Hearts of Three

by Jack London

  So it was that the Queen knew scarcely more of the great world than when she first started her travels by leaping into the subterranean river. Had she been a lesser creature, she would have been stunned by this vast civilisation around her. As it was, she was royally inconsequential, accepting such civilization as an offering from her royal spouse. Royal he was, served by many slaves. Had she not, on steamer and train, observed it? And here, arrived at his palace, she took as a matter of course the showing of house servants that greeted them. The chauffeur opened the door of the limousine. Other servants carried in the hand baggage. Francis touched his hand to nothing, save to her arm to assist her to alight. Even Bascom a man she divined was no servitor she also divined as one who served Francis. And she could not but observe Bascom depart in Francis’ limousine, under instruction and command of Francis.

  She had been a queen, in an isolated valley, over a handful of salvages. Yet here, in this mighty land of kings, her husband ruled kings. It was all very wonderful, and she was deliciously aware that her queenship had suffered no diminishing by her alliance with Francis.

  Her delight in the interior of the mansion was naive and childlike. Forgetting the servants, or, rather, ignoring them as she ignored her own attendants in her lake dwelling, she clapped her hands in the great entrance hall, glanced at the marble stairway, tripped in a little run to the nearest apartment, and peeped in. It was the library, which she had visioned in the Mirror of the World the first day she saw Francis. And the vision realized itself, for Francis entered with her into the great room of books, his arm about her, just as she had seen him on the fluid-metal surface of the golden bowl. The telephones, and the stock-ticker, too, she remembered; and, just as she had foreseen herself do, she crossed over to the ticker curiously to examine, and Francis, his arm still about her, stood by her side.

  Hardly had he begun an attempted explanation of the instrument, and just as he realized the impossibility of teaching her in several minutes all the intricacies of the stock market institution, when his eyes noted on the tape that Frisco Consolidated was down twenty points a thing unprecedented in that little Iowa railroad which E.H.M. had financed and builded and to the day of his death maintained proudly as so legitimate a creation, that, though half the banks and all of Wall Street crashed, it would weather any storm.

  The Queen viewed with alarm the alarm that grew on Francis’ face.

  It is magic liko my Mirror of the World?” she halfqueried, half-stated.

  Francis nodded.

  It tells you secrets, I know,” she continued. “Like my golden bowl, it brings all the world, here within this very room, to you. It brings you trouble. That is very plain. But what trouble can this world bring you, who are one of its great kings?”

  He opened his mouth to reply to her last question, halted, and said nothing, realizing the impossibility of conveying comprehension to her, the while, under his eyelids, or at the foreground of his brain, burned pictures of great railroad and steamship lines, of teeming terminals and noisy docks; of miners toiling in Alaska, in Montana, in Death Valley; of bridled rivers, and harnessed waterfalls, and of power-lines stilting across lowlands and swamps and marshes on twohundred-foot towers; and of all the mechanics and economics and finances of the twentieth century machine-civilization.

  It brings you trouble,” she repeated. “And, alas! I cannot help you. My golden bowl is no more. Never again shall I see the world in it. I am no longer a ruler of the future. I am a woman merely, and helpless in this strange, colossal world to which you have brought me. I am a woman merely, and your wife, Francis, your proud wife.”

  Almost did he love her, as, dropping the tape, he pressed her closely for a moment ere going over to the battery of telephones. She is delightful, was his thought. There is neither guile nor malice in her, only woman, all woman, lovely and lovable alas, that Leoncia should ever and always arise in my thought between her whom I have and herself whom I shall never have!

  “More magic,” the Queen murmured, as Francis, getting Bascom’s office, said:

  “Mr. Bascom will undoubtedly arrive back in half an hour. This is Morgan talking Francis Morgan. Mr. Bascom left for his office not five minutes ago. When he arrives, tell him that I have started for his office and shall not be more than five minutes behind him. This is important. Tell him I am on the way. Thank you. Good bye.”

  Very naturally, with all the wonders of the great house yet to be shown her, the Queen betrayed her disappointment when Francis told her he must immediately depart for a place called Wall Street.

  What is it,” she asked, with a pout of displeasure, “that drags you away from me like a slave?”

  “It is business and very important,” he told her with a smile and a kiss.

  “And what is Business that it should have power over you who are a king? Is business the name of your god whom all of you worship as the Sun God is worshipped by my people?”

  He smiled at the almost perfect appositeness of her idea, saying:

  It is the great American god. Also, is it a very terrible god, and when it slays it slays terribly and swiftly.”

  “And you have incurred its displeasure?” she queried.

  “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.

  “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 f
lood 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 stiffer 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.

  “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 ‘Goodbye,’ you will say ‘Goodbye,’ 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 tomorrow? 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 gav
e 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.”