The Haunted Pajamas

I had received it, by Jove!

Of course, I recognized it all as impossible and crazy, you know, but when I said so to Billings his remarks were so violent, and he turned such a dangerous apoplectic purple, dashed if I didn't renege.

"But then the old man, you know!" I protested weakly.

Billings leveled his big arm at me, mouthing wordlessly for a minute.

"That – that'll do, about that old man!" he choked at last. "Not – not another word about him!" And finally he collapsed into his seat from sheer exhaustion. Just sat there panting and glaring at me like a jolly bulldog.

Gradually he became calmer.

"Tell you what: the only thing that lets you out, Dicky, is the way Van Dyne and Blakesley did, in turn, when I got them there."

He spoke savagely, but I brightened a little.

"Oh!" I said. "Didn't they recognize you, either?"

Billings' snort made me jump.

"Recognize!" he bellowed. "They went back, mad as hell!"

"By Jove!" I said soothingly.

"That's not all," continued Billings grimly. "I was so sure it was a put-up job, some asinine, fool joke, I wrote a cautious note to the governor. After a lot of pleading, I got the fools to send it. He came."

Billings paused dramatically.

"Oh, yes, he came!" he went on, fixing me with an excited eye. "And when I staggered forward and did the prodigal son act on his neck, he handed me a punch that jolted off his silk tile. Went straight up in the air with the whole bunch down there and contracted to do things for them that will keep him active for a year. Threatened to have me sent up for forgery – this is my own father now, mind you – forgery of my own name! Huh!"

Billings strode to the end of the room and back. Then he sat down again, beating with his foot upon the floor.

"Say, has everybody gone crazy?" he demanded.

I didn't dare say a word, for I had my own opinions, you know, and I knew it wouldn't do to express them. Only excite him. Best way seemed just to pretend to swallow it all, you know. Best way always, Pugsley says, especially with best friends.

"They were pretty nasty after that," Billings went on gloomily; "and they wouldn't send for any one else. Just had to sit there in that infernal bastile with nothing on but pajamas and a pair of bedroom slippers. Every once in a while somebody would come and address me as 'Foxy,' and want me to send for my clothes or else send out and buy some. Finally, a big brute came and threw me some dirty rags and said I'd have to put on those or else buy some others. Buy some, Dicky – did you get that? —buy some!"

"Devilish rude, I say," I commented indignantly. "Who wants to wear bought clothes? Why, dash it, my tailor says – "

"Pshaw!" Billings whirled his fat head impatiently. "You miss the whole point, Dicky! I didn't have a cent of money; and what's more, I couldn't get any." He paused. "See? Try to get that, Dicky – make an effort, old chap."

I did, but, dash it, it was such a rum idea – very oddest thing he had said – and silly, you know. Fancy any one not being able to send out and get money! I just got to thinking what a jolly queer idea it was and lost part of what Billings was saying – something about how he managed to get them to send a note for his clothes. Here is what I did hear:

"And I had just got into the togs and stuffed the rubies and pajamas out of sight in my pocket, when the particular brigand who had charge of my coop came back. He almost threw a fit when he saw me. 'Where's Twenty-seven?' he wanted to know. And then, before I could say a word, he blustered up to me with: 'And say, what business you got in here? Clear out!' And you bet I didn't lose a single golden minute – I cleared. You should have seen me beat it down that corridor! The fellow followed me a little, grumbling to himself. Then he called to a cop who was just coming in: 'Say, O'Keefe, run that young fat freak out of here, will you? It's one of that bunch of visitors that went through just now. Fresh thing – snooping into the cells!'

"And so the same cop that brought me there – the very same – was the one that shoved me out of the door, warning me that I'd best not go poking into the prisoners' cells again if I knew what was good for me!"

"By Jove!" I ventured sympathetically.

Billings nodded. "Of course, I knew it was a semi-lucid interval with them all, but for all I knew it might pass any instant and some bat discover I was a Dutch scrubwoman escaped from Hoboken. So I broke for the first taxi and hit it up for the club."

Billings took a deep breath and went on:

"By George," he said, laughing nervously. "I felt like a dog with a can to its tail hunting for a place to hide. Every time a fellow looked at me I had heart failure until he called me by my own name. Bribed Eugene to lie about my whereabouts until his face hurt and then I went to bed. Sneaked out of my hole this evening to get a bite of something, and then you ran me down.

