“I most certainly do,” he assured her. “Want to look at them?”
“Why—yes,” confessed Ruth. “I am curious, as I tell you.”
“Go to it!” exclaimed Mr. Hammond, opening a drawer of his desk and pointing to the pile of manuscripts within. “Consider yourself at home here. I am going over to the port with Director Hooley and most of the members of the company. We have found just the location for the shooting of that scene in your ‘Seaside Idyl’ where the ladies’ aid society holds its ‘gossip session’ in the grove—remember?”
“Oh, yes,” Ruth replied, not much interested, as she took the first scenario out of the drawer.
“And Hooley’s found some splendid types, too, around the village. They really have a sewing circle connected with the Herringport Union Church, and I have agreed to help the ladies pay for having the church edifice painted if they will let us film a session of the society with our principal character actors mixed in with the local group. The sun is good to-day.”
He went away, and a little later Ruth heard the automobiles start for Herringport. She had the forenoon to herself, for the rest of her party had gone out in a motor boat fishing—a party from which she had excused herself.
Eagerly she began to examine the scenarios submitted to Mr. Hammond. The possibility that she might find one of them near enough like her own lost story to suggest that it had been plagiarized, made Ruth’s heart beat faster.
She could not forget the quotation on the scrap of brown paper. Somebody on this Point—and it seemed that the “somebody” must be one of the moving picture company—had written that quotation from her scenario. She felt that this could not be denied.