CAPTAIN CARLSTONE, V. C.
I
JOSEPHINE STONE did not look back after Acey Smith led her down the
lakeshore from the spot where she had parted with Louis Hammond. She
knew Hammond would neither attempt to follow them nor spy upon them from
a distance. Perhaps too she was preoccupied with the tensity of new
sensations she did not quite understand. Had she been inclined to mental
analysis she might have contrasted the reactions upon herself the
presence of the two men brought about; the one frank, buoyant, purposeful
and full of the verve and enthusiasm of youth—the other in the prime of
his vigour; masterful, grimly fascinating under his cloak of mystery and
conscious power.
What discerning, womanly woman is not drawn irresistibly by the type of
men who curb tremendous potentialities under a poise that outwardly
bespeaks merely good form and the niceties of the occasion? It was not
“side” with this man; it was patent he was what he was for a definite
purpose. More, to the sensitive intuition of Josephine Stone there
appealed from out of the deeps of the personality of Acey Smith a great
latent tragedy—a something persistently repressed by that fatalistic
mouth that could set so grim and straight—a something that smouldered at
times in his brooding eyes and flickered ever so elusively over the face
he had taught to be a cold, cruel mask.
If she did not analyse, she at least felt these things in her feminine
way. It was this impression, perhaps, that impelled her to say as they
strolled to the log seat by the whispering surf: “Sometimes, Mr. Smith,
this place seems to me like an enchanted forest—like a dream inset in the
prosaic course of everyday life.”
“Does it appeal to you that way, Miss Stone?” He led her to the log seat
and dropped down near her. “Strange, isn’t it, how some life-incidents
flicker by us with all the glamour of a dream—leaving us wondering, in a
floundering sort of way, if it wasn’t a fleeting mirage, so to speak,
from some other existence.”
“You express it so wonderfully! You think then that all of us have
experienced previous existences on this or some other sphere?”
“Some of us—perhaps.”
“You have felt _that_ here then, the same as I?”
“I have.” Acey Smith lit a cigarette. “You may laugh at the conceit,
but at times I could fancy the feel of a basket sword-hilt at my side,
the rap-rap of its scabbard-end on my heels and even the jingle of spurs
on my boots. Yet, what I believe—”
He broke off and laughed scornfully at his own confession. “What
nonsense to be boring you with, Miss Stone!”
“But it’s not nonsense, and you’re not boring me. You must go on,” she
commanded, “even if I have to first confess that I have heard the
clanking of your knightly sword, the jingling of your spurs—yes, and even
felt at my cheek for the beauty-patch I fancied was there.”
His glance met hers, swiftly. If she were merely acting she was intense
about it.
“I was going to say that what I believe is that it is a fleeting glimpse
of the ideal we experience at such times, and imagination does the rest,”
he continued. “Most of us are composites of two or more personalities.
Fate, or circumstances if you prefer, decrees which of those
personalities shall flourish; the others, like the sucker-shoots of
yonder mountain ash tree, aspire but never attain perfection. There is
always the Man That Is and the Man That Might Have Been. Saint or
sinner, philosopher or fool, there comes sooner or later a time when the
Man That Might Have Been insists on life and triumph for his little day.”
“But doesn’t the choice of personality lie pretty much with the man
himself?” she argued. “You know they say that every man is the architect
of his own fortune.”
“Strong men are ever the playthings of Destiny,” he replied. “So-called
masterful men stifle their true selves and accept the role that Fate has
ordained alone shall carry them to their goal.”
“That’s cynicism.”
“Must the truth always be sugar-coated? It’s an impression.”
“You speak out of an experience?”
“More or less.” Frankly.
Josephine Stone plunged boldly. “Then, for instance,” she suggested,
“the man they call Acey Smith might have been whom?”
“Quite another personality by quite another name.”
“You believe there is something in a name?”
“I do and I do not, Miss Cross-examiner,” he answered enigmatically.
“Napoleon might have been born Dick Jones, but in such a case the world
would have found another name to call him by.”
She laughed over the allusion. “But you are drifting away from the
subject, Mr. Witness,” she reminded. “I asked you about Acey Smith’s Man
That Might Have Been.”
