Catching a United Fruit Company boat at Colon within fifteen minutes
after landing from the small coaster, the Queen’s progress with Francis
to New York had been a swift rush of fortunate connections. At New
Orleans a taxi from the wharf to the station and a racing of porters
with hand luggage had barely got them aboard the train just as it
started. Arrived at New York, Francis had been met by Bascom, in
Francis’ private machine, and the rush had continued to the rather
ornate palace R.H.M. himself, Francis’ father, had built out of his
millions on Riverside Drive.
So it was that the Queen knew scarcely more of the great world than when
she first started her travels by leaping into the subterranean river.
Had she been a lesser creature, she would have been stunned by this vast
civilisation around her. As it was, she was royally inconsequential,
accepting such civilization as an offering from her royal spouse. Royal
he was, served by many slaves. Had she not, on steamer and train,
observed it? And here, arrived at his palace, she took as a matter of
course the showing of house servants that greeted them. The chauffeur
opened the door of the limousine. Other servants carried in the hand
baggage. Francis touched his hand to nothing, save to her arm to assist
her to alight. Even Bascom—a man she divined was no servitor—she also
divined as one who served Francis. And she could not but observe Bascom
depart in Francis’ limousine, under instruction and command of Francis.
She had been a queen, in an isolated valley, over a handful of savages.
Yet here, in this mighty land of kings, her husband ruled kings. It was
all very wonderful, and she was deliciously aware that her queenship had
suffered no diminishing by her alliance with Francis.
Her delight in the interior of the mansion was naïve and childlike.
Forgetting the servants, or, rather, ignoring them as she ignored her
own attendants in her lake dwelling, she clapped her hands in the great
entrance hall, glanced at the marble stairway, tripped in a little run
to the nearest apartment, and peeped in. It was the library, which she
had visioned in the Mirror of the World the first day she saw Francis.
And the vision realized itself, for Francis entered with her into the
great room of books, his arm about her, just as she had seen him on the
fluid-metal surface of the golden bowl. The telephones, and the
stock-ticker, too, she remembered; and, just as she had foreseen herself
do, she crossed over to the ticker curiously to examine, and Francis,
his arm still about her, stood by her side.
Hardly had he begun an attempted explanation of the instrument, and just
as he realized the impossibility of teaching her in several minutes all
the intricacies of the stock market institution, when his eyes noted on
the tape that Frisco Consolidated was down twenty points—a thing
unprecedented in that little Iowa railroad which R.H.M. had financed and
builded and to the day of his death maintained proudly as so legitimate
a creation, that, though half the banks and all of Wall Street crashed,
it would weather any storm.
The Queen viewed with alarm the alarm that grew on Francis’ face.
“It is magic—like my Mirror of the World?” she half-queried,
half-stated.
Francis nodded.
“It tells you secrets, I know,” she continued. “Like my golden bowl, it
brings all the world, here within this very room, to you. It brings you
trouble. That is very plain. But what trouble can this world bring you,
who are one of its great kings?”
He opened his mouth to reply to her last question, halted, and said
nothing, realizing the impossibility of conveying comprehension to her,
the while, under his eyelids, or at the foreground of his brain, burned
pictures of great railroad and steamship lines, of teeming terminals and
noisy docks; of miners toiling in Alaska, in Montana, in Death Valley;
of bridled rivers, and harnessed waterfalls, and of power-lines stilting
across lowlands and swamps and marshes on two-hundred-foot towers; and
of all the mechanics and economics and finances of the twentieth century
machine-civilization.
“It brings you trouble,” she repeated. “And, alas! I cannot help you. My
golden bowl is no more. Never again shall I see the world in it. I am no
longer a ruler of the future. I am a woman merely, and helpless in this
strange, colossal world to which you have brought me. I am a woman
merely, and your wife, Francis, your proud wife.”
Almost did he love her, as, dropping the tape, he pressed her closely
for a moment ere going over to the battery of telephones. She is
delightful, was his thought. There is neither guile nor malice in her,
only woman, all woman, lovely and lovable——alas, that Leoncia should
ever and always arise in my thought between her whom I have and herself
whom I shall never have!
“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.”
