UNCERTAINTIES
The automobile purred along the shell road, past the white-sided, green-blinded houses of the retired ship captains and the other well-to-do people of Herringport. The car ran so smoothly that Ruth might have read all the way.
But after the first page or two—those containing the opening scenes of “Plain Mary”—she dared not read farther.
Not yet. It was not that there was a familiar phrase in the upright chirography of the old hermit. The story merely suggested a familiar situation to Ruth’s mind. Thus far it was only a suggestion.
There was something else she felt she must prove or disprove first of all. She sat beside Mr. Hammond quite speechless until they came to the camp on the harbor shore of Beach Plum Point.
He went off cheerfully to his letter writing, and Ruth entered the shack she occupied with Helenand Jennie. She opened her locked writing-case. Under the first flap she inserted her fingers and drew forth the wrinkled scrap of paper she had picked up on the sands.
A glance at the blurred writing assured her that it was the same as that of the hermit’s scenario.
“Flash:—“As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be——”
“Flash:—
“As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be——”
Shakingly Ruth sat down before the cheap little maple table. She spread open the newspaper wrapper and stared again at the title page of “Plain Mary.”
That title was nothing at all like the one she had given her lost scenario. But a title, after all, meant very little.
The several scenes suggested in the beginning of the hermit’s story did not conflict with the plot she had evolved, although they were not her own. She had read nothing so far that would make this story different from her own. The names of the characters were changed and the locations for the first scene were different from those in her script. Nevertheless the action and development of the story might prove to be exactly like hers.
She shrank from going deeper into the hermit’sscript. She feared to find her suspicions true; yet shemustknow.
Finally she began to read. Page after page of the large and sprawling writing she turned over, face down upon the table. Ruth grew so absorbed in the story that she did not note the passing of time. She was truly aware of but one thing. And that seized upon her mind to wring from it both bitterness and anger.
“Want to go back to the port, Miss Ruth?” asked Mr. Hammond. “I want to mail my letters.”
His question startled her. She sprang up, a spot of crimson in either cheek. Had he looked at her, the manager would certainly have noted her strange look.
“I’ll come in a minute,” she called to him in a half-stifled voice.
She laved her eyes and cheeks in cool water, removing such marks of her emotion as she could. Then she bundled up the hermit’s scenario and joined Mr. Hammond in the car.
“Did you look at this?” she asked the producer as he started the motor.
“Bless you, no! What is it? As crazy as the old codger himself?”
“Do you really think that man is crazy?” she asked sharply.
“Why, I don’t really know. Just queerperhaps. It doesn’t seem as though a sane man would live all stark alone over on that sea-beaten point.”
“He is an actor,” declared Ruth. “Your director says so.”
“At least, he does not claim to be, and they usually do, you know,” chuckled Mr. Hammond. “But about this thing——”
“You read it! Then I will tell you something,” said the girl soberly, and she refused to explain further.
“You amaze me,” said the puzzled manager. “If that old codger has succeeded in turning out anything worth while, I certainly shall believe that ‘wonders never cease.’”
“He has got you all fooled. Heisa good actor,” declared Ruth bitterly. Then, as Mr. Hammond turned a puzzled frown upon her, she added, “Tell me what you think of the script, Mr. Hammond, before you speak to—er—John, or whatever his name may be.”
“I certainly am curious now,” he declared.
They got back to the place where the director had arranged to “shoot” the sewing circle scene just as everything was all set for it. Mother Paisley dominated the half circle of women about the long table under the trees. Ruth marveled at the types Mr. Hooley had found in the village.And she marveled further that any group of human beings could appear so wooden.
“Oh, Ruth!” murmured Helen, who was not in this scene, but was an interested spectator, “they will surely spoil the picture again. Poor Mr. Hooley! He takessuchpains.”
It was like playing a child’s game for most of the members of the Herringport Union congregation. They were selfconscious, and felt that they were in a silly situation. Those who were not too serious of demeanor were giggling like schoolgirls.
Yet everything was ready for the cameras. Mr. Hooley’s keen eye ran over all the group. He waved a hand to the camera men.
“Ready camera—action—go!”
The women remained speechless. They merely looked at each other in a helpless way. It was evident they had forgotten all the instructions the director had given them.
But suddenly into the focus of the cameras ran a barefooted urchin waving a newspaper. This was the Alectrion Company’s smartest “kid” actor and a favorite wherever his tousled head, freckled face, and wide grin appeared on the screen. He plunged right at Mother Paisley and thrust the paper into her hand, while he pointed at a certain place on the front page.
“Readthat, Ma Bassett!” cried the news vender.
Mrs. Paisley gave expression first to wonder, then utter amazement, as she read the item Ruth had had inserted in this particular “edition” of theHarpoon. She was a fine old actress and her facial registering of emotion was a marvel. Mr. Hooley had seldom to advise her.
Now his voice was heard above the clack of the cameras:
“Pass it to the lady at your left. That’s it! Cling to the paper. Get your heads together—three of you now!”
The amateur players looked at each other and began to grin. The scene promised to be as big a “fizzle” as the one shot the previous day.
But the woman next to Mrs. Paisley, after looking carelessly at the paper, of a sudden came to life. She seized theHarpoonwith both hands, fairly snatching it out of the actress’ hands. She was too startled to be polite.
“What under the canopy is this here?” she sputtered.
She was a small, wiry, vigorous woman, and she had an expressive, if a vinegary, face. She rose from her seat and forgot all about her “play-acting.”
“What d’you think it says here?” she demanded of her sister-members of the ladies’ aid.
“Sh!”
“Ella Painter, you’re a-bustin’ up the show!” admonished a motherly old person at the end of the table.
But Mrs. Painter did not notice these hushed remarks. She read the item in the paper aloud—and so extravagantly did she mouth the astonishing words that Ruth feared they might be read on her lips when shown on the screen.
