"Basically, I'm a nice boy," Malone said. "Sure I am." He paused. "Do you have any more pertinent information, Your Majesty?"
"Not right now," the Queen admitted. "But if I do, I'll let you know." She giggled. "You know, I had to argue awfully hard with Dr. Hatterer to get to use the telephone," she said.
"I'll bet," Malone said.
"But I did manage," she said, and winked. "I won't have that sort of trouble again."
Malone wondered briefly what dark secret Dr. Hatterer had, that Her Majesty had discovered in his mind and used to blackmail him with. At last he decided that it was probably none of his business, and didn't matter too much anyway.
"Quite right, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "And good-bye for now."
"Good-bye, Your Majesty," Malone said. He bowed again, and flipped off the phone. Bowing in a phone booth wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do, he thought to himself. But somehow he had managed it.
He reached into his pocket—half-convinced, for one second, that it was an Elizabethan belt-pouch. Talks with Her Majesty always had that effect; after a time, Malone came to believe in her strange, bright world. But he shook off the lingering effects of her psychosis, fished out some coins and thought for a minute.
So Dorothy—Dorothea—had lifted the notebook. That was some help,