The Haunted Pajamas

The question reminded me of the entanglement to which her frank simplicity had confessed. And she expected me, of all others, to tell her what to do! I looked up into the radian...

Poor, brave-hearted girl! How pitiful and heartrending to a keen-eyed man of the world, seemed her poor, little sham about her father's trust in her! For _I_ knew the facts, you...

"Jove!" I ejaculated, staring. Then suddenly I got the jolly idea full and strong, you know, and I was just so dashed relieved and delighted, I shook hands with him--fact!

"But tell you, sir, he is _not_ my son!" The judge was bending over the desk 'phone as I looked in a half hour later. His voice rose in a crescendo of rage: "Wha--what's _that_?...

"Hello! That you, Lightnut?" came his voice. "Say, old chap, you remember you said you wouldn't mind putting up the kid overnight on the way home from college. Remember? Wants t...

"So glad to see you here, my boy," the judge was saying. And his little round face beamed at me across the library table. I had encountered him in the hall just as I had descend...

That was all she said at first, her big blue eyes wide distended, her white-gloved wrists curving above the chair-arms as though to rise. Easy to see she was completely floored...

And hurling aside rugs and blankets, he twisted open the door and in a moment was in the road running back. It was then I went back to the crazy theory, for it was an open stret...

"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--"

_She_ wasn't pale! No, by Jove, she was fiery red, even to her hair; and red, too, the anvil sparks that were snapping from her eyes. She marched right in, followed by Wilkes, w...

And, by Jove, he meant it--there was no mistaking his fervency! But it made me feel like a silly ass, you know. Custom or no custom, it just made me a bit nifty to think _her_ f...

"See here, Dicky boy, I'm in dead earnest," he interrupted eagerly. "Don't you remember my one fad--gems? Got enough tied up in them to build two apartment houses as big as this...

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 chair...

No, dash it, I had a devilish headache and my mouth had that gummy, warm-varnish taste--_you_ know! The sunlight lay across the floor, and outside I could hear the jolly birds t...

Her lovely eyes were dancing with mischief as they hung there below mine--eyes, bluer than the Hudson at our feet; yet between the jolly ripples that played across those pools o...

Jenkins' head wagged sagaciously. "I think that's how it is, sir; it's wonderful what they do with rubber now; my brother wears a rubber cloth bandage that ain't no bigger 'roun...

"Mr. Lightnut, sir--" And the way he dropped his voice and turned his head to peer around into the corners was just creepy! That's what, creepy! This, with the glow from the gre...

"Oh, isn't it?"--his tone quickened truculently--"Well, maybe I'll make it my business!" He jerked his arm at me, continuing sharply: "Look here, you glass-eyed monkey-jack, don...

I stood, cap in hand, one foot on the sidewalk before the Kahoka, the other on the running-board of the car--a big double-tonneau red whale sort of affair. This was as far as I...

For all day I had been thinking of _her_. I wondered if Billings would happen to think to invite me up for the week end. But he had so many times, and I had never gone.

I twisted before the glass and surveyed the pajamas with much satisfaction. They looked jolly right from every point. Moreover, with all their easy looseness, there was not an i...

"Jenkins," he said with a sickly smile. "You--you see how it is with Lightnut--poor fellow! None of us ever thought he would go off that bad though. But, as it is, I guess you'r...

"Most infernal outrage of the century, I tell you!" Billings stormed. For an hour I had sat there in my rooms, limp and bewildered under the tempest of his wrath. The wild and i...

"For me?" I questioned, as he laid it on the table, and I eyed it ominously. Yet it could not be the same I had sent Billings myself--I could see that--for it was smaller, more...

"Impossible! And yet, it is, it is!" he muttered. "I would know the weave among a thousand. It is hers undoubtedly, undoubtedly--the lost silk of Si-Ling-Chi! How comes it here?"

In fact, it was almost bedtime. Frances and I sat before the hearth in the library, looking silently into the red heart of the dying embers of fragrant pine cones. For in the he...

Instead, I lay down up in my room, wondering what Jenkins would think when he saw Foxy Grandpa a guest with me under this roof, and wondering also what I ought to do, or if I sh...

"I don't blame you for looking at me so hard," she said, rubbing her chin and looking, I thought, a little confused. "For did you ever see a face like mine?"

Aside, he whispered hurriedly: "Don't say a word about the rubies! You heard him--murder, grand larceny or arson--it's all one to the old gazabe! Anybody can see that. He doesn'...

It was the first thing I saw that night as I swung into my chambers. Fact is, for the moment, it was the only thing I saw. Somehow, its splash of yellow there under the shaded l...

It was from Billings--I knew his fist in an instant. It was very short and without heading. In fact, above his name appeared just a half-dozen penciled words, heavily underscore...

"Just as I'm telling you, sir, I saw some one sitting there by the window and walked toward him, thinking it was you. Then, all of a sudden, I see his awful face a scowling at m...

I just stood in the doorway, staring. Couldn't say a word, my throat was that paralyzed. First time, you know, I'd ever seen a real burglar or jolly hold-up man, and he looked s...

"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."

"Shut up, Francis!" he bellowed. "Now you listen to what I'm telling you--and do _just_ as I tell you to, too--if you don't, I'll mash your face when I come up there! You hear?"