Billings ushered in the professor with a flourishing introduction.

The great man never spoke, but gave me the end of one finger, and devilish grudgingly at that. He just came to anchor and stood there very straight and stiff, ignoring the chairs thrust toward him from every point. One hand was stuck in his stiff broadcloth bosom, with elbow pointing outward, and his great topheavy head reared above us impressively.

Billings rubbed his hands and bowed and smirked.

"Lovely weather we are having for summer, don't you think, Professor? Jenkins, a chair for the professor."

He was already hedged in by chairs, but he remained standing. Dash it, he was staring hard at me, his beady eyes boring like gimlets, don't you know, and his little shriveled face all puckered up. By Jove, but he looked sour! Looked like he would bite, or, as Billings said afterward, would like to, if the human race wasn't poisonous.

"Wonderful stunt, science, isn't it, Professor?" gushed Billings, still rubbing his hands and grinning like a wild what's-its-name. "Tracing the orbits of the shooting stars or measuring the animals in the tiny sewer drop. H'm! Fascinating pursuit! And how marvelous it must be to be able to classify instantly any specimen of man's or nature's handiwork—to—a—call the turn, so to speak—right off the bat, as it were. H'm! We have here to-night—er—"

With his hand upon the pajamas, Billings paused, for the professor paid no attention—did not even turn round, in fact. He just stood there staring at me. Billings coughed suggestively.

"H'm! As I was saying, we have with us to-night a specimen," he resumed a little louder, "I may say an example of something that, while apparently commonplace and prosaic, is really a rare and unique—"

"Ha—specimen genus cypripedium," came in a squeaky bark from the professor as he held me in his eye. "Linnaeus, 1753. Ha! Species acaule—proper habitat, bogs. Very common—very common, indeed."

He batted at me sourly and seemed disappointed. By Jove, I never felt so devilish mortified in all my life! Never! I nearly dropped my monocle and felt myself getting jolly red about the ears. This only seemed to make it worse.

"Ha—labellum somewhat pinker purple than normal," he proceeded. "H'm! Unusually fresh specimen."

I looked appealingly at Billings. "Oh, I say, you know!" I exclaimed in dismay.

Billings had been standing with his mouth agape, but now he made a stride forward and touched the professor on the arm.

"That's Mr. Lightnut, Professor," he said blandly. "That's not the specimen. H'm! Slight mistake."

Slowly the professor's big head turned on its axis and his little eyes blinked at Billings nastily.

"I was referring to the orchid in the gentleman's coat," he observed quietly, and turned back to me.

"Of course! Of course!" stammered Billings with eagerness. "My mistake—one on me. Stung!" his lips pantomimed to me.

I addressed the professor hospitably: "Ah! won't you sit down, Professor?"

He drew back, frowning. "Sit down, sir?" he questioned. And, by Jove, by this time he showed his teeth. And devilish white, even teeth they were, too, only they didn't fit.

"I never sit down, sir," he said stiffly; "never!"

"By Jove!" I explained.

"To be sure!" ejaculated Billings, looking extremely silly.

The professor appeared not ungratified with the sensation he had produced and condescended to smile; that is, if you can call a creasing and wrinkling like the cracked end of a hard-boiled egg a smile.

"You say, 'sit down,' sir," he said, addressing me. "I ask you, in turn: Is not 'sitting down' recrudescence back to the primordial?"

So saying, he took a pinch at my shirt front and stepped back again impressively. Still addressing me, he continued:

"It is such thoughtless indulgence of muscles growing obsolescent that retards the evolution of our species, a species, sir, which I claim is coessential in fundamental attributes with contemporaneous amphibia. Ha! I surprise you, perhaps? Can you note in me a resemblance to a batrachian?"

I didn't know. And, dash it, I was afraid to chance it. Tried my jolly best to think what a batrachian was. It came to me like a flash that it sounded like something in Italy.

"By Jove, you do, though, awfully!" I exclaimed, trying to brighten up over it. "Doesn't he, Billings? Noticed a resemblance right off, don't you know."

Billings went to nodding with an air of pleased surprise. Dash me if I believed he knew what a batrachian was, though, any more than I did. But Billings never admits anything.

"Sure," he said glibly. "I was half suspecting it; why, look at the skin, you know—and features!"

"By Jove, yes!" I said, feeling encouraged. "Head, mouth, nose, eyes and—" I was going to say "hair," but I remembered in time about the wig.

The professor looked awfully pleased. He gave me a finger again.

"Such perspicacity—ah—is rare in one who looks so—"

He coughed slightly, then resumed:

"How gratifying, indeed, to meet another investigator! A student in zoÖtomy, no doubt? Ah! Do not deny it; I divined it at once. A delightful recreation, sir—a game, absorbing but elusive."

"Awfully jolly, you know," I agreed. "Ripping, I say!"

"Surest thing you know," chirped Billings. I wondered if it was anything like polo.

And then, by Jove, thinking of polo sent me off again thinking of Frances. Not that she was like polo, dash it, but I wished she could see me play.

The professor took another pinch from my shirt front and favored me with a rusty smile.

"Ah!" he said: "You must take time to look into a little monograph of mine: Man in Miniature; a Study of the Anthropology of the Frog. You regard the frog, of course?"

"Oh, I say, yes—fine, you know!" I answered, my mouth watering. By Jove! I thought of the devilish good things they got up in season down at the CafÉ Grenouille.

"My dear sir!" The professor bowed to me. "I can not express to you how gratifying to me this meeting is. I must get a list of your societies and degrees. So few appreciate the frog; so many, even in the scientific world, deride my published claim that congenious with man is the rana mugiens or American bullfrog."

By Jove! they were certainly congenial with me, all right.

"Awfully hard to swallow unless well done, don't you know," I demurred thoughtfully.

"Truly incredible, sir!"

The professor took another pinch and held it in front of him.

"But I have allowed for that," he added, emphasizing with his other hand. "My frog brochure meets that difficulty and whets the appetite of the most mediocre."

"By Jove, Billings!" I exclaimed eagerly, "we must tell Marchand about it over at the club." I was so devilish tired of his eternal sauce dÉlicieuse, his sauce aigre, his sauce Écossaise and the rest, don't you know.

The professor inclined his head gravely.

"Ha, French! Then Monsieur Marchand has done something with the frog, has he?" he questioned.

"Twenty-nine different stunts," Billings replied proudly. "I know because I'm on the House Committee. Yes, sir, frogs are his specialty; that man can get more out of a frog than any other living man."

The professor looked a little nettled.

"Oh, indeed!" he said rather coldly.

"I tell you, Professor, he's got 'em all skinned!" Billings enthused.

The remark provoked a contemptuous sniff.

"Undoubtedly, that being the proper condition preliminary to comparative anatomical study," said the professor loftily. "Then the physical resemblance to a man becomes startling. I have identified every analogy with man except the beautiful phenomenon of the beating of the frog heart twenty-four hours after separation from the body—the living body, sir. Experiment upon the living human specimen is necessary for confirmation of the homologous structure of the two hearts, however. This I have not done—not yet."

He spoke gloomily. I looked at Billings blankly but I found Billings was looking at me the same way.

Every once in a while he had been lifting the pajamas. He would cough and open his mouth, but just then the professor would start off again. Once Billings, with an awfully savage expression, shook his fist at our visitor's back and danced up and down upon the rug.

"The indifference, not to say prejudice, of the public upon the matter of human vivisection is heartrending," went on the professor sadly. "Sir, I have advertised in the 'help wanted' columns of the daily press, and have interviewed scores without arousing one spark of ambition or awakening one thrill of gratitude over the opportunity offered to assist me in the investigation of scientific phenomena. I pleaded, sir; I reproached; I even showed them the demonstration upon the frog. Did I move them? Were they affected, do you think?"

I shook my head sympathetically. Seemed the safe thing to do.

"A lot of pikers, by George!" said Billings with an air of indignation. "Must have been shameless!"

"Deuced indifferent," I ventured. "I should have been regularly cut up."

"Ah! of course you would," cried the professor, lifting another pinch. "There speaks the intelligent devotee of science! But did they see it that way? Not at all, sir; they were only indifferent and ungrateful—they were rude and—ah—boisterous! One savage primate assaulted me with his bare knuckles. A blow, gentlemen, a blow from the boasted family of anthropina!"

"Beastly outrage, Professor," growled Billings. "Leave it to me; I know a chap who's got a pull with the police commissioner, and I'll just tip him off, by George. It's no matter what family they are or how much they boasted. It'll be the hurry wagon and the cooler for them, eh, Dicky?"