“Listen!” Mrs. Painter cried. “Right at the top of the marriage notices! ‘Garside—Smythe. At Perleyvale, Maine, on August twenty-second, the Reverend Elton Garside, of Herringport, and Miss Amy Smythe, of Perleyvale.’ What do you know about that?”
The gasp of amazement that went up from the women of the Herringport Union Church was almost a chorus of anguish. The paper was snatched from hand to hand. Nobody could accuse the amateurs now of being “wooden.”
Not until Mrs. Paisley in the character ofMa Bassett, at the signal from Mr. Hooley, fell back in her chair, exclaiming: “My mercy me! Luella Sprague and the teacher! Who’d have thought it?” did the company in general suspect that something had been “put over on them.”
“All right! All right!” shouted Jim Hooley in high delight, stopping his camera men. “That’sfine! It’s great! Miss Fielding, your scheme worked like a charm.”
The members of the sewing circle began to ask questions.
“Do you mean to say this is in the play?” demanded Mrs. Ella Painter, waving the newspaper and inclined to be indignant.
“Yes, Mrs. Painter. That marriage notice is just a joke,” the director told her. “It certainly gave you ladies a start and—— Well, wait till you see this scene on the screen!”
“But ain’t itso?” cried another. “Why, Mr. Garside—— Why! it’s in theHarpoon.”
“But you won’t find it in anotherHarpoon,” laughed the director, recovering possession of the newspaper. “It’s only a joke. But I positively had to give you ladies a real shock or we’d never have got this scene right.”
“Well, of all the impudence!” began Mrs. Painter.
However, she joined in the laughter a minute later. At best, the women had won from Mr. Hammond enough money to pay for the painting of their church edifice, and they were willing to sacrifice their dignity for that.
COUNTERCLAIMS
“I declare, Ruth! that was a ridiculous thing to do,” exclaimed Helen, when they were on their way back to the Point. “But it certainly brought the sewing circle women all up standing.”
“I’ve been wondering all day what Ruth was up to,” said Tom, who was steering the big car. “I was in on it without understanding her game.”
“Well, it was just what the directer needed,” chuckled Jennie. “Oh, it takes our Ruth to do things.”
“I wonder?” sighed the girl of the Red Mill, in no responsive mood.
She had something very unpleasant before her that she felt she must do, and nothing could raise her spirits. She did not speak to anybody about the hermit’s scenario. She waited for Mr. Hammond to express his opinion of it.
At the camp she found a letter for her from the doctor’s wife who had promised to keep her informed regarding Arabella Montague FitzmauricePike. That young person was doing well and getting fat at the Perkins’ farm. But Mrs. Holmes was quite sure that she had not heard from her father.
“You’ve got another half-orphan on your hands, Ruth,” said Helen. She made it a point always to object to Ruth’s charities. “I don’t believe that man will ever show up again. If he went away with a medicine show——”
“No, no,” said Ruth firmly. “No child would ever respect and love her father as Bella does if he was not good to her. He will turn up.”
Just then Tom called from outside the door of the girls’ shack.
“What say to a moonlight dip off the Point?” he asked. “The tide is not very low. And I missed my splash this morning.”
“We’re with you, Tommy,” responded his sister. “Wait till we get into bathing suits.”
Even Ruth was enthusiastic—to a degree—over this. In twenty minutes they were running up the beach with Tom and Henri toward the end of the Point.
“Let’s go over and get the surf,” suggested Jennie. “I do love surf bathing. All you have to do is to bob up and down in one place.”
“Heavy is lazy even in her sport,” scoffed Helen. “But I’m game for the rough stuff.”
They crossed the neck of land near the hermit’shut. There was a hard beach almost in front of the hut, and up this the breakers rolled and foamed delightfully. The so-called hermit, hearing their voices, came out and sat on a rock to watch them. But he did not offer to speak until Ruth went over to him.
“Mr. Hammond let me read your script, John,” she said coldly.
“Indeed?” he rejoined without emotion.
“Where did you get the idea for that scenario?”
He tapped his head with a long forefinger. “Right inside of that skull. I do my own thinking,” he said.
“You did not have any help about it? You originated the idea of ‘Plain Mary?’”
He nodded. “You ain’t the only person who can write a picture,” he observed. “And I think that this one they are filming for you is silly.”
Ruth stared down at him, but said nothing more. She was ready to go back to camp as soon as the others would, and she remained very silent. Mr. Hammond had been asking for her, Miss Loder said. When Ruth had got into something more presentable than a wet bathing suit, she went to his office.
“What do you know about this?” he demanded in plain amazement. “This story the old man gave me to read is a wonder! It is one of the best ideas I ever saw for the screen. Of course, itneeds fixing up a bit, but it’s great! What did you think of it, Miss Ruth?”
“I am glad you like it, Mr. Hammond,” she said, steadying her voice with difficulty.
“I do like it, I assure you.”
“It ismystory, Mr. Hammond!” she exclaimed. “It is the very scenario that was stolen from me at home. He’s just changed the names of the characters and given it a different title, and spoiled some of the scenes. But a large part of it is copied word for word from my manuscript!”
“Miss Fielding!” gasped the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation.
“I am telling you the truth,” Ruth cried, rather wildly, it must be confessed, and then she broke down and wept.
“My goodness! It can’t be possible! You—you’ve let your mind dwell upon your loss so much——”
“Do you think I am crazy?” she demanded, flaring up at him, her anger drying her tears.
“Certainly not,” he returned gently; yet he looked at her oddly. “But mistakes have been made——”
“Mistakes, indeed! It is no mistake when I recognize my own work.”
“But—but how could this old man have stolen your work—and away back there at the Red Mill?I believe he has lived here on the Point for years. At least, every summer.”
“Then somebody else stole it and he got the script from them. I tell you it is mine!” cried Ruth.
“Miss Fielding! Let us be calm——”
“You would not be calm if you discovered somebody trying to make use of something you had originated, and calling it theirs—no you wouldn’t, Mr. Hammond!”
