The Haunted Pajamas

The professor waved his glasses. "Did you ever read such a childish, ridiculous, extravagant asseveration?" he demanded.

"Ass – eh? I should say so!" I worked this off indignantly.

"Tommyrot!" murmured Billings absently. He seemed thoughtful.

I was thoughtful, too – wondering, by Jove, whether the professor would go soon, so we could turn in and get the earlier start to-morrow up the river. But chiefly I was wondering wistfully if Frances would still be angry with me.

"Moreover," broke in the professor's voice as he turned again to the lettering, "to assert further that there will be a semblance – not actual, gentlemen, mind you, but an optical illusion – taking the form of some creature of the same kind that this silken tenement has previously inclosed.

"In other words, gentlemen, if I were to don these garments, I might no longer look like myself, but like some one else who had worn them upon some previous occasion – perhaps last night – perhaps a thousand years ago. Eh? Is that what you understand?"

He ducked again over the letters and came up, looking chagrined.

"Moreover, I am forced to confess, gentlemen, that I fail to find a system – any rule governing these ridiculous transformations. The hypothesis is, therefore, that the alleged materializations merely follow the arbitrary caprice of the magic." He shook his head. "Well, gentlemen, I – really, I must laugh!"

And he did! I hadn't caught the drift of what it was he thought he was laughing at – I got the words, but I was too dashed sleepy to get the sense. But I was awfully glad I understood this much – that what he was attempting now was a laugh. I never would have known it. It was more like a shrieking squeak – rusty hinge, you know, that sort of thing.

"First-time-I've-laughed-in-twenty-years!" His shrill cackle ran a treble scale that ended in high C. "I know you – you won't believe it!"

"Believe it?" said Billings drily, "I'd bet a purse on it." He whispered to me: "Don't need any affidavit; it shows. Sounds like a country wagon on a down grade, brake on, and shrieking like a banshee."

Behind me the door opened slightly. I turned to see Jenkins, looking devilish chalky and a little wild-eyed. He lifted a coil of stout sash cord questioningly.

"Eh? Why, no!" I whispered through the opening. "He's just laughing. Don't be a jolly ass!" And I closed the door sharply.

The professor looked up from the pajamas, and folding his arms, eyed Billings with a cunning leer.

"I think I see," he said, leveling his finger. "You have both demonstrated how nonsensical is the assertion in this inscription. Doubtless you desire an experiment upon my part to confirm your proof of its absurdity. Reductio ad absurdum– eh, gentlemen?"

Billings looked at me, but I couldn't help him. Why, dash it, I didn't even know yet what the inscription was. And, by Jove, I didn't know what experiments he wanted to try with the pajamas, but I didn't care. He could boil them, if he wanted to, if he would only let us get to bed.

So at random I just nodded eagerly.

"Excellent!" The professor's chuckle sounded like dice rattling in a metal box. "An excellent jest upon this fellow, Fuh-keen, to furnish a demonstration by twentieth-century scientists of the presumption of his claims of necromancy and thaumaturgy. You have done so – now I will do so, in turn. Eh, gentlemen?"

I hadn't the ghost of an idea what he was talking about. Fact is, I was thinking of my darling and wondering if she was asleep. By Jove, I wished that I was!

But a devilish queer look had come into Billings' face. He nodded, gathered the pajamas into the professor's arms and patted him on the shoulder in a way I thought offensively familiar.

"You've got it, Professor!" he said, grinning.

Then he whispered to me aside:

"Not a word, Dicky – great Scott!" But he needn't have said that, even if I had been mind-reader enough to guess what word he meant. It was about all I could do to get out a last word to the professor as he went out the door:

"'Night!"

CHAPTER XX

BILLINGS RAMBLES

Ten minutes later I was almost wide awake, for Billings was talking over long distance – and to her!

But I did not like the way he did it.

"Shut up, Francis!" he bellowed. "Now you listen to what I'm telling you – and do just as I tell you to, too – if you don't, I'll mash your face when I come up there! You hear?"

And he swore at her – yes, by Jove, swore!

"Oh, here – I say now!" I remonstrated indignantly.

"It's all right, Dicky," and he waved his fat hand indifferently as he hung up the receiver. "Francis wants to drive that car down for us in the morning – Francis, now!" And his hands went out impressively.

And dash it, I was impressed – I was delighted.

