The apartment was small and the furniture used and cheap, but it was what he'd expected to find for the money he had, and it was clean. Which was more than he could say for the cockroach farm he was temporarily hoteled in. There was a combination livingroom and kitchen, the distinction between the two areas drawn by a dinette set lengthwise against one wall. The floor was carpeted in the Old Rose pattern popular with hotel lobbies, and the few pictures on the walls were strictly Woolworth Pastoral. Against the far wall was a gas heater, and when he looked in the bedroom, he was glad to see that the heater had a small duct to pipe hot air into it as well as the main room.

The bedroom – well, what was there to say about a bedroom? It had the usual double bed, closet, lamps and bureau. The rug was newer and a different color, but same pattern. He shut the door.

"There's a porch which is actually the roof of the storage room below," she said, nodding over her shoulder towards the hall and beyond. "You can't see it from here, but you get to it from either end of the hallway; there's doors leading out onto it."

"I'd like to see it if I may," Preston asked…

The porch was railed and its flooring was of redwood slats. It had a magnificent view of the whole Reedsport harbor, of the frosty blue Pacific lapping gently against the sandy, boulder- and driftwood-strewn shore, of the verdant green lacery of trees and shrubs which enclosed the sheltered harbor like a crescent-shaped cove. To his left was the main part of Reedsport, a community of some twenty thousand, nestled in the heart of the fishing and timber producing area of fertile Northern California.