"H'm! So it was in China you saw the other piece of silk?"

The professor sighed profoundly. His reply came dreamily, regretfully:

"In the Purple Forbidden City; but I was not quick enough."

"Not quick enough?" Billings' echo was solicitous, sympathetic.

"It was among the palace treasures, the imperial properties--things unhappily lost to the world and civilization. Ah, gentlemen, I erred; I committed a fatal mistake; it has been a matter of deep mortification to me often!" His head wagged somberly.

Billings looked a little embarra.s.sed and rubbed his chin. "H'm!" he coughed. "I guess we all slip a cog now and then. I know I've done things myself I've been rather ash--"

"I erred, gentlemen," went on the professor, "in trusting most unscientifically to the false principle that the hand is quicker than the eye. It is _not_ true, for one of the guards saw me and my carelessness cost me dearly: I not only lost the silk, but a singularly beautiful gold thread altar cloth and a matchless amulet of _yu-chi jade_, you know--white jade, at that, gentlemen, I a.s.sure you--a rare bit of carving of the second century--real Khoton jade, too--no base _fei-tsui_. But, alas! I lost them, my friends; they confiscated them, and no doubt they are still there in their original places from which I had--a--attached them. Do you wonder at my mortification? And then the sacrifice of a whole year of planning, watching, bribing and perfecting of preliminary disguise! All fruitless, fruitless!"

The professor lifted and dropped his palms in eloquent deprecation.

Billings' foot pressed mine. "Now, wouldn't that frost you?" he whispered under his breath. Aloud he exclaimed indignantly:

"Beastly outrage; it must have been painful."

The professor started in the act of lifting the pajamas again.

"Pain? I did not speak of the physical consequences. They were too terrible to discuss. I--"

The pajamas dropped from his hands and his eyes took on that somewhere-else, far-off look, don't you know.

"Sort of 'third degree' work, Professor?" Billings prodded him.

The professor did not reply. His long, slim fingers swept his forehead for an instant and he looked away again, his little eyes dilated.

Somehow it made one feel devilish uncomfortable, dash it!

Billings c.o.c.ked his eye at me and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Then he deliberately kicked at the tabouret and sent its bra.s.s fixture set clattering noisily across the room.

The professor shivered, compressed his lips and blinked at us.

"Your pardon, gentlemen," he observed in some confusion. "Some one was asking me--"

"What they did to you when you lift--I mean when you lost the--er--loot."

He stared, shivered again and returned to the pajamas, muttering an almost inaudible reply.

We caught a word or two: "Long imprisonment--much physical pain--unspeakable things--do not like to think of it--I--"

His eyes closed. He folded his long, thin arms shudderingly. Billings and I sat very still. The professor's voice came as from far away:

"I could tell you of some experiences in China and in Tibet," he murmured. "Perhaps I--some other time--such horrible details, I--"

He leaned heavily upon the table with both hands. His head dropped forward an instant.

"No matter _now_," he muttered. "It was long, long ago!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE SPELL OF THE PAJAMAS

"George!" breathed Billings, breaking a curious, tense silence.

The professor suddenly faced us, holding up the pajamas with a gesture of inquiry.

"From a friend of Mr. Lightnut's in China," Billings explained.

Aside, he whispered hurriedly: "Don't say a word about the rubies! You heard him--murder, grand larceny or arson--it's all one to the old gazabe! Anybody can see that. He doesn't let little things like those stand in the way of getting what he wants!" He frowned warningly.

"H'm! In the neck, Professor--I mean inside the collar," he said, approaching the table--"there's some kind of freak lettering. Looks foolish to me."

The professor looked perplexed.

"I mean, looks like it was done by some one who was batty--had wheels, you know; probably some c.h.i.n.k whose biscuit was drifty," floundered Billings. "_You_ understand!"

The professor didn't. I knew that jolly well by the way he c.o.c.ked his head on one side, standing like a puzzled crow, don't you know.

"Ha! I fear I do not as I should," he said with an apologetic cough.

"Perhaps I do not intelligently and logically follow your deductions because your premises are inscrutable until I have seen the lettering.

Ah!"

Out came gla.s.ses and lens again and he bent over the collar eagerly.

"H'm! The _Hwuyi_, or ideographic characters, rather than the ideophonetic!" He looked up at Billings and myself inquiringly. "Ha! I trust we start together in accord upon that conclusion, eh, gentlemen?"

Billings nodded emphatically.

"Surest thing you know," he declared firmly, and whispered to me triumphantly. "Didn't I tell him it was idiotic?"

The professor's lips moved rapidly and his visage twisted into a horrible frown.

"Why, why--a--what!" With mouth open, and gripping the pajamas tightly, he glared at us each in turn.

"Oh, impossible!" he rasped harshly, seizing the lens and bending again.

"Incredible--poof--absurd--tut, tut, what nonsense!"

The gla.s.s swept the lines rapidly. Suddenly, with a cry, the professor dropped the lens, a violent start almost lifting him from the floor.

"_Papauhegopoulos!_" he cried explosively, and whirled on us again.

Dash me, if I didn't fall back a step, his eyes rolled so wildly. But Billings stood his ground, by Jove!