The appointment was kept to the letter and minute in the morning. Helen was still asleep when Ruth dressed and stole out of the bungalow. Not many of the people on the island, save the cooks and dining-room employees, were astir. But Tom and the boatman—and the Gem—were at the dock in readiness.
Ruth gave Willie his instructions. He was to make a landing at the far end of the island on which the picture had been taken the day before. It was too early for any of Mr. Hooley’s men to be over there looking for the old man whose face had spoiled several hundred feet of good film. Ruth wished, if possible, to first interview the strange man.
She took Tom into her confidence at once about the King of the Pipes. She did not believe the man was so crazy that he ought to be shut up in an asylum. He was merely “queer.” And if they could get him off the island and out of the way while the picture was being shot, he might then go back to his hermit life and play at being king all he wished to.
“What a lark!” exclaimed Tom, looking at the matter a good deal as his twin sister did. “And you are constantly falling in with queer characters, Ruth.”
“You might better say they are falling in with me, for I am sure I do not intentionally hunt them up,” complained Ruth. “And this poor old man has cost us money enough.”
“It is too bad,” was Tom’s comment.
“Worse than that, perhaps Mr. Hooley will never again get as fine an allegorical picture as he did yesterday. They were all in the spirit of the piece when the shot was made.”
They arrived at the sloping stone beach and landed as Ruth and the girls had before disembarked. Ruth led Tom up the rough path into the woods beyond the table-rock. The trees stood thick, and the bushes were thorny, but they pushed through to an open space surrounding an old, gnarled, lightning-riven beech. The top of this monarch of the ancient forest had been broken off and the line of its rotted trunk and branches could be marked amid the undergrowth. But the staff of it stood at least thirty feet in height.
“What a spread of shade it must have given in its day,” said Tom. “All these other tall trees have grown up since the top broke off.”
“Quite so,” agreed Ruth. “But where do you suppose that queer old man has his camp?”