“Good! I’ll look around first of all. If there has been a skulker near——”
“Now, don’t be rash,” she cried.
“We’re not behind the German lines now, Fraulein Mina von Brenner,” and he laughed as he went out of the summer-house.
He did not smile when he was searching under the house and beating the brush clumps near by. He realized that this loss was a very serious matter for Ruth.
She was now independent of Uncle Jabez, but her income was partly derived from her moving picture royalties. During her war activities she had been unable to do much work, and Tom knew that Ruth had spent of her own means a great deal in the Red Cross work.
Ruth had refused to tell her friends the first thing about this new story for the screen. She believed it to be the very best thing she had ever originated, and she said she wished to surprise them all.
He even knew that all her notes and “before-the-finish” writing was in the notebooks that had now gone with the completed manuscript. It looked more than mysterious. It was suspicious.
Tom looked all around the summer-house. Of course, after this hard downpour it was impossible to mark any footsteps. Nor, indeed, did the raider need to leave such a trail in getting to and departing from the little vine-covered pavilion. The sward was heavy all about it save on the river side.
The young man found not a trace. Nor did he see a piece of paper anywhere. He was confident that Ruth’s papers and notebooks and pen had been removed by some human agency. And it could not have been a friend who had done this thing.