J.C.X.!
I
JOSEPHINE STONE was seated in the library of the chateau up in the Cup of
Nannabijou after the zenith of the storm had passed that night. Earlier
in the evening she and Mrs. Johnson with some apprehension had watched
the storm coming up, but it broke with much less violence there than it
did down on the waterfront, the high cliffs of the Cup effectually
diverting the fury of the tempest, whose roar they could hear in the
upper air while the rain came down in torrents. Mrs. Johnson, who was
invariably up before the sun, retired early, but Miss Stone did not feel
that she could compose herself for sleep. Since childhood high winds had
always made her restless and nervous.
She had been sitting in her room reading a book she had brought up from
the library. An hour had passed, when, above the lash of the driving
rain, she was certain she heard the rumble of voices outside; then the
opening and closing of a door in the building adjacent where the wireless
station was located. Some of the Indians who looked after the place
slept there, but she was sure they could not be up and about unless
something unusual had happened. They invariably went to their slumbers
and were not seen or heard from after sundown.
Josephine Stone got up and going to the window cautiously lifted a corner
of the drawn blind. A light shone in the wireless building, but she
could see nothing of what was going on inside. The nervousness that was
upon her precluded sleep and it was becoming too chilly to sit up in her
room. She thought of going down to the library and building a wood fire
in the huge fireplace. That would possibly cheer her up, she felt.
But when the fire was leaping high and crackling loudly she still felt
the need of something to occupy her mind. There was an eerie, insistent
personality to the library. Its high, small-paned French windows were
heavily-curtained, and its furniture, of a substantial design several
decades old, was upholstered in the same sombre brown tone that
characterised the curtains and the great deep-piled rug that occupied the
entire floor space. Curtained wall-shelves and ancient, glass-doored
cases were crowded with leather-bound volumes of a heterogeneous variety
as well as departmental government books in blue paper covers. There
were several tiers of the classics, dog-eared and much thumb-worn, but
the majority of the books were devoted to science, psychology, mineralogy
and forestry. None of the books contained a name to designate to whom
they belonged, though many of the older ones had fly-leaves torn from
them that bespoke some one’s precaution against identification.
The girl, tiring of rummaging through the books, turned her attention to
the square, black mahogany piano across one corner of the room, wondering
vaguely what might be the history of this strange place, what story these
walls might tell if they could speak. It was a quaint old instrument
with a wonderfully mellow tone. Some cultured person must have at some
time occupied this chateau, some one of a distinctly scientific turn, she
reflected. Who were they and what had become of them? She shivered
involuntarily. Was it fancy, or did she sense a silent, unseen presence
in this room?
She ran her lithe fingers over the keys and struck up a popular air from
memory. The music seemed to dissipate her oppression and lift the heavy
melancholy of her surroundings.
The girl played on and on, until wearying of memory selections, she
thought to look over a sheaf of music on the back of the instrument.
During the pause she was sure she heard a light tapping at the door off
the hall to her left.
She listened, at first quite startled; but when the tapping was repeated,
something human and deferential in the summons reassured her.
II
Josephine Stone switched on the hall light, opened the door leading to
the porch and drew back with a startled exclamation.
“Mr. Smith!”
But it was no longer fright that was upon her. Something was so daringly
appropriate in his appearance, so grotesque on the part of the
picturesque master of Nannabijou camps that she had to smile in spite of
herself. She had never seen him thus garbed before; quite debonaire and
at ease in a dark, tailored suit and the habiliments of a man of
fashion—a handsome, compelling type, faultlessly groomed from his
close-cropped, crisp black hair and clean-shaven face to the tips of his
fine black shoes. Even his flicker of a smile, which usually had
something grim and sinister in it, now radiated goodwill in its becoming
elegance. Frank admiration shone in the lustre of his great black eyes.
He was bowing graciously, hat in hand. “I heard you playing,” he said,
“and I could not resist the temptation of looking in a moment.”
She stood to one side holding the door for him. “Then you invited
yourself over; I suppose I must let you come in.”
She knew it was not the proper thing at this hour, but then Josephine
Stone was an unusual girl who had a ready confidence in herself. What
she meant to do was to demand of him why she was being held a prisoner
here—why she had been forcibly carried off from Amethyst Island by his
band of Indians.
He accompanied her to the library. There she turned upon him, her whole
demeanour intensely frigid. “Now then,” she demanded, “I want you to
tell me what all this means! Why have I been brought to this place
against my will by your gang of cut-throats?”
She had meant to be acid, but there was that in his bantering smile that
disarmed her, made her impotent to find the words that would humiliate
him.
