“Before I enlisted I left a sealed envelope containing explicit instructions as to the disposition of the affairs of the North Star, in case I did not return, with Sir David Edwards-Jones, president of the Regal Bank of Canada, a man I had grown to estimate as the soul of thoroughness and honour. Those instructions were to be returned to me with the seals unbroken if I did come back. Then one night, unnoticed, I took a midnight train for the West.
“I stained my skin the copper tint it had been before old Joseph Stone bleached it with his formula, and in Vancouver enlisted as Private Alexander Carlstone. None that knew me as Acey Smith knew my name, number or battalion except Yvonne Kovenay, a rather wonderful young woman who was head of the North Star’s intelligence department. I confided that much to her, under pledges of strictest secrecy, in order that I might be kept in touch with the affairs of the North Star while I was at the front.
“From what you told me that day on Amethyst Island, Miss Stone, I gather that you have heard most there was to know about the record of Alexander Carlstone with the Canadian army; except that the story as it was passed on by others gives me much more credit for deeds of valour than is coming to me. How I slipped away unnoticed from the base hospital and reverted to the role of Acey Smith is a little story in itself, but we have no time for those details now. The fighting was almost over and I wanted to get back to Canada as quickly as possible, lest in the process of demobilisation my identity should be learned.
“Incidentally, news had come to me that Gildersleeve was organising a new company to enter into competition with the North Star’s pulpwood activities along the North Shore.”
II
“Before the war, the North Star had succeeded in acquiring all the larger and more valuable timber concessions on the upper reaches of Lake Superior, with the exception of the block known as the Nannabijou Limits. This vast area of pulpwood was considered the most desirable of all, and the cutting rights there meant the domination of the pulp and paper industry in Northern Ontario.
“The government had withheld the Nannabijou Limits from being thrown on the market in deference to a pledge made to the people by a former premier that it would never be leased until the company tendering for it erected a mill at Kam City capable of manufacturing into paper every stick of wood taken from it.
“The North Star until then had been an exporter, sending most of its pulpwood to mills in eastern Canada in which it held stock and to customers in United States. I had early conceived that to make the North Star hold its place it must by one means or another acquire the Nannabijou Limits. Before the war, plans were all completed for the building of a pulp and paper mill at Kam City to comply with the government stipulation. The outbreak of hostilities, however, brought about such chaos in the business world that the project had to be abandoned.
“My absence at the war and the consequent inactivity of the North Star in the matter of expansion had given Gildersleeve the opportunity he had been quietly watching for. When I returned I discovered that he was organising international capital on a large scale with the express purpose of securing the rights on the Nannabijou. If he succeeded I knew too well what it meant, and that would be the ultimate elimination of the North Star as a factor on the upper lakes.
“The North Star immediately purchased a site for a plant in Kam City, let a contract for the erection of a pulp and paper mill building and placed an order for the necessary machinery and equipment. With these proofs of our good intentions we went to the provincial government and put in our application for cutting rights on the Nannabijou. The Kam City Pulp and Paper Company, subsidiary of the International Investment Corporation, of which Gildersleeve had been made president, simultaneously made a bid for the limits. They too bought a site in Kam City and made preparations for the erection of a mill.