"And Dicky" – Billings finished excitedly – "I was sure you had come to drag me back to my dungeon, and I looked behind you, fully expecting to see those two Irish pirates. If I had, I should have swooned in my soup, that's all!"

I murmured my sympathy. And, by Jove, I certainly did have a heartache about him, but of course I couldn't tell him why. I was getting him quieted – I could see that – and he was so far mollified as to help himself to a cigar. When he had clipped a V from the end with his knife, he leaned over and tapped me impressively on the knee with the blade.

"And just think, Dicky," he said, absently emphasizing with the sharp point of the knife, "there I sat, moneyless – not even a dime, you know – in a suit of pajamas whose three buttons were worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars!"

He fell back, his fat arms eloquently outspreading.

"Can you beat it?" he demanded.

I rubbed my palm on my knee and considered.

Privately, I thought I could beat it – by Jove, I was sure I could! I knew of a pair of pajamas worth a dashed sight more than money. And I wondered gloomily where they were. I had telephoned as soon as I stepped out at the Grand Central Station, and after a bit made them understand who I was and reminded them that the black pajamas had not been returned according to promise. And then they told me Foxy Grandpa had escaped, but as he had nothing else on, they felt sure of rounding him up as soon as he came out of his hiding-place – probably after dark.

"By the way, old chap," puffed Billings, his poise and good humor improving under the spell of the cigar, "I was sorry to return the pajamas torn and dusty and wrinkled as they were. But you see, on account of the rubies, I was leary about having them pressed or fussed over. So I wrapped and sealed them myself, just as one does a jewel package. Got them, did you?"

I stared at Billings through my glass.

"Didn't you get them?" he questioned in alarm.

"Yes, yes – it's all right, old chap," I said hastily and as pleasantly as I could. "Eugene delivered the box to Jenkins and I opened it myself. Thought it was – h'm – thought it was something else." Then I proceeded soothingly: "But you're just a little mistaken about the dust and wrinkles, old chap – and about them being torn. Ha, ha! Good joke!"

But Billings' face was unresponsive.

"Why, you goop," he said with cheerful contempt, "there's a triangular tear in the back of the coat you could stick your head through; and one of the sleeves is in ribbons."

I just opened the drawer of the table and took out the box – glove box, I think it was – containing the pajamas. I had read something somewhere about the clearing effect – the reaction, and that sort of thing, produced sometimes by a shock.

"See for yourself, old chap," I said gently. And I lifted out the gossamer fabrics and again spread their crimson glory under the lamp. Billings examined them eagerly, but just looked confounded.

"Don't understand it," he said, biting his nails. "Why, hang it, they look smooth, too, as though never worn. And the rubies are all right, too."

He rested his chin upon his hands and gloomed at the red sweep.

I caught a few sentences of his mumbling.

"By George, I'm half a mind to think there's something in the pajamas," he muttered – "something uncanny and disagreeable – something they're alive with!"

I sprang up and back, overturning my chair.

"Good heavens – oh, I say!" I exclaimed in consternation, as I fixed my glass on the garments. "It's your jail, then, you know – "

His hand checked my reach to the bell push.

"Don't be any more kinds of an ass than you can help, Dicky," he said with rude irritability. "I'm talking about something else; and I haven't got any jail, dammit! A station house isn't exactly a jail!"

He reached for another cigar and went off into a brown study, wrapping himself in clouds of smoke. I thought that maybe if I kept quite still he might come to himself all right. Meantime, for want of something to do, and to keep from getting so devilish sleepy, I fell to turning over the pajamas, admiring their beauty and daintiness and kind of half-daringly wondering how she would —

And suddenly I made a discovery; and I forgot about keeping still.

"By Jove, Billings!" I exclaimed excitedly. "Here's something inside the collar – some sort of jolly writing!"

"What's that?" said Billings sharply. He jerked the garment from my hand and held it in the light. All round the circle within the collar band ran four or five darker red lines of queer little crisscross characters.

"Chinese laundry marks, you idiot," he commented carelessly. And then he ducked his head closer with a quick intake of breath.

"By George, Dicky!" he cried, his voice tremulous with some excitement. "Can't be that either; it's woven in – awfully fine, neat job, too. Now, what do you suppose – "

He broke off wonderingly.

