"Aha," Malone said. "I've got it. The crime is--"
"High treason," Her Majesty said with satisfaction and fire in her voice.
"Very high treason," Malone said. "Extremely high."
"Stratospheric," Boyd agreed. "That is, of course," he added, "if the perpetrators of this dastardly crime are Her Majesty's subjects."
"My goodness," the Queen said. "I never thought of that. Suppose they're not?"
"Then," Malone said in his most vibrant voice, "it is an Act of War."
"We must do our utmost," Malone said. "Sir Thomas--"
"This task requires our most fervent dedication," Malone said. "Please come with me."
He went to the desk. Boyd followed him, walking straight-backed and tall. Malone bent and removed from a drawer of the desk a bottle of bourbon. He closed the drawer, poured some bourbon into two handy water glasses from the desk, and capped the bottle. He handed one of the water glasses to Boyd, and raised the other one aloft.
"Sir Thomas," Malone said, "I give you--Her Majesty, the Queen!"
They downed their drinks and turned, as one man, to hurl the glasses into the wastebasket.
In thinking it over later, Malone realized that he hadn't considered anything about that moment silly at all. Of course, an outsider might have been slightly surprised at the sequence of events, but Malone was no outsider. And, after all, it was the proper way to treat a Queen, wasn't it?
When Malone had first met Her Majesty, he had wondered why, although she could obviously read minds, and so knew perfectly well that neither Malone nor Boyd believed she was Queen Elizabeth I, she insisted on an outward show of respect and dedication. He'd asked her about it at last, and her reply had been simple, reasonable and to the point.
According to her--and Malone didn't doubt it for an instant--most people simply didn't think their superiors were all they claimed to be. But they acted as if they did--at least while in the presence of those superiors. It was a common fiction, a sort of handy oil on the wheels of social intercourse.
And all Her Majesty had ever insisted on was the same sort of treatment.
"Bless you," she'd said, "I can't help the way you _think_, but, as Queen, I do have some control over the way you _act_."