THE PROFESSOR
Billings ushered in the professor with a flourishing introduction.
The great man never spoke, but gave me the end of one finger, and
devilish grudgingly at that. He just came to anchor and stood there very
straight and stiff, ignoring the chairs thrust toward him from every
point. One hand was stuck in his stiff broadcloth bosom, with elbow
pointing outward, and his great topheavy head reared above us
impressively.
Billings rubbed his hands and bowed and smirked.
"Lovely weather we are having for summer, don't you think, Professor?
Jenkins, a chair for the professor."
He was already hedged in by chairs, but he remained standing. Dash it,
he was staring hard at me, his beady eyes boring like gimlets, don't you
know, and his little shriveled face all puckered up. By Jove, but he
looked sour! Looked like he would bite, or, as Billings said afterward,
would like to, if the human race wasn't poisonous.
"Wonderful stunt, science, isn't it, Professor?" gushed Billings, still
rubbing his hands and grinning like a wild what's-its-name. "Tracing
the orbits of the shooting stars or measuring the animals in the tiny
sewer drop. H'm! Fascinating pursuit! And how marvelous it must be to be
able to classify instantly any specimen of man's or nature's
handiwork--to--a--call the turn, so to speak--right off the bat, as it
were. H'm! We have here to-night--er--"
With his hand upon the pajamas, Billings paused, for the professor paid
no attention--did not even turn round, in fact. He just stood there
staring at me. Billings coughed suggestively.
"H'm! As I was saying, we have with us to-night a specimen," he resumed
a little louder, "I may say an example of something that, while
apparently commonplace and prosaic, is really a rare and unique--"
"Ha--specimen _genus cypripedium_," came in a squeaky bark from the
professor as he held me in his eye. "Linnaeus, 1753. Ha! _Species
acaule_--proper habitat, bogs. Very common--_very_ common, indeed."
He batted at me sourly and seemed disappointed. By Jove, I never felt so
devilish mortified in all my life! Never! I nearly dropped my monocle
and felt myself getting jolly red about the ears. This only seemed to
make it worse.
"Ha--_labellum_ somewhat pinker purple than normal," he proceeded. "H'm!
Unusually fresh specimen."
I looked appealingly at Billings. "Oh, I say, you know!" I exclaimed in
dismay.
Billings had been standing with his mouth agape, but now he made a
stride forward and touched the professor on the arm.
"That's Mr. Lightnut, Professor," he said blandly. "That's not _the_
specimen. H'm! Slight mistake."
Slowly the professor's big head turned on its axis and his little eyes
blinked at Billings nastily.
"I was referring to the orchid in the gentleman's coat," he observed
quietly, and turned back to me.
"Of course! Of _course_!" stammered Billings with eagerness. "My
mistake--one on me. _Stung!_" his lips pantomimed to me.
I addressed the professor hospitably: "Ah! won't you sit down,
Professor?"
He drew back, frowning. "Sit down, sir?" he questioned. And, by Jove, by
this time he showed his teeth. And devilish white, even teeth they were,
too, only they didn't fit.
"I never sit down, sir," he said stiffly; "never!"
"By Jove!" I explained.
"To be sure!" ejaculated Billings, looking extremely silly.
The professor appeared not ungratified with the sensation he had
produced and condescended to smile; that is, if you can call a creasing
and wrinkling like the cracked end of a hard-boiled egg a smile.
"You say, 'sit down,' sir," he said, addressing me. "I ask you, in
turn: Is not 'sitting down' recrudescence back to the primordial?"
So saying, he took a pinch at my shirt front and stepped back again
impressively. Still addressing me, he continued:
"It is such thoughtless indulgence of muscles growing obsolescent that
retards the evolution of our species, a species, sir, which I claim is
coessential in fundamental attributes with contemporaneous amphibia. Ha!
I surprise you, perhaps? Can you note in me a resemblance to a
batrachian?"
I didn't know. And, dash it, I was afraid to chance it. Tried my jolly
best to think what a batrachian was. It came to me like a flash that it
sounded like something in Italy.
"By Jove, you do, though, awfully!" I exclaimed, trying to brighten up
over it. "Doesn't he, Billings? Noticed a resemblance right off, don't
you know."
Billings went to nodding with an air of pleased surprise. Dash me if I
believed he knew what a batrachian was, though, any more than I did. But
Billings never admits anything.
"Sure," he said glibly. "I was half suspecting it; why, look at the
skin, you know--and features!"
