The Haunted Pajamas Part 38

Wilkes coughed reproachfully. "Why, you know, sir, he told about being arrested in front of the Kahoka Apartments. He mentioned that it was about--h'm!" He stole a furtive backward glance at the frump, but she was enjoying herself berating a fat girl she addressed as "Flora." He looked at me eloquently and whispered: "About his--h'm--stealing some black silk pajamas."

My monocle dropped, and I almost did myself.

"By Jove!" I gasped feebly.

"Yes, sir." Wilkes looked up at the paneled ceiling and stroked his chin. "He mentioned that they found them--or _thought_ they found them in the bag he had with him."

"But he's got them _on_, and they are his own," I managed to get out.

Wilkes' face lightened understandingly. "Oh-h, I _see_, sir," he said, nodding with his jolly chin hanging; "so _that's_ how you got him off--I was a-wondering!" He looked at me, his fishy old eyes twinkling admiration. "Very neat, if I may say, sir--making, as it were, a sort of alibi--_very_ neat, indeed! Of course, when they puts 'em on him, they see for themselves they are his'n, and not any lady's what had been stolen--Oh, _I_ see!"

Dash me, if _I_ did! The only thing I saw was that it must have been Jenkins that had telephoned and the message had been twisted. What he _had said_, of course, was that Billings had _almost_ been arrested. But the police finding the pajamas in his bag--I did not like that. Could it be that, after all, Billings _had_ found his sister's pajamas in the guest-room and had quietly confiscated them? It looked devilishly, ominously like it! Or perhaps he, himself, had recovered them from Foxy Grandpa, and with more delicacy than I thought him capable of, had kept the whole matter to himself. One thing only was certain: the sleuth hounds of the law, stimulated by the extravagant reward I had offered over the telephone, _had_ run down and recovered _her pajamas_. It was a relief that they were out of his hands, anyhow--_I_ could get them again, but _he_ couldn't. By Jove!

Alone in my room, I stood before the mirror, hands in pockets and rocking on my toes--kind of smiling, you know--and thinking what a daredevil, reckless thing it had been--clever, too, dash it--in getting them away from old Jack, and right under his nose. By Jove, I felt a bit proud about it--sort of exultation, don't you know--and I had just got off a wink at myself, when Wilkes appeared again.

"Pardon, sir, for disturbing you, but Mr. Billings is acting so queer, we are afraid to cross him; and he just insisted I take his message to you at once."

"Message?" I repeated, sobering.

"Yes, sir--something about some pajamas--"

"Pajamas?" I faltered, and I dropped into a chair. "Oh!"

Wilkes looked grave. "Pajamas seem to be the thing with him this time, sir--it's the queerest go! That's a _new_ one, _that_ is!" He shifted contemplatively. "The last time it was lizards and the time before blue dachshunds, but his main stand-by, so to speak, is piebald rattlesnakes--them we're _used_ to; but this new turn, pajamas, gets me!" He shook his head dubiously. "And he won't take his off--you can't get him to; he just gets kinder peevish and goes off on the queerest streak of freak talk you ever heard. Perkins tried to coax him to take a bath, but he said he never had taken a bath in his life--and he called Perkins something awful--some name about a yard long. It squelched Perkins so that he--"

"But the _message_?" I suggested nervously.

"I was just a-coming to that, sir. He asks me if I knew whether you were still on the place; and when I said you were, he says to me kinder excited and impressive like: 'Well, you go to him at once--_at once_--and tell him I'm on the trail of the mystery of those pajamas, and I'll soon know as much about 'em as _he_ does. Just tell him that--_he'll_ know what I mean.'"

"Oh!" I gasped shortly.

"Yes, sir," Wilkes nodded, "but that ain't quite all. He says: 'Tell Mr.

Lightnut that when I first saw those pajamas in his rooms--'" Wilkes paused inquiringly. "Did you say something, sir?"

I had not--I had only groaned!

He went on, repeating as by rote: "'When I found and took them away, I was curious and amused, but skeptical--firmly skeptical--of there being any dark mystery about them. But now I know I let myself be deceived and I mean to get at the bottom of the whole thing.'"

Wilkes seemed to kind of waver and fade before me, and then go out like a candle. Then he came back into view and I heard his voice again:

"'And what's more, you tell him I say--'"

The butler hesitated and seemed embarra.s.sed--his heavy jowls reddened a little. He looked beyond me and coughed.

"Of course _you_ know, sir," he said, shifting uneasily, "Mr. Billings ain't exactly himself, so to speak, so you mustn't mind. Fact is--if I _may_ say so--he's got the most considerable case of jimmies I ever see him with, so--"

"Oh, _go_ on!" I breathed miserably.

"Yes, sir--h'm!" Wilkes heaved distressfully, then drove doggedly ahead: "Oh, well, sir, what he _says_ was that it was his duty, he thought, to tell the family the truth about those pajamas, so that they would know that the man they were harboring under their roof wasn't what he seemed to be." His gaze bored higher over my head, his voice tapering off so faintly I could hardly hear.

But I heard all right! Oh, yes, I got the full devilish force of it; but I couldn't speak. My dry lips touched wordlessly and I hunched deep into the hollow of the big leather rocker. I would have liked to get even deeper, and I studied wistfully a tiny floor-crack under the radiator. I thought I could make it if I were alone!