CHAPTER XVI

AN INSCRIPTION AND A MYSTERY

Billings rubbed his chin perplexedly.

"By jigger, now, I wonder what those hen tracks mean?" he uttered musingly. Then he looked up at me with sudden animation in his face.

"Look here, Dicky," he exclaimed, "do you happen to know Doozenberry?"

I tried to remember. I shut one eye and studied the marks closely through my glass, but had to shake my head at last.

"Sorry, old chap; don't seem to remember it at all if I ever did – not a dashed glimmer of it left." I yawned. "Never tried to keep any of those college things, you know."

Billings, who had been staring, uttered a rude comment.

"It's not a language, you cuckoo," he snapped; "it's a man. He's a D.S. – distinguished scientist, you know. What's more, he's one of your neighbors, right in this building."

"Don't know him," I said a little stiffly. "What's his club?"

Billings all but gnashed his teeth.

"Club, thunder!" he jerked out impatiently. "Why, man, he's a member of all the great societies of the world – bodies whose rank and exclusiveness put the blink on all the clubs you or I ever saw. Got a string of letters after his name like a universal keyboard, and is the main squeeze, the great scream, among all the scientific push over here and in Europe. Lots of dough, but off his trolley with learning."

"And in this building?" I said wonderingly. "What's he like?"

For a moment I had a thought of Foxy Grandpa, but the janitor had said he did not belong in the building. Besides, Billings' next words removed that clue to the lost pajamas. By Jove, how I did long to ask his advice about them! Once I was on the point of doing so – had devilish narrow escape, in fact – but pulled up on the brink. So deuced hard to remember that anything so delicate and sweet and fetching could be Billings' sister, you know. I had been wondering for an hour whether I had better say anything about my adventure up at Tarrytown – wondered if she would like me to.

"Here, you moon calf, wake up!" Billings' coarse voice brought me back to the present, and I had to blink and pretend I was listening. "I'm telling you about Doozenberry! I say you surely must have seen him – you couldn't miss him in a black cave. Queer-looking old skate, tall as a street lamp and as thin; looks like a long cylinder of black broadcloth. So dignified it hurts him."

I reflected.

"Awfully large head," continued Billings, elevating his hands some two feet apart, "pear-shaped affair – big end up – bumps on it like halves of grape fruit, porcupine eyebrows, and – "

"Oh, I know," I said, nodding eagerly; "and a little, shriveled – well, kind of mashed sort of face, eyes beadlike and jolly small. I've got him now! I've gone down with him in the elevator."

Billings nodded. "You've got him painted," he said drily. "That's the professor; only, his eyes are anything but 'jolly.' I've ridden in the elevator with him myself. Always manages to look like he was traveling with a bad smell!"

"Devilish sensitive, I dare say."

Billings looked at me suspiciously, but I had got hold of the thing I was trying to recollect and I went on quickly:

"By Jove, you know, I believe Jenkins knows his man – fellow who butlers, and, I believe, cooks, for him. He and Jenkins belong to the same – how do they call it? – same club of gentlemen's gentlemen."

Billings brought his fist down. "Let's have Jenkins in," he suggested. And we did.

"I say, Jenkins," I began, "this Professor Doodle bug above us – "

"Doozenberry!" Billings sharply corrected.

"Well, some jolly rum thing about him, don't you know, Jenkins – something you said his man told you – remember, eh?"

Jenkins' eyes batted a little.

He cleared his throat. "Why, yes, sir; he told me a lot of funny things one night, sir. Don't suppose he would have done it, only him and me had an evening off and we – we – "

Jenkins seemed to hesitate.

"And you went on a bat together," suggested Billings, rubbing his hands pleasantly.

"It was, sir," Jenkins admitted, looking at me sadly. "Leastways, he sort o' loosened up as he got – got – "

"Pickled," Billings helped smoothly.

"Quite so, sir; there's some is that way always: some is taken other ways." Jenkins considered Billings moodily. "The power of the demon rum, sir."

"Ah, true!" sighed Billings, lifting his eyes.

"This here chap, he got to going on and all but crying about his cursed hard fate – them's his own words, sir – his cursed hard fate in having to drink water all the time and eat cow feed – "

"Eat what?"

"I don't know, sir – that's what he called it – something the perfesser has him fix out of cereals and nuts and sour milk. That's all they have, sir; and they don't have no cooking, for the perfesser says it breaks the celluloid – "

"Cellular," corrected Billings.

