"I didn't quite catch--" he began hesitatingly, angling his bristly red head forward and smiling pleasantly.

The professor seemed abashed of a sudden.

"H'm! Your pardon, gentlemen! Merely an expletive--h'm--a Greek word I indulge in sometimes when--when excited; a weakness, I might say. H'm!"

He seized his lens again.

Billings' eyes yielded admiration.

"Great Scott, d.i.c.ky!" he whispered in my ear. "See what a thing education is! Think of being able to swear _in Greek_--in Greek, d.i.c.ky!"

Billings' voice expressed awe. "Why, he's got an Erie Ca.n.a.l skipper backed clear off the board, and if he wanted to turn loose, I'll bet he could make a certain railway president I know look like a two-spot!"

At this point the professor struck his fist angrily upon the pajamas.

The face that he turned was unnaturally flushed and his chin quivered excitedly.

"Ridiculous, I say! Poof!" He snapped his fingers. "Necromancy and thaumaturgy transmitted in pajamas! Absurd!"

"Piffle!" said Billings emphatically. "Don't know what they are," he whispered to me, "but I'll take a hundred-to-one shot on anything he says. The professor's a corker!"

"By Jove!" I remarked. "Perhaps Professor Huckleberry won't mind telling us--"

"What I think, gentlemen? What _could_ I think but what I am sure is your own conclusion--though you have generously and considerately left me to form my own opinion--namely, that the claim of supernatural attributes of these garments is preposterous. Enchanted pajamas! Haunted pajamas! Poof! Nursery lore; children's fairy tales! Ghosts, gentlemen?

Tut, tut--nonsense!"

He snorted indignantly.

"Ghosts!" faltered Billings.

"Oh, I say!" I rather gasped. Dash me if it didn't give me a turn, rather!

The professor shrugged his shoulders.

"What other interpretation is admissible, gentlemen?" he questioned somewhat peevishly, taking up the coat. "Here we have the royal insignia of the cruel emperor, Kee, and we note that these garments were given some one in his court by the alleged sorcerer, Fuh-keen. Perhaps it was revenge--perhaps some court plot in which Fuh-keen, for reasons of his own, was an active partic.i.p.ant; it is of no importance, that part of it.

So much for the first line: but now we come--"

He paused to polish his spectacles.

"Tell me," he said more cheerfully, "do our free translations of the ideographs so far agree in essentials--eh?"

"Like as two peas!" Billings declared with manifest enthusiasm.

The professor looked gratified and bowed.

"Of course, the rendition is entirely a free one," he remarked. "You must not expect too much."

"Devilish handsome and clever of him!" I whispered to Billings, as the professor proceeded to adjust his spectacles. "Dash it, I wish he'd let me pay him, though."

"Forget it!" hissed Billings. "Didn't he just say it was free? He's no cheap skate, I tell you."

The professor resumed:

"Now we come to the second line, or, more strictly speaking, column," he said, straightening impressively. "Here we find the astonishing claim made that there will be a change or metamorphosis of any kind of animal life that these habiliments enshroud. Um!"

The great man breathed heavily and batted at us over his gla.s.ses.

"_Credat Judaeus apella_--eh, gentlemen?" And he winked knowingly.

Dashed if he didn't almost catch me swallowing a yawn, too! For I hadn't any idea what he was talking about or driving at, and, by Jove, I _did_ know I was getting devilish sleepy.

The professor waved his gla.s.ses. "Did you ever read such a childish, ridiculous, extravagant a.s.severation?" he demanded.

"a.s.s--eh? I should say so!" I worked this off indignantly.

"Tommyrot!" murmured Billings absently. He seemed thoughtful.

I was thoughtful, too--wondering, by Jove, whether the professor would go soon, so we could turn in and get the earlier start to-morrow up the river. But chiefly I was wondering wistfully if Frances would still be angry with me.

"Moreover," broke in the professor's voice as he turned again to the lettering, "to a.s.sert further that there will be a semblance--not actual, gentlemen, mind you, but an optical illusion--taking the form of some creature of the same kind that this silken tenement has previously inclosed.

"In other words, gentlemen, if I were to don these garments, I might no longer look like myself, but like some one else who had worn them upon some previous occasion--perhaps last night--perhaps a thousand years ago. Eh? Is that what you understand?"

He ducked again over the letters and came up, looking chagrined.

"Moreover, I am forced to confess, gentlemen, that I fail to find a system--any rule governing these ridiculous transformations. The hypothesis is, therefore, that the alleged materializations merely follow the arbitrary caprice of the magic." He shook his head. "Well, gentlemen, I--really, I must laugh!"

And he did! I hadn't caught the drift of what it was he thought he was laughing at--I got the words, but I was too dashed sleepy to get the sense. But I was awfully glad I understood this much--that what he was attempting now _was_ a laugh. I never would have known it. It was more like a shrieking squeak--rusty hinge, you know, that sort of thing.

"First-time-I've-laughed-in-twenty-years!" His shrill cackle ran a treble scale that ended in high C. "I know you--you won't believe it!"

"Believe it?" said Billings drily, "I'd bet a purse on it." He whispered to me: "Don't need any affidavit; it _shows_. Sounds like a country wagon on a down grade, brake on, and shrieking like a banshee."

Behind me the door opened slightly. I turned to see Jenkins, looking devilish chalky and a little wild-eyed. He lifted a coil of stout sash cord questioningly.

"Eh? Why, no!" I whispered through the opening. "He's just _laughing_.

Don't be a jolly a.s.s!" And I closed the door sharply.

The professor looked up from the pajamas, and folding his arms, eyed Billings with a cunning leer.

"I think I see," he said, leveling his finger. "You have both demonstrated how nonsensical is the a.s.sertion in this inscription.

Doubtless you desire an experiment upon my part to confirm your proof of its absurdity. _Reductio ad absurdum_--eh, gentlemen?"

Billings looked at me, but I couldn't help him. Why, dash it, I didn't even know yet what the inscription was. And, by Jove, I didn't know what experiments he wanted to try with the pajamas, but I didn't care.

He could boil them, if he wanted to, if he would only let us get to bed.

So at random I just nodded eagerly.

"Excellent!" The professor's chuckle sounded like dice rattling in a metal box. "An excellent jest upon this fellow, Fuh-keen, to furnish a demonstration by twentieth-century scientists of the presumption of his claims of necromancy and thaumaturgy. You have done so--now I will do so, in turn. Eh, gentlemen?"

I hadn't the ghost of an idea what he was talking about. Fact is, I was thinking of my darling and wondering if she was asleep. By Jove, I wished that _I_ was!