"Careful, sir," warned Jenkins. "Likely to cut something."
By Jove! No sooner said, than I did it!
The dashed blade slipped somehow and cut into the threads that tied the covers or caps or whatever-you-call-'ems, over the knots. And when I pulled, the beastly piece of silk came off in my fingers.
And then—oh, but I say! I just gave a sort of yell and dropped the whole thing!
Ever have some silly ass try to scare you by poking a red hot cigar at you in the dark? Know how you jerk back? Well, there you are! For, give you my word, when I peeled off the little cloth cap, regular blazes of crimson fire seemed to shoot from the end of the knot.
Fact is, it wasn't a knot at all, but a button—a devilish glassy button, something bigger than a dime, perhaps, and thick as the end of your little finger. And there it lay against the silk, burning its way through it like a red coal of fire.
Dashed if it didn't look that way, anyhow. I just sat there blinking like a jolly owl, waiting to see the stuff begin to smoke, before I had presence of mind to tell Jenkins to touch it to see if it would burn.
But Jenkins wouldn't. He just stood there with his jaw hanging and his eyes bulging like champagne corks!
And it was just then that Billings rolled in.
I say "rolled in," because it always looks that way. That's the way Billings is built, you know.