collection in
New York, if I do say it. But I haven't anything like one of these
rubies, and neither has any one else--no one else in this country,
anyhow. There's nothing like them in all New York, from Tiffany's down
to Maiden Lane, and never has been. I never saw anything like--near
like any of them--except the one in the Russian crown of Anna Ivanovana.
That's bigger, but it hasn't the same fire."

I just laughed at him. "Why, Billings, these pajamas were sent me by a
friend in China, and I assure you--"

"Assure? What can you assure--what do _you_ know about it?" said
Billings rudely. "What did your friend know, or the one he had these
things from--or the one before him--or the one still before that?
Pshaw!" And he snapped his fingers.

With his hand he swept up the little caps and the long, wirelike threads
that held them and sniffed the handful curiously.

"H'm! Funky sort of aromatic smell--balsam, cedar oil or something like
that," he muttered half aloud. "That accounts for the preservation. But
still--"

He crossed his legs and puffed thoughtfully.

"Tell you how I figure this out, Dicky," he said finally. "These
nighties your friend has sent you are awfully rare and old; and for
delicate, dainty elegance and that sort of thing they've got everything
else in the silk way shoved off the clothes-line. But as to these
jewels, you can just bet all you've got that whoever passed them on was
not wise to them being under these covers."

Here he got to looking at one of the buttons and murmuring his
admiration--regular trance, you know.

"By Jove!" I remarked, just to stir him up a bit. And he unloaded a
great funnel of smoke and continued:

"My theory is that during some danger, some mandarins' war, likely,
somebody got cold feet about these jewels and roped them in with these
bits of silk--see how different they are from the rest of the stuff!
Then, when the roughhouse came, these pajamas were swept along in the
sacking--sort of spoils of pillage, you know. It was a clever method of
concealment--clever because simple--a hiding place unlikely to be
thought of because right under the eye. You recall Poe's story of _The
Purloined Letter_?"

I tried to remember. "Can't say I do, dear boy," I had to admit. "Don't
seem to place that one. Only one I remember hearing him tell is that one
he brought back from Paris. Let me see--_The Story of the Lonely
Lobster_, I think he called it." I chortled delightedly as i