"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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.s than you can help, d.i.c.ky," 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, d.i.c.ky!" 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, d.i.c.ky," he exclaimed, "do you happen to know Doozenberry?"

I tried to remember. I shut one eye and studied the marks closely through my gla.s.s, 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' coa.r.s.e 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--b.u.mps 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--"