“But it seems impossible,” he said weakly.
“That old man is an actor—an old-school actor. You can see that easily enough,” she declared. “There was such a person about the Red Mill the day my script was lost. Oh, it’s plain enough.”
“Not so plain, Miss Ruth,” said Mr. Hammond firmly. “And you must not make wild accusations. That will do no good—and may do harm in the end. It does not seem probable to me that this old hermit could have actually stolen your story. A longshore character like him——”
“He’s not!” cried Ruth. “Don’t you see that he is playing a part? He is no fisherman. No longshore character, as you call him, would be as afraid of the sea as he is. He is playing a part—and he plays it just as well as the parts Mr. Hooley gives him to play.”
“Jove! There may be something in that,” murmured the manager.
“He got my script some way, I tell you!” declared Ruth. “I am not going to let anybody maul my story and put it over as his own. No, sir!”
“But—but, Miss Ruth!” exclaimed Mr. Hammond. “How are you going to prove what you say is true?”
“Prove it?”
“Yes. You see, the burden of proof must be on you.”
“But—but don’t you believe me?” she murmured.
“Does it matter what I believe?” he asked her gently. “Remember, this man has entrusted me with a manuscript that he says is original. At least it is written in his own hand. I cannot go back of that unless you have some means of proof that his story is your story. Who did you tell about your plot, and how you worked it out? Did you read the finished manuscript—or any part of it—to any person who can corroborate your statements?”
“Oh, Mr. Hammond!” she cried, with sudden anguish in her voice. “Not a soul! Never to a single, solitary person. The girls, nor Aunt Alvirah, nor Tom——”
She broke down again and he could not soothe her. She wept with abandon, and Mr. Hammond was really anxious for her. He went to the door,whistled for one of the boys, and sent for Mrs. Paisley.
But Ruth recovered her composure—to a degree, at least—before the motherly old actress came.
“Don’t tell anybody! Don’t tell anybody!” she sobbed to Mr. Hammond. “They will think I am crazy! I haven’t a word of proof. Only my word——”
“Against his,” said the manager gravely. “I would accept your word, Miss Ruth, against the world! But we must have some proof before we deliberately accuse this old man of robbing you.”
“Yes, yes. I see. I will be patient—if I can.”
“The thing to do is to find out who this hermit really is,” said Mr. Hammond. “Through discovering his private history we may put our finger on the thing that will aid you with proof. Good-night, my dear. Try to get calm again.”
THE GRILL
Ruth did not go back to her chums until, under Mother Paisley’s comforting influence, she had recovered a measure of her self-possession. The old actress asked no questions as to the cause of Ruth’s state of mind. She had seen too many hysterical girls to feel that the cause of her patient’s breakdown was at all important.
“You just cry all you want to, deary. Right here on Mother Paisley’s shoulder. Crying will do you good. It is the Good Lord’s way of giving us women an outlet for all our troubles. When the last tear is squeezed out much of the pain goes with it.”
Ruth was not ordinarily a crying girl. She had wept more of late, beginning with that day at the Red Mill when her scenario manuscript had been stolen, than in all her life before.
Her tears were now in part an expression of anger and indignation. She was as mad as she could be at this man who called himself “John, thehermit.” For, whether he was the person who had actually stolen her manuscript, he very well knew that his scenario offered to Mr. Hammond was not original with him.
The worst of it was, he had mangled her scenario. Ruth could look upon it in no other way. His changes had merely muddied the plot and cheapened her main idea. She could not forgive that!
The other girls were drowsy when Ruth kissed Mother Paisley good-night and entered the small shack. She was glad to escape any interrogation. By morning she had gained control of herself, but her eyes betrayed the fact that she had not slept.
“You certainly do not look as though you were enjoying yourself down here,” Tom Cameron said to her at breakfast time, and with suspicion. “Maybe we did come to the wrong place for our vacation after all. How about it, Ruth? Shall we start off in the cars again and seek pastures new?”
“Not now, Tom,” she told him, hastily. “I must stay right here.”
“Why?”
“Because——”
“That is no sensible reason.”
“Let me finish,” she said rather crossly. “Because I must see what sort of scenario Mr. Hammond finds—if he finds any—in this contest.”
“Humph! And you said you and scenarioswere done forever! I fancy Mr. Hammond is taking advantage of your good nature.”
“He is not.”
“You are positively snappish, Ruth,” complained Tom. “You’ve changed your mind——”
“Isn’t that a girl’s privilege?”
“Very well, Miladi!” he said, with a deep bow as they rose from the table. “However, you need not give all your attention to these prize stories, need you? Let’s do something besides follow these sun-worshippers around to-day.”
“All right, Tommy-boy,” acclaimed his sister. “What do you suggest?”
“A run along the coast to Reef Harbor where there are a lot of folks we know,” Tom promptly replied.
“Not in that oldTocsin,” cried Jennie. “She’s so small I can’t take off my sweater without tipping her over.”
“Oh, what a whopper!” gasped Helen.
“Never mind,” grinned her twin. “Let Jennie run to the superlatives if she likes. Anyway, I would not dream of going so far as the Harbor in that dinky littleTocsin. I’ve got my eye on just the craft, and I can get her over here in an hour by telephoning to the port. It’s theStazy.”
“Goody!” exclaimed Jennie Stone. “That big blue yacht! And she’s got a regular crew—andeverything. Aunty won’t be afraid to go with us in her.”
“That’s fine, Tom,” said his sister with appreciation.
Even Ruth seemed to take some interest. But she suggested:
“Be sure there is gasoline enough, Tom. ThatStazydoesn’t spread a foot of canvas, and we are not likely to find a gas station out there in the ocean, the way we did in the hills of Massachusetts.”
“Don’t fear, Miss Fidget,” he rejoined. “Are you all game?”