"By Jove, yes!" I said, feeling encouraged. "Head, mouth, nose, eyes
and--" I was going to say "hair," but I remembered in time about the
wig.
The professor looked awfully pleased. He gave me a finger again.
"Such perspicacity--ah--is rare in one who looks so--"
He coughed slightly, then resumed:
"How gratifying, indeed, to meet another investigator! A student in
zootomy, no doubt? Ah! Do not deny it; I divined it at once. A
delightful recreation, sir--a game, absorbing but elusive."
"Awfully jolly, you know," I agreed. "Ripping, I say!"
"Surest thing you know," chirped Billings. I wondered if it was anything
like polo.
And then, by Jove, thinking of polo sent me off again thinking of
Frances. Not that she was like polo, dash it, but I wished she could see
me play.
The professor took another pinch from my shirt front and favored me with
a rusty smile.
"Ah!" he said: "You must take time to look into a little monograph of
mine: _Man in Miniature; a Study of the Anthropology of the Frog_. You
regard the frog, of course?"
"Oh, I say, yes--fine, you know!" I answered, my mouth watering. By
Jove! I thought of the devilish good things they got up in season down
at the Cafe Grenouille.
"My dear sir!" The professor bowed to me. "I can not express to you how
gratifying to me this meeting is. I must get a list of your societies
and degrees. So few appreciate the frog; so many, even in the scientific
world, deride my published claim that congenious with man is the _rana
mugiens_ or American bullfrog."
By Jove! they were certainly congenial with me, all right.
"Awfully hard to swallow unless well done, don't you know," I demurred
thoughtfully.
"Truly incredible, sir!"
The professor took another pinch and held it in front of him.
"But I have allowed for that," he added, emphasizing with his other
hand. "My frog brochure meets that difficulty and whets the appetite of
the most mediocre."
"By Jove, Billings!" I exclaimed eagerly, "we must tell Marchand about
it over at the club." I was so devilish tired of his eternal _sauce
delicieuse_, his _sauce aigre_, his _sauce ecossaise_ and the rest,
don't you know.
The professor inclined his head gravely.
"Ha, French! Then Monsieur Marchand has done something with the frog,
has he?" he questioned.
"Twenty-nine different stunts," Billings replied proudly. "I _know_
because I'm on the House Committee. Yes, _sir_, frogs are his specialty;
that man can get more out of a frog than any other living man."
The professor looked a little nettled.
"Oh, indeed!" he said rather coldly.
"I tell you, Professor, he's got 'em _all_ skinned!" Billings enthused.
The remark provoked a contemptuous sniff.
"Undoubtedly, that being the proper condition preliminary to comparative
anatomical study," said the professor loftily. "Then the physical
resemblance to a man becomes startling. I have identified every analogy
with man except the beautiful phenomenon of the beating of the frog
heart twenty-four hours after separation from the body--the living body,
sir. Experiment upon the living human specimen is necessary for
confirmation of the homologous structure of the two hearts, however.
This I have not done--not yet."
He spoke gloomily. I looked at Billings blankly but I found Billings was
looking at me the same way.
Every once in a while he had been lifting the pajamas. He would cough
and open his mouth, but just then the professor would start off again.
Once Billings, with an awfully savage expression, shook his fist at our
visitor's back and danced up and down upon the rug.
"The indifference, not to say prejudice, of the public upon the matter
of human vivisection is heartrending," went on the professor sadly.
"Sir, I have advertised in the 'help wanted' columns of the daily press,
and have interviewed scores without arousing one spark of ambition or
awakening one thrill of gratitude over the opportunity offered to assist
me in the investigation of scientific phenomena. I pleaded, sir; I
reproached; I even showed them the demonstration upon the frog. Did I
move them? Were they affected, do you think?"
I shook my head sympathetically. Seemed the safe thing to do.
"A lot of pikers, by George!" said Billings with an air of indignation.
"Must have been shameless!"
"Deuced indifferent," I ventured. "I should have been regularly cut up."
"Ah! of course you would," cried the professor, lifting another pinch.
"There speaks the intelligent devotee of science! But did they see it
that way? Not at all, sir; they were only indifferent and
ungrateful--they were rude and--ah--boisterous! One savage primate
assaulted me with his bare knuckles. A blow, gentlemen, a blow from the
boasted family of anthropina!"
"Beastly outrage, Professor," growled Billings. "Leave it to me; I know
a chap who's got a pull with the police commissioner, and I'll just tip
him off, by George. It's no matter what family they are or how much they
boasted. It'll be the hurry wagon and the cooler for them, eh, Dicky?"
