e anything but 'jolly.' I've ridden in the
elevator with him myself. Always manages to look like he was traveling
with a bad smell!"

"Devilish sensitive, I dare say."

Billings looked at me suspiciously, but I had got hold of the thing I
was trying to recollect and I went on quickly:

"By Jove, you know, I believe Jenkins knows his man--fellow who butlers,
and, I believe, cooks, for him. He and Jenkins belong to the same--how
do they call it?--same club of gentlemen's gentlemen."

Billings brought his fist down. "Let's have Jenkins in," he suggested.
And we did.

"I say, Jenkins," I began, "this Professor Doodle bug above us--"

"Doozenberry!" Billings sharply corrected.

"Well, some jolly rum thing about him, don't you know,
Jenkins--something you said his man told you--remember, eh?"

Jenkins' eyes batted a little.

He cleared his throat. "Why, yes, sir; he told me a lot of funny things
one night, sir. Don't suppose he would have done it, only him and me had
an evening off and we--we--"

Jenkins seemed to hesitate.

"And you went on a bat together," suggested Billings, rubbing his hands
pleasantly.

"It was, sir," Jenkins admitted, looking at me sadly. "Leastways, he
sort o' loosened up as he got--got--"

"Pickled," Billings helped smoothly.

"Quite so, sir; there's some is that way always: some is taken other
ways." Jenkins considered Billings moodily. "The power of the demon rum,
sir."

"Ah, true!" sighed Billings, lifting his eyes.

"This here chap, he got to going on and all but crying about his cursed
hard fate--them's his own words, sir--his cursed hard fate in having to
drink water all the time and eat cow feed--"

"Eat what?"

"I don't know, sir--that's what he called it--something the perfesser
has him fix out of cereals and nuts and sour milk. That's all they have,
sir; and they don't have no cooking, for the perfesser says it breaks
the celluloid--"

"Cellular," corrected Billings.

"Maybe so, sir," demurred Jenkins. "He _said_ celluloid--the celluloid
tissue papers, _he_ called it. And then his having no heat on all winter
and the windows kept open all the time and the snow piling up on his bed
at night kept him with colds all the year. And then, there was the
dampness--"

"_That's_ it, the dampness!" I exclaimed. "Tell him."

"Why, sir, he told me that every night he had to turn down the
perfesser's bed and go all over it with a two-gallon watering can--"

"Watering can!"