CHAPTER XVI
RUTH SOLVES ONE PROBLEM
Had Ruth Fielding been confronted with the question: “Did she expect to find a clue to the identity of the person who had stolen her scenario before she left the Red Mill?” she could have made no confident answer. She did not know what she would find when she sat down at Mr. Hammond’s desk for the purpose of looking over the submitted stories.
Doubt and suspicion, however, enthralled her mind. She was both curious and anxious.
Ruth had no particular desire to read the manuscripts. In any case she did not presume Mr. Hammond desired her advice about selecting a script for filming.
She skimmed through the first story. It had not a thing in it that would suggest in the faintest way any familiarity of the author with her own lost scenario.
For two hours she fastened her attention upon one after another of the scenarios, often by main will-power, because of the utter lack of interest in the stories the writers had tried to put over.
Without being at all egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script, and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a much better story.
But not a trace of her original idea and its development was to be found in these manuscripts. Her suspicion had been needlessly roused.
Ruth could not deny that the scrap of paper found in the sand was quite as mysterious as ever. The quotation on it seemed to be taken directly from her own scenario. But there was absolutely nothing in this pile of manuscripts to justify her suspicions.