The Haunted Pajamas

"Your brother?" I questioned, astonished, and I guess my face must have showed it, for Billings' eyes, first opening wide, narrowed, and his countenance began to gather an angry red. He stopped short.

"Didn't he stay with you?" he snapped.

I stared blankly. "Why, Billings – I didn't know – I didn't remember you had a brother. I never have seen him."

Billings' face swelled redder, and he struck his fist down with an oath. He looked angrily toward the house. Then he stepped hurriedly in advance of me.

"Excuse me, old chap, will you?" he said, his voice hardened. "Will see you at luncheon – make yourself at home, won't you?"

CHAPTER XXXIII

UNDER THE PERGOLA

Make myself at home! I sneaked under the quiet shade in a convenient pergola, and, dropping upon a bench, gazed gloomily at the sunlight patches at my feet.

"Oh, here you are, eh?" broke harshly upon me.

I looked up, startled from my mood. There, hands upon his hips and scowling, stood – the chauffeur!

I frowned, but the fellow just moved nearer.

"I guess mamma's baby don't feel so spry this morning!" he jeered. "Does its little heady-cums ache-ums – eh?"

I grunted rather wearily. "If it does, my good fellow, it's none of your business. Don't bother me!" I shifted the other way.

"Oh, isn't it?" – his tone quickened truculently – "Well, maybe I'll make it my business!" He jerked his arm at me, continuing sharply: "Look here, you glass-eyed monkey-jack, don't you get flip with me this morning" – he laughed coarsely – "or I'll think you want some more! Do you?"

I turned my head and, polishing my monocle carefully, gave it a tight screw and took him in slowly, beginning with his yellow mop of hair and ending with the toes of his soiled canvas shoes. By Jove, I was sure they'd never been whitened since he bought them.

I seemed to anger him. He uttered a sort of snort with a mutter uncomplimentary and strode forward, towering above me where I sat.

"Answer, when I'm talking to you, you sap-headed fool," he bellowed, "or I'll wring your neck! I asked if you wanted some more."

I stretched my arms, trying their muscle room in a lengthy yawn, and blinked at him with my free eye, wondering where the deuce he got the crimson hat band. By Jove, that was the most dashed impertinent thing of all!

"More what?" I drawled indifferently.

"More – of that!" – viciously – and thwack his knuckles struck against the iron back of the jolly bench. For I wasn't there, don't you know.

"Huh! Think you're some smart, don't you?" he sneered, hitching his trousers band. "Now, look here" – he leveled his finger – "you're a guest here and I know I oughtn't to do it, and I hate it for Jack's sake, but I'm feeling I'll just have to give you another trimming this lovely morning!" He chuckled, rolling his lips and spreading them till I could see every tooth. He moved toward me leisurely, slipping up his sleeves. "What you got last night, sonny, was for your own sake, but this time it's going to be for Frances' – you fishworm!"

"Guess we'll leave Miss Frances out of it, don't you know," I remonstrated. Dash the fellow's impudence! Then, remembering I was wearing a coat of dark cheviot that was the very devil for showing every speck of dust, I slipped out of it and looked about for somewhere to hang it. Not a dashed place, of course; not a thing, you know, except nails here and there in the wooden uprights of the pergola, and of course nails wouldn't do to hang a coat on. So I just folded the jolly thing carefully – very carefully, just as I had seen Jenkins do – and then I held it on my arm.

The chap had been shifting about me in a curve, clucking his tongue contemptuously and muttering, and getting more jolly red-eyed and abusive every minute.

"Be a man!" he snarled. "You blame tailor's dummy, be a man!" And he struck his chest a blow to show me what he meant.

And just then I remembered to smooth my hair-part.

"Oh, you– " With a growl like a bear, he swept both his hands to his head and whirled them through his great yellow pile, leaving each hair standing on end like the quills on the fretful what's-its-name. Then he danced toward me, pausing irregularly to double over with a chuckle.

"Oh, this is too good!" he yelped. "But I can't help it; I jest can't refuse the money, Lizzie! I know they'll send me away for this, but – Oh, mamma!"

And over he'd double again.

