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.