Kitabı oku: «The Haunted Pajamas», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XVII
THE PROFESSOR

Billings ushered in the professor with a flourishing introduction.

The great man never spoke, but gave me the end of one finger, and devilish grudgingly at that. He just came to anchor and stood there very straight and stiff, ignoring the chairs thrust toward him from every point. One hand was stuck in his stiff broadcloth bosom, with elbow pointing outward, and his great topheavy head reared above us impressively.

Billings rubbed his hands and bowed and smirked.

"Lovely weather we are having for summer, don't you think, Professor? Jenkins, a chair for the professor."

He was already hedged in by chairs, but he remained standing. Dash it, he was staring hard at me, his beady eyes boring like gimlets, don't you know, and his little shriveled face all puckered up. By Jove, but he looked sour! Looked like he would bite, or, as Billings said afterward, would like to, if the human race wasn't poisonous.

"Wonderful stunt, science, isn't it, Professor?" gushed Billings, still rubbing his hands and grinning like a wild what's-its-name. "Tracing the orbits of the shooting stars or measuring the animals in the tiny sewer drop. H'm! Fascinating pursuit! And how marvelous it must be to be able to classify instantly any specimen of man's or nature's handiwork – to – a – call the turn, so to speak – right off the bat, as it were. H'm! We have here to-night – er – "

With his hand upon the pajamas, Billings paused, for the professor paid no attention – did not even turn round, in fact. He just stood there staring at me. Billings coughed suggestively.

"H'm! As I was saying, we have with us to-night a specimen," he resumed a little louder, "I may say an example of something that, while apparently commonplace and prosaic, is really a rare and unique – "

"Ha – specimen genus cypripedium," came in a squeaky bark from the professor as he held me in his eye. "Linnaeus, 1753. Ha! Species acaule– proper habitat, bogs. Very common —very common, indeed."

He batted at me sourly and seemed disappointed. By Jove, I never felt so devilish mortified in all my life! Never! I nearly dropped my monocle and felt myself getting jolly red about the ears. This only seemed to make it worse.

"Ha —labellum somewhat pinker purple than normal," he proceeded. "H'm! Unusually fresh specimen."

I looked appealingly at Billings. "Oh, I say, you know!" I exclaimed in dismay.

Billings had been standing with his mouth agape, but now he made a stride forward and touched the professor on the arm.

"That's Mr. Lightnut, Professor," he said blandly. "That's not the specimen. H'm! Slight mistake."

Slowly the professor's big head turned on its axis and his little eyes blinked at Billings nastily.

"I was referring to the orchid in the gentleman's coat," he observed quietly, and turned back to me.

"Of course! Of course!" stammered Billings with eagerness. "My mistake – one on me. Stung!" his lips pantomimed to me.

I addressed the professor hospitably: "Ah! won't you sit down, Professor?"

He drew back, frowning. "Sit down, sir?" he questioned. And, by Jove, by this time he showed his teeth. And devilish white, even teeth they were, too, only they didn't fit.

"I never sit down, sir," he said stiffly; "never!"

"By Jove!" I explained.

"To be sure!" ejaculated Billings, looking extremely silly.

The professor appeared not ungratified with the sensation he had produced and condescended to smile; that is, if you can call a creasing and wrinkling like the cracked end of a hard-boiled egg a smile.

"You say, 'sit down,' sir," he said, addressing me. "I ask you, in turn: Is not 'sitting down' recrudescence back to the primordial?"

So saying, he took a pinch at my shirt front and stepped back again impressively. Still addressing me, he continued:

"It is such thoughtless indulgence of muscles growing obsolescent that retards the evolution of our species, a species, sir, which I claim is coessential in fundamental attributes with contemporaneous amphibia. Ha! I surprise you, perhaps? Can you note in me a resemblance to a batrachian?"

I didn't know. And, dash it, I was afraid to chance it. Tried my jolly best to think what a batrachian was. It came to me like a flash that it sounded like something in Italy.

"By Jove, you do, though, awfully!" I exclaimed, trying to brighten up over it. "Doesn't he, Billings? Noticed a resemblance right off, don't you know."

Billings went to nodding with an air of pleased surprise. Dash me if I believed he knew what a batrachian was, though, any more than I did. But Billings never admits anything.

"Sure," he said glibly. "I was half suspecting it; why, look at the skin, you know – and features!"

"By Jove, yes!" I said, feeling encouraged. "Head, mouth, nose, eyes and – " I was going to say "hair," but I remembered in time about the wig.

The professor looked awfully pleased. He gave me a finger again.