Oddest thing, isn't it, how your jolly active mind will wander at the rummest times; and I had a thought then of how, when I was a delicate boy, bully old Doctor Dake and Doctor Madden had prescribed a punching-bag, and later boxing-gloves. And I thought with a pang of what ripping times the governor and I had, scrapping, and of what knocks he gradually began to give me until he forced me to learn to come back harder. Jove, what corking hours we had! And then when Chugsey, the retired English light-weight champion, came to butler —oh, what smashing three-handed rounds we used to have! Bully old governor, who was never so busy on his sermons but what he could take a walk or a ride with me; or talk with me, or fight with me! Why, he —

By Jove, my dashed monocle got so cloudy of a sudden, I almost missed the chauffeur's move —almost, don't you know!

And then —

"I say, you know!" I said disgustedly, as I screwed my monocle at him there, his big yellow mat sticking out of sight through the jolly vines. "Awfully raw thing to strike at a man and leave your guard open like that – I could have put it over your heart, don't you know!"

I heard a little sound behind me and there was she!

"Oh!" I gasped as I slipped into my coat. And now I was miserable, for I remembered how kind this chauffeur, Scoggins, had been to her. And for her to have seen me in this vulgar row!

"Yes, I saw it all," she said, as I moved toward her, murmuring some jolly effort at apology. Her eyes were shining. "I saw it all, sir – and heard. And just when I had hunted you up with these!" – and then I saw that her arms were burgeoning with roses. "See what I've been doing for you, sir!"

"For me?" By Jove, it was all I could say as I took them!

"And you ran off!" She pouted adorably – naturally, too, dash it. I've seen them put it on when they looked like they had toothache. "How am I ever going to thank you about the pajamas?" By Jove, her big blue eyes looked me frankly in the face. There was never a quiver of embarrassment. "It's wonderful – and to find them here!"

"I'd – I'd have got 'em to you sooner," I faltered, swallowing, "but they've been lost a day or two – thief stole them from my rooms, you know."

"How on earth did you ever get hold of them? I never expected to see those pajamas again. Oh, you must tell me all about how you managed it!" – and we moved away – "I just wish father were here!"

I didn't! Dash it, it made me squirm to think of his return.

As we left the pergola behind, I looked backward through its arch, and there was the chauffeur, standing in the shadows, looking after us. And long after, as we turned from the straight avenue leading through the pergola, I descried his figure, still looking after us, unchanged, immovable.

It was rum!

But I had other things to think of as we sat out in the loggia – chiefly of her, herself; withal, wondering gloomily what her father would say when he found I had disobeyed his injunction about not speaking to her. Presently the summons to luncheon came, and we went in.

From up-stairs came sounds indicating great hilarity on Billings' part. In fact, we could hear him slapping his knee and screaming. The frump looked at me anxiously.

"Why, I understood he was all right again," she said aside.

I shook my head dubiously. I had seen in the past day or two how rapidly Billings' moods shifted. Twenty minutes since he had looked enraged.

"Oh, this is too good – but keep it mum!" we heard. "Come on, Professor!"

"Professor?" The frump looked at Frances, then at Wilkes inquiringly.

"I didn't know, miss," he murmured contritely. "'S why I didn't mention it."

We were crossing the great hall in the direction of the beautiful dining-room beyond – Elizabethan, I think Frances said it was. We all paused expectantly as Billings rolled down the stairs in his usual jolly, elephantine way. And then on the landing appeared an apparition – not only an apparition, but, by Jove, a scarecrow, as well!

Professor Doozenberry, blandly smiling – his rail-like figure shrouded flabbily in one of Billings' largest and loudest suits! Billings went through the form of introductions, chuckling idiotically the while. But the professor scarcely noticed any one but the frump.

"Don't wait, Wilkes," Billings directed. His nod beckoned me aside.

"Gentleman sulking in his tent over here I want you to meet," he said. And I followed him to the library. A figure pacing the floor turned sharply. By Jove, it was the chauffeur, and how he did scowl at me!

"Now, young man," said Billings sternly, "perhaps you'll have the nerve to tell me before Mr. Lightnut himself that you were his guest on your way home from Harvard."

"I certainly was!" He made the statement, chin up and eyes blazing. "I was his guest at the Kahoka Wednesday night, and he knows it."

Billings looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't bother denying it, old man," he said. "It's all right."

"Oh, but I say – it isn't!" I exclaimed in disgusted amaze. "Dashed impertinence, you know – never saw this fellow before the morning at the – er – boat, and day before yesterday when I – " I halted, remembering.

