CHAPTER XIV
A QUOTATION
"Do help him, Tom!" cried Ruth Fielding, and she started for the spotwhere the man and the skiff were sinking.
Tom cast aside his sweater, kicked his sneakers off, and plunged into thetide. Ruth was quite as lightly dressed as Tom; but she saw that he coulddo all that was necessary.
That was, to bring the frightened man ashore. This "hermit" as they calledhim, was certainly very much afraid of the water.
He splashed a good deal, and Tom had to speak sharply to keep him fromgetting a strangle-hold about his own neck.
"Jimminy! but that was a mean trick," panted Tom, when he got ashore withthe fisherman. "Somebody pulled the plug out of the bottom of the skiffand first he knew, he was going down."
"It is a shame," agreed Ruth, looking at the victim of the joke curiously.
He was a thin-featured, austere looking man, scrupulously shaven, but withrather long hair that had quite evidently been dyed. Now that it wasplastered to his crown by the salt water (for he had been completelyimmersed more than once in his struggle with Tom Cameron) his hair wasshown to be quite thin and of a greenish tinge at the roots.
The shock of being dipped in the sea so unexpectedly was plainly no smallone for the hermit. He stood quite unsteadily on the strand, panting andsputtering.
"Young dogs! No respect for age and ability in this generation. I mighthave been drowned."
"Well, it's all over now," said Tom comfortingly. "Where do you live?"
"Over yonder, young man," replied the hermit, pointing to the ocean sideof the point.
"We will take you home. You lie down for a while and you will feelbetter," Ruth said soothingly. "We will come back here afterward and getyour skiff ashore."
"Thank you, Miss," said the man courteously.
"I'll make those fellows who played the trick on you get the boat ashore,"promised Tom, running for his shoes and sweater.
The hermit proved to be a very uncommunicative person. Ruth tried to gethim to talk about himself as they crossed the rocky spit, but all that hesaid of a personal nature was that his name was "John."
His shack was certainly a lonely looking hovel. It faced the tumblingAtlantic and it seemed rather an odd thing to Ruth that a man who was soafraid of the sea should have selected such a spot for his home.
The hermit did not invite them to enter his abode. He promised Ruth thathe would make a hot drink for himself and remove his wet garments and liedown. But he only seemed moderately grateful for their assistance, andshut the door of the shack promptly in their faces when he got inside.
"Just as friendly as a sore-headed dog," remarked Tom, as they went backto the bay side of the Point.
"Perhaps the others have played so many tricks on him that he issuspicious of even our assistance," Ruth said.
Thus speaking, she stooped to pick up a bit of paper in the path. It hadbeen half covered by the sand and might have lain there a long time, oronly a day.
Just why this bit of brown wrapping paper had caught her attention, itwould be hard to say. Ruth might have passed it a dozen times withoutnoticing it.
But now she must needs turn the paper over and over in her hands as shewatched Tom, with the help of the rather abashed practical jokers, haulthe water-logged skiff ashore.
She had forgotten the fishing poles they had abandoned on the rocks, andsat down upon a boulder. Suddenly she discovered that there was writing onthe bit of paper she had picked up. It was then that her attention reallybecame fixed upon her find.
The characters had been written with an indelible pencil. The dampness hadonly blurred the writing instead of erasing it. Her attention thusengaged, she idly scrutinized more than the blurred lines. Her attitude asshe sat there on the boulder slowly stiffened; her gaze focused upon thepaper.
"Why! what is it?" she murmured at last.
The blurred lines became clearer to her vision. It was the wording of thephrase rather than the handwriting that enthralled her. This that followswas all that was written on the paper:
"Flash:--
"As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be----"
To the ordinary observer, with no knowledge of what went before orfollowed this quotation, the phrase must seem idle. But the word "flash"is used by scenario writers and motion picture makers, indicating anexplanatory phrase thrown on the screen.
And this quoted phrase struck poignantly to Ruth Fielding's mind. For itwas one she had used in that last scenario--the one that had so strangelydisappeared from the summer-house back at the Red Mill!
Amazed--almost stunned--by this discovery, she sat on the boulder scarcelyseeing what Tom and the others were doing toward salvaging the oldhermit's skiff and other property.
Thoughts regarding the quotation shuttled back and forth in the girl'smind in a most bewildering way. The practical side of her characterpointed out that there really could be no significance in this discovery.It could not possibly have anything to do with her stolen script.