They were. The girls went to “doll up,” to quote the slangy Tom, for Reef Harbor was one of the most fashionable of Maine coast resorts and the knockabout clothing they had been wearing at Beach Plum Point would never do at the Harbor hotels.
TheStazywas a comfortable and fast motor-yacht. As to her sea-worthiness even Tom could not say, but she looked all right. And to the eyes of the members of Ruth Fielding’s party there was no threat of bad weather. So why worry about the pleasure-craft’s balance and her ability to sail the high seas?
“It is only a short run, anyway,” Tom said.
As for Colonel Marchand, he had not the first idea about ships or sailing. He admitted that onlycontinued fair weather and a smooth sea had kept him on deck coming over from France with Jennie and Helen.
At the present time he and Jennie Stone were much too deeply engrossed in each other to think of anything but their own two selves. In a fortnight now, both the Frenchman and Tom would have to return to the battle lines. And they were, deep in their hearts, eager to go back; for they did not dream at this time that the German navy would revolt, that the High Command and the army had lost their morale, and that the end of the Great War was near.
Within Tom’s specified hour the party got under way, boarding theStazyfrom a small boat that came to the camp dock for them. It was not until the yacht was gone with Ruth Fielding and her party that Mr. Hammond set on foot the investigation he had determined upon the night before.
The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation thought a great deal of the girl of the Red Mill. Their friendship was based on something more than a business association. But he knew, too, that after her recent experiences in France and elsewhere, her health was in rather a precarious state.
At least, he was quite sure that Ruth’s nerves were “all out of tune,” as he expressed it, and hebelieved she was not entirely responsible for what she had said.
The girl had allowed her mind to dwell so much upon that scenario she had lost that it might be she was not altogether clear upon the subject. Mr. Hammond had talked with Tom about the robbery at the Red Mill, and it looked to the moving picture producer as though there might be some considerable doubt of Ruth’s having been robbed at all.
In that terrific wind and rain storm almost anything might have blown away. Tom admitted he had seen a barrel sailing through the air at the height of the storm.
“Why couldn’t the papers and note books have been caught up by a gust of wind and carried into the river?” Mr. Hammond asked himself. “The river was right there, and it possesses a strong current.”
The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation knew the Lumano, and the vicinity of the Red Mill as well. It seemed to him very probable that the scenario had been lost. And the gold-mounted fountain pen? Why, that might have easily rolled down a crack in the summer-house floor.
The whole thing was a matter so fortuitous that Mr. Hammond could not accept Ruth’s version of the loss without some doubt, in any case. And then, her suddenly finding in the only good scenariosubmitted to him by any of his company, one that she believed was plagiarized from her lost story, seemed to put a cap on the whole matter. Ruth might be just a little “off soundings,” as the fishermen about Herringport would say. Mr. Hammond was afraid that she had been carried into a situation of mind where suspicion took the place of certainty.
She had absolutely nothing with which to corroborate her statement. Nobody had seen Ruth’s scenario nor had she discussed the plot with any person. Secrecy necessary to the successful production of anything new in the line of picture plays was all right. Mr. Hammond advised it. But in this case it seemed that the scenario writer had been altogether too secret.
Had Ruth not chanced to read the hermit’s script before making her accusation, Mr. Hammond would have felt differently. Better, had she been willing to relate to him in the first place the story of the plot of her scenario and how she had treated it, her present accusation might have seemed more reasonable.
But, having read the really good story scrawled on the scraps of brown paper that John, the hermit, had put in the manager’s hands, the girl had suddenly claimed the authorship of the story. There was nothing to prove her claim. It looked dubious at the best.
John, the hermit, was a grim old man. No matter whether he was some old actor hiding away here on Beach Plum Point or not, he was not a man to give up easily anything that he had once said was his.
The manager was far too wise to accuse the hermit openly, as Ruth had accused him. They would not get far with the old fellow that way, he was sure.
First of all he called the company together and asked if there were any more scenarios to be submitted. “No,” being the answer, he told them briefly that out of the twenty-odd stories he had accepted one that might be whipped into shape for filming—and one only.
Each story submitted had been numbered and the number given to its author. The scripts could now be obtained by the presentation of the numbers. He did not tell them which number had proved successful. Nor did he let it be known that he proposed to try to film the hermit’s production.
Mr. Hooley was using old John on this day in a character part. For these “types” the director usually paid ten or fifteen dollars a day; but John was so successful in every part he was given that Mr. Hooley always paid him an extra five dollars for his work. Money seemed to make no difference in the hermit’s appearance, however. Hewore just as shabby clothing and lived just as plainly as he had when the picture company had come on to the lot.
When work was over for the day, Hooley sent the old man to Mr. Hammond’s office. The president of the company invited the hermit into his shack and gave him a seat. He scrutinized the man sharply as he thus greeted him. It was quite true that the hermit did not wholly fit the character he assumed as a longshore waif.
In the first place, his skin was not tanned to the proper leathery look. His eyes were not those of a man used to looking off over the sea. His hands were too soft and unscarred for a sailor’s. He had never pulled on ropes and handled an oar!
Now that Ruth Fielding had suggested that his character was a disguise, Mr. Hammond saw plainly that she must be right. As he was a good actor of other parts before the camera, so he was a good actor in his part of “hermit.”
“How long have you lived over there on the point, John?” asked Mr. Hammond carelessly.
“A good many years, sir, in summer.”
“How did you come to live there first?”
“I wandered down this way, found the hut empty, turned to and fixed it up, and stayed on.”
He said it quite simply and without the first show of confusion. But this tale of his occupancyof the seaside hut he had repeated frequently, as Mr. Hammond very well knew.
“Where do you go in the winter, John?” the latter asked.
“To where it’s a sight warmer. I don’t have to ask anybody where I shall go,” and now the man’s tone was a trifle defiant.
