“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.”