Yet the odd phrase, used in just this way, had been one of the few"flashes" indicated in her scenario. Was it likely that anybody else,writing a picture, would use just that phrase?
She balanced the improbability of this find meaning anything at all to heragainst the coincidence of another author using the quotation in writing ascenario. She did not know what to think. Which supposition was the moreimprobable?
The thought was preposterous that the paper should mean anything to her.Ruth was about to throw it away; and then, failing to convince herselfthat the quotation was but idly written, she tucked the piece of paperinto the belt of her bathing suit.
When Tom was ready to go back to their fishing station, Ruth went with himand said nothing about the find she had made.
They had fair luck, all told, and the chef at the camp produced theircatch in a dish of boiled tautog with egg sauce at dinner that evening.The company ate together at a long table, like a logging camp crew, onlywith many more of the refinements of life than the usual logging crewenjoys. It was, however, on a picnic plane of existence, and there wasmuch hilarity.
These actor folk were very pleasant people. Even the star, Miss Loder, wasquite unspoiled by her success.
"You know," she confessed to Ruth (everybody confided in Ruth), "I neverwould have been anything more than a stock actress in some jerkwater town,as we say in the West, if the movies hadn't become so popular. I have whatthey call the 'appealing face' and I can squeeze out real tears at theproper juncture. Those are two very necessary attributes for a girl whowishes to gain film success."
"But you can really act," Ruth said honestly. "I watched you to-day."
"I should be able to act. I come of a family who have been actors forgenerations. Acting is like breathing to me. But, of course, it is anotherart to 'register' emotion in the face, and very different from displayingone's feelings by action and audible expression. You know, one of our mostpopular present-day stage actresses got her start by an ability to screamoff-stage. Nothing like that in the movies."
"You should hear Jennie Stone with a black ant down her back," put inHelen, with serious face. "I am sure Heavy could go the actress you speakof one better, and become even more popular."
"I am not to be blamed if I squeal at crawly things," sniffed the plumpgirl, hearing this. "See how brave I am in most other respects."
But that night Jennie exhibited what Tom called her "scarefulness" in mostunmistakable fashion, and never again could she claim to be brave. Shegave her chums in addition such a fright that they were not soon overtalking about it.
The three college girls had cots in a small shack that Mr. Hammond hadgiven up to their use. It was one of the shacks nearest the shore of theharbor. Several boat-docks near by ran out into the deep water.
It was past midnight when Jennie was for some reason aroused. Usually sheslept straight through the night, and had to be awakened by violent meansin time for breakfast.
She was not star
tled, but awoke naturally, and found herself broad awake.She sat up in her cot, almost convinced that it must be daylight. But itwas the moon shining through a haze of clouds that lighted the interior ofthe shack. The other two girls were breathing deeply. The noises she hearddid not at first alarm Jennie.
There was the whisper of the tide as it rolled the tiny pebbles and shellsup the strand and, receding, swept them down again. It chuckled, too,among the small piers of the near-by docks.
Then the listening girl heard footsteps--or what she took to be thatsound. They approached the shack, then receded. She began to be curious,then felt a tremor of alarm. Who could be wandering about the camp at thisgrim hour of the night?
She was unwise enough to allow her imagination to wake up, too. She stolefrom her bed and peered out of the screened window that faced the water.Almost at once a moving object met her frightened gaze.
It was a figure all in white which seemed to float down the lane betweenthe tents and out upon the nearest boat-dock.
Afterward Jennie declared she could have suffered one of thesespirit-looking manifestations in silence. She crammed the strings of herfrilled nightcap between her teeth as a stopper!
This spectral figure was going away from the shack, anyway. It appeared tobe bearing something in its arms. But then came a second ghost, likewiseburdened. Gasping, Jennie waited, clinging to the window-sill for support.
A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast.This was too much for the plump girl's self-control. She opened her mouth,and her half-strangled shriek, the partially masticated cap-strings allbut choking her, aroused Ruth and Helen to palpitating fright.
"Oh! What is it?" demanded Helen, bounding out of bed.
"Ghosts! Oh! Waw!" gurgled Jennie, and sank back into her friend's arms.
Helen was literally as well as mentally overcome. Jennie's weight carriedher to the straw matting with a bump that shook the shack and broughtRuth, too, out of bed.