“I would like to know something more about you,” Mr. Hammond said, quite frankly. “I may be able to do something with your story. We like to know about the person who submits a scenario——”
“That don’t go!” snapped the hermit grimly. “You offered five hundred for a story you could use. If you can use mine, I want the five hundred. And I don’t aim to give you the history of my past along with the story. It’s nobody’s business what or who I am, or where I came from, or where I am going.”
“Hoity-toity!” exclaimed Mr. Hammond. “You are quite sudden, aren’t you? Now, just calm yourself. I haven’t got to take your scenario and pay you five hundred dollars for it——”
“Then somebody else will,” said the hermit, getting up.
“Ah! You are quite sure you have a good story here, are you?”
“I know I have.”
“And how do you know so much?” sharply demanded the moving picture magnate.
“I’ve seen enough of this thing you are doing, now—this ‘Seaside Idyl’ stuff—to know that mine is a hundred per cent. better,” sneered the hermit.
“Whew! You’ve a good opinion of your story, haven’t you?” asked Mr. Hammond. “Did you ever write a scenario before?”
“What is that to you?” returned the other. “I don’t get you at all, Mr. Hammond. All this cross-examination——”
“That will do now!” snapped the manager. “I am not obliged to take your story. You can try it elsewhere if you like,” and he shoved the newspaper-wrapped package toward the end of his desk and nearer the hermit’s hand. “I tell you frankly that I won’t take any story without knowing all about the author. There are too many comebacks in this game.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the other stiffly.
“I don’tknowthat your story is original. Frankly, I have some doubt about that very point.”
The old man did not change color at all. His gray eyes blazed and he was not at all pleasant looking. But the accusation did not seem to surprise him.
“Are you trying to get it away from me for less than you offered?” he demanded.
“You are an old man,” said Mr. Hammond hotly, “and that lets you get away with such a suggestion as that without punishment. I begin to believe that there is something dead wrong with you, John—or whatever your name is.”
He drew back the packet of manuscript, opened a drawer, put it within, and locked the drawer.
“I’ll think this over a little longer,” he said grimly. “At least, until you are willing to be a little more communicative about yourself. I would be glad to use your story with some fixing up, if I was convinced you really wrote it all. But you have got to show me—or give me proper references.”
“Give me back the scenario, then!” exclaimed the old man, his eyes blazing hotly.
“No. Not yet. I can take my time in deciding upon the manuscripts submitted in this contest. You will have to wait until I decide,” said Mr. Hammond, waving the man out of his office.
A HERMIT FOR REVENUE ONLY
The bays and inlets of the coast of Maine have the bluest water dotted by the greenest islands that one can imagine. And such wild and romantic looking spots as some of these islands are!
Just at this time, too, a particular tang of romance was in the air. The Germans had threatened to devastate our Atlantic coast from Eastport to Key West with a flock of submersibles. There actually were a few submarines lurking about the pathways of our coastwise shipping; but, as usual, the Hun’s boast came to naught.
The young people on theStazyscarcely expected to see a German periscope during the run to Reef Harbor. Yet they did not neglect watching out for something of the kind. Skipper Phil Gordon, a young man with one arm but a full and complete knowledge of this coast and how to coax speed out of a gasoline engine, ordered his “crew” of one boy to remain sharply on the lookout, as well.
TheStazydid not, however, run far outside. The high and rocky headland that marked the entrance to Reef Harbor came into view before they had more than dropped the hazy outline of Beach Plum Point astern.
But until they rounded the promontory and entered the narrow inlet to Reef Harbor the town and the summer colony was entirely invisible.
“If a German sub should stick its nose in here,” sighed Helen, “it would make everybody ashore get up and dust. Don’t you think so?”
“Is it the custom to do so when the enemy, he arrive?” asked Colonel Marchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the Yankee was still a puzzle.
“Sure!” replied Tom, grinning. “Sure, Henri! These New England women would clean house, no matter what catastrophe arrived.”
“Oh, don’t suggest such horrid possibilities,” cried Jennie. “And they are only fooling you, Henri.”
“Look yonder!” exclaimed Captain Tom, waving an instructive hand. “Behold! Let the Kaiser’s underseas boat come. That little tin lizzie of the sea is ready for it. Depth bombs and all!”
The grim looking drab submarine chaser lay at the nearest dock, the faint spiral of smoke rising from her stack proclaiming that she was ready for immediate work. There was a tower, too, onthe highest point on the headland from which a continual watch was kept above the town.
“O-o-oh!” gurgled Jennie, snuggling up to Henri. “Suppose one of those German subs shelled the movie camp back there on Beach Plum Point!”
“They would likely spoil a perfectly good picture, then,” said Helen practically. “Think of Ruthie’s ‘Seaside Idyl!’.
“Oh, say!” Helen went on. “They tell me that old hermit has submitted a story in the contest. What do you suppose it is like, Ruth?”
The girl of the Red Mill was sitting beside Aunt Kate. She flushed when she said:
“Why shouldn’t he submit one?”
“But that hermit isn’t quite right in his head, is he?” demanded Ruth’s chum.
“I don’t know that it is his head that is wrong,” murmured Ruth, shaking her own head doubtfully.
Here Jennie broke in. “Is auntie letting you read her story, Ruth?” she asked slyly.
“Now, Jennie Stone!” exclaimed their chaperon, blushing.
“Well, you are writing one. You know you are,” laughed her niece.
“I—I am just trying to see if I can write such a story,” stammered Aunt Kate.
“Well, I am sure you could make up a betterscenario than that old grouch of a hermit,” Helen declared, warmly.
Ruth did not add anything to this discussion. What she had discovered regarding the hermit’s scenario was of too serious a nature to be publicly discussed.
Her interview the evening before with Mr. Hammond regarding the matter had left Ruth in a most uncertain frame of mind. She did not know what to do about the stolen scenario. She shrank from telling even Helen or Tom of her discovery.
