“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.”
“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.”
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.