Chapter 1

Edgar Corning was one day short of his sixtieth birthday when he had the uncommon good fortune to inherit an entire apartment building from his dowager Aunt Hyacinth along with a substantial amount of currency in various denominations from several countries he had never visited in his entire life. The cash was stored in a locked room of an apartment on the top floor of the solid stone building that took in the entire level with designed disregard for economic efficiency.

The mealy-mouthed banker Mister Claude informed Edgar that his Aunt had been in residence in that comfortable unit for these past forty years without much contact with the outside world except for an occasional foray to the theater district to watch some vaunted work by famous well-known but long-dead authors. He surmised she was a patroness of the arts to some degree in her early years but he had no facts to back up his hasty assumption.

Edgar just listened to the little man babble and made no comment except for the random grunt or nod of agreement or acceptance of the other person's discourse without any input of his own.

He had the dubious distinction of remaining married for four long decades without any semblance of love to an Irish woman with the mouth of the devil and precious few teeth. Their children remained scattered and disinterested in any familial intercourse and perhaps that was to the better despite his longing to see his grandchildren at least once before he met his maker.

Those who knew Edgar and were still alive to describe him could be counted on the fingers of one hand and when queried about what type of fellow he really was under his cloak of anonymity, they would merely shrug their shoulders or scratch their heads and reply,

"Beats me, I don't think I ever really looked at him and he was never the one to look you straight in the eye."

That evening Edgar explained to his skeptical spouse Hyacinth that they were now the proud owners of a fine building located nicely in the middle of the city with all the units rented at high profit to retired members of society wanting a place close to the advantages of big-city life.

The ever succinct Hyacinth lifted his compliant face with her wrinkled and gnarled fingers and spat out,

"Get rid of the thing. It will be an albatross and the taxes will ruin us."

He, of course, not wanting to incur Hyacinth's wrath, nodded his head in complete non-confrontational agreement and that was the end of that. Well, at least in Hyacinth's mind at that moment in time.

Edgar had uncertain plans for the newly acquired apartment building and none of them included selling it or demolishing it to increase the land value. He had fallen in love with the solid building with its art deco hallways and the stone exterior that had been carried into the city by horse and carriage from several states distant.

There were a total of twelve units in the building not counting the top floor suite that he had decided to make his "home away from home" and the center of his business dealings in the city. He discovered that the basement which was unusually large for a building of that size was completely finished with plastered walls and with floors that resembled the fine floors found in a large nearby hospital. The inlayed tile on the baseboards was all hand done decades prior and would be impossible to replicate without excessive investment.

Edgar made a half-hearted attempt to familiarize himself with the tenants with little success and gave up the effort with no regrets. As long as they paid their rents on time, he had little or no interest in their mundane lives and he was content to leave them alone in their own little worlds.

He was beginning to feel he had a good control over the ownership situation until he came to the basement area and a meeting with Mister Crane. Apparently, Mister Crane had been a resident of the basement ever since the building had first opened for tenancy. The basement was a huge area and in fact was larger than the top floor suite by several hundred square feet. That was because the building was built on a wider and deeper foundation than the walls above ground and the rooms in the basement were larger. Mister Crane had taken the duties of the building superintendent onto his wide shoulders and he had a set rule that visitors were not allowed into his little fiefdom for any reason whatsoever. He only broke his own rule when one of the female tenants wanted a special favor and he was willing to grant it for one reason or another not pertinent to this story.

Part of the basement was set aside for the furnace room and a long cluttered room that was used for the many garbage cans set out twice a week for pickup by the city's workers.

Edgar took an immediate dislike to Mister Crane when he first met him.

It was an initial contact that boded badly for their future relationship and Edgar wanted desperately to find a way to dislodge Mister Crane from his residency in the basement quarters. Unfortunately, it was unlikely he could find anyone to take Mister Crane's position as the superintendent of the building and it would be extremely expensive even if he did locate some qualified person for the difficult job. Apparently, his aunt had made an unbreakable contract with Mister Crane that he would be granted residence in perpetuity in the basement providing he performed the duties of tending the maintenance of the building without any complaint. No resident was ever known to make a single complaint against Mister Crane leaving Edgar with no legal ground to stand on at all.

Nobody in the building called Mister Crane by name. They all referred to him as "The Basement Man" and they preferred to let him go his own way since the hallways were sparkling clean and the heat and water was always perfect and reliable and he made repairs usually the same day they were reported to him by leaving a note in his box in the lobby.

Edgar pulled in his horns and thought carefully about the situation.

He was one of those fellows that thought a lot about obstacles in his path. He considered Mister Crane to be a real obstacle because he had plans for the basement that didn't include the mysterious working man.

It was rumored that Mister Crane had several female nieces and cousins who visited him on a regular basis but there were no residents that had ever actually talked to the females that seemed to come and go in the basement area generally traveling in the company of Mister Crane or one of his two helpers, Mike and Frank. His two assistants were odd characters and that was putting it lightly.