Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 54 — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MAN IN A MAZE my agent will have it deli- vered to you.” A month later, Tyler moved in. For six months after that he was in heaven. Sometimes he went for a week without shaving, scarcely even eating or sleeping, lured along some magic trail he’d hit on in the woods of science. Sometimes the trail led to a dead end or faded out into the insignifi- cant. But sometimes it led to a fat report to await Mr. Sweet. But Mr. Sweet never came. Nor did Tyler par- ticularly want him to come— yet. Not while things were so interesting. It was the week when things started to become too interesting that he felt the need for Sweet. When he noticed that the carpet in the ground floor lobby had changed colour from fawn to a glaring scarlet. It might have changed colour before that, but half the time he lived in reverie and scarcely noticed his surroundings. But that scarlet fairly shrieked at him. Soon afterwards, he found himscif in the lounge after 49 * he’d started out to get Tin- bergen’s The Study of Instinct from the library. This was far from the first time he'd gone absent- mindedly into the wrong room. He tut-tutted, and withdrew. The library was on the top floor, so he tried to go up a floor. This turned out to be impossible simply be- cause he discovered himself to be on the top floor already. He examined the blank wall where the ascending staircase wasn’t, and then craned out of a window and counted the windows beneath. He counted them thrice. Then his hands trembled on the sill as he leaned on them and gazed at the quiet boule- vard below. He couldn’t seem to think of anything except how peaceful and normal it was out there, and that he should go out more often. What was it? Overwork? Hallucinations? Maybe he’d been overdoing it. The brain plays queer tricks when it’s been denied sleep for forty hours. All the same, a library can’t be transformed into a comiclooks.cormn