Bascom shrugged his shoulders despairingly.
“Are you sure you cannot think of somebody who is doing this and who may
be your enemy?”
“Not for the life of me, Bascom. Can’t think of a soul. I haven’t made
any enemies, because, since my father died, I have not been active.
Tampico Petroleum is the only thing I ever got busy with, and even now
it’s all right.” He strolled over to the ticker. “There. Half a point up
for five hundred shares.”
“Just the same, somebody’s after you,” Bascom assured him. “The thing is
clear as the sun at midday. I have been going over the reports of the
different stocks at issue. They are colored, artfully and delicately
colored, and the coloring matter is pessimistic and official. Why did
Northwestern Electric pass its dividend? Why did they put that black-eye
stuff into Mulhaney’s report on Montana Lode? Oh, never mind the rest of
the black-eying, but why all this activity of unloading? It’s clear.
There’s a raid on, and it seems on you, and it’s not a sudden rush raid.
It’s been slowly and steadily growing. And it’s ripe to break at the
first rumor of war, at a big strike, or a financial panic——at anything
that will bear the entire market.
“Look at the situation you’re in now, when all holdings except your own
are normal. I’ve covered your margins, and covered them. A grave
proportion of your straight collateral is already up. And your margins
keep on shrinking. You can scarcely throw them overboard. It might start
a break. It’s too ticklish.”
“There’s Tampico Petroleum, smiling as pretty as you please——it’s
collateral enough to cover everything,” Francis suggested. “Though I’ve
been chary of touching it,” he amended.
Bascom shook his head.
“There’s the Mexican revolution, and our own spineless administration.
If we involved Tampico Petroleum, and anything serious should break down
there, you’d be finished, cleaned out, broke.
“And yet,” Bascom resumed, “I see no other way out than to use Tampico
Petroleum. You see, I have almost exhausted what you have placed in my
hands. And this is no whirlwind raid. It’s slow and steady as an
advancing glacier. I’ve only handled the market for you all these years,
and this is the first tight place we’ve got into. Now your general
business affairs? Collins has the handling and knows. You must know.
What securities can you let me have? Now? And to-morrow? And next week?
And the next three weeks?”
“How much do you want?” Francis questioned back.
“A million before closing time to-day.” Bascom pointed eloquently at the
ticker. “At least twenty million more in the next three weeks, if——and
mark you that _if_ well——if the world remains at peace, and if the
general market remains as normal as it has been for the past six
months.”
Francis stood up with decision and reached for his hat.
“I’m going to Collins at once. He knows far more about my outside
business than I know myself. I shall have at least the million in your
hands before closing time, and I’ve a shrewd suspicion that I’ll cover
the rest during the next several weeks.”
“Remember,” Bascom warned him, as they shook hands, “it’s the very
slowness of this raid that is ominous. It’s directed against you, and
it’s no fly-by-night affair. Whoever is making it, is doing it big, and
must be big.”
* * * * *
Several times, late that afternoon and evening, the Queen was called up
by the slave of the flying speech and enabled to talk with her husband.
To her delight, in her own room, by her bedside, she found a telephone,
through which, by calling up Collins’ office, she gave her good night to
Francis. Also, she essayed to kiss her heart to him, and received back,
queer and vague of sound, his answering kiss.
She knew not how long she had slept, when she awoke. Not moving, through
her half-open eyes she saw Francis peer into the room and across to her.
When he had gone softly away, she leapt out of bed and ran to the door
in time to see him start down the staircase.
More trouble with the great god Business——was her surmise. He was going
down to that wonderful room, the library, to read more of the dread
god’s threats and warnings that were so mysteriously made to take form
of written speech to the clicking of the ticker. She looked at herself
in the mirror, adjusted her hair, and with a little love-smile of
anticipation on her lips put on a dressing-gown——another of the
marvelous pretties of Francis’ forethought and providing.
At the entrance of the library she paused, hearing the voice of another
than Francis. At first thought she decided it was the flying speech, but
immediately afterward she knew it to be too loud and near and different.
Peeping in, she saw two men drawn up in big leather chairs near to each
other and facing. Francis, tired of face from the day’s exertions, still
wore his business suit; but the other was clad in evening dress. And she
heard him call her husband “Francis,” who, in turn, called him “Johnny.”
