II
The girl watched with bated breath. From an opening in the shrubbery there almost immediately burst into view the figure of a man who seemed the incarnation of this wild place. Spare was he, but of height, build and movement that bespoke physical strength of lightninglike potentialities. The exotic pallor of his masterful face accentuated the blackness of his alert, flashing eyes.
The Indian man-of-all-work, splitting firewood to the side of the cottage, looked up, gasped and scuttled from view. His wolf-dog sank back on his haunches, tilted his grey snout in air and sent forth a long, dolorous howl that brought mocking echoes from the cliffs of the mainland.
The visitor, quite unconcerned by the seeming panic his appearance provoked, strode easily to the front door.
Josephine Stone rose all a-tremble. A fear unaccountable had suddenly swept over her, but when she opened the door for him there was no longer outward trace of it.
“Oh, Mr. Smith,” she voiced, “I know I have put you to a lot of trouble to come over here this morning. It is really too good of you simply to accommodate a stranger.”
“I will not have you mention it, Miss Stone,” he waived with a courtly smile. “It is I rather who should offer apologies.”
“You?”
“I’m late. Delayed by the discovery of a defective boom on my way here. Had to go back and notify one of the boom-tenders.”
“You have heavy responsibilities.”
There was the faintest of inflections on the last word. It brought a momentary gleam of hard alertness to the face of Acey Smith. But he as quickly hid it in a light laugh. “It all came about through my weakness for travelling by water,” he went on. “You see, there is a shorter cut by the land trail here, though I would have had to signal for one of your boats to get over to the island.”
“Won’t you be seated?” She indicated the easy chair by the window and herself sank gracefully to the nearby couch.
“Mr. Smith,” she opened in a nervous confusion that brought the faintest of pink to her delicate throat and cheeks, “I fear I am asking of you too great a favour—that I am about to request too much.”
“If you had not asked me to come here and offer what little service I may,” he replied, “I would consider I had been robbed of one of the most wonderful opportunities of my lifetime.”
“But have you considered the full nature of my request?”
The spell of those wonder eyes under the high-arched brows was upon him. “Name it,” he urged. “I must obey.”
“You must not compromise yourself before you know it all.”
“I have already compromised myself. I have promised to do anything within my power.”
She stirred on the couch, came ever so little nearer to him. “I have feared my request might be an impossible one.”
“An impossible one?”
“Yes—yet—I had hoped almost that you might—”
“Please,” he encouraged. “Tell me what it is.”
“I want to meet the man you call J.C.X.”
Had she plunged ice-cold water upon him the effect on Acey Smith could not have been more startling. His face went ashen at the name, his long hands gripping convulsively at the arms of the chair. He glanced apprehensively about the room, even behind him, then sprang bolt upright.
“J.C.X.” He breathed it hoarsely. “There are no others within hearing?”
“Not a soul.” It was she who was calmer now. She too had risen, was standing with a thrilling nearness to him, so close as to be within the province of his arms had he obeyed an almost irresistible impulse that was upon him to sweep her to him. She looked up at him, a steadiness in the appeal of her eyes.
Under the sway of those eyes decision within him wavered. When he spoke it was in a tone of solemn pronouncement: “Miss Stone, you have asked of me what should be impossible.”
“But you can make it a possibility?”
“The ultimate decision lies with—J.C.X.” Again that furtive glance about the room as he pronounced the name in a whispered undertone. “It were better—perhaps—that you should not meet J.C.X.”
“Is he so terrible?”
“No, it is not that. If I could in some way act as intermediary, for instance?”
But the girl was in no wise willing to let slip by her hard-won concession. “It would not do,” she negatived. “I am sorry, for I know I could trust you as such, but I feel it is imperative that I should meet J.C.X. personally if that which I was sent for is to be properly explained.”
His eyes searched her face. “What do you know of J.C.X.?” he asked.
“Nothing—positively nothing. Oh, I wish I could explain. I hate being mysterious, but for the present I must ask you to accept my statement that it appeals to me as vital to meet him. Can you accept such a statement?”
Under stress of her anxiety she had unconsciously placed an ivory-white little hand upon his sleeve. He thrilled at the pressure.
“I can and do accept it,” he returned. “What is more, when the time is opportune, you shall meet the one you desire to. But you must be patient; for a little while there will be obstacles which are insurmountable.”
“Oh, how can I thank you, Mr. Smith?” Impulsively she seized his hand in both her own, artlessly as a child might do it.
Not even saint might have resisted that delicate, desirable presence so near. Acey Smith was far from saint. His long, powerful hands closed over hers, a devil of gleaming black triumph leaping to the eyes that feasted on her face.
But even as she drew away, trembling like a captured bird, he released her abruptly. His head shot forward and he whirled with his back toward her, his hands cupping at his face in the convulsive fashion of one who is strangling.
She was standing mute in stupefied fright when he faced her again, quite his former self, a trace of a shamed smile on his lips. “I am sorry,” he offered in a contrite tone.
“It was perhaps my fault—” She started to say that before its significance struck her.
“It was not!” he declared. “I had forgotten for the moment that—that I am merely a means to an end. It will not happen again.”
The girl did her best to hide her mystification. Before he left Acey Smith informed her the tugs plying daily between the pulp camp and the city were at her service. He had made arrangements not only for her passage back and forth, but for the carrying of such supplies out as she needed from time to time. This would be much more satisfactory than depending on the motor-boat, he told her, as from now on the weather on the northern reaches of Superior was not dependable.
As for the unexplained purpose for which she had been brought to the island, he hoped she would be tolerant of a delay in bringing things about that would not only take time but patience and foresight on the part of others. He did not mention J.C.X. again nor the meeting he had promised to arrange for Miss Stone. But intuitively the latter knew two things; the one was that he would be as good as his word and the other that he almost dreaded mention of J.C.X.
Besides, Josephine Stone was but two generations removed from Canadian pioneer stock, and, like the women of her race, was not prone to question the moods and whimsicalities of men of the forests.