"Such perspicacity – ah – is rare in one who looks so – "

He coughed slightly, then resumed:

"How gratifying, indeed, to meet another investigator! A student in zoötomy, no doubt? Ah! Do not deny it; I divined it at once. A delightful recreation, sir – a game, absorbing but elusive."

"Awfully jolly, you know," I agreed. "Ripping, I say!"

"Surest thing you know," chirped Billings. I wondered if it was anything like polo.

And then, by Jove, thinking of polo sent me off again thinking of Frances. Not that she was like polo, dash it, but I wished she could see me play.

The professor took another pinch from my shirt front and favored me with a rusty smile.

"Ah!" he said: "You must take time to look into a little monograph of mine: Man in Miniature; a Study of the Anthropology of the Frog. You regard the frog, of course?"

"Oh, I say, yes – fine, you know!" I answered, my mouth watering. By Jove! I thought of the devilish good things they got up in season down at the Café Grenouille.

"My dear sir!" The professor bowed to me. "I can not express to you how gratifying to me this meeting is. I must get a list of your societies and degrees. So few appreciate the frog; so many, even in the scientific world, deride my published claim that congenious with man is the rana mugiens or American bullfrog."

By Jove! they were certainly congenial with me, all right.

"Awfully hard to swallow unless well done, don't you know," I demurred thoughtfully.

"Truly incredible, sir!"

The professor took another pinch and held it in front of him.

"But I have allowed for that," he added, emphasizing with his other hand. "My frog brochure meets that difficulty and whets the appetite of the most mediocre."

"By Jove, Billings!" I exclaimed eagerly, "we must tell Marchand about it over at the club." I was so devilish tired of his eternal sauce délicieuse, his sauce aigre, his sauce écossaise and the rest, don't you know.

The professor inclined his head gravely.

"Ha, French! Then Monsieur Marchand has done something with the frog, has he?" he questioned.

"Twenty-nine different stunts," Billings replied proudly. "I know because I'm on the House Committee. Yes, sir, frogs are his specialty; that man can get more out of a frog than any other living man."

The professor looked a little nettled.

"Oh, indeed!" he said rather coldly.

"I tell you, Professor, he's got 'em all skinned!" Billings enthused.

The remark provoked a contemptuous sniff.

"Undoubtedly, that being the proper condition preliminary to comparative anatomical study," said the professor loftily. "Then the physical resemblance to a man becomes startling. I have identified every analogy with man except the beautiful phenomenon of the beating of the frog heart twenty-four hours after separation from the body – the living body, sir. Experiment upon the living human specimen is necessary for confirmation of the homologous structure of the two hearts, however. This I have not done – not yet."

He spoke gloomily. I looked at Billings blankly but I found Billings was looking at me the same way.

Every once in a while he had been lifting the pajamas. He would cough and open his mouth, but just then the professor would start off again. Once Billings, with an awfully savage expression, shook his fist at our visitor's back and danced up and down upon the rug.

"The indifference, not to say prejudice, of the public upon the matter of human vivisection is heartrending," went on the professor sadly. "Sir, I have advertised in the 'help wanted' columns of the daily press, and have interviewed scores without arousing one spark of ambition or awakening one thrill of gratitude over the opportunity offered to assist me in the investigation of scientific phenomena. I pleaded, sir; I reproached; I even showed them the demonstration upon the frog. Did I move them? Were they affected, do you think?"

I shook my head sympathetically. Seemed the safe thing to do.

"A lot of pikers, by George!" said Billings with an air of indignation. "Must have been shameless!"

"Deuced indifferent," I ventured. "I should have been regularly cut up."

"Ah! of course you would," cried the professor, lifting another pinch. "There speaks the intelligent devotee of science! But did they see it that way? Not at all, sir; they were only indifferent and ungrateful – they were rude and – ah – boisterous! One savage primate assaulted me with his bare knuckles. A blow, gentlemen, a blow from the boasted family of anthropina!"

"Beastly outrage, Professor," growled Billings. "Leave it to me; I know a chap who's got a pull with the police commissioner, and I'll just tip him off, by George. It's no matter what family they are or how much they boasted. It'll be the hurry wagon and the cooler for them, eh, Dicky?"

He gestured to me wildly, nodding his head like a man with the what's-it-name dance.

"Deuced good idea. Awful rotters, I say," was my comment.

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 modicum 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 homo! 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 glass. 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 reassured 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 classes, 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 butterfly or a grasshopper 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?"

An exclamation of triumph from the professor, another glance at us, and a hoarser 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, Dicky," 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, Dicky," 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, Dicky?" 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 Hwang-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 glasses 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 glasses 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 goddess."

"Goddess!" 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!" ejaculated 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:

"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 embarrassed 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 assure 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 cocked his eye at me and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Then he deliberately kicked at the tabouret and sent its brass 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!"