An exclamation of triumph from the professor, another glance at us, and a hoa.r.s.er and more prolonged mutter. I shifted uneasily. By Jove, I didn't like it at all!

Billings looked at me in consternation. "I wouldn't be in your shoes, d.i.c.ky," he whispered. "You'll be pinched for this, sure."

"Oh, I say, now! I tell you, a friend in China--"

Billings shrugged impatiently. "Just a plant, you chowder head," he said, viewing me pityingly. "I tell you that's how all these blackmailing schemes are worked. You ought to be more careful."

"But, dash it, I don't even know her, this Celia what's-her-name," I protested miserably. If Frances' brother thought that way, what would _she_ think?

"Um! Maybe you don't, but they'll expect you to say that, anyhow. You're up against it, old chap; the professor here evidently knows her and he knows her pajamas--relative, probably."

By Jove, I felt a little faint!

"It will be all over New York to-morrow," continued Billings gloomily.

"Your picture and hers will be in the extras."

Out of the professor's mutterings we caught a random sentence.

"Found, found again," we heard him say. "Hers beyond peradventure of a doubt. I am _not_ mistaken."

Billings rose, and his beckoning finger summoned me to a corner of the room.

"This is going to cost you a pot of money, d.i.c.ky," he said with a serious air, "to say nothing of the scandal. My advice is, try buying him off--best thing in the long run. I'll feel him for you."

Nodding solemnly to me he cleared his voice. "H'm! I say, Professor."

The professor, with his eye glued to the lens and the lens to the silk, turned slowly about.

"H'm!" began Billings. "The--h'm--articles you have there--you recognize where they are from--eh?"

"Of course," he snapped, without looking up.

"H'm! And whose did I understand you to say--I--er--did not catch her name."

His glance uplifted and scoured us sourly.

"Si-Ling-Chi. Did you think I did not know? I recognized at sight her wonderful disappearing weave." He bent again with his lens. "Marvelous, indeed, after all these years," he muttered. "So long, so long!

Incredible preservation!"

Billings placed his finger against his nose, rolled his eyes upward and emitted the faintest of whistles. He caught my arm sharply.

"Say, how old are you, d.i.c.ky?" he whispered excitedly.

"I--er--twenty-seven, I think, old chap," I replied hesitatingly.

Billings noiselessly slapped his leg. His face brightened.

"Been of age six years," he calculated to himself. "By George, maybe you can prove an alibi!"

He coughed again at the absorbed figure stooping over the table.

"Ah, Professor--h'm--how long now would you say it might be since--well, she you mention--how long a time since she last saw--er--what you have there--eh?"

"How long?" repeated the professor absently. Then he moved, but his hand only, and he flipped it, don't you know, as one does to banish a fly or a dashed mosquito--that sort of thing, by Jove!

"Can't you figure it out yourself?" he questioned irritably. "You remember chronology gives Hw.a.n.g-Si's reign as in the twenty-sixth century before Christ; and of course, that of Si-Ling-Chi, his empress, would be the same."

Billings subsided limply into a chair.

"Great Thomas cats!" he gasped weakly.

"I think I divine the astute purpose of your inquiry," said the professor, pausing to polish his gla.s.ses and favoring us with a wintry smile. "It does not deceive me. You have in mind, sir, the erroneous chronology that places Si-Ling-Chi thirteen centuries earlier. Ha! Is not my suspicion correct?"

"Regular bull's-eye!" responded Billings. "I mean," he added hastily, "what's the use of denying it?"

"Twenty-six centuries before the Christian era is the best we can give Si-Ling-Chi," said the professor, carefully affixing his gla.s.ses and falling once more upon the pajamas.

"By Jove!" I said dazedly. "Then the lady--er--I mean the party--she's rather far back--er--isn't she, don't you know?"

The professor answered abstractedly:

"Two thousand years before Confucius; twenty-four hundred and twenty-nine years before the building of the Great Wall," he murmured mechanically.

Jove, but I was relieved! I looked inquiringly at Billings. He just sat there kind of drooping, and shook his head. "I'm all in," he motioned with his lips; and he wiped his forehead.

"Ah, gentlemen!" exclaimed the professor, coming back again, "what a thing this little Chinese woman did for civilization when she gave the world silk culture and invented the loom! No wonder the Chinese deified her as a G.o.ddess."

"G.o.ddess!" Billings swallowed hard. "And did these--h'm--garments belong to the lady?"

The professor frowned at him in surprise. "Garments?"

"Them," said Billings in devilish questionable grammar, pointing to the table. "They are pajamas, you know."

"Ha!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the professor, holding them up. "So they are. You are very observing, sir, very. Now, I had not noticed that at all; I was so interested in the material itself--the wonderful silk of Si-Ling-Chi, gentlemen. Ha! Indeed a rare privilege!"

By Jove! He stroked the stuff lightly, tenderly--as one likes to do a little child's hair, don't you know.

"Beautiful, beautiful fabric," he sighed half to himself. "Only once before have I seen a piece of it--but it was enough; I could never, never forget." Something like a groan escaped him.

Billings angled his head toward me and tightly compressed one eye.

"H'm! Something in the petticoat line--eh, Professor?"

The professor's face wrinkled with the most matter-of-fact surprise.

"Petticoat?" he piped querulously. "You are forgetting that the petticoat is a vestment unknown in China."

"Oh, in China! I was thinking of Paree," chuckled Billings, with a gay air and another glance at me. Then his nerve withered under the professor's blank stare, and he added hurriedly: