The various committees retired to the several corners of the room to discuss their individual lines of action, when a shadow was observed to obscure the moonlight which had been streaming in through the window.The faces of Calpurnia and Cleopatra blanched for an instant, as, immediately following upon this apparition, a large bundle was hurled through the open port into the middle of the room, and the shadow vanished.
"Is it a bomb?" cried several of the ladies at once.
"Nonsense!" said Madame Recamier, jumping lightly forward."A man doesn't mind blowing a woman up, but he'll never blow himself up.
We're safe enough in that respect.The thing looks to me like a bundle of illustrated papers.""That's what it is," said Cleopatra who had been investigating.
"It's rather a discourteous bit of courtesy, tossing them in through the window that way, I think, but I presume they mean well.Dear me," she added, as, having untied the bundle, she held one of the open papers up before her, "how interesting! All the latest Paris fashions.Humph! Look at those sleeves, Elizabeth.What an impregnable fortress you would have been with those sleeves added to your ruffs!""I should think they'd be very becoming," put in Cassandra, standing on her tip-toes and looking over Cleopatra's shoulder."That Watteau isn't bad, either, is it, now?""No," remarked Calpurnia."I wonder how a Watteau back like that would go on my blue alpaca?""Very nicely," said Elizabeth."How many gores has it?""Five," observed Calpurnia."One more than Caesar's toga.We had to have our costumes distinct in some way.""A remarkable hat, that," nodded Mrs.Lot, her eye catching sight of a Virot creation at the top of the page.
"Reminds me of Eve's description of an autumn scene in the garden,"smiled Mrs.Noah."Gorgeous in its foliage, beautiful thing; though I shouldn't have dared wear one in the Ark, with all those hungry animals browsing about the upper and lower decks.""I wonder," remarked Cleopatra, as she cocked her head to one side to take in the full effect of an attractive summer gown--"I wonder how that waist would make up in blue crepon, with a yoke of lace and a stylishly contrasting stock of satin ribbon?""It would depend upon how you finished the sleeves," remarked Madame Recamier."If you had a few puffs of rich brocaded satin set in with deeply folded pleats it wouldn't be bad.""I think it would be very effective," observed Mrs.Noah, "but a trifle too light for general wear.I should want some kind of a wrap with it.""It does need that," assented Elizabeth."A wrap made of passementerie and jet, with a mousseline de soie ruche about the neck held by a chou, would make it fascinating.""The committee on treachery is ready to report," said Delilah, rising from her corner, where she and Lucretia Borgia had been having so animated a discussion that they had failed to observe the others crowding about Cleopatra and the papers.
"A little sombre," said Cleopatra."The corsage is effective, but Idon't like those basque terminations.I've never approved of those full godets--""The committee on treachery," remarked Delilah again, raising her voice, "has a suggestion to make.""I can't get over those sleeves, though," laughed Helen of Troy.
"What is the use of them?"
"They might be used to get Greeks into Troy," suggested Madame Recamier.
"The committee on treachery," roared Delilah, thoroughly angered by the absorption of the chairman and others, "has a suggestion to make.
This is the third and last call."
"Oh, I beg pardon," cried Cleopatra, rapping for order."I had forgotten all about our committees.Excuse me, Delilah.I--ah--was absorbed in other matters.Will you kindly lay your pattern--Ishould say your plan--before us?"
"It is briefly this," said Delilah."It has been suggested that we invite the crew of this vessel to a chafing-dish party, under the supervision of Lucretia Borgia, and that she--"The balance of the plan was not outlined, for at this point the speaker was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door, its instant opening, and the appearance in the doorway of that ill-visaged ruffian Captain Kidd.
"Ladies," he began, "I have come here to explain to you the situation in which you find yourselves.Have I your permission to speak?"The ladies started back, but the chairman was equal to the occasion.
"Go on," said Cleopatra, with queenly dignity, turning to the interloper; and the pirate proceeded to take the second step in the nefarious plan upon which he and his brother ruffians had agreed, of which the tossing in through the window of the bundle of fashion papers was the first.