"Oh, I hope I haven't said anything that I shouldn't have!" babbled Kaire. With a desperate effort he struggled to his feet and raised his arms after the manner of one who is just about to lead a cheer. "Now, all together, ladies and gentlemen!" he cried.
"There was a young lady from Smyrna,
Of—of Smyrna——"
Across his flaccid mouth the odd little smile tightened suddenly in a single poignant flash of bewilderment and pain. "Oh, you Little Good Works Business!" he grinned. "You—you——"
Then, before their startled eyes, he pitched over headlong on the table, gave a queer twitch of his shoulders, and lay very quiet, with a little flush of blood spreading redder and redder from his lips.
But before Jaffrey Bretton could snatch Daphne from the sight, her overtaxed brain had collapsed into delirium. Dodging down the narrow passageway with the dreadful little burden in his 220 arms he stumbled almost immediately on Martha's crouching figure.
"Martha!" he cried. "There's something redder than curtains in the cabin back there! Run and get Kaire's man!"
"Kaire's man?" scoffed the woman shrilly. Robbed in that single instant of all her inhibition she turned and sped madly for the reddest thing that she would ever know, every thought in her awakened brain, every flash of her jeweled hands keyed suddenly to service.
Close behind her a cabin boy came hurrying. Champagne and crystal glasses were on his tray.
Roused from a half-completed nap Kaire's man came running to the scene.