IN THE CUP!
I
JOSEPHINE STONE gasped involuntarily at the restful beauty of the scene
that lay before her.
It was like a bit of some fantastic fairyland cached away up in the
hills, surrounded on all sides as it was by what seemed an unbroken and
impregnable wall of black cliffs.
To her left and occupying almost half the area inside the Cup right up to
the cliffs back of her, where its overflow escaped through a narrow
opening, reposed a mountain lake like a silver-grey mirror reflecting the
walls of the Cup on the further side in absolute clarity of detail. To
the right, from the point by which the party had entered, the land rose
at a gentle grade till it reached the foot of the walls of rock on that
side and the farther end possibly three-quarters of a mile away. Back of
the clear area of green sward at the lake-front was a great forest of
glistening white birch trees making a natural background for a landscape
picture indescribably perfect in the dull gold of the morning sunlight.
But it was the vast green plot up which the carriers were transporting
her over a winding, gravelled walk, bordered to either side with shrubs
and small electric light standards such as are used in city parks, that
most amazed the young woman. Miniature fountains, built of amethyst
encrusted rock, were set out here and there in little green “islands”
isolated by means of linked circles branching out at regular intervals
from the main gravelled path.
Before them, in the centre of the great lawn, stood a great rambling
building, constructed of unbarked cedar, with screened verandahs and
odd-looking little towers at its corners. Some little distance from this
château was a smaller building and before it on high, white-painted poles
were what were unmistakably wireless aërials. Heavy copper wires carried
up on a series of poles from a point back in the opening of the cliffs
indicated that somewhere in the cascades formed by the overflow of the
lake a hydro-electric plant was located, whence the current was brought
for light and power to this strange habitation in the heart of the
wilderness.
Once Josephine Stone looked back into the face of Ogima Bush. On the
instant she thought she caught a quizzical, amused expression on his
swarthy visage, as though the Medicine Man were actually enjoying her
bewilderment. But his features relapsed as quickly into the grim,
stoical lines they habitually held, so that only the wicked eyes above
the livid red gashes in his cheeks seemed alive and human.
As the party approached the château a plump, middle-aged woman with a
kindly, beaming face came out on the verandah and down the steps to the
walk.
It was Mrs. Johnson, Miss Stone’s companion.
The Indians eased down the sedan, and, as Miss Stone stepped out, quickly
carried it away to the rear of the château, Ogima Bush striding away with
them.
“Josie!” cried the elder woman as she embraced the other. “I was really
beginning to think something had happened.”
Bewildered, the girl looked into the face of her friend. “Happened?” she
echoed. “I should say something _has_ happened. I never dreamed of
meeting you here.”
“Why Josie, dear, what’s wrong? Didn’t you send word for me to come
yesterday morning?”
“I send word? I never sent any such word: I didn’t know I was coming
myself!”
“Well, for the land’s sake! They came after you had gone away with Mr.
Hammond yesterday morning and told me you were moving right away back to
a bungalow in the mountain. Mr. Smith said—”
“Mr. Smith—the superintendent? Was he there?”
“Why, yes, Josie. It was he who suggested that it would much facilitate
matters if I came here first to see that the Indian help set the bungalow
in order. He was awfully nice about it, and they took me around the
other side of the point in his motorboat. Then the Indians carried me up
in that sedan to the entrance you came through to-day.”
“Well!” It was all Josephine Stone could say for her pent-up
indignation. So this was Acey Smith’s work!
She saw through it all now. He had thought she would immediately accept
his suggestion yesterday morning and come up to this place; so sure had
he been, that he had lured Mrs. Johnson up here while she was out with
Louis Hammond. Then—then when she had refused unless he explained, he
had hired that hateful, horrible Indian and his band to carry her off by
force. When she next saw Acey Smith—well, he’d know a piece of her mind
about it!
But the elder woman was proceeding: “When the afternoon passed and you
didn’t come, I began to feel worried, Josie, until word was brought up by
one of the Indians that you couldn’t come till this morning. I was a
little nervous in that big house all alone except for those Indians, but
they seemed ready to do everything for me and I kept the electric lights
going all night. Really, dear, it’s a wonderful place. Like something
you’d read about in a story-book—old, old furniture, great big rooms and
huge fire-places and wall mirrors. And away off in one wing is a library
full of queer books, and back of it again is a laboratory such as
scientists use. But it’s locked up and you can see through the glass
door that there’s dust over everything and it hasn’t been used for
years.”
But Josephine Stone was too exhausted by her exciting morning’s
experience to talk, let alone go about exploring the house. Her limbs
seemed trembling under her as she entered the door. The reaction of a
sleepless night and the events of the morning were commencing to tell on
her. So, directly after Mrs. Johnson had procured her a hot cup of tea,
she went direct to the room in the western end of the building which the
elder woman said had been set aside for her. She flung herself on the
bed without troubling to even take her shoes off, and pulling the
coverlet over her dropped off to sleep immediately.
II
It was two hours later—almost eleven o’clock—when she awoke, quite
refreshed. There was a light tapping at her chamber door. She leaped
from the bed, adjusted her rumpled hair by the glass and smoothed out her
skirt. She opened the door to find Mrs. Johnson in the hall accompanied
by two Indians bearing a hamper. The Indians, at Mrs. Johnson’s
direction, carried the hamper into the room and departed.
To her delight, Miss Stone found it to contain, neatly packed, her
wardrobe from the cottage at Amethyst Island as well as her toilet
articles and other personal effects.
“That awful-looking Indian and the two that just went out brought it,”
explained Mrs. Johnson, which set Josephine Stone pondering over the
sagacity which the wily Ogima Bush must have employed to revisit the
island and safely spirit away her belongings under the very noses of the
police.
