As the party approached the château a plump, middle-aged woman with a kindly, beaming face came out on the verandah and down the steps to the walk.
It was Mrs. Johnson, Miss Stone’s companion.
The Indians eased down the sedan, and, as Miss Stone stepped out, quickly carried it away to the rear of the château, Ogima Bush striding away with them.
“Josie!” cried the elder woman as she embraced the other. “I was really beginning to think something had happened.”
Bewildered, the girl looked into the face of her friend. “Happened?” she echoed. “I should say something _has_ happened. I never dreamed of meeting you here.”
“Why Josie, dear, what’s wrong? Didn’t you send word for me to come yesterday morning?”
“I send word? I never sent any such word: I didn’t know I was coming myself!”
“Well, for the land’s sake! They came after you had gone away with Mr. Hammond yesterday morning and told me you were moving right away back to a bungalow in the mountain. Mr. Smith said—”
“Mr. Smith—the superintendent? Was he there?”
“Why, yes, Josie. It was he who suggested that it would much facilitate matters if I came here first to see that the Indian help set the bungalow in order. He was awfully nice about it, and they took me around the other side of the point in his motorboat. Then the Indians carried me up in that sedan to the entrance you came through to-day.”
“Well!” It was all Josephine Stone could say for her pent-up indignation. So this was Acey Smith’s work!
She saw through it all now. He had thought she would immediately accept his suggestion yesterday morning and come up to this place; so sure had he been, that he had lured Mrs. Johnson up here while she was out with Louis Hammond. Then—then when she had refused unless he explained, he had hired that hateful, horrible Indian and his band to carry her off by force. When she next saw Acey Smith—well, he’d know a piece of her mind about it!
But the elder woman was proceeding: “When the afternoon passed and you didn’t come, I began to feel worried, Josie, until word was brought up by one of the Indians that you couldn’t come till this morning. I was a little nervous in that big house all alone except for those Indians, but they seemed ready to do everything for me and I kept the electric lights going all night. Really, dear, it’s a wonderful place. Like something you’d read about in a story-book—old, old furniture, great big rooms and huge fire-places and wall mirrors. And away off in one wing is a library full of queer books, and back of it again is a laboratory such as scientists use. But it’s locked up and you can see through the glass door that there’s dust over everything and it hasn’t been used for years.”