But the fellow was shaking his finger at me.

"A-a-a!" he jeered like a school-boy. "Why don't you finish? Bet you don't know, Jack, that this paragon friend of yours was up here on the train day before yesterday." Billings stared, for he did not know.

The chap grew more impudent. "Yah, see him turn red!"

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, warming up, you know. "Say, Billings, who the devil is this fellow?" And I advanced angrily – dashed annoyed, you know.

Billings interposed. "My brother," he said quietly.

"Yes, his brother," almost shouted the other. Then he lowered his voice at Billings' command: "And I say, you didn't tell Jack you were on the train yesterday, posing as a 'Mr. Smith,' and that you insulted Frances." He shook off his brother's hand angrily. "Oh, yes he did – sister told me about it! I knew it was you when I got to thinking about it this morning!" He panted for breath. "I can't call you a liar, Lightnut, when you say I wasn't at your rooms, because you're a quicker hitter than I am, and – " He looked around and shrugged. "And because we are in this house. But you're an infernal hypocrite, and I want Jack to know it." He laughed mockingly and faced his brother. "Ask your friend, Mr. Lightnut, about that girl in black pajamas in his rooms!"

And he flung himself from the room with a Parthian shot: "Ask him to tell you about her as he did me. Ask him who it was!"

Billings seemed to groan. "More black pajamas!" he muttered.

I faced him eagerly. "I never told him about her – I'll swear I didn't," I pleaded miserably. "You know all there is to know, Jack. I wouldn't tell anybody in the world a thing like that. I – love her too well. Much less would I go and tell her own brother."

"Wha-a-a-t?" Billings' fat body almost leaped into the air. "What the devil – say, old chap, what are you talking about?"

"And, besides, she's forgiven me," I persisted gloomily. "And I love her – and – and we're going to be married – or I hope so, dash it!"

Billings stared at me with popping eyes for an instant. Then he lifted my chin and looked at me anxiously. "Are you quite well, old man?" he asked. "Headache, or anything like that? By George, it's from sitting out in that sun without a hat. Marry my sister?" He wagged his head lugubriously. "What – Elizabeth? Oh, good heavens!"

"No – Frances," I explained anxiously.

He stared. "Francis?" Then his arm led me out. "Come along, old chap," he said with an air of concern. "We'll get a little ice – "

There was a bustle near the hall entrance, and I heard a commanding voice I recognized as that of Judge Billings:

"Come right in, Colonel, and we will try to make you forget that little exasperation – do you know I just can't get over the idea that I've seen you somewhere and recently– Hello, Jack! Colonel Kirkland, my eldest boy, Jack – named after his mother, Johanna. Look here, Jack, has everybody on the blithering police force gone crazy about pajamas? Most infernal outrage – pardon me, Colonel Kirkland – three policemen wanted to arrest him on description – dragnet order, they said – for stealing a pair of black silk pajamas. Ever hear the like of that?"

Billings' voice murmured something, and then I was dully conscious of my name being passed and of the fact that I was limply shaking a hand. But I don't remember uttering a word – couldn't, by Jove, for my jolly tongue was paralyzed. Didn't know what to do; didn't know what to say, you know, for there before my eyes, recognizable and unmistakable, despite frock coat and white choker tie, was the figure of "Foxy Grandpa."

The beefy face, white mutton chop whiskers and bald head were as indelibly imprinted on my memory as the sunburn line that fenced his fiery face.

And this was the frump's father, and it was for him she was scheming to make a home!

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE CUB

I didn't go in to luncheon.

Instead, I lay down up in my room, wondering what Jenkins would think when he saw Foxy Grandpa a guest with me under this roof, and wondering also what I ought to do, or if I should do anything. I came to the conclusion finally that I wouldn't say anything for the present, for I had about all the complications I could carry.

Presently I went down to the living-room, where they were all assembled, and my heart leaped as I thought I detected a brightening in Frances' face as I entered.

Billings was waving the frump away with his fat hand. "Take it away," he said. "I hate bugs."

"But, Jacky," said the frump pleadingly, "I think it's a phusiotus gloriosa."

"I don't care if it's a giraffe," said Billings rudely.

But the professor was already across the room to the rescue.

