I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone else lived here.” I noticed, even as I spoke, that I was imitating his own whistling sibilant utterance.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “We live here. It’s delightful.”

“We?”

“All of us. Look!”

We were near the edge of the first gallery. He swept his long hand around, indicating the whole well of the shop. I looked. I saw nothing. I could hear nothing, except the watchman’s thudding step receding infinitely far along some basement aisle.

“Don’t you see?”

You know the sensation one has, peering into the half-light of a vivarium? One sees bark, pebbles, a few leaves, nothing more. And then, suddenly, a stone breathes — it is a toad; there is a chameleon, another, a coiled adder, a mantis among the leaves. The whole case seems crepitant with life. Perhaps the whole world is. One glances at one’s sleeve, one’s feet.

So it was with the shop. I looked, and it was empty. I looked, and there was an old lady, clambering out from behind the monstrous clock. There were three girls, elderly ingénues, incredibly emaciated, simpering at the entrance of the perfumery. Their hair was a fine floss, pale as gossamer. Equally brittle and colorless was a man with the appearance of a colonel of southern extraction, who stood regarding me while he caressed mustachios that would have done credit to a crystal shrimp. A chintzy woman, possibly of literary tastes, swam forward from the curtains and drapes.

They came thick about me, fluttering, whistling, like a waving of gauze in the wind. Their eyes were wide and flatly bright. I saw there was no color to the iris.

“How raw he looks!”

“A detective! Send for the Dark Men!”

“I’m not a detective. I am a poet. I have renounced the world.”

“He is a poet. He has come over to us. Mr. Roscoe found him.”

“He admires us.”

“He must meet Mrs. Vanderpant.”

I was taken to meet Mrs. Vanderpant. She proved to be the Grand Old Lady of the store, almost entirely transparent.

“So you are a poet, Mr. Snell? You will find inspiration here.