But it was in the person of the dwarf that this resentment seemed to crystallize. Ruth shuddered merely to look at the deformed, twisted body of Joe Rumph. Once she caught his deep-set black eyes gazing intently at her from under beetling brows and beneath that somewhat sinister look her flesh actually crawled as though some slimy creature had trailed its length across her.
When it was over and they had all gone off, informed of Ruth’s plans for the morrow’s start, Ruth flung herself into a chair and pressed a hand over her eyes as though to shut out some unwelcome vision.
Tom, who had been thoroughly enjoying himself and who had found a kindred spirit in one of the jovial cameramen, Bert Traymore, looked surprised at Ruth’s strange gesture. He came over to her anxiously and rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Buck up, Ruth,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“That horrid Joe Rumph,” cried Ruth, in a muffled voice, hands still pressed close before her eyes. “Did you notice how he looked at me? I don’t like him, Tom! Why, I’d just as soon take a venomous snake along with the company as that man!”
CHAPTER XI
A CHANCE REVELATION
Tom Cameron laughed at Ruth’s statement and tried to reassure her. But Ruth could not be shaken from her stand.
“Rumph dislikes me and mistrusts me for some reason, Tom,” she insisted. “I have not been in this profession so long, meeting all types and kinds of people, without learning a few things—and one of them is to be able to judge pretty accurately the attitude of my actors toward me. You don’t know how sensitive a director is to atmosphere, Tom. I suppose he has to traffic so much in emotions, both artificial and real, that he becomes supersensitive to them. Anyway, I know I can always tell whether an actor has confidence in me and whether he is working for or against me. And this dwarf, Rumph, is going to work against me every inch of the way! Of that much I am sure!”
Ruth had removed her hands from before her face and was sitting with them clasped tightly in her lap. She leaned toward Tom and spoke with an earnestness that could not fail to impress him. He had learned long ago to place trust in Ruth’s almost uncanny gift of reading people and motives. She seemed to know sometimes what her associates were going to do and how they were going to do it almost before they were aware of their own designs.
So on this occasion he looked grave and troubled and put one of his own big hands over her clasped ones.