"Moreover, I am forced to confess, gentlemen, that I fail to find a system--any rule governing these ridiculous transformations. The hypothesis is, therefore, that the alleged materializations merely follow the arbitrary caprice of the magic." He shook his head. "Well, gentlemen, I--really, I must laugh!" And he did! I hadn't caught the drift of what it was he thought he was laughing 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 he meant. It was about all I could do to get out a last word to the professor as he went out the door: "'Night!" CHAPTER XX BILLINGS RAMBLES