pajamas--"

"Pajamas?" I faltered, and I dropped into a chair. "Oh!"

Wilkes looked grave. "Pajamas seem to be the thing with him this time,
sir--it's the queerest go! That's a _new_ one, _that_ is!" He shifted
contemplatively. "The last time it was lizards and the time before blue
dachshunds, but his main stand-by, so to speak, is piebald
rattlesnakes--them we're _used_ to; but this new turn, pajamas, gets
me!" He shook his head dubiously. "And he won't take his off--you can't
get him to; he just gets kinder peevish and goes off on the queerest
streak of freak talk you ever heard. Perkins tried to coax him to take
a bath, but he said he never had taken a bath in his life--and he
called Perkins something awful--some name about a yard long. It
squelched Perkins so that he--"

"But the _message_?" I suggested nervously.

"I was just a-coming to that, sir. He asks me if I knew whether you were
still on the place; and when I said you were, he says to me kinder
excited and impressive like: 'Well, you go to him at once--_at
once_--and tell him I'm on the trail of the mystery of those pajamas,
and I'll soon know as much about 'em as _he_ does. Just tell him
that--_he'll_ know what I mean.'"

"Oh!" I gasped shortly.

"Yes, sir," Wilkes nodded, "but that ain't quite all. He says: 'Tell Mr.
Lightnut that when I first saw those pajamas in his rooms--'" Wilkes
paused inquiringly. "Did you say something, sir?"

I had not--I had only groaned!

He went on, repeating as by rote: "'When I found and took them away, I
was curious and amused, but skeptical--firmly skeptical--of there being
any dark mystery about them. But now I know I let myself be deceived and
I mean to get at the bottom of the whole thing.'"

Wilkes seemed to kind of waver and fade before me, and then go out like
a candle. Then he came back into view and I heard his voice again:

"'And what's more, you tell him I say--'"

The butler hesitated and seemed embarrassed--his heavy jowls reddened a
little. He looked beyond me and coughed.

"Of course _you_ know, sir," he said, shifting uneasily, "Mr. Billings
ain't exactly himself, so to speak, so you mustn't mind. Fact is--if I
_may_ say so--he's got the most considerable case of jimmies I ever see
him with, so--"

"Oh, _go_ on!" I breathed miserably.

"Yes, sir--h'm!" Wilkes heaved distressfully, then drove doggedly ahead:
"Oh, well, sir, what he _says_ was that it was his duty, he thought, to
tell the fami