derstood Dal's wrath then, but it seems he meant to arrange
the plot himself, and when it was ripe, and the hour nearly come, he
intended to wager that he could break the quarantine, and to take any
odds he could get that he would free the entire party in half an hour.
As for the plan itself, it was idiotically simple; we were perfectly
delighted when we heard it. It was so simple and yet so comprehensive.
We didn't see how it COULD fail. Both the Mercer girls kissed Dal on the
strength of it, and Anne was furious. Jim was not so much pleased, for
some reason or other, and Mr. Harbison looked thoughtful rather than
merry. Aunt Selina had gone to bed.

The idea, of course, was to start an embryo fire just inside the
windows, in the pans, to feed it with the orange-fire powder that is
used on the Fourth of July, and when we had thrown open the windows and
yelled "fire" and all the guards and reporters had rushed to the
front of the house, to escape quietly by a rear door from the basement
kitchen, get into machines Dal had in waiting, and lose ourselves as
quickly as we could.

You can see how simple it was.

We were terribly excited, of course. Every one rushed madly for motor
coats and veils, and Dal shuffled the numbers so the people going the
same direction would have the same machine. We called to each other as
we dressed about Mamaroneck or Lakewood or wherever we happened to have
relatives. Everybody knew everybody else, and his friends. The Mercer
girls were going to cruise until the trouble blew over, the Browns were
going to Pinehurst, and Jim was going to Africa to hunt, if he could get
out of the harbor.

Only the Harbison man seemed to have no plans; quite suddenly with the
world so near again, the world of country houses and steam yachts and
all the rest of it, he ceased to be one of us. It was not his world at
all. He stood back and watched the kaleidoscope of our coats and veils,
half-quizzically, but with something in his face that I had not seen
there before. If he had not been so self-reliant and big, I would have
said he was lonely. Not that he was pathetic in any sense of the word.
Of course, he avoided me, which was natural and exactly what I wished.
Bella never was far from him and at the last she loaded him with her
jewel case and a muff and traveling bag and asked him to her cousins' on
Long Island. I felt sure he was going to decline, when he glanced across
at me.

"Do go," I said, very pol