So at random I just nodded eagerly.
"Excellent!" The professor's chuckle sounded like dice rattling in a metal box. "An excellent jest upon this fellow, Fuh-keen, to furnish a demonstration by twentieth-century scientists of the presumption of his claims of necromancy and thaumaturgy. You have done so—now I will do so, in turn. Eh, gentlemen?"
I hadn't the ghost of an idea what he was talking about. Fact is, I was thinking of my darling and wondering if she was asleep. By Jove, I wished that I was!
But a devilish queer look had come into Billings' face. He nodded, gathered the pajamas into the professor's arms and patted him on the shoulder in a way I thought offensively familiar.
"You've got it, Professor!" he said, grinning.
Then he whispered to me aside:
"Not a word, Dicky—great Scott!" But he needn't have said that, even if I had been mind-reader enough to guess what word he meant. It was about all I could do to get out a last word to the professor as he went out the door:
"'Night!"