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.