To tell the truth, Mr. Hammond’s seeming doubt—not of her truthfulness but of her wisdom—had shaken the girl’s belief in herself. It was a strange situation, indeed. She thought of the woman she had found wandering about the mountain in the storm who had lost control of both her nerves and her mind, and Ruth wondered if it could be possible that she, too, was on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck.
Had she deceived herself about this hermit’s story? Had she allowed her mind to dwell on her loss until she was quite unaccountable for her mental decisions? To tell the truth, this thought frightened the girl of the Red Mill a little.
Practical as Ruth Fielding ordinarily was, she must confess that the shock she had received when the hospital in France was partly wrecked, anaccount of which is given in “Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound,” had shaken the very foundations of her being. She shuddered even now when she thought of what she had been through in France and on the voyage coming back to America.
She realized that even Tom and Helen looked at her sometimes when she spoke of her lost scenario in a most peculiar way. Was it a fact that she had allowed her loss to unbalance—well, her judgment? Suppose she was quite wrong about that scenario the hermit had submitted to Mr. Hammond? The thought frightened her!
At least, she had nothing to say upon the puzzling subject, not even to her best and closest friends. She was sorry indeed two hours later when they were at lunch on the porch of the Reef Harbor House with some of the Camerons’ friends that Helen brought the conversation around again to the Beach Plum Point “hermit.”
“Arealhermit?” cried Cora Grimsby, a gay, blonde, irresponsible little thing, but with a heart of gold. “And is he a hermit for revenue only, too?”
“What do you mean by that?” Helen demanded.
“Why, we have a hermit here, you see. Over on Reef Island itself. If you give us a sail in your motor yacht after lunch I’ll introduce our hermit to you. But you must buy something ofhim, or otherwise ‘cross his palm with silver.’ He told me one day that he was not playing a nut for summer folks to laugh at just for the good of his health.”
“Frank, I must say,” laughed Tom Cameron.
“I guess he’s been in the hermit business before,” said Cora, sparkling at Tom in his uniform. “But this is his first season at the Harbor.”
“I wonder if he belongs to the hermit’s union and carries a union card,” suggested Jennie Stone soberly. “I don’t think we should patronize non-union hermits.”
“Goody!” cried Cora, clapping her hands. “Let’s ask him.”
Ruth said nothing. She rather wished she might get out of the trip to Reef Island without offending anybody. But that seemed impossible. She really had seen all the hermits she cared to see!
She could not, however, be morose and absent-minded in a party of which Cora Grimsby and Jennie Stone were the moving spirits. It was a gay crowd that crossed the harbor in theStazyto land at a roughly built dock under the high bluff of the wooded island.
“There’s the hermit!” Cora cried, as they landed. “See him sitting on the rock before the door of his cabin?”
“Right on the job,” suggested Tom.
“No unlucky city fly shall escape that spider’s web,” cried Jennie.
He was a patriarchal looking man. His beard swept his breast. He wore shabby garments, was barefooted, and carried a staff as though he were lame or rheumatic.
“Dresses the part much better than our hermit does,” Helen said, in comment.
The man met the party from theStazywith a broad smile that displayed a toothless cavity of a mouth. His red-rimmed eyes were moist looking, not to say bleary. Ruth smelled a distinct alcoholic odor on his breath. A complete drouth had evidently not struck this part of the State of Maine.
“Good day to ye!” said the hermit. “Some o’ you young folks I ain’t never seed before.”
“They are my friends,” Cora hastened to explain, “and they come from Beach Plum Point.”
“Do tell! If you air goin’ back to-night, better make a good v’y’ge of it. We’re due for a blow, I allow. You folks ain’t stoppin’ right on the p’int, be ye?”
Ruth, to whom he addressed this last question, answered that they were, and explained that there was a large camp there this season, and why.
“Wal, wal! I want to know! Somebody did say something to me about a gang of movin’picture folks comin’ there; but I reckoned they was a-foolin’ me.”
“There is a good sized party of us,” acknowledged Ruth.
“Wal, wal! Mebbe that fella I let my shack to will make out well, then, after all. Warn’t no sign of ye on the beach when I left three weeks ago”.
“Did you live there on the point?” asked Ruth.
“Allus do winters. But the pickin’s is better over here at the Harbor at this time of year.”
“And the man you left in your place? Where is your house on the point?”
The hermit “for revenue only” described the hut on the eastern shore in which the other “hermit” lived. Ruth became much interested.
“Tell me,” she said, while the others examined the curios the hermit had for sale, “what kind of man is this you left in your house? And who is he?”
“Law bless ye!” said the old man. “I don’t know him from Adam’s off ox. Never seed him afore. But he was trampin’ of it; and he didn’t have much money. An’ to tell you the truth, Miss, that hutch of mine ain’t wuth much money.”
She described the man who had been playing the hermit since the Alectrion Film Corporation crowd had come to Beach Plum Point.
“That’s the fella,” said the old man, nodding.
Ruth stood aside while he waited on his customers and digested these statements regarding the man who claimed the authorship of the scenario of “Plain Mary.”
Not that Ruth would have desired to acknowledge the scenario in its present form. She felt angry every time she thought of how her plot had been mangled.
But she was glad to learn all that was known about the Beach Plum Point hermit. And she had learned one most important fact.
He was not a regular hermit. As Jennie Stone suggested, he was not a “union hermit” at all. And he was a stranger to the neighborhood of Herringport. If he had been at the Point only three weeks, as this old man said, “John, the hermit,” might easily have come since Ruth’s scenario was stolen back there at the Red Mill!
Her thoughts began to mill again about this possibility. She wished she was back at the camp so as to put the strange old man through a cross-examination regarding himself and where he had come from. She had no suspicion as to how Mr. Hammond had so signally failed in this very matter.
AN ARRIVAL
Mr. Hammond was in no placid state of mind himself after the peculiarly acting individual who called himself “John, the hermit,” left his office. The very fact that the man refused to tell anything about his personal affairs—who he really was, or where he came from—induced the moving picture producer to believe there must be something wrong about him.