While she was dressing, Miss Stone told the elder woman as much as she
thought it policy to tell her of the events in connection with her
forcible removal from Amethyst Island to the Cup of Nannabijou.
Mrs. Johnson listened with growing amazement. “I had thought—in fact, I
was sure—that it was an arrangement between you and Mr. Smith,” she
gasped. “I had no idea—”
“Oh, it was—in a way, pre-arranged,” hastily replied the girl. “But it
was not entirely according to what I had planned. Do you think there is
any way we could make our escape—at night, for instance—if we found it
necessary?”
Mrs. Johnson shook her head emphatically. “This place is surrounded by
an unscalable wall of cliffs,” she said. “There are but two openings;
the one you came in where they turn the waters of the lake in by means of
some gate operated by electric power and another tunnel through the
cliffs down to the edge of Lake Superior on the northwestern side.”
“Why couldn’t we get out the latter way?”
“Because, Josie, it is merely a tunnel going down to the edge of the big
lake or an inlet from it. That’s the way they get in their supplies for
this place from the boats, but the upper end is closed by great, heavy
double doors which are kept securely locked. They have some system of
signals by which the Indians here are notified when a boat docks at the
mouth of the tunnel.”
“And isn’t there any one in authority here besides those Indians?”
insisted Miss Stone. “Are you sure there are no other buildings in the
Cup besides these?”
“There are none that I have seen trace of, and I have heard no one giving
orders except that frightful Ogima Bush. But,” and Mrs. Johnson lowered
her voice, “I _have_ felt every hour I have been in this place that there
is some one or something one never sees or hears—”
Her words were cut short by a hissing, crackling disturbance that
suddenly broke loose in the upper air outside.
Mrs. Johnson reassuringly placed a hand upon her companion’s arm. “It is
only the wireless, dear,” she explained. “It has sputtered away like
that a couple of times since I’ve been here, but who operates it, unless
it be one of the Indians, I have not been able to find out.
“Oh, yes, I had almost forgotten to tell you,” she added suddenly, “that
hideous Indian Medicine Man seems to be hanging around outside to see you
about something.” She went to the window and peered out. “He’s gone at
last,” she observed. “He had been waiting around out on the lawn over
there since he and the other two brought your belongings. I asked him if
there was any message he had to leave; but he only made a noise in his
throat like the snarl of a wild beast and walked away.”
III
It was a few moments later that Josephine Stone, while walking down to
the shore of the little lake, was suddenly confronted by Ogima Bush.
He bowed low, holding in an extended hand a folded note.
Wonderingly, the girl accepted the missive which was addressed to her in
a firm spencerian hand. When she had opened it she read with amazement
greater still:—
DEAR MISS STONE:—This is principally to set at rest any fears on your
part as to your personal safety. No harm can reach you where you
are, and at most you will not be asked to remain there for more than
a few days.
Believe me, it was not part of my plan that you should have had to go
through the disagreeable experience that befell you this morning,
which, for reasons I hope to be able to explain later, I was unable
to prevent without endangering your interests. Circumstances
promoted by others over whom I had no control did that.
If there is any detail for your comfort or convenience which may have
been overlooked, please advise me. The bearer of this note, Mr.
Ogima Bush, is absolutely trustworthy so far as the affairs of my
friends are concerned. Mr. Bush will therefore safely convey any
message you may have for me before I leave this afternoon for the
east. Yours to command,
ACEY SMITH.
“You wait here.” Josephine Stone addressed the Indian, who stood with
eyes averted to the gravel walk.
“Un-n-n-n ugh,” he gutturalled. “Ogima wait.”
She hurried back to the château and returned with a pencil and some
sheets of paper. Seating herself on a little rustic bench, she three
times started a reply to Acey Smith’s note, but each time failed to find
words coldly expressive of her contempt for the man who could knowingly
allow her to suffer the indignities she had met with that morning.
Finally she tore all the sheets into little shreds and flung them angrily
to the ground. Into the sinister face of the Indian there came a look of
actual apprehension as she arose from the bench.
“Tell Mr. Smith I have no answer for him!”
The Medicine Man pointed to the torn bits of paper on the walk. “Maybe
Ogima tell Big Boss white lady make words many times and throw away.”
Miss Stone’s eyes were blazing as she stamped her little foot on the
gravel. “You tell him what I told you to tell him—nothing more!”
The Medicine Man quailed before the white wrath of the girl, a
ridiculous, crestfallen creature for the moment in his savage trappings.
“Un-n-n-n, Ogima tell him what white lady say—no more,” he answered
supinely with a hand above his head as though to ward off an expected
blow. “Big Boss maybe get heap mad; tell poor Ogima he lie.”
“I hope he beats you within an inch of your life!”
The Indian drew himself up to his full height at that.
“No hit Ogima Bush,” he declared pompously. “Mister Smid Big Boss of
camp; no boss of Ogima. Un-n-n-n, Smid no boss Ogima!”
“Well!” There was a wealth of biting sarcasm in the girl’s tones. “Then
who is Ogima’s boss, pray?”
“Ogima’s boss same boss as Big Boss—same boss as Mister Smid.” The
Indian was looking straight down into her eyes. His wicked black optics
softened in a flash that transformed him, transfixed her with its
intensity.
He placed his right hand over his left breast as he said it in tones
scarcely above a sibilant whisper: “_Ogima’s boss is J.C.X._”
With another low bow, the Medicine Man whirled on a shoe-packed heel and
strode swiftly away up the walk in the direction of the water-locked gate
of the Cup of Nannabijou.
A few minutes later the girl heard the gong in the cliffs announce his
departure.