“Madame!”

“It is time, I believe, that England had a new queen. A human queen.”

“Think of my honor!”

Lady Pamela paused in the doorway. “You are a very pretty fellow indeed. But with this, I can have the monarchy and keep such a harem as will reduce your memory to that of a passing and trivial fancy.”

With a rustle of skirts, she spun away.

“Then I am undone!” Surplus cried, and fainted onto the bed.

Quietly, Darger closed the door. Surplus raised himself from the pillows, began removing the patches from his body, and said, “Now what?”

“Now we get some sleep,” Darger said. “Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

The master of apes came for them after breakfast, and marched them to their usual destination. By now, Darger was beginning to lose track of exactly how many times he had been in the Office of Protocol. They entered to find Lord Coherence-Hamilton in a towering rage, and his sister, calm and knowing, standing in a corner with her arms crossed, watching. Looking at them both now, Darger wondered how he could ever have imagined that the brother outranked his sister.

The modem lay opened on the dwarf-savant’s desk. The little fellow leaned over the device, studying it minutely.

Nobody said anything until the master of apes and his baboons had left. Then Lord Coherence-Hamilton roared, “Your modem refuses to work for us!”

“As I told you, sir,” Surplus said coolly, “it is inoperative.”

“That’s a bold-arsed fraud and a goat-buggering lie!” In his wrath, the Lord’s chair rose up on its spindly legs so high that his head almost bumped against the ceiling. “I know of your activities—” he nodded toward his sister—“and demand that you show us how this whoreson device works!”

“Never!” Surplus cried stoutly. “I have my honor, sir.”

“Your honor, too scrupulously insisted upon, may well lead to your death, sir.”

Surplus threw back his head. “Then I die for Vermont!”