The man met the party from the _Stazy_ with 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 sh.o.r.e 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.

CHAPTER XXII

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 dimmed by 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 sh.e.l.l 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 bright tan one of imitation leather with bra.s.s 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 who _he_ is?"

"I am not sure that I do, my dear."

"You don't--Say! who are you?" demanded Bella, with some sharpness.