snapped. 'The man positively detests music. Hasn't he told you so?'
"'I can't say that the subject of music has ever been mentioned between us,' I told her.
"Well, she persisted, practically went into a tirade. Yammer, yammer, yammer; I'll reproduce it for you as well as I can. She said, and she was in dead earnest, too, 'Mr. Chambers, that Mr. Pierce, before he would even so much as look at my rooms, told me very emphatically that if there was a piano in the house he wouldn't even consider staying here; said that he hated piano-playing. Of course, as it happens, there isn't a piano on the premises, though I've often considered getting one of those little spinets for the reception room. So I told Mr. Pierce the truth, that there weren't any pianos in the building, and he seemed very pleased, didn't even ask then to look at rooms, but paid me a month's lodging in advance and moved in the same day. Mark my words, Mr. Chambers; a man who hates music as much as that isn't normal!'
"I hadn't noticed that Pierce disliked music—though I knew perfectly well that he had peculiarities—and I commented that I'd played the radio in my room lots of times when Pierce was present, and he never seemed upset. Also I mentioned Dowd's banjo playing, down the hall, said that that never seemed to bother Pierce, either.
"Well, that about terminated the conversation; Mrs. Thomas muttered around a little more and then went off in a huff. I merely had the idea at the time that she'd just taken a violent dislike to her new lodger, and wanted to express that dislike in talking to me; I know now, of course, that she was right, Landladies are uncanny that way.
"Consciously I didn't pay much attention at the time to what Mrs. Thomas had said, but I guess that subconsciously I kept mulling it over. I remember the thought came to me one day all of a sudden that I really didn't know the first damned thing about Pierce—about where he worked, if he did work, who his people were, where he came from, anything. And I realized another thing, too, that that funny mannerism of his of always seeming to be listening nervously for some sound that he never actually heard was getting more pronounced every time I saw him; by thunder after I'd known the fellow about two weeks I began to wonder if maybe Mrs. Thomas wasn't right after all about him. Watching him—and remember that I had plenty of opportunity to do just that, for we were fairly thick there for awhile—I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that either the man possessed such an acutely sensitive ear that the sound of piano playing was torture to him, or he was just plain nuts.
"And neither of those notions exactly fitted the facts, either—for no man who ever lived played a more miserable banjo than Dowd, yet Dowd's banjo practice didn't bother Pierce at all. Nor did piano playing when it came over the radio. But any sort of piano playing, good or bad, popular or classical, that came to his ears direct from the instrument seemed to affect him like the screech of chalk on a blackboard affects a normal person. I've seen him turn white as a sheet at the faintest sound of piano-playing coming from an open apartment window as we walked past; I've even seen him cross the street to avoid passing the open door of our neighborhood music store. That's the way he was all the time he lived here, normal in every respect except when it came to pianos and piano-playing direct from producer to consumer. Music under those circumstances was pure unadulterated torture to him. The more I watched him the more I veered toward the conclusion that he was really crazy, after all.
