crimson glory under the lamp.
Billings examined them eagerly, but just looked confounded.

"Don't understand it," he said, biting his nails. "Why, hang it, they
look smooth, too, as though never worn. And the rubies are all right,
too."

He rested his chin upon his hands and gloomed at the red sweep.

I caught a few sentences of his mumbling.

"By George, I'm half a mind to think there's something in the pajamas,"
he muttered--"something uncanny and disagreeable--something they're
alive with!"

I sprang up and back, overturning my chair.

"Good heavens--oh, I say!" I exclaimed in consternation, as I fixed my
glass on the garments. "It's your jail, then, you know--"

His hand checked my reach to the bell push.

"Don't be any more kinds of an ass than you can help, Dicky," he said
with rude irritability. "I'm talking about something else; and I haven't
got any jail, dammit! A station house isn't exactly a jail!"

He reached for another cigar and went off into a brown study, wrapping
himself in clouds of smoke. I thought that maybe if I kept quite still
he might come to himself all right. Meantime, for want of something to
do, and to keep from getting so devilish sleepy, I fell to turning over
the pajamas, admiring their beauty and daintiness and kind of
half-daringly wondering how _she_ would--

And suddenly I made a discovery; and I forgot about keeping still.

"By Jove, Billings!" I exclaimed excitedly. "Here's something inside the
collar--some sort of jolly writing!"

"What's that?" said Billings sharply. He jerked the garment from my hand
and held it in the light. All round the circle within the collar band
ran four or five darker red lines of queer little crisscross characters.

"Chinese laundry marks, you idiot," he commented carelessly. And then he
ducked his head closer with a quick intake of breath.

"By George, Dicky!" he cried, his voice tremulous with some excitement.
"Can't be that either; it's woven in--awfully fine, neat job, too. Now,
what do you suppose--"

He broke off wonderingly.

CHAPTER XVI

AN INSCRIPTION AND A MYSTERY

Billings rubbed his chin perplexedly.

"By jigger, now, I wonder what those hen tracks mean?" he uttered
musingly. Then he looked up at me with sudden animation in his face.

"Look here, Dicky," he exclaimed, "do you happen to know Doozenberry?"

I tried to remember. I shut one eye and studied the marks closely
through my glass, but had to shake my h