"Well, it looks to me," observed her friend, "that if we cannot find him, they will be unable to find him as well. So I wouldn't worry, Ruth."

But the girl went back to the Gem and sailed again to the headquarters of the moving picture company not at all satisfied as to the result of their undertaking.

CHAPTER XI

BILBY AGAIN

The work of picture making that day went without a hitch. Mr. Hooley sent several men into the woods above the spot on the sh.o.r.e of the "Kingdom of Pipes," as Helen insisted upon calling the island where the prologue of the picture was made, and they remained on watch there during the activities of the company below.

When the film was developed and run off in the projection room that evening it was p.r.o.nounced by all--even by Mr. Hammond--as good in detail as the spoiled reel.

From that point the work went on briskly, for the weather remained perfect for picture taking. Ruth was busy; but she could give some time to enjoyment, too, especially in the evening; and that next evening when Chess Copley appeared in his own motor-boat, the _Lauriette_, she was glad to join a moonlight boating party which ventured as far as Alexandria Bay, where they had supper and danced at the pavilion, returning to the picture camp in the early hours of the morning.

Ruth was Chessleigh's particular guest on this occasion, and Tom and Helen Cameron went in another launch.

The moonlight upon the islands and the pa.s.sages of silvery water between them was most beautiful. And Ruth enjoyed herself immensely. That is, she found the occasion enjoyable until they got back to the bungalow and had bidden the Copleys and their party good night. Then the girl of the Red Mill found her roommate rather irritable. Helen pouted and was frankly cross when she spoke.

"I don't see what you find so interesting in Chess Copley," she observed, brushing her hair before the gla.s.s.

"He is nice I think," replied Ruth placidly.

"And you just ignore Tommy-boy."

"I could not very well refuse Chess when he invited me into his launch. I did not know you and Tom were going in the other boat."

"Well, I wasn't going with Chess. And I wouldn't let Tommy tag after you."

"I wish you wouldn't be so foolish, Helen," sighed her chum.

"If you act this way," declared the rather unreasonable Helen, "you'll spoil our whole visit at the Thousand Islands."

"My goodness!" exclaimed Ruth, for once showing exasperation, "you do not talk very sensibly, Helen. I have come here to work, not to play. Please bear that in mind. If you think I spoil your sport I will not join any other evening parties."

The next evening when the Copley party came over to get acquainted with some of the moving picture people and arrange for a big dance on Sat.u.r.day night, Ruth was as good as her word, and remained in Mr. Hammond's office, recasting certain scenes in her story that Mr. Hooley proposed to make next day.

Helen was sure Ruth was "mad" and kept out of the way intentionally. She told Tom so. But she did not choose to relieve Chess Copley's loneliness when she saw him mooning about.

Whenever Chess tried to speak to Helen in private she ran away from him.

Whether it was loyalty to her brother, Tom, or some other reason that made Helen treat Copley so unkindly, the fact remained that Chess was plainly not in Helen's good books, although she made much of the two Copley girls.

The next day Ruth was quite as busy, for the making of the picture was going ahead rapidly while the good weather lasted. This story she had written was more of a pageant than anything she had yet essayed. The scenes were almost all "on location," instead of being filmed under a gla.s.s roof.

Helen and Tom did not seem to understand that their friend could not go off fishing or sailing or otherwise junketing whenever they would like to have her. But picture making and directors, and especially sunlight, will not wait, and so Ruth tried to tell them.

It was Chess Copley, after all, who seemed to have the better appreciation of Ruth's situation just at this time. Before a week had pa.s.sed he was almost always to be found at Ruth's beck and call; for when she could get away from the work of picture making, Chess turned up as faithfully as the proverbial bad penny.

"You are not a bad penny, however, Chess," she told him, smiling. "You are a good scout. Now you may take me out in your motor-boat. If it is too late to fish, we can at least have a run out into the river. How pretty it is to-day!"

"If everybody treated me as nicely as you do, Ruth," he said, rather soberly, "my head would be turned."

"Cheer up, Chess," she said, laughing. "I don't say the worst is yet to come. Perhaps the best will come to you in time."

"You say that only to encourage me I fear."

"I certainly don't say it to discourage you," she confessed. "Going around like a faded lily isn't going to help you a mite--and so I have already told you."

"Huh! How's a fellow going to register joy when he feels anything but?"

"You'd make a poor screen actor," she told him. "See Mr. Grand to-day. He has an ulcerated tooth and is going to the Bay to-night to have it treated. Yet, as the French voyageur, he had to make love to Wonota and Miss Keith, both. Some job!"

"That fellow makes love as easy as falling off a log," grumbled Chess. "I never saw such a fellow."

"But the girls flock to see him in any picture. If he were my brother--or husband--I would never know when he was really making love or just registering love. Still actors live in a world of their own. They are not like other people--if they are really good actors."

Copley's _Lauriette_ shot them half way across the broad St. Lawrence before sunset, and from that point they watched the sun sink in the west and the twilight gather along the Canadian sh.o.r.e and among the islands on the American side.

When Chessleigh was about to start the engine again and head for the camp--and dinner--they suddenly spied a powerful speed boat coming out from the Canadian side. It cleaved the water like the blade of a knife, throwing up a silver wave on either side. And as it pa.s.sed the _Lauriette_ Ruth and her companion could see several men in her c.o.c.kpit.

"There are those fellows again," Chess remarked. "Wonder what they are up to? That boat pa.s.sed our island yesterday evening and the crowd in her then acted to me as though they were drunk."

"I should think----Why!" exclaimed Ruth suddenly breaking off in what she was first going to say, "one of those men is a Chinaman."

"So he is," agreed Chessleigh Copley.

"And that little fat man--see him? Why, Chess! it looks like----"

"Who is it?" asked the young fellow, in surprise at Ruth's excitement.

"It's Bilby!" gasped Ruth. "That horrid man! I I hoped we had seen the last of him. And now he's right here where we are working with Wonota."

She had said so much that she had to explain fully about Bilby, while they sat and watched the speed boat disappear up the river. Ruth was sure she had made no mistake in her identification of the rival picture producer who had made her so much trouble back at the Red Mill.

"I must tell Mr. Hammond at once," she concluded. "If Bilby is here, he is here for no good purpose, I can be sure. And if he has a boat like that at his command, we must keep double watch."

"You think he would try to abduct Wonota again?" queried Chess.

"I would believe that fellow capable of anything," she returned. "I mean anything that did not call for personal courage on his part."

"Humph!" murmured Chess thoughtfully. "I wonder what he was doing with the Chinaman in his party. You know, sometimes Chinamen are smuggled across from Canada against the emigration laws of the States."

He headed the _Lauriette_ for the camp then, and they arrived there in a rather serious mood.