A FILM MYSTERY
“I told you there were pirates there,” Helen declared that evening, when she and Ruth were in the room they shared together. Wonota slept in a room adjoining and had already retired.
“I don’t think that poor old man was a pirate,” returned Ruth, smiling a little.
“Didn’t he tell you he was ’king of the pirates’?” demanded Helen.
Ruth laughed outright. “He said he was ’king of the pipes’—whatever that may mean. Poor old fellow!”
“Well, it seems he most certainly had been ‘smoking the pipe’—or do they call it ‘hitting the pipe’?”
“Don’t ask me to aid you with any information on slang,” admonished her friend. “I don’t suppose he is really king of anything except of a country of his dreams—poor fellow.”
“Dear me!” grumbled Helen. “You never will boost romance, Ruth Fielding. Maybe there are pirates on that island.”
“Or pipes,” said Ruth calmly.
“Never mind. When the boys come I am going to shoo them on to that place.”
“What boys?” demanded Ruth in surprise.
“The Copleys arrive to-morrow. And their place is not five miles away from this very spot. We’ll get a motor-boat and go down there to-morrow evening and welcome them. I got a telegram from Tom when I came back from canoeing. I forgot to tell you.”
“Tom!” exclaimed Ruth, and for perhaps the first time in her life she seemed undesirous of hearing about Tom Cameron.
Helen gave her a somewhat puzzled side glance as she found the telegram and gave it to her chum, who read:
“Vacation begins to-morrow. Will be with you next day. Tom.”
Helen giggled. “You can make up your mind that he knows Chess Copley has started for this neck of woods. Tom is becoming Mr. Jealous Jellaby. Did you ever?”
“I am sorry Tom considers it necessary to take a vacation when he has only just begun work with your father, Helen.”
“There you go again!” exclaimed her chum. “I don’t understand you at all, Ruth Fielding. Tom doesn’t have to work.”
“It might be better if he did,” said Ruth, and refused to discuss the point further that evening.
The next day was just as lovely as that first one. Preparations were under way all over the island Mr. Hammond had rented for the making of the picture which Ruth had written. The continuity was being studied by Mr. Hooley, the director; and the principals had been furnished with their detail.
The ordinary participants in the filming of a picture—the “extras”—seldom know much about the story. They merely appear in certain scenes and do what they are told. As the scenes are not made in sequence these actors of the smaller parts have little idea of the story itself.
Ruth, under the advice of Mr. Hammond, had chosen a certain series of incidents relating to early French-Canadian history, and it began with an allegory of the bringing of the Christian religion to the Indians by the first French priests. This allegory included the landing of the French upon the shore of a rocky island where they were met by the wondering Indians, and Mr. Hooley’s assistant had chosen the spot for this scene to be “shot,” not far from the place where the company had its headquarters.
Ruth paid little attention to the locations until the moment arrived for the camera work. In fact, after supplying the detailed script she had little to do with the preparation of the picture until the scenes were made. She had never made continuity, as it is called, for that is more or less of a mechanical process and is sure to interfere with the creative faculty of the screen writer.
In the afternoon of this day Helen engaged a motor-boat, and she and Ruth set out for the Copley island, which was some miles away, toward Alexandria Bay. Caretakers and servants had been at work there for some time, it was evident, for the lawns were neatly shaved, the gardens in full growth, and the family were already comfortably settled in their summer home.
Chess Copley must have been on the watch (could it be possible that he had inside information about this early visit of Helen and Ruth?) for he came running down to the dock before the gardener could reach that point to fasten the boat’s line.
“Hurrah!” he shouted. “I was just wondering if we would see you girls to-day; and if you hadn’t come I should have got out our launch and tried to find your camp this evening.”
“Oh, hullo, Chess,” Helen said coolly as she stepped ashore, refusing his assistance. “Where are the girls?”
“There they are—waiting for you on the porch,” he said, rather subdued it would seem by her bruskness.
Helen started directly for the wide veranda of the villa-like house that topped the higher part of the island. There were several acres of grounds about the Copley house, for the whole island was cultivated to the water’s edge. There was nothing wild left in the appearance of the property, save a few of the tall forest trees that had been allowed to stand and some huge boulders almost covered with climbing vines.
Ruth gave Chess her hand—and he squeezed it warmly. She gave him a frank smile, and Chess seemed comforted.
“Nell’s dreadfully tart with a fellow,” he grumbled. “She’s nothing like she used to be. But you are kind, Ruth.”
“You should not wear your heart on your sleeve,” she told him briskly, as they followed Helen Cameron toward the veranda.
The two girls from the moving picture camp passed a pleasant evening with their New York friends. The Copley girls always managed to gather, Helen declared, “perfectly splendid house parties;” and they had brought with them several companionable girls and young men.
