rent. Before that, there was an old Mr. Doyle… I can’t remember any further back.”

The young man thanked Mrs. Purdy and then slowly walked back to his room.

The room was lifeless. The osmanthus fragrance had disappeared, replaced by the musty, stale, and stagnant smell of the old and moldy furniture.

The young man felt that he would never find his beloved Miss Kelly. He sat there, staring blankly at the yellow light of the hissing gas lamp. After a while, he walked to the bed, tore the sheets into long strips, and then used a knife blade to stuff the strips into every crack around the doors and windows.

After everything was properly sealed, the young man turned off the gas lamp but turned the gas on full. Finally, extremely desperate and exhausted, he lay down on the bed and committed suicide by gas.

Just as the young man was lying on the bed in despair, Mrs. Purdy had gone to a neighbor’s house to play.

Mrs. Purdy told the neighbor lady, “I’ve rented out the back room on the third floor. The tenant is a young man.”

“Oh, good for you,” said the neighbor lady. “It’s really a miracle that you can rent out that kind of room. Did you tell him about that?” She said this in a soft, mysterious voice.

Mrs. Purdy said in her annoying, rough voice, “I didn’t tell him about it just so I could rent it out. If people knew someone had committed suicide in that room and died in the bed, who would rent it?”

“Yes, that’s true. You just cleaned up the back room on the third floor a week ago. That girl killed herself with gas – they say she was very pretty,” the neighbor lady said, both in agreement and rather critically. “It’s just that the mole on the left side of her eyebrow wasn’t very nice.”