Wilkes coughed again. I winced--there was evidently more!

"Yes, sir," he murmured, as I cut a quick glance upward. "He _did_ say further that if you weren't satisfied, though, and would prefer another trial--"

"Eh?" I bounded out of the chair. "What's that? Oh, dash it, _yes_--I would, by Jove!"

"Very good, sir." Wilkes looked relieved, himself. "In that case, he said he was willing to experiment again--that was his word--_experiment_. He said he wouldn't detain you here on _his_ account, but he would _have_ to ask you to stay another day or two while he made his observations."

It was a devilish cold shoulder, but I had no choice. Fact was, by Jove, I was so jolly glad for _that_ chance, and for being trusted again by Billings, even in this half-hearted way, that I just ground my pride under my heel--why, dash it, I would have ground anything under my heel for _her_! I was as happy as a bird, and life was again one grand, sweet what's-its-name.

"Tell him certainly, Wilkes, and thank him--don't forget to thank him."

And I believe I wrung his hand. "And--er--wait, Wilkes--couldn't you use a tenner?" I checked him on the threshold. "Let's see--no, that's a twenty--say, take _that_; take them both--_thank_ you, Wilkes!--and there's a five, too. Oh, yes, you _must_ take it all--I have no use for it, you know--never _would_ use those particular ones!"

And, by Jove, he took it--just made him, you know. These butlers are not half bad fellows if you go at them right--I can _always_ manage them. He sympathized with me--you could see that--dashed if the fellow wasn't almost weeping as he closed the door.

And then I just flopped down upon a divan and lay there panting like a what's-its-name--reaction, you know. So he _had_ known! He had known when he let me come to Wolhurst, and had waited for the moment when he would have me under his roof and be able utterly to confound me. This, then, explained his mental condition, his relapse to drink again--his madness on the subject of pajamas. It was _awful_! By Jove, as I lay there thinking of his suspicions and diseased imaginings induced by his monstrous folly of drink--the awful curse of drink--and of what it had almost brought upon two innocent lives, I felt indignant--almost sick.

Lay there helpless, wishing Jenkins would come, and wondering if I wasn't getting a bit feverish--mouth dry and craving moisture, you know.

But not a thing could I find in the room except a gla.s.s--and empty.

Carafe beside it, but nothing in it but water, you know, and a large, round ball of ice. So just had to fall back on the couch and try not to think of my throbbing, swollen tongue.

Mind got to wandering then, I think. Thought of Frances and how much I loved her, and of cooling streams--fizzy and gurgling--and of amber fountains, crested with sparkling, pearly sunbursts--_you_ know! I even got to wondering if she really loved me--fact! And then came the disquieting thought of how devilish disappointing and awful it _would_ be if Jenkins should forget a stock of my Egyptian Koroskos. What _was_ it she had told me that night about being engaged to another and wanting to be free, now that she had met me--the darling! Then, dash me if I could remember to save me whether Jenkins had or had not said something to me that morning about packing my ashes-of-roses socks and ties--or was it about my lilac silk underwear with the mauve fleur-de-lis?

Devilish annoying I couldn't remember. Of course it was this that was making her so reticent and offish about any reference to the other night--I mean it was this thing of being entangled with this other chap.

So jolly sensitive and high-minded, don't you know, she didn't want to talk about _our_ future until she had dumped the other fellow in the road--that was it.

Struck me suddenly that there was some jolly proverb thing about it: something about the old love and the new--some dashed wise, old, musty rot about _that_. What the deuce was it?

And luckily, just then Jenkins came!

And when he had laid out my things, and I found I was to wear a scarf of Harvard crimson--the color _she_ admired--I was so devilish pleased and grateful to Jenkins for the decision that I thought that now I would let him have a try at the proverb.

"I say, Jenkins," I began carelessly, "there's some jolly saying or proverb--eh, _you_ know?"

"Certainly, sir," responded Jenkins absently, for he was intensely concentrated on the selection of a scarf-pin.

I went on: "It's about--oh, don't you know--about when you've tried being engaged to one person and you don't like it, and you are thinking of being engaged to another--something of that sort, dash it--oh, _you_ know!" And I wondered if it would be the sardonyx or the ruby, and hoped it would be the ruby.

"Mm-m-m," murmured Jenkins, blinking thoughtfully. "Let's see, sir--it ain't that one about the hair of the dog, is it?"

"Hair of the--Certainly _not_!" I exclaimed with indignation. "No, it's some jolly saw about being off with the old and on with--" I stalled.

"Off and on," came quickly from Jenkins; then he went back to his jolly pins.

"Maybe," I said, trying to think, "but there's something else about being on with the new--or being on to the new--Oh, yes, the devilish thing starts off: ''Tis well to be off'--um, off--Dash it, off _what_?

You catch the idea, don't you?"

"Certainly, sir." He tried the ruby and sardonyx in turn against the silk and rejected both--_he_ took a garnet. It wouldn't have been _my_ taste, but then it wasn't my business, you know! His jolly old lips moved as he repeated something to himself; he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and cleared his throat--and _then_ I knew he had it!