"Maybe so, sir," demurred Jenkins. "He said celluloid – the celluloid tissue papers, he called it. And then his having no heat on all winter and the windows kept open all the time and the snow piling up on his bed at night kept him with colds all the year. And then, there was the dampness – "

"That's it, the dampness!" I exclaimed. "Tell him."

"Why, sir, he told me that every night he had to turn down the perfesser's bed and go all over it with a two-gallon watering can – "

"Watering can!" gasped Billings.

"I'm telling you what he says, sir. Then he covers it all up again, and in about a half-hour the perfesser turns the covers down; and if it's what he calls 'fine' – that is, damp all over – he climbs in and sleeps like a top."

"Cold-water bug, you know," I explained, but Billings shrugged his shoulders.

"That's all right. Bug or not, he's the goods, all the same. Greatest ever." He spoke with quiet conviction.

He deliberated a moment and turned to me.

"Tell you what, Dicky: I'm going up and ask him down. He's the one to give us the right dope on these crazy letters – Eh, what you say, Jenkins?"

"Beg pardon, sir; I was saying that the perfesser don't visit nobody; and he never sees nobody but the big lit'ry and scientific sharps."

"Oh, he don't eh?" Billings snorted contemptuously. "Well, Jenkins, I haven't been a prize fisherman in my time for nothing; I guess I know how to select my 'fly.' I know what will fetch him: 'Mr. Lightnut's compliments, and will he be pleased to honor him by passing upon an Oriental curio of rare scientific interest?' – that sort of merry rot! Why, you couldn't hold him back with a block and tackle. Oh, you needn't worry; I'll do the proper curves all right." He turned toward the door. "And, Jenkins, you come along and work me into the lodge."

"Oh, but dash it," I protested nervously, "he won't come – he'll be insulted. Why, he'll know as soon as he sees you that you couldn't – "

I checked myself, recalling that the best thing after his recent exhibition was to avoid every contradiction. And then, by Jove, I knew that if he became ill and had to go to a hospital or somewhere, it would be all off with his taking me up to Wolhurst next day.

Billings grinned confidently. "Watch me bring him down here," he said.

And by Jove, he did!

CHAPTER XVII

THE PROFESSOR

Billings ushered in the professor with a flourishing introduction.

The great man never spoke, but gave me the end of one finger, and devilish grudgingly at that. He just came to anchor and stood there very straight and stiff, ignoring the chairs thrust toward him from every point. One hand was stuck in his stiff broadcloth bosom, with elbow pointing outward, and his great topheavy head reared above us impressively.

Billings rubbed his hands and bowed and smirked.

"Lovely weather we are having for summer, don't you think, Professor? Jenkins, a chair for the professor."

He was already hedged in by chairs, but he remained standing. Dash it, he was staring hard at me, his beady eyes boring like gimlets, don't you know, and his little shriveled face all puckered up. By Jove, but he looked sour! Looked like he would bite, or, as Billings said afterward, would like to, if the human race wasn't poisonous.

"Wonderful stunt, science, isn't it, Professor?" gushed Billings, still rubbing his hands and grinning like a wild what's-its-name. "Tracing the orbits of the shooting stars or measuring the animals in the tiny sewer drop. H'm! Fascinating pursuit! And how marvelous it must be to be able to classify instantly any specimen of man's or nature's handiwork – to – a – call the turn, so to speak – right off the bat, as it were. H'm! We have here to-night – er – "

With his hand upon the pajamas, Billings paused, for the professor paid no attention – did not even turn round, in fact. He just stood there staring at me. Billings coughed suggestively.

"H'm! As I was saying, we have with us to-night a specimen," he resumed a little louder, "I may say an example of something that, while apparently commonplace and prosaic, is really a rare and unique – "

"Ha – specimen genus cypripedium," came in a squeaky bark from the professor as he held me in his eye. "Linnaeus, 1753. Ha! Species acaule– proper habitat, bogs. Very common —very common, indeed."

He batted at me sourly and seemed disappointed. By Jove, I never felt so devilish mortified in all my life! Never! I nearly dropped my monocle and felt myself getting jolly red about the ears. This only seemed to make it worse.

"Ha —labellum somewhat pinker purple than normal," he proceeded. "H'm! Unusually fresh specimen."