"By Jove!" I cried. "Fine!" For I knew by that that she had forgiven me.

"Fine!" snorted Billings. "You don't know what you're talking about! Francis hasn't got sense enough to get a road engine ten feet without smashing it, much less a car twenty-five miles."

"Oh, look here!" I growled protestingly, "I don't like to hear you talking about – er – Frances that way."

Billings grunted and bit a cigar savagely without stopping to clip it. He pulled fiercely at it a moment.

"Kind of you, old chap," he exclaimed, "but you don't know our family as I do. If Francis has got a headache now, I know that by morning – "

"Headache?" I cried in dismay.

He nodded. "So I understood over the 'phone – been getting at the governor's private stock, I'd bet all I've got." He shook his head gloomily. "No, sir; that car cost five thousand, and when you can't trust people sober, how are you going to trust them drunk?"

I sighed as I remembered the half pint of whisky she had taken – but, dash it, I didn't care! It somehow didn't seem to make any difference in my loving her. The only thing important, really, in the matter of the car was that she might hurt herself. Billings didn't seem to think of that. And yet, by Jove, she wanted to come! She must!

"See here," I said coaxingly, for Billings seemed to have gone off in a moody, brown study, "you must remember, old chap, your sister has been cooped up there in Radcliffe for months. Why not let her have the run down to the city and back? It will do her good, you know."

"Of course," he said absently. "She's going to drive the car down."

"Eh – what say?" I was sure I had not heard aright.

"I say she's going to bring the car down – my chauffeur's sick, it seems."

I didn't wonder at that, but I did wonder at his sudden change.

"Then you're not afraid – "

"Afraid? I should say not! She can drive better than I can – better than anybody in Westchester County!"

"I see – I see!" I said in a low voice. And I did see, poor fellow! By Jove, my spirits sank to zero.

"Yes, there's somebody you can always rely on!" he enthused under his changing mood. "Good thing in this blankety world there's somebody you can rely on – among women, I mean. There's a girl with a purpose in life – yes, sir! Never dances, plays bridge, nor uses slang – no, sir! And what's more, in this cursed age, she's one woman who can go through life and say she never touched a cigarette or a cocktail."

"Of course – of course!" I agreed soothingly. By Jove, it was a devilish sight better to have him talk this way about her. I wouldn't antagonize anything he might say now. And I had turned his mind just by a simple hint – the power of suggestion, you know. Just as I had myself forgotten I was sleepy.

"Of course, you never have met my sister, have you?" he puffed. "I mean the one that's been up at Radcliffe."

"Oh, never!" I said promptly.

"You will in the morning," said Billings, flicking his ash. "Not much to look at – I mean not what you would call handsome – "

I interrupted. "Oh, but I say," I exclaimed unguardedly, "how can you say that? I think she's just beautiful."

"Eh?" He stared so hard I was afraid I had got his mind off again. "Thought you said you had never met her."

"No, no, I never did," I stammered. "Mistake, you know."

He went on musingly: "But I understand that her room-mate – who has come home with her, by the way – is a peach. English girl, you know. They tell me Francis is crazy about her beauty."

Dashed if I could see how she could be, for, by Jove, I had seen her myself. It was the frump! Peach? She was a fright!

Here Billings' eyes hung on the ceiling as though he would bore through it.

"Say, do you know" – he dropped his voice, still looking up – "I hope the old gazabe up there won't get wise to those rubies. Awfully careless of us – forgot all about them. By George, I've half a mind to go up there and get the pajamas back."

"Oh, dash it, no!" I protested, for I was getting sleepy again. "It's the silk the old fellow was interested in; he wants to examine it – try some experiments – something. He'll never think of the jolly rubies, you know."

Billings looked at me oddly. "That's so," he agreed. "Still, I know I won't sleep, thinking about those rubies." Then he looked up at the ceiling again and muttered: "Wonder if the old boy will have any visitors to-night?"

I yawned. I knew it wasn't likely – not with him!

Billings rose. "Well, I'll get along over to the club, old chap. Now mind, the car will call for you about nine. Then you are to pick me up – that is, unless I should come over here. And, oh, say, Dicky!" He turned back from the door where Jenkins waited with his hat and cane. "Speaking of pajamas – er – what do you think of black ones – eh?"

By Jove, I got red – could just feel it, you know!

"Ever see a suit of black silk pajamas?" Billings chuckled.

