From the near distance came a whispering voice, which made him shiver. "No one insists here," said the unknown speaker, "all obey." "Who is it that all obey?" demanded the prisoner undauntedly. "Queen Beelzebub!" murmured the voice, soft and sibilant. There flashed into Dan's mind some teaching, secular or sacred--he could not tell which at the moment--relative to a deity who had to do with flies. A Ph[oe]nician deity he fancied, but surely if his memory served him, a male godling. Beelzebub, the god of Flies! He remembered now, and remembered also the trade-mark of the mysterious society formed for the purpose of murdering various people for various reasons, known and unknown. "So you have got me at last," he said aloud. "I might have guessed that Penn would trap me." "No names," said the unseen speaker coldly; "it will be the worse for you if you mention names." "Am I addressing Beelzebub?" asked Dan, and for the life of him he could not keep the irony out of his tones, for the whole thing was so theatrical. "Queen Beelzebub!" "I see; you have given the god of Flies a consort. May I ask why I have been brought here?" "We intend to make you an offer." "Who we? What we?" "The members of the Society of Flies, of which I am the head." "H'm, I understand. Don't you think you had better loose my hands and turn up the lights?" "Be silent," ordered the voice imperiously, and, as Dan fancied, with some hint of temper at the flippant way in which he talked; "be silent and listen!" "I can't help myself," said Halliday coolly, "go on, please." There was a soft rustle, as if the unseen company admired his courage for behaving calmly in what was, undoubtedly, a weird and trying situation. Then some distance away a disk of red light, like a winter sun, appeared with nerve-shaking swiftness. It revealed none of the company, for all were still in the gloom, but concentrated its angry rays on a large and solemn visage, unhuman in its stillness and awful calm. It was an Egyptian face, such as belongs to the statues of the gods of Kem, and the head-dress, stiff and formal, was also suggestive of the Nile. Of more than usual size, Dan could only see its vast features, but fancied that a red robe fell in folds from the neck downward. There was something grand about this severe face, and in the darkness, with the scarlet light gleaming fiercely on its immobility, it was assuredly effective, if somewhat theatrical. The lips did not move when Queen Beelzebub began to speak, but the eyes were alive; the eyes of the person concealed behind the mask. Dan noticed that, when the face became visible in the angry red light, the speaker ceased to whisper, and the voice became deep, voluminous, and resonant as that of a gong. The tone was that of a man, but it might have been a woman speaking through an artificial mouthpiece. The final thing which Dan noticed was that the whole atmosphere of the room reeked with the rich fragrance of the Sumatra scent.