“He was a dreamer of high-minded dreams and a scholar; the man Fate
shaped and willed should survive was merely him they call Acey Smith the
timber pirate.”
“But this Man That Might Have Been.” There was deep concern in her
tones. “You could have made him, and you could yet—by the sheer force of
your will—make him a reality.”
His black eyes were drawn to hers, and, momentarily, she thought she saw
the soul of another man—another who was not Acey Smith. But the softened
light in them as quickly changed to a hardened glint.
“No, no,” he said harshly, “that man can never be. I am fighting him
off—have been fighting him since—” His gaze swerved from hers as his jaw
clicked the balance: “—since you came. His advent now—would mean
disaster. I found him too late.”
Anything she might have added was negatived by his changed attitude, a
field of reserve, of isolation, he threw around himself at will. “With
your permission,” he urged, “we will drop the personal topic with which I
have been egotistically monopolising your time. You intimated at our
last meeting that you had finally decided to tell me why it was so
essential you should meet J.C.X.”
“Oh, yes,” she admitted. “I think I told you there was a very personal
matter concerned outside of the unexplained reason for the head of the
North Star Company asking me to come here. It was this: A man known as
J.C.X. knew something of the affairs of my grandfather, Joseph Stone, a
mining prospector, who lived and died in this north country somewhere.”
“Then you knew of the existence of J.C.X. before you received his
letter?”
“Yes, through the rather vague statements about J.C.X., the North Star
Company and my grandfather made in a field hospital during the great war
by a Canadian named Captain Carlstone while in a delirium caused by
shell-shock.”
“Yes?” If there was a shock of surprise in this disclosure, Acey Smith’s
features did not register it.
“The rest was all conjecture,” Josephine Stone went on. “But let me
first tell you the story of Captain Carlstone. When you have heard it
you will be the better able to understand my curiosity in the matter.”
II
“It is not a long story,” she began. “The military career of Captain
Carlstone was meteoric—he flashed into the thick of things from nobody
knew where and disappeared in the fog of war as mysteriously.
“I was one of the first contingent of nurses who accompanied the Canadian
forces to the front,” she continued. “I never had the privilege of
meeting the wonderful captain, but everybody in the —th division heard of
him and his dare-devil exploits. He was not only noted for his bravery
but for an almost superhuman cunning and resourcefulness. The men fairly
worshipped him. I nursed wounded soldiers who swore they would
cheerfully walk into the mouth of hell behind Captain Carlstone and
declared that to die fighting by the side of such a man would be the
height of glory.
“With his superior officers, however, he was not so popular. They were
jealous of the handsome, dare-devil captain, who seemed himself to devise
obstacles against further promotion. At the battle of Vimy Ridge he won
the Victoria Cross, and he might have had higher promotion as well but
for a sarcastic remark made publicly that he valued the companionship of
his boys more than any ‘dug-out office’ they could give him.
“Captain Carlstone was a mystery man whose previous history none knew
beyond the facts that he enlisted in the West early in the war and won
first a promotion from the ranks to lieutenant and then to captain on the
field. He was very dark-complexioned—so dark it was generally conceded
he had Indian blood in him or a foreign strain from some remote ancestor
in Canada. Some were inclined to the belief that he was fighting under
an assumed name.
“Captain Carlstone seemed to bear a charmed life. He was always where
the fighting was heaviest and came out unscathed until his last memorable
engagement, when, with a picked body of men, he captured a strategic
position in a clump of woods the enemy was holding. He was to have had
further honours for that, but they brought him from the wood in a state
of coma induced by shell-shock.
“He was conveyed to a base hospital where he came out of the stupor a
raving maniac. His complete recovery came with that remarkable
suddenness that sometimes characterised such cases, but the morning
following the day he became normal he was not in his cot. Not a clue to
his whereabouts was ever afterwards discovered. He was one of the
unsolved mysteries of the war.
“Now then, Mr. Smith, we come to the point where I became so personally
interested in locating J.C.X.,” concluded Josephine Stone. “While in the
base hospital Captain Carlstone was under the care of an old chum of
mine, Sister Cummings. It was she who afterwards told me of the vivid
story he related during his ravings of the death of Joseph Stone, my
grandfather, on a northern trail years ago. Alternately, he talked of a
mine and a will, most of it incoherent, but—”
Josephine Stone paused. Acey Smith was gazing fixedly beyond her into
the thicket above, but at her cognisance of it the alertness in his
features relaxed in a whimsical smile and his eyes came back to a level
with hers.
