AN INSCRIPTION AND A MYSTERY
Billings rubbed his chin perplexedly.
"By jigger, now, I wonder what those hen tracks mean?" he uttered
musingly. Then he looked up at me with sudden animation in his face.
"Look here, Dicky," he exclaimed, "do you happen to know Doozenberry?"
I tried to remember. I shut one eye and studied the marks closely
through my glass, but had to shake my head at last.
"Sorry, old chap; don't seem to remember it at all if I ever did--not a
dashed glimmer of it left." I yawned. "Never tried to keep any of those
college things, you know."
Billings, who had been staring, uttered a rude comment.
"It's not a language, you cuckoo," he snapped; "it's a man. He's a
D.S.--distinguished scientist, you know. What's more, he's one of your
neighbors, right in this building."
"Don't know him," I said a little stiffly. "What's his club?"
Billings all but gnashed his teeth.
"Club, thunder!" he jerked out impatiently. "Why, man, he's a member of
all the great societies of the world--bodies whose rank and
exclusiveness put the blink on all the clubs you or I ever saw. Got a
string of letters after his name like a universal keyboard, and is the
main squeeze, the great scream, among all the scientific push over here
and in Europe. Lots of dough, but off his trolley with learning."
"And in this building?" I said wonderingly. "What's he like?"
For a moment I had a thought of Foxy Grandpa, but the janitor had said
he did not belong in the building. Besides, Billings' next words removed
that clue to the lost pajamas. By Jove, how I did long to ask his advice
about them! Once I was on the point of doing so--had devilish narrow
escape, in fact--but pulled up on the brink. So deuced hard to remember
that anything so delicate and sweet and fetching could be Billings'
sister, you know. I had been wondering for an hour whether I had better
say anything about my adventure up at Tarrytown--wondered if she would
like me to.
"Here, you moon calf, wake up!" Billings' coarse voice brought me back
to the present, and I had to blink and pretend I was listening. "I'm
telling you about Doozenberry! I say you surely must have seen him--you
couldn't miss him in a black cave. Queer-looking old skate, tall as a
street lamp and as thin; looks like a long cylinder of black
broadcloth. So dignified it hurts him."
I reflected.
"Awfully large head," continued Billings, elevating his hands some two
feet apart, "pear-shaped affair--big end up--bumps on it like halves of
grape fruit, porcupine eyebrows, and--"
"Oh, I know," I said, nodding eagerly; "and a little, shriveled--well,
kind of mashed sort of face, eyes beadlike and jolly small. I've got him
now! I've gone down with him in the elevator."
Billings nodded. "You've got him painted," he said drily. "That's the
professor; only, his eyes are 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!" gasped Billings.
"I'm telling you what he says, sir. Then he covers it all up again, and
in about a half-hour the perfesser turns the covers down; and if it's
what he calls 'fine'--that is, damp all over--he climbs in and sleeps
like a top."
"Cold-water bug, you know," I explained, but Billings shrugged his
shoulders.
"That's all right. Bug or not, he's the goods, all the same. Greatest
ever." He spoke with quiet conviction.
He deliberated a moment and turned to me.
"Tell you what, Dicky: I'm going up and ask him down. He's the one to
give us the right dope on these crazy letters--Eh, what you say,
Jenkins?"
"Beg pardon, sir; I was saying that the perfesser don't visit nobody;
and he never sees nobody but the big lit'ry and scientific sharps."
"Oh, he don't eh?" Billings snorted contemptuously. "Well, Jenkins, I
haven't been a prize fisherman in my time for nothing; I guess I know
how to select my 'fly.' I know what will fetch him: 'Mr. Lightnut's
compliments, and will he be pleased to honor him by passing upon an
Oriental curio of rare scientific interest?'--that sort of merry rot!
Why, you couldn't hold him back with a block and tackle. Oh, you needn't
worry; I'll do the proper curves all right." He turned toward the door.
"And, Jenkins, you come along and work me into the lodge."
"Oh, but dash it," I protested nervously, "he won't come--he'll be
insulted. Why, he'll know as soon as he sees you that you couldn't--"
I checked myself, recalling that the best thing after his recent
exhibition was to avoid every contradiction. And then, by Jove, I knew
that if he became ill and had to go to a hospital or somewhere, it would
be all off with his taking me up to Wolhurst next day.
Billings grinned confidently. "Watch me bring him down here," he said.
And by Jove, he did!