“The general conception that a mysterious outside personality directed the affairs of the North Star had become a fixed make-believe with myself. I actually used to come here to the cabin in the Cup to ‘consult’ the fictitious J.C.X., playing upon the violin the music that was en rapport with my mood. And with the music would come flashes of inspiration from what I held to myself was the unseen agency of J.C.X. It was whimsical, childish, if you like, but one must so pamper the sub-conscious if he would have it function.
“The North Star’s great smash was the capture of the government ice-breaking contracts for spring and fall, which the Gildersleeve interests held until we had J. J. Slack elected to the Commons, elevated to the cabinet and made him our president.
“The North Star gave Gildersleeve no quarter. A series of other swiftly-succeeding coups broke the back of Gildersleeve’s control on the upper Lakes. Soon his boats were lying idle at their docks, and when in a tight year they were offered for sale at what would be little better than their value as junk, the North Star secretly financed other small companies to buy up the best of them, in order to make sure there would not even be crumbs left for its rival.
“The North Star had gained undisputed monopoly of the Upper Lakes, and it now turned its attention to inland activities, seeking where it could strike Gildersleeve most vitally. It became a byword that the unknown clique who guided the North Star could make and break other men and businesses at its pleasure. Politicians and the so-called rulers of the land came seeking the North Star ready to do its pleasure. It seems to be a fact that the mob respect and fear only that which remains a profound mystery to them. The unsolved riddle of the North Star’s ownership and direction inspired a morale among its executives and workers that familiarity with the master mind of the enterprise would have negatived. Its operations and swift expansion to the exclusion of others came to be looked upon with a sort of numbed fatalism by its rivals and enemies. It seemed to appropriate with ease what it willed on land and water; but none knew the continuous drudgery of one man’s imagination to bring about those very things. And the North Star fostered and preserved an element of colour that distinguished it from the drab grind of most big business undertakings—it was picturesque as well as successful.
“Before the year 1914, when the Great War broke out, the North Star had driven Norman T. Gildersleeve from every holding he had originally usurped in the estate of John Carlstone, and from other enterprises he held stock in in Canada. He fled to the States, a bankrupt.
“I have given you a cold-blooded story of how the North Star succeeded. Its operations were on a plane with those of nearly every big enterprise in Canada to-day. Big business is war, always war—smash or be smashed. But the North Star hid behind no smug cloak of hypocrisy; it gave no quarter and it asked for none. On the other hand, the North Star lived up to its contracts to the letter; it never swindled a legitimate customer nor took advantage of a weak or struggling competitor. Its sole prey was the Gildersleeve interests and those who stood in the way of its becoming great and powerful.”
V
“And now I must go back to a detail that I would much rather not have to touch upon,” said Acey Smith. “But in this account of my stewardship, I promised you I should leave no mystery unexplained, and had not this little matter been attended to I would feel I had been remiss in my duty.
“Some time after the North Star enterprise had been successfully placed on its feet I had a trusted agent locate the whereabouts of Josephine Stone and her mother. He brought back a report that they were living in Calgary, and that the death of the heiress’ father had left them poorly provided for. Joseph Stone’s eccentric will left no alternative in the matter of supplying funds direct from the earnings of his estate to her until she had reached her twenty-first birthday.
“How to supply you with an annuity that would provide for your livelihood and education without leaving it open to discovery where the money came from was one of the most perplexing problems of all I set out to solve. The discovery that your father had been manager of a wholesale produce concern in Edmonton before his health broke down and that he had invented a secret method for preserving eggs for indefinite periods without the use of salt finally gave me an idea. A man was sent to make your mother an offer for the recipe. Fortunately, she had preserved the formula, and she seemed only too delighted to dispose of it to the Kam City Cold Storage Company at a royalty of three thousand dollars a year. It was as much as I dared make the royalty lest—”