“It seemed almost an unbelievable coincidence when I received the letter
signed by J.C.X., asking me to come here to learn something of interest
to myself,” continued the girl.
Again Acey Smith flashed an apprehensive glance at the woods above.
“Come,” he urged, “we’ll go down to the open space on the beach.”
She had heard nothing and could discern no sign of life where his eyes
had been focussed. Nevertheless, she accompanied him without question
down the beach out of earshot of the woods.
He turned to her. “Your grandfather died when you were a child?” he
asked.
“When I was two years of age, yes. He was by hobby a scientific man and
a recluse, I believe, but he did considerable prospecting. My father was
an only son, and, after the death of my grandmother, he insisted on
father leaving the wilds. There followed a heated dispute which led my
father to leave never to return. He seldom spoke of grandfather, and
mother and I learned only the most fragmentary details of him and his
life. Father died before I started to school and mother passed away a
few years later, leaving me quite alone in the world, and had it not been
for an invention of father’s, purchased on a royalty basis after his
death by a manufacturing firm, I might also have been left quite
penniless.”
“You never learned definitely just what happened your grandfather?”
“No. There were rumours reached us that he was killed by Indians in the
bush and that rival prospectors had made away with him after he had
discovered a gold mine. But none of these stories seemingly were ever
confirmed.
“All my life I’ve wanted to learn about grandfather and what happened
him,” she went on. “Though I had never known him it seemed as though he
was very near to me—as if actually I had been in his dying thoughts. I
had intended to explain all this to you that first night I went to your
office, but—I was at first—afraid of you. Since then—”
“Yes?” he urged as she hesitated.
“Since I’ve felt instinctively you knew what I came to seek and you would
find a way. I know now I could trust you.”
III
She looked up at him. His eyes did not meet hers and she was unprepared
for the answer he gave her: “If you had asked sixty people, forty-nine
who know me best would have told you you had better put your trust in
Mephistopheles himself.”
She caught her breath. “But that—that is because they do not know you
intimately.”
“It is because they know me _too_ intimately—the reputation is not
unmerited.”
There was a bitter indifference to his words that chilled her, a drooping
sneer at his mouth and a cold gleam in his black eyes as he made frank,
unboastful admission of iniquity. It seemed for a space as though the
demon he had confessed looked out mockingly from the man at her.
“Yet you made no mistake,” he assured her almost immediately. “Your
woman’s intuition told you aright; there is that I must assist you to
learn of, even if—if I did not care.”
“But about Captain Carlstone,” she reminded him. “You have not told me
whether he has any connection with the matter or not.”
“Captain Carlstone does not matter. He is gone—made away with himself
somewhere overseas.”
“Killed himself?” she asked aghast.
Acey Smith gave vent to a soulless, soundless laugh. “Something like
that,” he answered indifferently. “At any rate, he never came back to
Canada. There were vital reasons why he dare not. But don’t waste pity
on him; as I said, he doesn’t matter, and, lest you may have conceived
otherwise, I may tell you there was never anything in common between
Captain Carlstone and J.C.X. In fact, they were as unalike as it is
possible for two individuals to be.”
His utter callousness bruised the sensitive girl—angered her so that she
could have wished to have been a man to strike him where he stood.
“Be patient for a little while.” He intercepted the retort that trembled
on her lips. “You shall know and you shall understand. You shall be the
first person outside myself to meet face to face the mysterious J.C.X.,
whose power is greater than any other one individual in the Dominion of
Canada, who makes and unmakes big businesses at his will, sways big men
as puppets, uses political parties as pawns to his own advantage, advises
and the Press thunders his words, and yet works as with an unseen hand.
You shall be the first to meet J.C.X. and know definitely in whose
presence you stand.”
“I don’t think I care to meet him—now,” coldly.
“But you wanted to know about your grandfather.”
“You mean he alone can tell me?”
“No, J.C.X. could tell you nothing of that. But it is through your
coming meeting with him that you will learn all that you seek to know and
more.”
