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pajamas--" "Pajamas?" I faltered, and I dropped into a chair. "Oh!" Wilkes looked grave. "Pajamas seem to be the thing with him this time, sir--it's the queerest go! That's a _new_ one, _that_ is!" He shifted contemplatively. "The last time it was lizards and the time before blue dachshunds, but his main stand-by, so to speak, is piebald rattlesnakes--them we're _used_ to; but this new turn, pajamas, gets me!" He shook his head dubiously. "And he won't take his off--you can't get him to; he just gets kinder peevish and goes off on the queerest streak of freak talk you ever heard. Perkins tried to coax him to take a bath, but he said he never had taken a bath in his life--and he called Perkins something awful--some name about a yard long. It squelched Perkins so that he--" "But the _message_?" I suggested nervously. "I was just a-coming to that, sir. He asks me if I knew whether you were still on the place; and when I said you were, he says to me kinder excited and impressive like: 'Well, you go to him at once--_at once_--and tell him I'm on the trail of the mystery of those pajamas, and I'll soon know as much about 'em as _he_ does. Just tell him that--_he'll_ know what I mean.'" "Oh!" I gasped shortly. "Yes, sir," Wilkes nodded, "but that ain't quite all. He says: 'Tell Mr. Lightnut that when I first saw those pajamas in his rooms--'" Wilkes paused inquiringly. "Did you say something, sir?" I had not--I had only groaned! He went on, repeating as by rote: "'When I found and took them away, I was curious and amused, but skeptical--firmly skeptical--of there being any dark mystery about them. But now I know I let myself be deceived and I mean to get at the bottom of the whole thing.'" Wilkes seemed to kind of waver and fade before me, and then go out like a candle. Then he came back into view and I heard his voice again: "'And what's more, you tell him I say--'" The butler hesitated and seemed embarrassed--his heavy jowls reddened a little. He looked beyond me and coughed. "Of course _you_ know, sir," he said, shifting uneasily, "Mr. Billings ain't exactly himself, so to speak, so you mustn't mind. Fact is--if I _may_ say so--he's got the most considerable case of jimmies I ever see him with, so--" "Oh, _go_ on!" I breathed miserably. "Yes, sir--h'm!" Wilkes heaved distressfully, then drove doggedly ahead: "Oh, well, sir, what he _says_ was that it was his duty, he thought, to tell the fami
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