The Haunted Pajamas

by Francis Perry Elliott

"Yes, sir." Jenkins rested the end of the crumb brush on the table and considered me earnestly. "You know, Mr. Lightnut, last night as Mr. Billings was retiring, he says to me: 'Jenkins, Mr. Lightnut has promised to go up home with me to-morrow for the week end. There's a tenner coming your way if he doesn't forget about it. He's to go to-morrow, now, mind you, Jenkins; and it don't matter what comes up. You see that he goes up to-morrow.'"

"By Jove!" I said as he paused, and I screwed my monocle tighter and nodded. "I see."

Of course I didn't see, but I knew the poor fellow was driving at something, and I wanted to give him a run.

"Exactly, sir." And he stood waiting. "So, shall I pack, sir? You'll want to take the four-ten express, I suppose?"

By Jove, it was the most amazingly, dashed clever guess I ever knew Jenkins to get off! Fact! I knew that if there was one thing more than another in all the world that I wanted to do, it was to take that four-ten express. To think of seeing Frances again, and to-day!

Of course, it was quite clear that Billings must have anticipated the possibility of something unusual, and that was why he had impressed a sort of personal responsibility upon Jenkins—kind of tipping him off, as it were, so he would be sure to see that I got off in case he did not show up himself. It was very easy to see this, especially as Jenkins saw it that way, too, but what made it specially so awfully jolly easy to see was the fact that I wanted to go, you know.

So I let Jenkins shoot a wire up to Billings, stating my train, and I just had to chuckle as in my mind's eye I saw old brazen face Jack coming down to the station to meet me, and just ignoring his going off in the middle of the night in my pajamas. By Jove, perhaps he would bring her down to the train in his car, so I would be sure not to ask him any questions!

I left Jenkins to travel by a later train, and a little after four I was whirling above Spuyten Duyvil and looking about the chair-car to see if there was any one I knew. But, by Jove, there was hardly a soul in the car—nobody except just women, you know, and these filled the whole place. And they were talking about all sorts of dashed silly things. Most of them were devilish pretty as the word goes, but, of course, not a patch on her. Oh, well, of course, they couldn't be that! Don't know how they were behind me, you know—too much trouble to turn round and fix my glass. So I just took the range in front, looking at the tops of the hats and the chairs and wondering if women would ever become extinct like that bird—the great what's-its-name, you know.

"By Jove, she could be spared!" I thought, studying a young woman who stood in the aisle beside me. She was rather heavy set—what you might call egg-shaped. Her face and her heavy glasses seemed to proclaim a mission in life, and the dowdyish cut of her rig and the reckless way it was hurled on made it plain that she was on to the fact that nature had made a blunder in her sex, and she wanted the world to know she knew.

She was talking to the lady immediately behind me. At least, I discovered after five minutes that she was talking. By Jove, up to that time, I thought she was canvassing for a book! The other never got in a word, don't you know. And I was getting devilish tired of it and wishing she would move on, when she shifted, preparatory to doing so, and raised her voice: