"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. Eemembering 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.