Now for it! "I – I – never did," I managed to get out.

"Never heard of any myself before," Billings gurgled. "But great idea, don't you think? Good thing, traveling – Pullmans, hotels – that sort of thing – eh? Just got them to-day – ordered two weeks ago."

By Jove, what a relief! I felt myself breathing again.

"Wish you would stay," I said, for I felt uneasy about him.

"Oh, no," carelessly; "all my traps are over there, you know." He smiled. "To say nothing of the new pajamas."

Standing in the door, he looked upward again, twirling his cane. His head shook dubiously.

"Could kick myself about those rubies," he grumbled. "Just half a mind to go up there – " He shrugged. "Oh, well, good night, old chap; see you in the morning."

I murmured some reply as I followed him without. Then I stood a moment looking down the shaft after he had descended.

"Hope he'll be all right in the morning," I mused. "And hope his infernal mood won't shift round again as to Frances!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE COLLAPSE OF BILLINGS

"Are you sure, Mr. Lightnut?"

I stood, cap in hand, one foot on the sidewalk before the Kahoka, the other on the running-board of the car – a big double-tonneau red whale sort of affair. This was as far as I had been admitted to the vehicle.

For the frump was sitting there behind the steering wheel, looking down at me in a nasty, sidewise fashion. Ever have them do you that way? Besides, I somehow felt that she had a feeling toward me as a man, an unvoiced protest against my existence at all. It found expression in her suspicious, sniffy manner. Dash it, I just hated that woman from the start! I felt it was bad enough, her English clumsiness in getting the introductions twisted as I advanced to meet the car, but now I was of half a mind that she had done it purposely. Could see with half an eye that she was determined to make trouble about yesterday.

"Haven't we met before, Mr. Lightnut?" she had asked.

But it struck me that Frances glanced at me with a kind of wistful light in her lovely eyes, and I saw that the game was to lie like a gentleman – that sort of thing, you know. And, by Jove, I was getting kind of used to it now, anyhow – I mean since I had broken the ice last night. Not hard at all, though, after a few goes – really!

So I stood out that I had never had the pleasure, you know – all that sort of polite rot. And all the time felt like a jolly cad, too, meeting a girl with that, when she remembered! But, by Jove, it was worth sacrificing the frump fifty times over just to see Frances' face brighten and note her faint flush and smile as she looked at me. For, dash it, I knew then I had done the right thing!

"Um!" grunted the frump, compressing her lips and looking at my darling. "There's one good thing: the experience with Mr. Smith will teach Francis a lesson!"

The cat! Nice sort of host!

But the dear girl just laughed – how I remembered that laugh!

"Poor Francis!" she said lightly. "Do you know," she added, "I believe I can forgive a Harvard man almost anything, Mr. Lightnut."

By Jove! The angel! And before I knew what I was doing or thought about the frump, I had stretched out a hand to her, looking her straight in the eye and smiling. She hesitated an instant only, then laughed, and I felt her little fingers just brush my palm – but it was enough.

She flushed a little shyly and addressed the frump.

"Are we going to keep Mr. Lightnut standing like this all day?" she asked.

"Half on earth and half in heaven – like what's-his-name's coffin," I suggested. Devilish good, that, don't you think? She thought so, for she opened the door herself as the frump turned, murmuring some silly thing about China and the open door to America. What did China have to do with it?

And it was just then that Jenkins bolted wildly from the building.

"Mr. Lightnut – quick, sir! Mr. Billings, sir!"

I thought of the telephone right off, but he just caught my arm. First time ever knew Jenkins to take a liberty.

"Come quick, sir!" he exclaimed. "He's up-stairs and, oh, off his nut, sir —awful!"

"By Jove!" I gasped. "Excuse me – will see – come right back and tell you – I feared this last night." And I rushed to the elevator with Jenkins.

"He's in them black pajamas he was talking about," said Jenkins gloomily, "and he's run the perfesser off. Leastwise, he ain't there, and his man can't get Mr. Billings to go. He came down for me, but I couldn't do a thing with him, either."

I knew – I understood. It was the dwelling of his mind upon the rubies! He had gone back in the night for them – in his sleep, for all I knew. But I thought most likely awake, for recent experience with him showed me that he didn't think anything of wandering around the neighborhood in his pajamas.

The janitor's pale face met us at the landing.

