ing at--I got the words, but I was too dashed sleepy to get the
sense. But I was awfully glad I understood this much--that what he was
attempting now _was_ a laugh. I never would have known it. It was more
like a shrieking squeak--rusty hinge, you know, that sort of thing.

"First-time-I've-laughed-in-twenty-years!" His shrill cackle ran a
treble scale that ended in high C. "I know you--you won't believe it!"

"Believe it?" said Billings drily, "I'd bet a purse on it." He whispered
to me: "Don't need any affidavit; it _shows_. Sounds like a country
wagon on a down grade, brake on, and shrieking like a banshee."

Behind me the door opened slightly. I turned to see Jenkins, looking
devilish chalky and a little wild-eyed. He lifted a coil of stout sash
cord questioningly.

"Eh? Why, no!" I whispered through the opening. "He's just _laughing_.
Don't be a jolly ass!" And I closed the door sharply.

The professor looked up from the pajamas, and folding his arms, eyed
Billings with a cunning leer.

"I think I see," he said, leveling his finger. "You have both
demonstrated how nonsensical is the assertion in this inscription.
Doubtless you desire an experiment upon my part to confirm your proof of
its absurdity. _Reductio ad absurdum_--eh, gentlemen?"

Billings looked at me, but I couldn't help him. Why, dash it, I didn't
even know yet what the inscription was. And, by Jove, I didn't know
what experiments he wanted to try with the pajamas, but I didn't care.
He could boil them, if he wanted to, if he would only let us get to bed.

So at random I just nodded eagerly.

"Excellent!" The professor's chuckle sounded like dice rattling in a
metal box. "An excellent jest upon this fellow, Fuh-keen, to furnish a
demonstration by twentieth-century scientists of the presumption of his
claims of necromancy and thaumaturgy. You have done so--now I will do
so, in turn. Eh, gentlemen?"

I hadn't the ghost of an idea what he was talking about. Fact is, I was
thinking of my darling and wondering if she was asleep. By Jove, I
wished that _I_ was!

But a devilish queer look had come into Billings' face. He nodded,
gathered the pajamas into the professor's arms and patted him on the
shoulder in a way I thought offensively familiar.

"You've got it, Professor!" he said, grinning.

Then he whispered to me aside:

"Not a word, Dicky--great Scott!" But he needn't have said that, even if
I had been mind-reader enough to guess what word