A MESSAGE AND A WARNING
"It's all right, miss," Wilkes reported; "at least, I hope so. Perkins
is with him--we've been trying to persuade him to have a bath and lie
down. But I don't know--"
He shook his head gloomily, then turned to me.
"If you will come with me, sir--" Then he added, and it seemed a
question: "You must have made a quick run, sir. Seems like only a few
minutes since we got Mr. Jack's 'phone message." His voice dropped:
"From the station house, you know."
"Eh--what's that?" I paused with my foot on the first tread of the
stairway. "Jack's 'phone message--from the station house?" I repeated
blankly. "What are you talking about?"
Wilkes coughed reproachfully. "Why, you know, sir, he told about being
arrested in front of the Kahoka Apartments. He mentioned that it was
about--h'm!" He stole a furtive backward glance at the frump, but she
was enjoying herself berating a fat girl she addressed as "Flora." He
looked at me eloquently and whispered: "About his--h'm--stealing some
black silk pajamas."
My monocle dropped, and I almost did myself.
"By Jove!" I gasped feebly.
"Yes, sir." Wilkes looked up at the paneled ceiling and stroked his
chin. "He mentioned that they found them--or _thought_ they found them
in the bag he had with him."
"But he's got them _on_, and they are his own," I managed to get out.
Wilkes' face lightened understandingly. "Oh-h, I _see_, sir," he said,
nodding with his jolly chin hanging; "so _that's_ how you got him
off--I was a-wondering!" He looked at me, his fishy old eyes twinkling
admiration. "Very neat, if I may say, sir--making, as it were, a sort of
alibi--_very_ neat, indeed! Of course, when they puts 'em on him, they
see for themselves they are his'n, and not any lady's what had been
stolen--Oh, _I_ see!"
Dash me, if _I_ did! The only thing I saw was that it must have been
Jenkins that had telephoned and the message had been twisted. What he
_had said_, of course, was that Billings had _almost_ been arrested. But
the police finding the pajamas in his bag--I did not like that. Could it
be that, after all, Billings _had_ found his sister's pajamas in the
guest-room and had quietly confiscated them? It looked devilishly,
ominously like it! Or perhaps he, himself, had recovered them from Foxy
Grandpa, and with more delicacy than I thought him capable of, had kept
the whole matter to himself. One thing only was certain: the sleuth
hounds of the law, stimulated by the extravagant reward I had offered
over the telephone, _had_ run down and recovered _her pajamas_. It was a
relief that they were out of his hands, anyhow--_I_ could get them
again, but _he_ couldn't. By Jove!
Alone in my room, I stood before the mirror, hands in pockets and
rocking on my toes--kind of smiling, you know--and thinking what a
daredevil, reckless thing it had been--clever, too, dash it--in getting
them away from old Jack, and right under his nose. By Jove, I felt a bit
proud about it--sort of exultation, don't you know--and I had just got
off a wink at myself, when Wilkes appeared again.
"Pardon, sir, for disturbing you, but Mr. Billings is acting so queer,
we are afraid to cross him; and he just insisted I take his message to
you at once."
"Message?" I repeated, sobering.
"Yes, sir--something about some 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 family the truth about those pajamas, so that they would know
that the man they were harboring under their roof wasn't what he seemed
to be." His gaze bored higher over my head, his voice tapering off so
faintly I could hardly hear.
But I heard all right! Oh, yes, I got the full devilish force of it; but
I couldn't speak. My dry lips touched wordlessly and I hunched deep into
the hollow of the big leather rocker. I would have liked to get even
deeper, and I studied wistfully a tiny floor-crack under the radiator. I
thought I could make it if I were alone!
Wilkes coughed again. I winced--there was evidently more!
"Yes, sir," he murmured, as I cut a quick glance upward. "He _did_ say
further that if you weren't satisfied, though, and would prefer another
trial--"
"Eh?" I bounded out of the chair. "What's that? Oh, dash it, _yes_--I
would, by Jove!"
"Very good, sir." Wilkes looked relieved, himself. "In that
case, he said he was willing to experiment again--that was his
word--_experiment_. He said he wouldn't detain you here on _his_
account, but he would _have_ to ask you to stay another day or two while
he made his observations."
It was a devilish cold shoulder, but I had no choice. Fact was, by Jove,
I was so jolly glad for _that_ chance, and for being trusted again by
Billings, even in this half-hearted way, that I just ground my pride
under my heel--why, dash it, I would have ground anything under my heel
for _her_! I was as happy as a bird, and life was again one grand, sweet
what's-its-name.
"Tell him certainly, Wilkes, and thank him--don't forget to thank him."
And I believe I wrung his hand. "And--er--wait, Wilkes--couldn't you use
a tenner?" I checked him on the threshold. "Let's see--no, that's a
twenty--say, take _that_; take them both--_thank_ you, Wilkes!--and
there's a five, too. Oh, yes, you _must_ take it all--I have no use for
it, you know--never _would_ use those particular ones!"
And, by Jove, he took it--just made him, you know. These butlers are not
half bad fellows if you go at them right--I can _always_ manage them. He
sympathized with me--you could see that--dashed if the fellow wasn't
almost weeping as he closed the door.
And then I just flopped down upon a divan and lay there panting like a
what's-its-name--reaction, you know. So he _had_ known! He had known
when he let me come to Wolhurst, and had waited for the moment when he
would have me under his roof and be able utterly to confound me. This,
then, explained his mental condition, his relapse to drink again--his
madness on the subject of pajamas. It was _awful_! By Jove, as I lay
there thinking of his suspicions and diseased imaginings induced by his
monstrous folly of drink--the awful curse of drink--and of what it had
almost brought upon two innocent lives, I felt indignant--almost sick.