He gestured to me wildly, nodding his head like a man with the
what's-it-name dance.
"Deuced good idea. Awful rotters, I say," was my comment.
The professor seemed affected by our sympathy. He withdrew from his
pocket a folded handkerchief, slowly opened it and pressed it lightly to
each eye. Then he carefully refolded and replaced it.
"Strange thing, the persistence of the primitive emotions," he said,
sniffing thoughtfully. "Singular how they affect the lachrymal
_apparati_. Peculiarly disagreeable taste, gentlemen, that of tears,
despite their simple elementary composition--ninety-nine and six-tenths
per cent. water, you remember, and the rest a modicum of chloride of
sodium, mucus, soda and phosphates. H'm! Your pardon, gentlemen, for
this digression, but to have sustained a stab under this very roof from
_genus homo_! It is indeed hard."
Here Jenkins, who had been lingering and busying himself about the
apartment, whispered to me from behind:
"It's that dago, sir, that delivers fruit every day."
"Eh?"
"That's the name. I see him going back every morning."
Jenkins moved off, nodding mysteriously, as I stared at him through my
glass. In his way, Billings was speaking words of comfort and all that
sort of thing to the professor.
"Never mind; the law will get 'em for you," he reassured him.
"Ah! that's just where you are in error," sighed our guest. "The law,
sir, will not get a single subject for me. In this age of unrestrained
liberty of all classes, the law lends no aid whatever to science. It is
not as it was in the glorious past when, under imperial patronage,
Vesalius, the great father of anatomy, was protected when by mistake his
scalpel cut the living heart of a Spanish grandee. Times worth while,
gentlemen, those great days of supreme imperialism! Ah! there was no
lack of material available if one stood in a little at court; one had
only to designate a selection and the thing was done. Gracious, gentle
times, my friends! Gone, alas, for ever! Such opportunities are
impossible under a republic."
The professor shook his head and reached for his handkerchief again. But
this time he only blew his nose.
"_Tempora mutantur_," he murmured regretfully, "Eh, gentlemen?"
"True," said Billings, pursing his lips. "Ah, how true!"
"By Jove, ought to be something done, you know," I declared.
"Out of millions, not a single human specimen available," groaned the
professor dismally. "And my instruments ready for over a year."
"Cheer up, sir; you'll have a go yet," Billings encouraged.
"Ah!" The professor's little eyes swept Billings' person critically.
"Perhaps you, sir, would like the privilege--"
Billings staggered back a step or two precipitately.
"Delighted; nothing'd give me greater pleasure, but so infernally busy,"
he explained hurriedly. "Just my confounded luck; unfortunately, got to
go to Egypt right away--probably to-morrow morning."
The professor sighed again in his disappointment.
"No matter; I shall find some one in time," he said grimly. "But I shall
abandon this foolish persuasion and cajolery as unworthy of the
scientist. Do we lower ourselves with such devices in securing a
butterfly or a grasshopper or a frog or any animate specimen except man?
Certainly not; we capture and etherize them."
He glanced about the room and beckoned us with his finger.
"I have lately had my eye upon the gas man," he said in a low tone. He
closed one eye impressively.
"Ah!" said Billings, his mouth dropping open wide.
"The individual who comes at intervals to take the quarters from the
slot meter. H'm, fine subject, gentlemen!"
"Great!" agreed Billings.
"Ripping idea," I tried as a reply.
The professor clasped his fingers tightly and rubbed his thumbs one over
the other. He brightened visibly.
"The party has to go down upon his knees and stoop behind the end of the
tub in the bath-room," he continued. "It was my thought that while in
that advantageous position the sudden, quick application of a Turkish
bath towel saturated in ether would--Eh? Do you follow me?"
"Devilish clever, you know," I said. I had already selected this for
reply for this time.
Billings failed to come up. He just stared hard, rolled his eyes and ran
his finger around under his collar.
The professor, in the act of taking another pinch from my shirt front,
paused with a little jerk. Then his great head shot forward in front of
his rigid neck--so suddenly, by Jove, that I reached out to try to catch
it, don't you know. He made just two strides to the table, ten feet
away, and pounced upon the pajamas with obviously trembling hands.
And behind his back Billings relapsed into an arm-chair and fanned
himself with a magazine.
His head dropped back, and upon his fat face was a what-you-call-it
smile of peace. He closed his eyes for an instant.
"Suffering Thomas cats! At last!" I heard him murmur.