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.