"Ha! not a gloriosa," he said animatedly, as he snooped over the little greenish thing in the frump's hand. "Observe the shortened prothorax and mesothorax and – "

"And metathorax," chimed in the frump, her head close to his. "Hence – "

"It is a phanaeus carnifex," said the professor positively.

By Jove, it looked to me like what we used to call a dung beetle!

And then the two cranks went out in the sun with butterfly nets, and Frances and I drifted out to our pavilion overlooking the broad sweep of the Tappan Zee. As yet, her father had said nothing to me, but I knew that the blow might fall any moment. Only the arrival of the frump's father had so far saved me. And though I had gone right ahead violating his jolly injunction about Frances, I kept a sort of parole with him by avoiding any discussion of things that I knew would have interested my darling the most – that is, our love and our future. Later we took a drive through Sleepy Hollow and the Pocantico Hills. But though we grew better and better acquainted every minute, I couldn't help feeling devilish disappointed, for never once did she ever call me "Dicky." I wondered moodily whether her brother had told her yet of his plans for me.

In the evening, the younger brother showed up at dinner, but sulked, which I thought under the circumstances was about the most considerate thing he could have done.

Once during the evening, Billings, who had been talking with the professor, turned to me. "By the way, Dicky – those pajamas, you know – what did you do with them this morning?" He and the professor whispered again; then Billings turned back. "Gray paper parcel – um – you know?"

Know? Dash it, of course I knew, but I —

"Why, I have them now," came quietly from my companion, "thanks to Mr. Lightnut. He gave them to me this morning."

"Gave them to you!" gasped Billings. He whispered to me: "But the rubies, you cuckoo – you didn't give her those?"

Rubies? Dash it, I had to think hard to remember what had become of the rubies. But I got the idea.

"Why, the professor has those," I reminded him. "The red pajamas, you know – don't you remember?" I drew him aside.

Billings stared. "But he says he returned them," he exclaimed, cutting an odd sidewise look at the professor, who was talking to Frances and the frump. Billings frowned.

"Haven't seen them," I said carelessly, for I wanted to talk to her. "Oh, dash the rubies – wait till morning!"

Billings looked sourly at the professor and went off and sat alone. He seemed put out about the old boy not returning the garments. Never seemed to occur to him that the professor was a devilish busy and absent-minded old chap. Might not return them for a month. I knew that.

"Oh, really, Frances?" the frump was saying, "How exceedingly nice of you, dear!" The professor was occupied for the moment with a moth. "I hope I won't frighten you in them as you say your maid was frightened at you. If pajamas are unbecoming to you, why just imagine me in them!"

By Jove, I was devilish glad I was not supposed to hear, for I didn't want to be required to imagine it. But as for them being unbecoming to my darling – well, I knew she knew what I thought!

Later, when the evening had shaded off and the ladies had left us, we sat in the smoking-room talking till late. I was astonished to find Foxy Grandpa devilish entertaining and clever – not a bad sort at all. He seemed to have no recollection of me at all, and therefore no grudges. I had made up my mind by this time I wasn't going to marry the frump, no matter what came or what Billings wanted, and I would tell him so in the morning. But whoever did marry her – and it looked like it was going to be the professor – would have some sort of compensation in Foxy Grandpa's entertaining stories of Eastern scandal.

Billings' cub brother smoked in a corner of the room by himself and drank innumerable slugs of whisky straight. Once I saw his father go over to him and seem to remonstrate, but without effect.

Billings wanted his father to try my special import of cigarettes, so I sent for Jenkins, who had arrived, to bring some down. And when he saw Foxy Grandpa calmly sitting there by me, pulling at a straw, he almost lost his balance. But I shook my head with covert warning.

"Ever see me before – eh?" asked the cub harshly, as he waved aside the cigarettes Jenkins extended. "Last Wednesday night – remember?"

"Yes, sir," replied Jenkins, hesitatingly. Then he rolled an eye at me and corrected himself hastily but firmly:

"No, sir; I don't recall ever seeing you before, sir."

Of course, I knew he had not, but the cub got up with a sour laugh. Then with a murmured gruff apology, he withdrew, saying he had a headache and was going to bed. And, by Jove, what a look he gave me from the door!