"I've sent for the police, sir, and it would be a good idea, don't you think, if you could get him away before they come. I don't want to get Mr. Billings into no trouble."

"Good idea," I agreed. "We'll just rush him to the car – but, h'm!"

I suddenly remembered he was in pajamas. It might be all right to Billings to wander around in public streets and vehicles in his night things, but it certainly wouldn't do under the present circumstances. He might not care, but then, there were the feelings of the girls to consider. And besides, dash it, I had some sort of idea it was against the law.

I stood there in the corridor, puzzling.

"We must get his clothes," I said to Jenkins. "No, wait, wait– not time! I want to get him away before the police get here. Um – dressing-robe – bathrobe – can't you get something of that sort – quick?"

Jenkins shook his head distractedly.

"Thought of that, sir – no use – nothing anywhere around here would half-way meet on Mr. Billings."

Here the professor's man interposed.

"Please hurry, sir; he's going through the professor's papers and things!" I dashed for the apartment, shouting to Jenkins to get a bundle of rugs and blankets to the car.

Billings was standing by the window looking at a glass thermometer that he had just withdrawn from his mouth.

"Um!" he grunted complacently. "Ninety-seven and a quarter – my usual healthy subnormal temperature. Pulse sixty-five – respiration, twenty-four and two-fifths – excellent, excellent! I am myself. Ha!" And he whirled triumphantly.

"Ah!" he said, advancing eagerly and rubbing his hands. "It is you! You have heard, then? Marvelous, isn't it – wholly incredible! But do you know" – here he plucked at my shirt front, took a pinch, as it were, just as he had seen the professor do – "I can not find any transmigration. The materialization appears to be wholly optical."

"Never mind," I said anxiously, for I knew he was talking about the rubies; "we don't care." I smiled brightly. "Let's go down and see the car —nice car!" And I tried to get hold of his fat side, but missed it.

"Car?" Billings looked puzzled. Then his face broke into a smile. "Carpe diem– eh, am I not right? True, true! Whither you say." He looked about on a table. "Um – my notes, now," he muttered; and he caught up a small book and a pencil.

The professor's man protested: "Professor Doozenberry don't like – "

"Oh, dash it, let him have them!" I exclaimed, for Billings was already chuckling happily and writing in the little blank book.

"Come on," I pleaded, catching a fold of the pajamas. "Wouldn't you like to come get some clothes on?"

He drew back in alarm. "No, no – not yet – not until I complete my notes," was his crazy answer. "You know: sublata causa, tollitur effectus!" And he looked as though he thought this would finish me.

"But your friend," he exclaimed suddenly, as he allowed me to throw a blanket about his shoulders and we moved out of the door, "the gentleman I met last night – Billings – is not that the name?"

I looked at him miserably as we entered the car to go down.

"Oh, I say, Billings, old chap," I protested earnestly, "don't you know me?" I pointed to the little panel of mirror in the cage. "Don't you know you are Billings? Can't you see?"

His fat head pecked at the glass for an instant. Then he looked at me with eager, batting eyes. He chuckled hoarsely, gurglingly, and out came the note-book and pencil from his sleeve.

"Better and better," he muttered. "Now, if we could only go to him!" He caught my arm. "In the interest of this investigation of scientific phenomena, would he consider a call intrusive – could we not seek your friend, Mr. Billings?"

"It's all right, you know," I gently reassured him. "Yes, we're going to him – going right there. Just a little ride, you know."

By Jove, the way he cackled made my heart ache! I whispered to Jenkins to run ahead and prepare the ladies. But the first thing we saw as the cage hit the bottom was a woman – and, dash it, the frump from China!

She gave a little scream and fell on Billings' neck, almost bearing him to the ground.

"Oh, Jacky, Jacky!" she sobbed.

By Jove, I almost fell myself! So that was the way the wind lay! And I had never even so much as suspected. That was why he had raved so about her beauty! Beauty! Poor old Jack! If I had been sad about him before, it was a devilish sight worse now —

Worse? Why, dash it, she kissed him!

And to see him standing there, kind of batting and rolling his eyes and looking like a girl does when she's trying a strange piece of candy out of the box – oh, it just broke me all up!

No wonder he was crazy! Why, dash it, he would have to be crazy!

He was muttering to himself.

"Remarkable!" I heard. "Singularly sensate and exhilarating! Now, I never would have thought – um!"

