“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.”
