Hearts of Three 53
“More magic,” the Queen murmured, as Francis, getting Bascom’s office,
said:
“Mr. Bascom will undoubtedly arrive back in half an hour. This is Morgan
talking——Francis Morgan. Mr. Bascom left for his office not five minutes
ago. When he arrives, tell him that I have started for his office and
shall not be more than five minutes behind him. This is important. Tell
him I am on the way. Thank you. Good bye.”
Very naturally, with all the wonders of the great house yet to be shown
her, the Queen betrayed her disappointment when Francis told her he must
immediately depart for a place called Wall Street.
“What is it,” she asked, with a pout of displeasure, “that drags you
away from me like a slave?”
“It is business——and very important,” he told her with a smile and a
kiss.
“And what is Business that it should have power over you who are a king?
Is business the name of your god whom all of you worship as the Sun God
is worshipped by my people?”
He smiled at the almost perfect appositeness of her idea, saying:
“It is the great American god. Also, is it a very terrible god, and when
it slays it slays terribly and swiftly.”
“And you have incurred its displeasure?” she queried.
“Alas, yes, though I know not how. I must go to Wall Street——”
“Which is its altar?” she broke in to ask.
“Which is its altar,” he answered, “and where I must find out wherein I
have offended and wherein I may placate and make amends.”
His hurried attempt to explain to her the virtues and functions of the
maid he had wired for from Colon, scarcely interested her, and she broke
him off by saying that evidently the maid was similar to the Indian
women who had attended her in the Valley of Lost Souls, and that she had
been accustomed to personal service ever since she was a little girl
learning English and Spanish from her mother in the house on the lake.
But when Francis caught up his hat and kissed her, she relented and
wished him luck before the altar.
After several hours of amazing adventures in her own quarters, where the
maid, a Spanish-speaking Frenchwoman, acted as guide and mentor, and
after being variously measured and gloated over by a gorgeous woman who
seemed herself a queen and who was attended by two young women, and who,
in the Queen’s mind, was without doubt summoned to serve her and
Francis, she came back down the grand stairway to investigate the
library with its mysterious telephones and ticker.
Long she gazed at the ticker and listened to its irregular chatter. But
she, who could read and write English and Spanish, could make nothing of
the strange hieroglyphics that grew miraculously on the tape. Next, she
explored the first of the telephones. Remembering how Francis had
listened, she put her ear to the transmitter. Then, recollecting his use
of the receiver, she took it off its hook and placed it to her ear. The
voice, unmistakably a woman’s, sounded so near to her that in her
startled surprise she dropped the receiver and recoiled. At this moment,
Parker, Francis’ old valet, chanced to enter the room. She had not
observed him before, and, so immaculate was his dress, so dignified his
carriage, that she mistook him for a friend of Francis rather than a
servitor——a friend similar to Bascom who had met them at the station
with Francis’ machine, ridden inside with them as an equal, yet departed
with Francis’ commands in his ears which it was patent he was to obey.
At sight of Parker’s solemn face she laughed with embarrassment and
pointed inquiringly to the telephone. Solemnly he picked up the
receiver, murmured “A mistake,” into the transmitter, and hung up. In
those several seconds the Queen’s thought underwent revolution. No god’s
nor spirit’s voice had been that which she had heard, but a woman’s
voice.
“Where is that woman?” she demanded.
Parker merely stiffened up more stiffly, assumed a solemner __EXPRESSION__,
and bowed.
“There is a woman concealed in the house,” she charged with quick words.
“Her voice speaks there in that thing. She must be in the next room——”
“It was Central,” Parker attempted to stem the flood of her utterance.
“I care not what her name is,” the Queen dashed on. “I shall have no
other woman but myself in my house. Bid her begone. I am very angry.”
Parker was even stiller and solemner, and a new mood came over her.
