The professor seemed affected by our sympathy. He withdrew from his pocket a folded handkerchief, slowly opened it and pressed it lightly to each eye. Then he carefully refolded and replaced it.

"Strange thing, the persistence of the primitive emotions," he said, sniffing thoughtfully. "Singular how they affect the lachrymal _apparati_. Peculiarly disagreeable taste, gentlemen, that of tears, despite their simple elementary composition--ninety-nine and six-tenths per cent. water, you remember, and the rest a modic.u.m of chloride of sodium, mucus, soda and phosphates. H'm! Your pardon, gentlemen, for this digression, but to have sustained a stab under this very roof from _genus h.o.m.o_! It is indeed hard."

Here Jenkins, who had been lingering and busying himself about the apartment, whispered to me from behind:

"It's that dago, sir, that delivers fruit every day."

"Eh?"

"That's the name. I see him going back every morning."

Jenkins moved off, nodding mysteriously, as I stared at him through my gla.s.s. In his way, Billings was speaking words of comfort and all that sort of thing to the professor.

"Never mind; the law will get 'em for you," he rea.s.sured him.

"Ah! that's just where you are in error," sighed our guest. "The law, sir, will not get a single subject for me. In this age of unrestrained liberty of all cla.s.ses, the law lends no aid whatever to science. It is not as it was in the glorious past when, under imperial patronage, Vesalius, the great father of anatomy, was protected when by mistake his scalpel cut the living heart of a Spanish grandee. Times worth while, gentlemen, those great days of supreme imperialism! Ah! there was no lack of material available if one stood in a little at court; one had only to designate a selection and the thing was done. Gracious, gentle times, my friends! Gone, alas, for ever! Such opportunities are impossible under a republic."

The professor shook his head and reached for his handkerchief again. But this time he only blew his nose.

"_Tempora mutantur_," he murmured regretfully, "Eh, gentlemen?"

"True," said Billings, pursing his lips. "Ah, how true!"

"By Jove, ought to be something done, you know," I declared.

"Out of millions, not a single human specimen available," groaned the professor dismally. "And my instruments ready for over a year."

"Cheer up, sir; you'll have a go yet," Billings encouraged.

"Ah!" The professor's little eyes swept Billings' person critically.

"Perhaps you, sir, would like the privilege--"

Billings staggered back a step or two precipitately.

"Delighted; nothing'd give me greater pleasure, but so infernally busy,"

he explained hurriedly. "Just my confounded luck; unfortunately, got to go to Egypt right away--probably to-morrow morning."

The professor sighed again in his disappointment.

"No matter; I shall find some one in time," he said grimly. "But I shall abandon this foolish persuasion and cajolery as unworthy of the scientist. Do we lower ourselves with such devices in securing a b.u.t.terfly or a gra.s.shopper or a frog or any animate specimen except man?

Certainly not; we capture and etherize them."

He glanced about the room and beckoned us with his finger.

"I have lately had my eye upon the gas man," he said in a low tone. He closed one eye impressively.

"Ah!" said Billings, his mouth dropping open wide.

"The individual who comes at intervals to take the quarters from the slot meter. H'm, fine subject, gentlemen!"

"Great!" agreed Billings.

"Ripping idea," I tried as a reply.

The professor clasped his fingers tightly and rubbed his thumbs one over the other. He brightened visibly.

"The party has to go down upon his knees and stoop behind the end of the tub in the bath-room," he continued. "It was my thought that while in that advantageous position the sudden, quick application of a Turkish bath towel saturated in ether would--Eh? Do you follow me?"

"Devilish clever, you know," I said. I had already selected this for reply for this time.

Billings failed to come up. He just stared hard, rolled his eyes and ran his finger around under his collar.

The professor, in the act of taking another pinch from my shirt front, paused with a little jerk. Then his great head shot forward in front of his rigid neck--so suddenly, by Jove, that I reached out to try to catch it, don't you know. He made just two strides to the table, ten feet away, and pounced upon the pajamas with obviously trembling hands.

And behind his back Billings relapsed into an arm-chair and fanned himself with a magazine.

His head dropped back, and upon his fat face was a what-you-call-it smile of peace. He closed his eyes for an instant.

"Suffering Thomas cats! At last!" I heard him murmur.

CHAPTER XVIII

I RECEIVE A SHOCK

The professor fumblingly sought through his pockets, and producing a pair of spectacles with phenomenally large lenses, adjusted them shakily.

He bent over the pajamas eagerly.

"Impossible! And yet, it is, it is!" he muttered. "I would know the weave among a thousand. It is hers undoubtedly, undoubtedly--the lost silk of Si-Ling-Chi! How comes it here?"

He glared around rather wildly at each of us in turn. Without waiting for a reply, he whisked back to the pajamas, and fishing out a thick magnifying lens, scrutinized the garments closely. It seemed that he would certainly nod his big head off its jolly hinge; and his quick side glances at Billings and myself, together with his growling and muttering, just reminded me of a dog with a bone, by Jove!

I stared at Billings and Billings stared at me, and then he slipped over to the divan upon which I dropped, completely exhausted, dash it, from standing so long.

"_Whose_ did he say?" he whispered.

"Celia something," I answered. "Dash it, I didn't catch her surname.

Oh, I say, you know, this is _awful_!"

I felt devilish mortified. Wondered what Frances might think, you know.

Billings drew in his lips and wagged his head ominously. He waved me nearer.

"He's on," he breathed behind his hand; "he's looking for her laundry mark. Now, wouldn't that feaze you?"