"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 ma.n.u.script 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 compet.i.tion," 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 a.s.sured 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 princ.i.p.al 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 sc.r.a.p 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.

CHAPTER XVI

RUTH SOLVES ONE PROBLEM

Had Ruth Fielding been confronted with the question: "Did she expect to find a clue to the ident.i.ty of the person who had stolen her scenario before she left the Red Mill?" she could have made no confident answer.

She did not know what she would find when she sat down at Mr. Hammond's desk for the purpose of looking over the submitted stories.

Doubt and suspicion, however, enthralled her mind. She was both curious and anxious.

Ruth had no particular desire to read the ma.n.u.scripts. In any case she did not presume Mr. Hammond desired her advice about selecting a script for filming.

She skimmed through the first story. It had not a thing in it that would suggest in the faintest way any familiarity of the author with her own lost scenario.

For two hours she fastened her attention upon one after another of the scenarios, often by main will-power, because of the utter lack of interest in the stories the writers had tried to put over.

Without being at all egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script, and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a much better story.

But not a trace of her original idea and its development was to be found in these ma.n.u.scripts. Her suspicion had been needlessly roused.

Ruth could not deny that the sc.r.a.p of paper found in the sand was quite as mysterious as ever. The quotation on it seemed to be taken directly from her own scenario. But there was absolutely nothing in this pile of ma.n.u.scripts to justify her suspicions.

She was just as dissatisfied after scanning all the submitted scenarios as Mr. Hammond seemed to be with the day's work when the company came back from Herringport in the late afternoon.

"I suppose it is a sanguine disposition that keeps me at this game, Miss Ruth," he sighed. "I always expect much more than I can possibly get out of a situation; and when I fail I go on hoping just the same."

"I am sure that is a commendable disposition to possess," she laughed.

"What has gone so wrong?"

"It is the old story of leading the horse to water, and the inability of making him drink. This is a balky horse, and no mistake!"

"Do tell me what you mean, Mr. Hammond?"

"Why, I told you we had got what the ladies call 'perfectly lovely' types for that scene to-day. You ought to see them, Miss Ruth! You would be charmed. Just what the dear public expects a back-country sewing circle should look like."

"Oh!"

"And they all promised to be on hand at the location--and they were. I have had my experiences with amateurs before. I had begged the ladies to dress just as they would were they going to an actual meeting of their sewing society----"

"And they all dressed up?" laughed Ruth, clasping her hands.

"Well, that I expected to contend with. And most of them even in their best bib and tucker were not out of the picture. Not at all! That was not the main difficulty and the one that has spoiled our day's work."

"Indeed?"