AN AMAZING SITUATION
"'Ghost'?" cried Ruth Fielding. "Let me see it! Remember the campus ghost
back 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 as
well 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 complained
thereof:
"Jen has had a nightmare. I don't see a thing."
"Nightmare, your granny!" sputtered the plump girl, finally rolling off
her 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 slippers
and 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 through
the 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 say
you 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 through
the window. She suddenly bit off a cry of her own. She had to confess that
the sight she saw was startling.
"Is--is that the ghost, Jennie?" she breathed, seizing the plump girl by
her arm and dragging her forward.
Jennie gave one frightened look through the window and immediately clapped
her 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 up
the long dock. They approached the camp in a spectral procession and had
she been awakened to see them first of all, Ruth might have been startled
herself.
Helen peered over her chum's shoulder and in teeth-chattering monotone
breathed 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, of
course, at once. And then----
"Who ever saw ghosts carrying garbage cans before?" ejaculated the girl of
the Red Mill. "Mercy me, Heavy! do stop your wailing. It is the chef and
his two assistants who have got up to dump the garbage on the out-going
tide. What a perfect scare-cat you are!"
"You don't mean it, Ruth?" whimpered the plump girl. "Is that _all_ they
were?"
Helen began to giggle. And it covered her own fright. Ruth was rather
annoyed.
"If you had remained in bed and minded your own business," she said to
Jennie, "you would not have seen ghosts, or got us up to see them. Now go
back to sleep and behave yourself."
"Yes, ma'am," murmured the abashed Jennie Stone. "How silly of me! I was
never afraid of a cook before--no, indeed."
Helen continued to giggle spasmodically; but she fell asleep soon. As for
Jennie, she began to breathe heavily almost as soon as her head touched
the pillow. But Ruth must needs lie awake for hours, and naturally the
teeth of her mind began to knaw at the problem of that bit of paper she
had found in the sand.
The more she thought of it the less easy it was to discard the idea that
the writing on the paper was a quotation from her own scenario script. It
seemed utterly improbable that two people should use that same expression
as a "flash" in a scenario.
Yet, if this paper was a connecting link between her stolen manuscript and
the thief, _who was the thief_?
It would seem, of course, if this supposition were granted, that some
member of the company of film actors Mr. Hammond had there at Beach Plum
Point had stolen the scenario. At least, the stolen scenario must be in
the possession of some member of the company.
Who could it be? Naturally Ruth considered this unknown must be one of the
company who wished Mr. Hammond to accept and produce a scenario.
Ruth finally fell into a troubled sleep with the determination in her mind
to take more interest in the proposed scenario-writing contest than she
had at first intended.
She could not imagine how anybody could take her work and change it so
that she would not recognize it! The plot of the story was too well
wrought and the working out of it too direct.
She did not think that she had it perfect. Only that she had perfected the
idea as well as she was able. But changing it would not hide from her the
recognition of her own brain-child.
So after breakfast she went to Mr. Hammond to make inquiry about the
scenario contest.
"Ha, ha! So you are coming to yourself, Miss Ruth!" he chuckled. "I told
you you would feel different. I only wish _you_ would get a real smart
idea for a picture."
"Nothing like that!" she told him, shaking her head. "I could not think of
writing a new scenario. You don't know what it means to me--the loss of
that 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 regarding
the stories that have been offered to you."
"You need not fear competition," he replied. "Just as I told you, all
these perfectly good acting people base their scenarios on dramas they
have played or seen played. They haven't got the idea of writing for the
screen at all, although they work before the camera."
"And that is no wonder!" exclaimed Ruth. "The way the directors take
scenes, the actors never get much of an idea of the continuity of the
story they are making. But these stories?"
"So far, I haven't found a possible scenario. And I have looked at more
than 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 and
pointing to the pile of manuscripts within. "Consider yourself at home
here. I am going over to the port with Director Hooley and most of the
members of the company. We have found just the location for the shooting
of that scene in your 'Seaside Idyl' where the ladies' aid society holds
its 'gossip session' in the grove--remember?"
"Oh, yes," Ruth replied, not much interested, as she took the first
scenario out of the drawer.
"And Hooley's found some splendid types, too, around the village. They
really have a sewing circle connected with the Herringport Union Church,
and I have agreed to help the ladies pay for having the church edifice
painted if they will let us film a session of the society with our
principal character actors mixed in with the local group. The sun is good
to-day."
He went away, and a little later Ruth heard the automobiles start for
Herringport. She had the forenoon to herself, for the rest of her party
had gone out in a motor boat fishing--a party from which she had excused
herself.
Eagerly she began to examine the scenarios submitted to Mr. Hammond. The
possibility that she might find one of them near enough like her own lost
story to suggest that it had been plagiarized, made Ruth's heart beat
faster.
She could not forget the quotation on the scrap of brown paper. Somebody
on this Point--and it seemed that the "somebody" must be one of the moving
picture company--had written that quotation from her scenario. She felt
that this could not be denied.