Mr. Hammond went to the door of the shack and watched the man tramping up the beach toward the end of the point. What a dignified stride he had! Rather, it was the stride of a poseur—like nothing so much as that of the old-time tragedian, made famous by the Henry Irving school of actors.
“An ancient ‘ham’ sure enough, just as the boys say,” muttered the manager.
The so-called hermit disappeared. The moving picture people were gathering for dinner. The sun, although still above the horizon, was dimmedby cloud-banks which were rising steadily to meet clouds over the sea.
A wan light played upon the heaving “graybacks” outside the mouth of the harbor. The wind whined among the pines which grew along the ridge of Beach Plum Point.
A storm was imminent. Just as Mr. Hammond took note of this and wished that Ruth Fielding and her party had returned, a snorting automobile rattled along the shell road and halted near the camp.
“Is this the Alectrion Film Company?” asked a shrill voice.
“This is the place, Miss,” said the driver of the small car.
The chauffeur ran his jitney from the railroad station and was known to Mr. Hammond. The latter went nearer.
Out of the car stepped a girl—a very young girl to be traveling alone. She was dressed in extreme fashion, but very cheaply. Her hair was bobbed and she wore a Russian blouse of cheap silk. Her skirt was very narrow, her cloth boots very high, and the heels of them were like those of Jananese clogs.
What with the skimpy skirt and the high heels she could scarcely walk. She was laden with two bags—one an ancient carpet-bag that must have been seventy-five years old, and the other a brighttan one of imitation leather with brass clasps. She wore a coal-scuttle hat pulled down over her eyes so that her face was quite extinguished.
Altogether her get-up was rather startling. Mr. Hammond saw Jim Hooley come out of his tent to stare at the new arrival. She certainly was a “type.”
There was a certain kind of prettiness about the girl, and aside from her incongruous garments she was not unattractive—when her face was revealed. Mr. Hammond’s interest increased. He approached the spot where the girl had been left by the jitney driver.
“You came to see somebody?” he asked kindly. “Who is it you wish to see?”
“Is this the moving picture camp, Mister?” she returned.
“Yes,” said the manager, smiling. “Are you acquainted with somebody who works here?”
“Yes. I am Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice,” said the girl, with an air that seemed to show that she expected to be recognized when she had recited her name.
Mr. Hammond refrained from open laughter. He only said:
“Why—that is nice. I am glad to meet you, my dear. Who are you looking for?”
“I want to see my pa, of course. I guess you know whoheis?”
“I am not sure that I do, my dear.”
“You don’t—Say! who are you?” demanded Bella, with some sharpness.
“I am only the manager of the company. Who is your father, child?”
“Well, of all the—— Wouldn’t that give you your nevergitovers!” exclaimed Bella, in broad amazement. “Say! I guess my pa is your leading man.”
“Mr. Hasbrouck? Impossible!”
“Never heard of him,” said Bella, promptly. “Montague Fitzmaurice, I mean.”
“And I never heard of him,” declared Mr. Hammond, both puzzled and amused.
“What?” gasped the girl, almost stunned by this statement. “Maybe you know him as Mr. Pike. That is our honest-to-goodness name—Pike.”
“I am sorry that you are disappointed, my dear,” said the manager kindly. “But don’t be worried. If you expected to meet your father here, perhaps he will come later. But really, I have no such person as that on my staff at the present time.”
“I don’t know—— Why!” cried Bella, “he sent me money and said he was working here. I—I didn’t tell him I was coming. I just got sick of those Perkinses, and I took the money and went to Boston and got dressed up, and then came onhere. I—I just about spent all the money he sent me to get here.”
“Well, that was perhaps unwise,” said Mr. Hammond. “But don’t worry. Come along now to Mother Paisley. She will look out for you—and you can stay with us until your father appears. There is some mistake somewhere.”
By this speech he warded off tears. Bella hastily winked them back and squared her thin shoulders.
“All right, sir,” she said, picking up the bags again. “Pa will make it all right with you. He wrote in his letter as if he had a good engagement.”
Mr. Hammond might have learned something further about this surprising girl at the time, but just as he introduced her to Mother Paisley one of the men came running from the point and hailed him:
“Mr. Hammond! There’s a boat in trouble off the point. I think she was making for this harbor. Have you got a pair of glasses?”
Mr. Hammond had a fine pair of opera glasses, and he produced them from his desk while he asked:
“What kind of boat is it, Maxwell?”
“Looks like that blue motor that Miss Fielding and her friends went off in this morning. We sawit coming along at top speed. And suddenly it stopped. They can’t seem to manage it——”
The manager hurried with Maxwell along the sands. The sky was completely overcast now, and the wind whipped the spray from the wave tops into their faces. The weather looked dubious indeed, and the manager of the film corporation was worried before even he focused his glasses upon the distant motor-boat.
TROUBLE—PLENTY
Even Ruth Fielding had paid no attention to the warning of the Reef Island hermit regarding a change in the weather, in spite of the fact that she was anxious to return to the camp near Herringport. It was not until theStazywas outside the inlet late in the afternoon that Skipper Phil Gordon noted the threatening signs in sea and sky.
“That’s how it goes,” the one-armed mariner said. “When we aren’t dependent on the wind to fill our canvas, we neglect watching every little weather change. She’s going to blow by and by.”
“Do you think it will be a real storm?” asked Ruth, who sat beside him at the steering wheel and engine, watching how he managed the mechanism.
“Maybe. But with good luck we will make Beach Plum Point long before it amounts to anything.”
The long graybacks were rather pleasant to ride over at first. Even Aunt Kate was not troubledby the prospect. It was so short a run to the anchorage behind the Point that nobody expressed fear.