“No—not to-night,” he declined. “It would take too long. To-morrow I
will come to explain everything to you; then you may condemn me,
excoriate me at your will. For these few rare moments to-night let
us—just be friends.”
“You choose rather unconventional hours for your friendly calls, Mr.
Smith.”
He laughed outright at the scornful thrust, a ringing, boyish laugh,
totally unlike the sterner man she had known. “Perhaps you are right,”
he conceded, “but beggars can’t be choosers, you know. I came in the
first place because of the storm. I thought you might be nervous.”
“And you came to entertain.” Her glance travelled unconsciously to his
clothing.
“I’m glad if I add to the gaiety of nations,” he offered whimsically,
“but my other clothing got soaked in the downpour coming here and these
city decorations were the only things I had by that were dry. Catering
to a whim over the success of certain ventures, I put them on as a sort
of celebration. Then I saw your light over here and heard you playing,
and I thought I’d step over and see if everything was all right.”
“All dressed up and you simply had to have some place to go,” flashed
Josephine Stone, but in a better nature that he made contagious.
“Likely that was it. Even in the bush people are vain once in awhile.”
“But since you came to entertain and not to explain, Mr. Smith, wouldn’t
it have been really thoughtful to have brought along your Indian friend,
Ogima Bush?”
“That might have proved quite difficult. Did you find Ogima
entertaining?”
“In a Satanic way, yes. He has at least one virtue.”
“Yes?”
“Consistency. He has no fickle moods; he is always just what he is—a
savage.”
That subtle thrust, she saw, went under the skin. “That’s because you
don’t know Ogima,” he observed gravely. “He is faithful to his friends
and he has the rare quality of being sincere. Yes, and he is consistent.
With the exception of those artificial red gashes under his eyes, Ogima
is one hundred per cent. what he appears to be.
“But come,” he urged with an apparent desire to change the subject,
“aren’t you going to play for me?”
She shook her head. A spirit of contrariness prompted her to tantalise
him, to make this audacious, dandified czar of the big timber feel ill at
ease.
“I had taken it for granted _I_ was to be entertained,” she insisted,
smiling in spite of herself at the conceit of the tiny, scintillating
white diamond in his tie.
But even in his present playful mood Acey Smith had his nimble wits with
him. “To-morrow is your birthday,” he observed irrelevantly, his
flashing black orbs resting on hers momentarily. “You will be twenty-one
and have reached a woman’s estate.”
It was she who was caught perplexed. “How—how did you know that?” she
cried.
“The proverbial little bird must have been tattling to me. At any rate,
it just now struck me that this being the eve of so important an
anniversary your slightest whim should be gratified.”
“Meaning what?” She was trying hard to feign indifference.
“That I must entertain you as you have insisted.”
She watched him stride across the room. She thought at first he was
going to the piano; instead he leant over the back of the instrument and
brought up a black case from which he extracted a violin and bow.
“Now, what shall it be?” he asked with the bow poised.
“Oh, something light and lively—a popular air.”
The shade of a frown flickered at his brows. “What I know is rather
ancient; but it shall be as you command, Milady Caprice.”
He struck up a bit from an old comic opera. Josephine Stone sank to a
seat. There she lost sense of the bizarre nature of this scene. This
man was no mean amateur airing a mechanical talent. He executed no
flourishes; his form scarcely swayed as the bow rode the responding
strings like a thing possessed of life.
The girl sat enraptured till he had concluded two rollicking melodies.
“Oh, you wonderful man!” It came from her spontaneously as she clapped
her little hands in sheer delight. “Where did you learn to play so
exquisitely?”
“An old man who once lived here taught me the rudiments. The rest I
picked up.”
“But it must have taken years of practice.”
“It has been my one genuine diversion. I often come here when the mood
seizes me and play for a solid evening—but never before to a living
audience.”
He was replacing bow and instrument in the case. “Oh, don’t do that,”
she entreated. “Just one more selection anyway, please.”
Without show of diffidence he prepared to comply. “More light stuff?” he
asked.
“No. Something serious—your own choice this time.”
It was “Unrequited Love,” from the opera Rigoletto, that he played, a
rendition Josephine Stone was destined never to quite forget.
From the first tragic note the man before her seemed metamorphosed—seemed
one with his exquisite violin; and, as the wailing, beseeching soul-cry
of the rejected lover rose and fell, cried out in the volume of those
notes the depths of its anguish, and tremulously swooned its everlasting
despair, the player ceased for her to be Acey Smith, the piratical,
sinister timber boss. He swayed before her fascinated gaze a beautiful
disembodied spirit of melancholy calling to the subtlest deeps of her
being. Once again, as on that memorable morning at the beach, the soul
that looked out at her from those great, dark eyes was the soul of an
untarnished boy—a soul brilliant and aspiring, no longer shackled to the
clay of iniquity.