Music and dancing filled the evening, and it was ten o’clock when the two chums from Cheslow sought their motor-boat and set out for the camp on the Chippewa Bay island. Chess Copley had kept by Ruth’s side almost all the evening, and although Helen treated him so cavalierly, she seemed provoked at her chum for paying the young man so much attention.
“I don’t understand what you see in Chess,” she said in a vexed tone to the girl of the Red Mill. “He’s nothing much.”
“He is pleasant, and you used to like him,” said Ruth quietly.
“Humph!” Helen tossed her head. “I found him out. And he’s not to be compared with Tommy-boy.”
“I quite agree with you—that is, considering Tom as a brother,” observed Ruth, and after that refused to be led into further discussion regarding Chess Copley.
It was not often that Ruth and Helen had a disagreement. And this was not really of importance. At least, there was no sign of contention between them in the morning.
To tell the truth, there was so much going on, on this day, that the girls could scarcely have found time to quarrel. The sun was bright and the sky cloudless. It was an ideal day for out-of-door “shots,” and the camera men and Mr. Hooley had the whole company astir betimes.
The few real Indians, besides Wonota and Totantora, in the company, and all those “extras” who were dressed as aborigines, got into their costumes before breakfast. Soon after eight o’clock the company got away in barges, with launches to tow them through the quiet waterways.
In a costume play like this that had been planned, the participants naturally make a very brilliant spectacle wherever they appear. But among the islands of Chippewa Bay there were few spectators at this time save the wild fowl.
“And they,” Helen said, “might be descendants of the very birds who looked on the actual first appearance of the white man in this wilderness. Isn’t it wonderful?”
When Mr. Hooley, megaphone in hand and stationed with the two cameras on one of the decked-over barges, had got his company in position and the action was begun, it was indeed an impressive picture. Of course, a scene is not made off-hand—not even an outdoor pageant like this. The detail must be done over and over again before the cranks of the cameras are turned. It was almost noon before Mr. Hooley dared tell the camera men to “shoot the scene.”
The flag-decorated barge bearing the Frenchmen to the rocky shore moved forward into focus in a stately way, while the Indians gathered in a spectacular group on the sloping shore—tier upon tier of dark faces, wearing nodding feather head-dresses, blankets, deerskin leggings, and other garments of Indian manufacture—all grouped to make a brilliant spectacle.
Totantora, a commanding figure, and his daughter as White Fawn, the demure yet dominant princess of the Hurons, stood forth from the background of the other Indians in a graceful picture. Helen was delighted and could not help shouting to the Osage girl that she was “great”—a remark which elicited a frown from the director and an admonition from Ruth.
Behind the grouped Indians was the greenery of the primeval forest with which this rocky island seemed to be covered. The cameras whirred while the barge containing the actors representing the Frenchmen pushed close into the shore and the whites landed.
A boy carried ashore the great cross, and with him came a soldier bearing the lilies of France, the standard of which he sank into the turf. The detail of costume and armament had been carefully searched out by Ruth herself, and the properties were exact. She was sure that this part of the picture at least could not be criticised but to be praised.
It was three o’clock before the party disembarked and went back to the camp for a delayed lunch. The remainder of the afternoon was devoted to the taking of several “close-ups” and an interior scene that had been built on the island rather than in the city studio of the Alectrion Film Corporation.
The films taken earlier in the day were developed, and that evening after dinner Ruth and Helen joined Mr. Hammond and Mr. Hooley in the projection room to see a “run” of the strip taken at the island where the Frenchmen landed.
“Do you know that that island is the one we landed on ourselves the other evening, Ruth?” Helen remarked, as they took their seats and waited in the darkness for the operator to project the new film.
“Do you mean it? I did not notice. The island where I met that strange old man?”
“The pirate—yes,” giggled Helen. “Only we went ashore at the far end of it.”
“I never thought of it—or of him,” admitted Ruth. “Poor, crazy old fellow—”
The machine began its whirring note and they fell silent. Upon the silver sheet there took shape and actuality the moving barge with its banners and streamers and costumed actors. Then a flash was given of the Indians gathering on the wild shore—wondering, excited, not a little fearful of the strange appearance of the white men. The pageant moved forward to its conclusion—the landing of the strangers and the setting up of the banners and the cross.
But suddenly Ruth shrieked aloud, and Mr. Hammond shouted to the operator to “repeat.” The dense underbrush had parted behind the upper tier of Indians and in the aperture thus made appeared a face and part of the figure of a man—a wild face with straggling hair and beard, and the upper part of his body clad in the rags of a shirt.
“What in thunder was that, Hooley?” cried Mr. Hammond. “Somebody butted in. It’s spoiled the whole thing. I thought your men warned everybody off that island?”
“I never saw that scarecrow before,” declared the director, quite as angrily.
But Ruth squeezed Helen’s hand hard.
“The King of the Pipes,” she whispered.