I looked appealingly at Billings. "Oh, I say, you know!" I exclaimed in dismay.

Billings had been standing with his mouth agape, but now he made a stride forward and touched the professor on the arm.

"That's Mr. Lightnut, Professor," he said blandly. "That's not the specimen. H'm! Slight mistake."

Slowly the professor's big head turned on its axis and his little eyes blinked at Billings nastily.

"I was referring to the orchid in the gentleman's coat," he observed quietly, and turned back to me.

"Of course! Of course!" stammered Billings with eagerness. "My mistake – one on me. Stung!" his lips pantomimed to me.

I addressed the professor hospitably: "Ah! won't you sit down, Professor?"

He drew back, frowning. "Sit down, sir?" he questioned. And, by Jove, by this time he showed his teeth. And devilish white, even teeth they were, too, only they didn't fit.

"I never sit down, sir," he said stiffly; "never!"

"By Jove!" I explained.

"To be sure!" ejaculated Billings, looking extremely silly.

The professor appeared not ungratified with the sensation he had produced and condescended to smile; that is, if you can call a creasing and wrinkling like the cracked end of a hard-boiled egg a smile.

"You say, 'sit down,' sir," he said, addressing me. "I ask you, in turn: Is not 'sitting down' recrudescence back to the primordial?"

So saying, he took a pinch at my shirt front and stepped back again impressively. Still addressing me, he continued:

"It is such thoughtless indulgence of muscles growing obsolescent that retards the evolution of our species, a species, sir, which I claim is coessential in fundamental attributes with contemporaneous amphibia. Ha! I surprise you, perhaps? Can you note in me a resemblance to a batrachian?"

I didn't know. And, dash it, I was afraid to chance it. Tried my jolly best to think what a batrachian was. It came to me like a flash that it sounded like something in Italy.

"By Jove, you do, though, awfully!" I exclaimed, trying to brighten up over it. "Doesn't he, Billings? Noticed a resemblance right off, don't you know."

Billings went to nodding with an air of pleased surprise. Dash me if I believed he knew what a batrachian was, though, any more than I did. But Billings never admits anything.

"Sure," he said glibly. "I was half suspecting it; why, look at the skin, you know – and features!"

"By Jove, yes!" I said, feeling encouraged. "Head, mouth, nose, eyes and – " I was going to say "hair," but I remembered in time about the wig.

The professor looked awfully pleased. He gave me a finger again.

"Such perspicacity – ah – is rare in one who looks so – "

He coughed slightly, then resumed:

"How gratifying, indeed, to meet another investigator! A student in zoötomy, no doubt? Ah! Do not deny it; I divined it at once. A delightful recreation, sir – a game, absorbing but elusive."

"Awfully jolly, you know," I agreed. "Ripping, I say!"

"Surest thing you know," chirped Billings. I wondered if it was anything like polo.

And then, by Jove, thinking of polo sent me off again thinking of Frances. Not that she was like polo, dash it, but I wished she could see me play.

The professor took another pinch from my shirt front and favored me with a rusty smile.

"Ah!" he said: "You must take time to look into a little monograph of mine: Man in Miniature; a Study of the Anthropology of the Frog. You regard the frog, of course?"

"Oh, I say, yes – fine, you know!" I answered, my mouth watering. By Jove! I thought of the devilish good things they got up in season down at the Café Grenouille.

"My dear sir!" The professor bowed to me. "I can not express to you how gratifying to me this meeting is. I must get a list of your societies and degrees. So few appreciate the frog; so many, even in the scientific world, deride my published claim that congenious with man is the rana mugiens or American bullfrog."

By Jove! they were certainly congenial with me, all right.

"Awfully hard to swallow unless well done, don't you know," I demurred thoughtfully.

"Truly incredible, sir!"

The professor took another pinch and held it in front of him.

"But I have allowed for that," he added, emphasizing with his other hand. "My frog brochure meets that difficulty and whets the appetite of the most mediocre."

"By Jove, Billings!" I exclaimed eagerly, "we must tell Marchand about it over at the club." I was so devilish tired of his eternal sauce délicieuse, his sauce aigre, his sauce écossaise and the rest, don't you know.

The professor inclined his head gravely.

"Ha, French! Then Monsieur Marchand has done something with the frog, has he?" he questioned.