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.”