He gestured to me wildly, nodding his head like a man with the what's-it-name dance.

"Deuced good idea. Awful rotters, I say," was my comment.

The professor seemed affected by our sympathy. He withdrew from his pocket a folded handkerchief, slowly opened it and pressed it lightly to each eye. Then he carefully refolded and replaced it.

"Strange thing, the persistence of the primitive emotions," he said, sniffing thoughtfully. "Singular how they affect the lachrymal apparati. Peculiarly disagreeable taste, gentlemen, that of tears, despite their simple elementary composition—ninety-nine and six-tenths per cent. water, you remember, and the rest a modicum of chloride of sodium, mucus, soda and phosphates. H'm! Your pardon, gentlemen, for this digression, but to have sustained a stab under this very roof from genus homo! It is indeed hard."

Here Jenkins, who had been lingering and busying himself about the apartment, whispered to me from behind:

"It's that dago, sir, that delivers fruit every day."

"Eh?"

"That's the name. I see him going back every morning."

Jenkins moved off, nodding mysteriously, as I stared at him through my glass. In his way, Billings was speaking words of comfort and all that sort of thing to the professor.

"Never mind; the law will get 'em for you," he reassured him.

"Ah! that's just where you are in error," sighed our guest. "The law, sir, will not get a single subject for me. In this age of unrestrained liberty of all classes, the law lends no aid whatever to science. It is not as it was in the glorious past when, under imperial patronage, Vesalius, the great father of anatomy, was protected when by mistake his scalpel cut the living heart of a Spanish grandee. Times worth while, gentlemen, those great days of supreme imperialism! Ah! there was no lack of material available if one stood in a little at court; one had only to designate a selection and the thing was done. Gracious, gentle times, my friends! Gone, alas, for ever! Such opportunities are impossible under a republic."

The professor shook his head and reached for his handkerchief again. But this time he only blew his nose.

"Tempora mutantur," he murmured regretfully, "Eh, gentlemen?"

"True," said Billings, pursing his lips. "Ah, how true!"

"By Jove, ought to be something done, you know," I declared.

"Out of millions, not a single human specimen available," groaned the professor dismally. "And my instruments ready for over a year."

"Cheer up, sir; you'll have a go yet," Billings encouraged.

"Ah!" The professor's little eyes swept Billings' person critically. "Perhaps you, sir, would like the privilege—"

Billings staggered back a step or two precipitately.

"Delighted; nothing'd give me greater pleasure, but so infernally busy," he explained hurriedly. "Just my confounded luck; unfortunately, got to go to Egypt right away—probably to-morrow morning."

The professor sighed again in his disappointment.

"No matter; I shall find some one in time," he said grimly. "But I shall abandon this foolish persuasion and cajolery as unworthy of the scientist. Do we lower ourselves with such devices in securing a butterfly or a grasshopper or a frog or any animate specimen except man? Certainly not; we capture and etherize them."

He glanced about the room and beckoned us with his finger.

"I have lately had my eye upon the gas man," he said in a low tone. He closed one eye impressively.

"Ah!" said Billings, his mouth dropping open wide.

"The individual who comes at intervals to take the quarters from the slot meter. H'm, fine subject, gentlemen!"

"Great!" agreed Billings.

"Ripping idea," I tried as a reply.

The professor clasped his fingers tightly and rubbed his thumbs one over the other. He brightened visibly.

"The party has to go down upon his knees and stoop behind the end of the tub in the bath-room," he continued. "It was my thought that while in that advantageous position the sudden, quick application of a Turkish bath towel saturated in ether would—Eh? Do you follow me?"

"Devilish clever, you know," I said. I had already selected this for reply for this time.

Billings failed to come up. He just stared hard, rolled his eyes and ran his finger around under his collar.

The professor, in the act of taking another pinch from my shirt front, paused with a little jerk. Then his great head shot forward in front of his rigid neck—so suddenly, by Jove, that I reached out to try to catch it, don't you know. He made just two strides to the table, ten feet away, and pounced upon the pajamas with obviously trembling hands.

And behind his back Billings relapsed into an arm-chair and fanned himself with a magazine.

His head dropped back, and upon his fat face was a what-you-call-it smile of peace. He closed his eyes for an instant.

"Suffering Thomas cats! At last!" I heard him murmur.