And then he very deliberately took her head between his hands and – kissed her. Then he looked upward thoughtfully and did it again – like a chicken drinks water —you know!

And then while we – that is, Jenkins and I – were trying to urge him on, out came the note-book again and he scribbled rapidly, muttering audibly: "Labial osculation – extraordinary stimulation – sensatory ganglia – mucous membrane – "

"Police!" I whispered brutally in the frump's ear. "Better let's get him away!" And, by Jove, that woke her out of her trance! In two minutes she had cajoled him to the car and we had him inside on the cushions. We bunched blankets and rugs about him to hide the pajamas.

"Jacky, dear," gushed the Chinese freak, "wouldn't you like for me to sit by you and hold your poor hand?"

It looked as if he would.

The frump turned to me. "Can you drive the car, Mr. Lightnut?"

Could I? Well, I would show her! Especially as Frances had changed to the front as she saw us bringing out Billings.

"Take the train – get Billings' things from the club," I called to Jenkins. "Sharp, now! And here, unhook that number there on the back – give it here!"

Jenkins hesitated. "I think there's a heavy fine, sir," he hinted.

I snapped my fingers at him and he jumped to obey.

"Worse things than a jolly fine," I said, looking at poor Billings smiling crazily over the frump. I threw the number plate into the car.

And just in time!

Around the corner whirled a policeman – and, by Jove, no less than that fat Irishman, O'Keefe! With him was the professor's man.

"Don't tell me," panted the officer; "I know my – "

And then he gave a shout and sprang for the car.

"It's that fellow that was prowling around the station house!" he yelled. "Here, stop there!"

But I didn't want to. For one thing, we were a half-block away, and I had badly coasted a towel supply wagon and scattered the wares of a push-cart across three sidewalks.

My cap went flying as we skidded a corner, and I was devilish glad, for the inertia threw Frances' head almost against mine and I felt the tickling brush of a little hair wisp as it swept my nose.

Her eyes were dancing with excitement. She looked back, waving her hand at the figure of O'Keefe trotting from around the corner, and her laughter pealed joyously, deliciously in my ear.

"Oh, I think American men are great – are wonderful!" she cried, striking her little hands together. "Especially Harvard men – and especially – " She stopped with the faintest catch.

"By Jove!" I cried. "Do you mean it?"

And for the briefest instant the hands were three; but her scream brought me back to earth just in time to save the lives of a man and a boy. Devilish ungrateful, too, for I could see the man, three blocks behind, and still shaking his fist. The way with these pedestrians!

At Fifty-ninth Street we caromed with a hansom trotting too leisurely across the plaza, and I listened for nearly a block to the remarks of a bicycle cop before he dropped behind. What dashed me not a little was Billings' indifference to the record I was making for his car – didn't seem to care a jolly hang.

The frump was still hanging on him in a way to make you sick, and cooing and going on in a nervous, half-hysterical way I never would have thought her able to chirp up to. And Billings was holding her hand!

"Hello!" I called to him, just after we clipped Yonkers.

He looked up at me, smiling and nodding.

"Feel all right now, old man?" I inquired cheerily.

Billings looked at me hard, and then, dash it, he winked! And I began to wonder, by Jove, if it was just plain drunk.

CHAPTER XXII

MY DARLING IS SLANDERED

Three miles south of Irvington, Billings jumped wildly in the air and yelled for me to stop.

"A coleopteran!" he shrieked excitedly as I throttled down. "A coleopteran struck me in the eye – one of the hydrophilidae family!"

And hurling aside rugs and blankets, he twisted open the door and in a moment was in the road running back. It was then I went back to the crazy theory, for it was an open stretch of road and there wasn't a soul in sight. But it was so funny to see his fat figure waddling along there in the pajamas and bedroom slippers that Frances and I just threw back our heads and screamed. Couldn't help it, by Jove!

And the frump, jogging along behind, looked just as funny. I wasn't alarmed, for I knew she could control him. And, dash it, she did it by humoring him! For we saw her twist her veil about the fork of the stick he extended to her, and both of them went to slapping wildly at the air and the ground. Presently they both came waddling back, she with a butterfly and he with a bug which he was craning at with a lens he had fished from his sleeve somewhere. He was trying to do this and at the same time hold together a great armful of gaudy weeds he had gathered.