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“Well, maybe it is. And in answer to your question, I’m hardly a hack. I’ve told you already, m’boy, I’m not a joiner.” He grinned sourly. “One might call me a Marxist-at-liberty.”
    This, too, has been an excessive preamble. But as Dinsmore was to muddle my impression of Guinevere, so McLeod was to mislead me about Hollingsworth, our neighbor on the top floor. The morning McLeod and I met in the bathroom he had said in passing that Hollingsworth was lazy, and I was to learn that the word meant nothing at all. Afterward, McLeod was more specific.
    One day he introduced the subject. “You met our little buddy, Hollingsworth, yet?”
    When I shook my head, McLeod said typically, pinching his words, “I’ll be interested in your reactions when you do.”
    “Why?”
    But he would not tell me so easily. “You’re a student of human nature.”
    I sighed and sat back in my chair.
    “He’s a fascinating case,” McLeod continued. “Hollingsworth. A pretty sick individual.”
    “I’m bored with sick people.”
    McLeod’s internal laughter twisted his mouth. I waited for his humor to pass. He removed his severe silver-rimmed glasses and cleaned them leisurely with his handkerchief. “You know, Lovett, you can’t talk without nonsense. I don’t suppose you’ve said ten words to me you’ve ever meant.”
    “I have nothing to say.”
    “Neither has Hollingsworth.” He whinnied again, his tongue probing with relish a tooth in his upper jaw. “He’s got a mind like a garbage pail. My private opinion of him can be summed up in one word. He’s a madman.”
    There he let it lapse and we talked of other things, but as I left that evening McLeod was to repeat, “Just let me know what you think of him.”
    The meeting, when it came, was accidental. I crossed the hall next evening to knock upon McLeod’s door, and to my chagrin he was not there. I stood in the hall for a moment, disappointed because I did not want to work that night, and now there was no other prospect. For luck, I knocked once more.
    Instead, a young man who I guessed was Hollingsworth peered out of the adjoining room. I nodded to him. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I guess I tapped too loudly on McLeod’s porthole.”
    “Oh, that’s all right.” He peered at me in the dim light of the hallway. “Are you the fellow who moved in just recently?”
    I affirmed this, and he smiled politely. There was a pause. He broke it by saying without embarrassment and in great seriousness, “The weather’s been mighty hot, hasn’t it?”
    “It has, I guess.”
    “I do believe it’s going to let up though,” he said in a soft mild voice. “I think it’s fixing to rain, and that should clear a lot of the humidity out of the air.”
    I grunted something in return.
    Hollingsworth seemed to feel that the necessary liaison had been established, and we were no longer strangers. He said, “I’m having a drink now, and I wonder if you’d like to have one with me?”
    When I accepted, he invited me in and opened a can of beer. His room was somewhat larger than McLeod’s or mine, but there was little more space, for the bed was big and an immense bureau covered a sizable area of the floor. I pushed aside some dirty shirts to sit down, and as if their touch remained against my finger tips, I was aware for seconds afterward of something odd, or out of place.
    His room was unbelievably messed. There were several piles of soiled laundry, and two drawers in the bureau stuck open with linen hanging over the edge. His closet door was set at an angle, and I could see a suit tumbled upon the floor. Empty beer cans were strewn everywhere; the wastepaper basket had overflowed. He had a desk littered with pencil shavings, inkstains, cigarette butts, and a broken box of letter paper.
    Yet the floor had no dust, the woodwork was wiped, and the windows had been washed within the last few days. Hollingsworth took care of himself as well. His cloth summer pants were