head dropped
forward an instant.

"No matter _now_," he muttered. "It was long, long ago!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE SPELL OF THE PAJAMAS

"George!" breathed Billings, breaking a curious, tense silence.

The professor suddenly faced us, holding up the pajamas with a gesture
of inquiry.

"From a friend of Mr. Lightnut's in China," Billings explained.

Aside, he whispered hurriedly: "Don't say a word about the rubies! You
heard him--murder, grand larceny or arson--it's all one to the old
gazabe! Anybody can see that. He doesn't let little things like those
stand in the way of getting what he wants!" He frowned warningly.

"H'm! In the neck, Professor--I mean inside the collar," he said,
approaching the table--"there's some kind of freak lettering. Looks
foolish to me."

The professor looked perplexed.

"I mean, looks like it was done by some one who was batty--had wheels,
you know; probably some chink whose biscuit was drifty," floundered
Billings. "_You_ understand!"

The professor didn't. I knew that jolly well by the way he cocked his
head on one side, standing like a puzzled crow, don't you know.

"Ha! I fear I do not as I should," he said with an apologetic cough.
"Perhaps I do not intelligently and logically follow your deductions
because your premises are inscrutable until I have seen the lettering.
Ah!"

Out came glasses and lens again and he bent over the collar eagerly.

"H'm! The _Hwuyi_, or ideographic characters, rather than the
ideophonetic!" He looked up at Billings and myself inquiringly. "Ha! I
trust we start together in accord upon that conclusion, eh, gentlemen?"

Billings nodded emphatically.

"Surest thing you know," he declared firmly, and whispered to me
triumphantly. "Didn't I tell him it was idiotic?"

The professor's lips moved rapidly and his visage twisted into a
horrible frown.

"Why, why--a--what!" With mouth open, and gripping the pajamas tightly,
he glared at us each in turn.

"Oh, impossible!" he rasped harshly, seizing the lens and bending again.
"Incredible--poof--absurd--tut, tut, what nonsense!"

The glass swept the lines rapidly. Suddenly, with a cry, the professor
dropped the lens, a violent start almost lifting him from the floor.

"_Papauhegopoulos!_" he cried explosively, and whirled on us again.

Dash me, if I didn't fall back a step, his eyes rolled so wildly. But
Billings stood his ground, by Jove!

"I didn't quite catch--" he began hesitatingly, a