CHAPTER XVII
JOHN, THE HERMIT’S, CONTRIBUTION
A man with bushy hair, a pencil stuck over his ear, and wearing an ink-stained apron, met them in the office of the Harpoon. This was Ezra Payne, editor and publisher of the weekly news-sheet, and this was his busiest day. The Harpoon, Ruth had learned, usually went into the mails on this day.
“Tut, tut! I see. Is this a joke?” Mr. Payne pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow in uncertainty.
“A whole edition, Miss? Wall, I dunno. I do have hard work selling all the edition some weeks. But I have reg’lar subscribers——”
“This will not interfere with your usual edition of the Harpoon,” she hastened to assure him.
“How’s that, Miss?”
“I want to buy an edition of one copy.”
“One copy!”
“Yes, sir. I want something special printed in one paper. Then you can take it out and print your regular edition.”
“Tut, tut! I see. Is this a joke?” Mr. Payne asked, his eyes beginning to twinkle.
“It is the biggest joke you ever heard of,” declared Ruth.
“And who’s the joke on?”
“Wait and see what I write,” Ruth said, sitting down at the battered old desk where he labored over his editorials and proofsheets.
Opening a copy of the last week’s Harpoon that lay there, she was able to see the whole face of the paper.
“I’ve got the inside run off,” said Mr. Payne, still doubtfully. “So you can’t run anything on the second and third pages.”
“Oh, I want the most prominent place for my item,” laughed Ruth. “Front page, top column—— Here it is!”
He bent over her. Tom stared in wonder, too, as Ruth pointed to an item under a certain heading at the top of the middle column of the front page of the sheet.
“That is just where I want my item to appear,” she said briskly to the editor. “You run that—that department there every week?”
“Oh, yes, Miss. The people expect it. You know how folks are. They look for those items first of all in a country paper.”
“Yes. It is so. One of the New York dailies is still printed with that human foible in mind. It caters to this very curiosity that your Harpoon caters to.”
“Yes, Miss. You’re right. Most folks have the same curiosity, city or country. Shakespeare spoke of the ‘seven ages of man’; but there are only three of particular interest—to womankind, anyway; and they are all here.”
“There you go! Slurring the women,” she laughed. “Or do you speak compliments?”
“I guess the women have it right,” chuckled Mr. Payne. “Now, what is it you want me to print in one paper for you?”
Ruth drew a scratch pad to her and scribbled rapidly for a couple of minutes. Then she passed the page to the newspaper proprietor.
Mr. Payne read it, stared at her, pursed his lips, and then read it again. Suddenly he burst into a cackle of laughter, slapping his thigh in high delight.
“By gravy!” he chortled, “that’s a good one on the dominie. By gravy! wait till I tell——”
“Don’t you tell anybody, Mr. Payne,” interrupted Ruth, smiling, but firmly. “I am buying your secrecy as well as your edition of one copy.”
“I get you! I get you!” declared the old fellow. “This is to be on the q.t.?”
“Positively.”
“You sit right here. The front page is all made up on the stone, Marriages, Births, Death Notices, and all. I’ll set the paragraph and slip it in at the top o’ the column. My boy is out, but this young man can help me lift the page into the press. She’s all warmed up, and I was going to start printing when Edgar comes back from breakfast.”
He grabbed the piece of copy and went off into the printing room, chuckling. Half an hour later the first paper came from the press, and Ruth and Tom bent over it. The item the girl had written was plainly printed in the position she had chosen on the front page of the Harpoon.
“Now, you are to keep still about this,” Ruth said, threatening Mr. Payne with a raised finger.
“I don’t know a thing about it,” he promised, pocketing the bill she took from her purse, and in high good humor over the joke.
Tom helped him take the front page from the press again. The printer unlocked the chase, and removed and distributed the three lines he had set up at Ruth’s direction.
The crowd from Beach Plum Point came over in the cars about noontime. Aunt Kate had remained at the inn on this morning, and she and Ruth walked to the “location,” which was a beautiful old shaded front yard at the far end of the village.
Helen and Jennie had come with the real actors, and were to appear in the picture. The story related incidents at a Sunday-school picnic, and most of the comedy had already been filmed on the lot.
The scene around the long sewing table under the trees, when the ladies’ aid was at work with needle and tongue, should be the principal incident of this reel devoted to the picnic.
The heroine, to the amazement of the village gossips, has run away with the schoolmaster and married him in the next county. A certain character in the picture runs in with this bombshell of news and explodes it in the midst of the group about the sewing table.
The day before this point had failed to make much impression upon the amateur members of the company engaged in this typical scene. The Herringport ladies were not at all interested in such a thing happening to the town’s schoolmaster, for to tell the truth the local schoolmaster was an old married man with a house full of children and nothing at all romantic about him.
Ruth took Mr. Hooley aside and showed him the copy of the Harpoon she had had printed, and whispered to him her idea of the change in the action of the scenario. He seized upon the scheme—and the paper—with gusto.
“You are a jewel, Miss Fielding!” he declared. “If this doesn’t make those old tabbies come to life and act naturally, nothing ever will!”
Ruth left the matter in the director’s hands and retired from the location. She had no intention herself of appearing in the picture. She found Mr. Hammond sitting in his automobile in a state of good-humor.
“You seem quite sure that the work will go better to-day, Mr. Hammond,” Ruth observed, with curiosity as to the reason for his apparent enjoyment.
“Whether it does or not, Miss Ruth,” he responded. “There is something that I fancy is going to be more than a little amusing.”
He tapped a package wrapped in a soiled newspaper which lay on the seat beside him. “Thank goodness, I can still enjoy a joke.”
“What is the joke? Let me enjoy it, too,” she said.
“With the greatest of pleasure. I’ll let you read it, if you like—as you did those other scenarios.”
“What! Is it a movie story?” she asked.
“So I am assured. It is the contribution of John, the hermit. He brought it to me just before we started over here this morning. Poor old codger! Just look here, Miss Ruth.”
Mr. Hammond turned back the loose covering of the package on the automobile seat. Ruth saw a packet of papers, seemingly of roughly trimmed sheets of wrapping paper and of several sizes. At the top of the upper sheet was the title of the hermit’s scenario. It was called “Plain Mary.” She glanced down the page, noting that it was written in a large, upright, hand and with an indelible pencil.
Ruth Fielding had not the least idea that she was to take any particular interest in this picture-story. She smiled more because Mr. Hammond seemed so amused than for any other reason. Secretly she thought that most of these moving picture people were rather unkind to the strange old man who lived alone on the seaward side of the Beach Plum Point.
“Want to read it over?” Mr. Hammond asked her. “I would consider it a favor, for I’ve got to go back and try to catch up with my correspondence. I expect this is worse than those you skimmed through yesterday.”
Ruth did not hear him. Suddenly she had seen something that had not at first interested her. She read the first few lines of the opening, and saw nothing in them of importance. It was the writing itself that struck her.
“Why!” she suddenly gasped.
She was reminded of something that she had seen before. This writing——
“Let me go back to the camp with you, Mr. Hammond,” she said, slipping into the seat and taking the packet of written sheets into her lap. “I—I will look through this scenario, if you like. There is something down there on the Point that I want.”
“Sure. Be glad to have your company,” he said, letting in his clutch after pushing the starter. “We’re off.”
Ruth did not speak again just then. With widening eyes she began to devour the first pages of the hermit’s manuscript.