“But why all this intense mystery about it?” Josephine Stone plucked up
courage to demand. “I confess I am at a greater loss now than ever to
know what all these complications mean—where they lead to.”
There came frank concern into his face. “I only wish it were in my power
to tell you—now,” he said. “But it is out of my province to say more.
In a week, or likely less, the appointed time will arrive.
“Meanwhile, I have to go east on urgent business,” he added. “I will
return as quickly as possible, but before I go I am going to ask you if
you will put yourself in my care without question as to the reasons.”
“You mean to leave here—with you?”
“Exactly. Oh, but you may bring your chaperon, Mrs. Johnson, with you.
It will be all perfectly proper. Only, I must ask you to leave without
notifying a soul, not even your Indian servants. There’s a reason.”
“A reason? Another unexplained reason?”
“No, I may tell you this time. I fear for your safety during the next
few days while I am away.”
“But I am not afraid.”
“That’s because you do not sense your danger.”
“From what?”
“An enemy.”
“An enemy?” she echoed. “Who?”
“The one who despatched notes to yourself and young Hammond to bring
about your first meeting here.”
“Come,” he urged before the exclamation of surprise died on her lips.
“Say you will go to-night. I’ll come over in the motorboat this evening
and we can make the arrangements. It is vital that you should leave here
at once and without any one knowing or I would not ask it.”
“Without notifying my friends?”
She read from his keen answering glance that he knew she was thinking of
Hammond. “Without notifying any one,” he insisted.
“Then I refuse to go.”
“That is final?”
“It is, unless I can be shown a more coherent reason for going in such a
manner.”
The worried look that had come into his face receded and he laughed a
queer, bitter, little laugh. “Oh, well, if you _will_ have it so, it is
up to me to change my plans,” he said. “And that being so, I must bid
you good-bye until I return from Montreal.
“Oh, by the way,” he added, “if you should hear men striking camp up the
trail along the lakeshore this evening don’t be alarmed. It will be
merely a squad of the mounted police who’ve come to patrol this section
of the waterfront during the strike.”
“Strike?” she echoed perplexed.
He walked up the beach, drew his cached packsack from a clump of green
stuff and returned. “Yes, we’re to have one of those modern luxuries in
the camp within the next few days,” he answered.
He lifted his hat, whirled on a heel and was away.
In a maze of doubt as to whether her recent refusal to leave the island
as he had requested were a wise decision, she watched Acey Smith go up
and over the first hill of the lakeshore trail. When his figure had
disappeared she was assailed by a sudden apprehension—an overwhelming
apprehension—that she had made a grave mistake. There must have been
deep, very deep reasons for his asking her to leave the island. No doubt
she was imperilling not only her own safety but his plans as well.
On an impulse she sped forward after him. She felt that she could easily
get within call of him before he reached the crown of the second hill.
In her close-fitting garments she made fast time, but on the top of the
first hill she paused all out of breath. The trail before her down
through the valley and up the further rise was silent and empty.
At a tramping sound in the brush to her left she hesitated about
proceeding. It might be a wandering bear or moose.
The bushes up the trail parted and a fearsome figure strode out—a figure
as forbidding as one might well conceive an evil spirit to be. His face
was almost black and on his cheek-bones stood out two livid red gashes.
He wore no head-covering save a band of purple which held a single
eagle’s feather in place in his lank, black hair. Round his neck were
hung string upon string of gleaming white wolves’ teeth.
At the girl’s involuntary cry of dismay he whirled, the whites of his
evil black eyes showing garishly in his satanic visage. It afterwards
recurred to her that he had at first appeared quite as startled as she
had been, but he almost immediately straightened, and, folding his arms
on his chest, pronounced himself in deep, strangely-vibrating guttural
tones.
“Ogima Bush,” he said, “big Medicine Man. Him no hurt white lady.
_Un-n-n-n_—white lady pass.”
But Josephine Stone waited to have no further parley. She turned and
fled on trembling limbs back toward the island. And, as she ran, there
fell upon her ears a penetrating, wailing cry, long-drawn-out and
blood-curdling in its mixture of mockery and despair—a cry that for
subsequent reasons she was destined to remember all the days of her life.