Lay there helpless, wishing Jenkins would come, and wondering if I
wasn't getting a bit feverish--mouth dry and craving moisture, you know.
But not a thing could I find in the room except a glass--and empty.
Carafe beside it, but nothing in it but water, you know, and a large,
round ball of ice. So just had to fall back on the couch and try not to
think of my throbbing, swollen tongue.
Mind got to wandering then, I think. Thought of Frances and how much I
loved her, and of cooling streams--fizzy and gurgling--and of amber
fountains, crested with sparkling, pearly sunbursts--_you_ know! I even
got to wondering if she really loved me--fact! And then came the
disquieting thought of how devilish disappointing and awful it _would_
be if Jenkins should forget a stock of my Egyptian Koroskos. What _was_
it she had told me that night about being engaged to another and wanting
to be free, now that she had met me--the darling! Then, dash me if I
could remember to save me whether Jenkins had or had not said something
to me that morning about packing my ashes-of-roses socks and ties--or
was it about my lilac silk underwear with the mauve fleur-de-lis?
Devilish annoying I couldn't remember. Of course it was this that was
making her so reticent and offish about any reference to the other
night--I mean it was this thing of being entangled with this other chap.
So jolly sensitive and high-minded, don't you know, she didn't want to
talk about _our_ future until she had dumped the other fellow in the
road--that was it.
Struck me suddenly that there was some jolly proverb thing about it:
something about the old love and the new--some dashed wise, old, musty
rot about _that_. What the deuce was it?
And luckily, just then Jenkins came!
And when he had laid out my things, and I found I was to wear a scarf of
Harvard crimson--the color _she_ admired--I was so devilish pleased and
grateful to Jenkins for the decision that I thought that now I would let
him have a try at the proverb.
"I say, Jenkins," I began carelessly, "there's some jolly saying or
proverb--eh, _you_ know?"
"Certainly, sir," responded Jenkins absently, for he was intensely
concentrated on the selection of a scarf-pin.
I went on: "It's about--oh, don't you know--about when you've tried
being engaged to one person and you don't like it, and you are thinking
of being engaged to another--something of that sort, dash it--oh, _you_
know!" And I wondered if it would be the sardonyx or the ruby, and hoped
it would be the ruby.
"Mm-m-m," murmured Jenkins, blinking thoughtfully. "Let's see, sir--it
ain't that one about the hair of the dog, is it?"
"Hair of the--Certainly _not_!" I exclaimed with indignation. "No, it's
some jolly saw about being off with the old and on with--" I stalled.
"Off and on," came quickly from Jenkins; then he went back to his jolly
pins.
"Maybe," I said, trying to think, "but there's something else about
being on with the new--or being on to the new--Oh, yes, the devilish
thing starts off: ''Tis well to be off'--um, off--Dash it, off _what_?
You catch the idea, don't you?"
"Certainly, sir." He tried the ruby and sardonyx in turn against the
silk and rejected both--_he_ took a garnet. It wouldn't have been _my_
taste, but then it wasn't my business, you know! His jolly old lips
moved as he repeated something to himself; he rolled his eyes to the
ceiling and cleared his throat--and _then_ I knew he had it!
"I don't seem to remember it, sir--not _precisely_--h'm--but could it be
this: ''Tis well to be off--'" He paused with finger on chin, rolling
his eyes upward.
"Oh, dash it, yes!" I said disgustedly. "Why, _I_ told you--"
He lifted his hand. "'Tis well to be off and on--'" And he stuck again,
dash it! Then his lips worked some more and his face cleared. "Oh,
_here_ it is, sir--_I've_ got it now! See if this ain't it:"
And he laid it off with his fingers the way a woman counts the words in
a telegram to keep from going over ten:
"'Tis-well-to-be-off-and-on-with-the-old-love,
but-don't-let-on-to-the-new'--_there you are, sir_!"
"By Jove!" I exclaimed, batting at him; and the brushes in my hands
paused and pulled hard on each side of my part. "Oh, I say!" And I had
him repeat it again.
The thing troubled me! Odd I had not more carefully noticed before the
wording of the jolly thing! But then of course my interest in it had not
been so dashed personal as now. Kept running in my head now and
disturbing me all the while Jenkins was busying himself about me. And
_then_, as if I didn't have quite enough already to try me, Jenkins at
the last moment chucked the crimson scarf altogether, and slipped
through my collar a Persian bat! By Jove, I was so dashed annoyed, I
took it from him to tie myself.
"Off and on with the old love!" It kept whispering itself in my ear till
I hardly knew what I was doing. _Could_ it be that she would--but, oh,
dash it, _no_! I knew she wouldn't! And yet another chap might come
along and she might find she would rather be engaged to _him_! Oh, but I
was sure _she_ was not so variable as that. Still a vague fear kept
recurring; a miserable, tiny, pricking doubt--the crumpled
what's-its-name in the bed of down, you know--that sort of thing!
What the deuce was the best thing to do?
"Pardon, sir," came in Jenkins' voice, and in the glass I saw his head
piking anxiously over my shoulder; "but _I_ think with them changeable
kind, the best thing to try for is a sudden, firm knot!"
"Eh?" I said, staring. And then I whirled upon him, seizing both his
hands.
"By Jove, Jenkins!" I exclaimed admiringly. "What a perfectly
out-and-out corking idea--a regular ripper, you know! How devilish
clever of you, dash it!"
"Certainly, sir!" Jenkins batted a little--always does when I notice
these little things--so modest, don't you know.
But I had the idea now, and I gripped it tight along with my monocle,
as, ten minutes later, I sauntered down the stairs.
I would speak to her father at once!