Unconscious she was that he drew nearer and nearer, a new light in his
black, masterful eyes that was devouring, mesmeric. Unconscious she was
in the spell of it that she had fluttered back on the divan—inert, a
helpless thing, hopelessly enmeshed in the web of his romantic magnetism.
“Josephine!”
Bow and violin dropped heedlessly to the floor. He drew her hungrily to
his arms, swept her from the divan, from her feet and up to him till her
panting form was folded to his own.
“Josephine, Josephine, Josephine!”
His voice was low and hoarse with passion, his face close to hers.
Then: “Great God, what a cad I am!”
III
The spell upon her was broken. But before she could cry out he had
released her, his form a-tremble and his hands cupping piteously to his
mouth in that weird gesture she had once before witnessed.
She staggered back, white to the lips, her hands clenched at her breast.
“You—you—!”
Her accusing tones fell on him like blows as he stood with bowed head.
“It is true,” he acknowledged contritely. “I had forgotten a sacred
trust—a trust I was unworthy of. But—but it shall not happen again.”
She was steadying her trembling limbs. “I—I shall always be afraid of
you now.”
“Please do not say that,” he implored. “You will not have much longer to
endure my company.”
At heart she was sorry for him already. Perhaps it was this physical
trouble which seized him like the ague in moments of acute emotion that
drew her woman’s sympathy; perhaps she conceded it was the situation, the
tenseness brought about by acute artistic emotion that was largely to
blame—though he had the bigness to offer no such excuses.
At any rate, she could not find it in her heart to condemn this proud,
handsome man, who, though he held her here utterly in his power, was
abjectly humbled before the flash of her scorn.
Still she said: “There is only one explanation that might restore my
confidence, and that is a genuine one as to why you had me brought here,
why you insist on detaining me here.”
He brightened. “To-morrow you shall have that explanation in full as I
have promised you—after you have met J.C.X.”
“J.C.X.?” She smiled incredulously.
“Yes. Circumstances made it necessary for you to move from Amethyst
Island until such time as I was at liberty to carry out that promise.
You demurred about leaving, while I feared disastrous intervention during
my enforced absence in the east; that is why you were brought here in
haste without your consent—that and my inherent weakness for the
dramatic.”
“Oh—at last a candid confession! Then let us get down to earth as
quickly as possible. I am weary of playing Alice in Wonderland awaiting
the production of your fabled monster. Mr. Smith, let me reciprocate in
your candour. I have observed sufficient since I came to the Nannabijou
Limits to convince me that there is only one head to the North Star
Company, one man who rules and dictates here—and that man is yourself.”
“True, but I do so under a trusteeship for J.C.X.”
“You seem at least to have convinced yourself of his existence.”
“You think it all a fraud—a hoax?”
“I’m afraid so. Others you may have succeeded in deluding as to the
existence of this imaginary creature behind whose personality you carry
on your affairs, but I will not believe until I see. Furthermore, I
_don’t_ believe you can produce him.”
“Then you shall see J.C.X.—to-night!”
IV
He took her arm and led her across the room to a point near the entrance
to the hall. There he gently swung her so that she faced the wall and he
stood directly behind her.
“Look,” he indicated. “There you may see the J.C.X. for whom till
to-night I have anonymously guided the affairs of the North Star.”
Josephine Stone drew back with a startled cry. She was staring into a
wall mirror _at the reflection of herself_.
“To-morrow,” she heard his voice as from afar off. “To-morrow, she who
until now has been known as J.C.X., takes living control of the affairs
of the North Star. To-morrow, on her twenty-first birthday, she must, as
the lawful heir to this property, bear with me while I give an account of
my stewardship.”
She heard, as in a dream, the hall door beyond closing softly. When she
turned Acey Smith was gone. But out in the night somewhere there arose a
tortured cry—a smothered cry that died out in the encompassing sweep of
the storm.
Mad, she conjectured. . . . Yes, Acey Smith was a madman. Yet, her
intuition told her, his was the madness of abnormal genius with a fixed
purpose—always misunderstood—a desperate visionary with the imagination
and power of will to make his mad dreams come true.
She—she “the lawful heir to this property!” Her grandfather had been
previously referred to by Acey Smith. Could it be—?
But in her perplexed, unnerved state, Josephine Stone did the womanly
thing. She went to her room and had a hearty cry.