CHAPTER XV
AN AMAZING SITUATION
"'Ghost'?" cried Ruth Fielding. "Let me see it! Remember the campus ghostback at old Briarwood, Helen? I haven't seen a ghost since that time."
"Ugh! Get this big elephant off of me!" grunted her chum, impolitely aswell as angrily. "_She's_ no ghost, I do assure you. She's of the earth,earthy, and no mistake! Ouch! Get off, Heavy!"
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned the plump girl. "I--I saw them. Three of them!"
"Sounds like a three-ring circus," snapped Helen.
But Ruth was peering through the window. She saw nothing, and complainedthereof:
"Jen has had a nightmare. I don't see a thing."
"Nightmare, your granny!" sputtered the plump girl, finally rolling offher half crushed friend. "I saw it--them--_those_!"
"Your grammar is so mixed I wouldn't believe you on oath," declared Helen,getting to her own bare feet and paddling back to her cot for slippersand a negligee.
"O-o-oh, it is chilly," agreed Ruth, grabbing a wrap, too.
"Do tell us about it, Jennie," she begged. "Did you see your ghost throughthe window here?"
"It isn't my ghost!" denied the plump girl. "I'm alive, ain't I?"
"But you're not conscious," grumbled Helen.
"I can see!" wailed Jennie. "I haven't lost my eyesight."
"Stop!" Ruth urged. "Let us get at the foundation of this trouble. You sayyou saw----"
"I saw what I saw!"
"Oh, see-saw!" cried Helen. "We're all loony, now."
Ruth was about to ask another question, but she was again looking throughthe window. She suddenly bit off a cry of her own. She had to confess thatthe sight she saw was startling.
"Is--is that the ghost, Jennie?" she breathed, seizing the plump girl byher arm and dragging her forward.
Jennie gave one frightened look through the window and immediately clappedher palms over her eyes.
"Ow!" she wailed in muffled tones. "They're coming back."
They were, indeed! Three white figures in Indian file came stalking upthe long dock. They approached the camp in a spectral procession and hadshe been awakened to see them first of all, Ruth might have been startledherself.
Helen peered over her chum's shoulder and in teeth-chattering monotonebreathed in Ruth's ear the query:
"What is it?"
"It--it's Heavy's ghost."
"Not mine! Not mine!" denied the plump girl.
"Oh!" gasped Helen, spying the stalking white figures.
It was the moonlight made them appear so ghostly. Ruth knew that, ofcourse, at once. And then----
"Who ever saw ghosts carrying garbage cans before?" ejaculated the girl ofthe Red Mill. "Mercy me, Heavy! do stop your wailing. It is the chef andhis two assistants who have got up to dump the garbage on the out-goingtide. What a perfect scare-cat you are!"
"You don't mean it, Ruth?" whimpered the plump girl. "Is that _all_ theywere?"
Helen began to giggle. And it covered her own fright. Ruth was ratherannoyed.
"If you had remained in bed and minded your own business," she said toJennie, "you would not have seen ghosts, or got us up to see them. Now goback to sleep and behave yourself."
"Yes, ma'am," murmured the abashed Jennie Stone. "How silly of me! I wasnever afraid of a cook before--no, indeed."
Helen continued to giggle spasmodically; but she fell asleep soon. As forJennie, she began to breathe heavily almost as soon as her head touchedthe pillow. But Ruth must needs lie awake for hours, and naturally theteeth of her mind began to knaw at the problem of that bit of paper shehad found in the sand.
The more she thought of it the less easy it was to discard the idea thatthe writing on the paper was a quotation from her own scenario script. Itseemed utterly improbable that two people should use that same expressionas a "flash" in a scenario.
Yet, if this paper was a connecting link between her stolen manuscript andthe thief, _who was the thief_?
It would seem, of course, if this supposition were granted, that somemember of the company of film actors Mr. Hammond had there at Beach PlumPoint had stolen the scenario. At least, the stolen scenario must be inthe possession of some member of the company.
Who could it be? Naturally Ruth considered this unknown must be one of thecompany who wished Mr. Hammond to accept and produce a scenario.
Ruth finally fell into a troubled sleep with the determination in her mindto take more interest in the proposed scenario-writing contest than shehad at first intended.
She could not imagine how anybody could take her work and change it sothat she would not recognize it! The plot of the story was too wellwrought and the working out of it too direct.
She did not think that she had it perfect. Only that she had perfected theidea as well as she was able. But changing it would not hide from her therecognition of her own brain-child.
So after breakfast she went to Mr. Hammond to make inquiry about thescenario contest.
"Ha, ha! So you are coming to yourself, Miss Ruth!" he chuckled. "I toldyou you would feel different. I only wish _you_ would get a real smartidea for a picture."
"Nothing like that!" she told him, shaking her head. "I could not think ofwriting a new scenario. You don't know what it means to me--the loss ofthat picture I had struggled so long with and thought so much about. I----
"But let us not talk of it," she hastened to add. "I am curious regardingthe stories that have been offered to you."
"You need not fear competition," he replied. "Just as I told you, allthese perfectly good acting people base their scenarios on dramas theyhave played or seen played. They haven't got the idea of writing for thescreen at all, although they work before the camera."
"And that is no wonder!" exclaimed Ruth. "The way the directors takescenes, the actors never get much of an idea of the continuity of thestory they are making. But these stories?"
"So far, I haven't found a possible scenario. And I have looked at morethan a score."
"You don't mean it!"
"I most certainly do," he assured her. "Want to look at them?"
"Why--yes," confessed Ruth. "I am curious, as I tell you."
"Go to it!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond, opening a drawer of his desk andpointing to the pile of manuscripts within. "Consider yourself at homehere. I am going over to the port with Director Hooley and most of themembers of the company. We have found just the location for the shootingof that scene in your 'Seaside Idyl' where the ladies' aid society holdsits 'gossip session' in the grove--remember?"
"Oh, yes," Ruth replied, not much interested, as she took the firstscenario out of the drawer.
"And Hooley's found some splendid types, too, around the village. Theyreally have a sewing circle connected with the Herringport Union Church,and I have agreed to help the ladies pay for having the church edificepainted if they will let us film a session of the society with ourprincipal character actors mixed in with the local group. The sun is goodto-day."
He went away, and a little later Ruth heard the automobiles start forHerringport. She had the forenoon to herself, for the rest of her partyhad gone out in a motor boat fishing--a party from which she had excusedherself.
Eagerly she began to examine the scenarios submitted to Mr. Hammond. Thepossibility that she might find one of them near enough like her own loststory to suggest that it had been plagiarized, made Ruth's heart beatfaster.
She could not forget the quotation on the scrap of brown paper. Somebodyon this Point--and it seemed that the "somebody" must be one of the movingpicture company--had written that quotation from her scenario. She feltthat this could not be denied.
Ruth Fielding Down East; Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point Page 15