When the spray began to fly over the bows the girls merely squealed a bit, although they hastily found extra wraps. If theStazyplunged and shipped half a sea now and then, nobody was made anxious. And soon the Point was in plain view.
To make the run easier, however, Skipper Gordon had sailed the motor-yacht well out to sea. When he shifted the helm to run for the entrance to the bay, the waves began to slap against theStazy’sside. She rolled terrifically and the aspect of affairs was instantly changed.
“Oh, dear me!” moaned Jennie Stone. “How do you feel, Henri? I did not bargain for this rough stuff, did you? Oh!”
“‘Mister Captain, stop the ship, I want to get off and walk!’” sang Helen gaily. “Don’t lose all hope, Heavy. You’ll never sink if you do go overboard.”
“Isn’t she mean?” sniffed the plump girl. “And I am only afraid for Henri’s sake.”
“I don’t like this for my own sake,” murmured Aunt Kate.
“Are you cold, dear?” her niece asked, with quick sympathy. “Here! I don’t really need this cape with my heavy sweater.”
She removed the heavy cloth garment from her own shoulders and with a flirt sought to place it around Aunt Kate. The wind swooped down just then with sudden force. TheStazyrolled to leeward.
“Oh! Stop it!”
Bulging under pressure of the wind, the cape flew over the rail. Jennie tried to clutch it again; Henri plunged after it, too. Colliding, the two managed between them to miss the garment altogether. It dropped into the water just under the rail.
“Of all the clumsy fingers!” ejaculated Helen. But she could not seize the wrap, although she darted for it. Nor could Ruth help, she being still farther forward.
“Now, you’ve done it!” complained Aunt Kate.
The boat began to rise on another roller. The cape was sucked out of sight under the rail. The next moment the whirling propeller was stopped—so abruptly that theStazyshook all over.
“Oh! what has happened?” shrieked Helen.
Ruth started up, and Tom seized her arm to steady her. But the girl of the Red Mill did not express any fear. The shock did not seem to affect her so much as it did the other girls. Here was a real danger, and Ruth did not lose her self-possession.
Phil Gordon had shut off the power, and themotor-boat began to swing broadside to the rising seas.
“The propeller is broken!” cried Tom.
“She’s jammed. That cape!” gasped the one-armed skipper. “Here! Tend to this till I see what can be done. Jack!” he shouted to his crew. “This way—lively, now!”
But Ruth slipped into his place before Tom could do so.
“I know how to steer, Tommy,” she declared. “And I understand the engine. Give him a hand if he needs you.”
“Oh, we’ll turn turtle!” shrieked Jennie, as the boat rolled again.
“You’ll never become a turtle, Jen,” declared Tom, plunging aft. “Turtles are dumb!”
TheStazywas slapped by a big wave, “just abaft the starboard bow,” to be real nautical, and half a ton of sea-water washed over the forward deck and spilled into the standing-room of the craft.
Henri had wisely closed the door of the cabin. The water foamed about their feet. Ruth found herself knee deep for a moment in this flood. She whirled the wheel over, trying to bring up the head of the craft to meet the next wave.
“Oh, my dear!” groaned Jennie Stone. “We are going to be drowned.”
“Drowned, your granny!” snapped Helen angrily. “Don’t be such a silly, Jennie.”
Ruth stood at the wheel with more apparent calmness than any of them. Her hair had whipped out of its fastenings and streamed over her shoulders. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks aglow.
Helen, staring at her, suddenly realized that this was the old Ruth Fielding. Her chum had not looked so much alive, so thoroughly competent and ready for anything, before for weeks.
“Why—why, Ruthie!” Helen murmured, “I believe you like this.”
Her chum did not hear the words, but she suddenly flashed Helen a brilliant smile. “Keep up your pluck, child!” she shouted. “We’ll come out all right.”
Again theStazystaggered under the side swipe of a big wave.
“Ye-ow!” yelped Tom in the stern, almost diving overboard.
“Steady!” shouted Skipper Gordon, excitedly.
“Steady she is, Captain!” rejoined Ruth Fielding, and actually laughed.
“How can you, Ruth?” complained Jennie, clinging to Henri Marchand. “And when we are about to drown.”
“Weeping will not save us,” flung back Ruth.
Her strong hands held the wheel-spokes witha grip unbreakable. She could force theStazy’shead to the seas.
“Can you start the engine on the reverse, Miss?” bawled Gordon.
“I can try!” flashed Ruth. “Say when.”
In a moment the cry came: “Ready!”
“Aye, aye!” responded Ruth, spinning the flywheel.
The spark caught almost instantly. The exhaust sputtered.
“Now!” yelled the skipper.
Ruth threw the lever. The boat trembled like an automobile under the propulsion of the engine. The propeller shaft groaned.
“Ye-ow!” shouted the excited Tom again.
This time he sprawled back into the bottom of the boat, tearing away a good half of Jennie’s cape in his grip. The rest of the garment floated to the surface. It was loose from the propeller.
“Full speed ahead!” shouted the one-armed captain of the motor-boat.
Ruth obeyed the command. TheStazystaggered into the next wave. The water that came in over her bow almost drowned them, but Ruth, hanging to the steering wheel, brought the craft through the roller without swamping her.
“Good for our Ruth!” shouted Helen, as soon as she could get her breath.
“Oh, Ruth! you always come to our rescue,” declared Jennie gratefully.
“Hi! I thought you were a nervous wreck, young lady,” Tom sputtered, scrambling forward to relieve her. “Get you into a tight corner, and you show what you are made of, all right.”
The girl of the Red Mill smiled at them. She had done something! Nor did she feel at all overcome by the effort. The danger through which they had passed had inspired rather than frightened her.
“Why, I’m all right,” she told Tom when he reached her. “This is great! We’ll be behind the shelter of the Point in a few minutes. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“You’re all right, Ruth,” Tom repeated, admiringly. “I thought you’d lost your grip, but I see you haven’t. You are the same old Ruthie Fielding, after all.”