"Midnight!" ejaculated some one at length, just as the professor finished a jolly rum but interesting yarn of adventures in Tibet. We all rose and I was answering a challenge of Billings' for a Sunday morning game of billiards, when all of a sudden a scream rang out from somewhere above. Then came a greater commotion – two voices raised in rapid and excited colloquy. On top of this another scream, louder and more piercing – a woman's call for help.

"One of the maids," Billings hazarded. "A mouse – "

"That was Frances!" I answered him excitedly, and we all piled out into the hall and peered down its long vista.

Down one of the dimly illumined angles of the great stairway a white figure darted, then paused, abashed, crouching back against the wall at sight of us advancing. Above her sounded a man's voice, and even as she screamed again, he overtook her, clasping her arm.

"Frances – dear, dear Frances!" he cried. "Are you afraid of me?"

And he threw his arms around her. "Come on back, dearest!" he pleaded. "You have been dreaming."

And under the light of a great red cluster of grapes, pendent from the mouth of a grinning Bacchus, I recognized with horror the yellow mat of hair and freckled face of Billings' cub brother. On the instant, with a bull-like roar, Billings sprang forward, but I was quicker still. But fleeter than either of us to reach the scene were the two elderly men, together with Miss Warfield, the housekeeper, and a couple of the maids. Frances darted like a bird to Foxy Grandpa, and then the figures of the women shut her from view.

Billings and I had paused, half-way to the landing. It looked as though the elder Billings was amply capable of handling the occasion now. He had backed the youth against the wall behind, and his language was of a kind I hated to have my darling hear. Every time the other offered to expostulate, his father broke out again.

"You are a disgrace to an honored name!" he roared. "And the only explanation left for me to offer our guests is that you are drunk and don't know where you are!"

"Oh, father!" faltered the boy. And then he turned his black shrouded figure to the pale marble against which he leaned, and it seemed to me his very heart would sob away.

"What's the matter, dad?" came a voice from the head of the stairway. "What in thunder is all the row about?"

"By George!" gasped Billings. Everybody looked upward – one of the women screamed. For there, slowly advancing down the angle leading to the landing, his yellow mop of hair shining above the dark collar of a dressing-robe, was the duplicate of the youth cowering under the elder Billings' wrath.

And out of a dead, tense silence, came his voice again:

"Can't any of you speak?" He touched the figure on the shoulder. "Who are you?" he asked in an odd, strained voice.

The black figure turned toward him a face agonized in grief.

"I – I don't know," came a voice pitifully – his voice, it seemed.

The cub just stood like a statue for a moment – stood as we all stood. Then slowly his hand went out and touched the hand of his double. Slowly his fingers swept the face, the hair; gradually his eyes closed, as though he were sensing by touch alone.

Suddenly a loud cry leaped from his throat.

"Sister!" he shouted. And he swept the black figure to him.

Then, tossing back his head, the youth faced us with blazing, angry eyes, looking as David must have, when he faced old what's-his-name.

"If there's a man among you, I'd like to know what this means?" he cried.

There was a blank silence for an instant, and then —

"Perhaps I can explain," said a voice.

And up the stairway advanced Professor Doozenberry.

CHAPTER XXXV

IN THE GLOW OF THE RUBIES

Evening had come again.

In fact, it was almost bedtime. Frances and I sat before the hearth in the library, looking silently into the red heart of the dying embers of fragrant pine cones. For in the heights of the Pocantico Hills it often is chilly on summer nights.

My darling sat on a low fauteuil, her chin resting upon her hand, her beautiful eyes fixed dreamily, inscrutably, upon the fading coals. In her lap lay the spread of the crimson pajamas.

She was thinking – thinking – I wondered what! And I was thinking how jolly rum it all was; that Francis wasn't Frances, that the professor wasn't Billings, Colonel Francis Kirkland wasn't Foxy Grandpa and wasn't the frump's father after all; and that the frump, herself – bless her, her name was Elizabeth – wasn't Frances, and wasn't a frump at all, but just a jolly, nice, homely old dear, you know. And I was trying to catch and hold some of the deuced queer things the professor had discoursed upon about ancient Oriental what's-its-name, and astral bodies, obsession, psychical research and all that sort of thing. Somehow, dash it, it had all seemed devilish unreasonable and improbable to me– couldn't get hold of it, you know; but as everybody else had said "Ah-h-h!" and had wagged their heads as though they understood, I just said: "Dash it, of course, you know!" and recrossed my legs and took a fresher grip on my monocle.