That, and the familiarity of their conversation, conveyed to her that
they were old, close friends.
“And don’t tell me, Francis,” the other was saying, “that you’ve
frivoled through Panama all this while without losing your heart to the
senoritas a dozen times.”
“Only once,” Francis replied, after a pause, in which the Queen noted
that he gazed steadily at his friend.
“Further,” he went on, after another pause, “I really lost my heart——but
not my head. Johnny Pathmore, O Johnny Pathmore, you are a mere
flirtatious brute, but I tell you that you’ve lots to learn. I tell you
that in Panama I found the most wonderful woman in the world——a woman
that I was glad I had lived to know, a woman that I would gladly die
for; a woman of fire, of passion, of sweetness, of nobility, a very
queen of women.”
And the Queen, listening and looking upon the intense exaltation of his
face, smiled with proud fondness and certitude to herself, for had she
not won a husband who remained a lover?
“And did the lady, er——ah——did she reciprocate?” Johnny Pathmore
ventured.
The Queen saw Francis nod as he solemnly replied.
“She loves me as I love her——this I know in all absoluteness.” He stood
up suddenly. “Wait. I will show her to you.”
And as he started toward the door, the Queen, in roguishness of a very
extreme of happiness at her husband’s confession she had overheard, fled
trippingly to hide in the wide doorway of a grand room which the maid
had informed her was the drawing room, whatever such room might be.
Deliciously imagining Francis’ surprise at not finding her in bed, she
watched him go up the wide marble staircase. In a few moments he
descended. With a slight chill at the heart she observed that he
betrayed no perturbation at not having found her. In his hand he carried
a scroll or roll of thin, white cardboard. Looking neither to right nor
left, he re-entered the library.
Peeping in, she saw him unroll the scroll, present it before Johnny
Pathmore’s eyes, and heard him say:
“Judge for yourself. There she is.”
“But why be so funereal about it, old man?” Johnny Pathmore queried,
after a prolonged examination of the photograph.
“Because we met too late. I was compelled to marry another. And I left
her forever just a few hours before she was to marry another, which
marriage had been compelled before either of us ever knew the other
existed. And the woman I married, please know, is a good and splendid
woman. She will have my devotion forever. Unfortunately, she will never
possess my heart.”
In a great instant of revulsion, the entire truth came to the Queen.
Clutching at her heart with clasped hands, she nearly fainted of the
vertigo that assailed her. Although they still talked inside the
library, she heard no further word of their utterance as she strove with
slow success to draw herself together. Finally, with indrawn shoulders,
a little forlorn sort of a ghost of the resplendent woman and wife she
had been but minutes before, she staggered across the hall and slowly,
as if in a nightmare wherein speed never resides, dragged herself
upstairs. In her room, she lost all control. Francis’ ring was torn from
her finger and stamped upon. Her boudoir cap and her turtle-shell
hairpins joined the general havoc under her feet. Convulsed, shuddering,
muttering to herself in her extremity, she threw herself upon her bed
and only managed, in an ecstasy of anguish, to remain perfectly quiet
when Francis peeped in on his way to bed.
An hour, that seemed a thousand centuries, she gave him to go to sleep.
Then she arose, took in hand the crude jeweled dagger which had been
hers in the Valley of the Lost Souls, and softly tiptoed into his room.
There on the dresser it was, the large photograph of Leoncia. In
thorough indecision, clutching the dagger until the cramp of her palm
and fingers hurt her, she debated between her husband and Leoncia. Once,
beside his bed, her hand raised to strike, an effusion of tears into her
dry eyes obscured her seeing so that her dagger-hand dropped as she
sobbed audibly.
Stiffening herself with changed resolve, she crossed over to the
dresser. A pad and pencil lying handy, caught her attention. She
scribbled two words, tore off the sheet, and placed it upon the face of
Leoncia as it lay flat and upturned on the surface of polished wood.
Next, with an unerring drive of the dagger, she pinned the note between
the pictured semblance of Leoncia’s eyes, so that the point of the blade
penetrated the wood and left the haft quivering and upright.