Perhaps this dignified gentleman was higher than she had suspected in
the hierarchy of the lesser kings, she thought. Almost might he be an
equal king with Francis, and she had treated him peremptorily as less,
as much less.
She caught him by the hand, in her impetuousness noting his reluctance,
drew him over to a sofa, and made him sit beside her. To add to Parker’s
discomfiture, she dipped into a box of candy and began to feed him
chocolates, closing his mouth with the sweets every time he opened it to
protest.
“Come,” she said, when she had almost choked him, “is it the custom of
the men of this country to be polygamous?”
Parker was aghast at such rawness of frankness.
“Oh, I know the meaning of the word,” she assured him. “So I repeat: is
it the custom of the men of this country to be polygamous?”
“There is no woman in this house, besides yourself, madam, except
servant women,” he managed to enunciate. “That voice you heard is not
the voice of a woman in this house, but the voice of a woman miles away
who is your servant, or is anybody’s servant who desires to talk over
the telephone.”
“She is the slave of the mystery?” the Queen questioned, beginning to
get a dim glimmer of the actuality of the matter.
“Yes,” her husband’s valet admitted. “She is a slave of the telephone.”
“Of the flying speech?”
“Yes, madam, call it that, of the flying speech.” He was desperate to
escape from a situation unprecedented in his entire career. “Come, I
will show you, madam. This slave of the flying speech is yours to
command both by night and day. If you wish, the slave will enable you to
talk with your husband, Mr. Morgan——”
“Now?”
Parker nodded, arose, and led her to the telephone.
“First of all,” he instructed, “you will speak to the slave. The instant
you take this down and put it to your ear, the slave will respond. It is
the slave’s invariable way of saying ‘Number?’ Sometimes she says it,
‘Number? Number?’ And sometimes she is very irritable.
“When the slave has said ‘Number,’ then do you say ‘Eddystone 1292,’
whereupon the slave will say ‘Eddystone 1292?’ and then you will say,
‘Yes, please——‘”
“To a slave I shall say ‘please’?” she interrupted.
“Yes, madam, for these slaves of the flying speech are peculiar slaves
that one never sees. I am not a young man, yet I have never seen a
Central in all my life.—Thus, next, after a moment, another slave, a
woman, who is miles away from the first one, will say to you, ‘This is
Eddystone 1292,’ and you will say, ‘I am Mrs. Morgan. I wish to speak
with Mr. Morgan, who is, I think, in Mr. Bascom’s private office.’ And
then you wait, maybe for half a minute, or for a minute, and then Mr.
Morgan will begin to talk to you.”
“From miles and miles away?”
“Yes, madam——just as if he were in the next room. And when Mr. Morgan
says ‘Good-bye,’ you will say ‘Good-bye,’ and hang up as you have seen
me do.”
And all that Parker had told her came to pass as she carried out his
instructions. The two different slaves obeyed the magic of the number
she gave them, and Francis talked and laughed with her, begged her not
to be lonely, and promised to be home not later than five that
afternoon.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, and throughout the day, Francis was a very busy and perturbed
man.
“What secret enemy have you?” Bascom again and again demanded, while
Francis shook his head in futility of conjecture.
“For see, except where your holdings are concerned, the market is
reasonable and right. But take your holdings. There’s Frisco
Consolidated. There is neither sense nor logic that it should be beared
this way. Only your holdings are being beared. New York, Vermont and
Connecticut, paid fifteen per cent. the last four quarters and is as
solid as Gibraltar. Yet it’s down, and down hard. The same with Montana
Lode, Death Valley Copper, Imperial Tungsten, Northwestern Electric.
Take Alaska Trodwell——as solid as the everlasting rock. The movement
against it started only yesterday late. It closed eight points down, and
to-day has slumped twice as much more. Every one, stock in which you are
heavily interested. And no other stocks involved. The rest of the market
is firm.”
“So is Tampico Petroleum firm,” Francis said, “and I’m interested in it
heaviest of all.”
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