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Read Ebook: Ruth Fielding Down East; Or The Hermit of Beach Plum Point by Emerson Alice B
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Ebook has 1384 lines and 45181 words, and 28 pages
In "Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross; Or, Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam," the Girl of the Red Mill gained a very practical experience in the work of the great peace organization which does so much to smooth the ravages of war. Then, in "Ruth Fielding at the War Front; Or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier," the Red Cross worker was thrown into the very heart of the tremendous struggle, and in northern France achieved a name for courage that her college mates greatly envied.
Wounded and nerve-racked because of her experiences, Ruth was sent home, only to meet, as related in the fifteenth volume of the series, "Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils," an experience which seemed at first to be disastrous. In the end, however, the girl reached the Red Mill in a physical and mental state which made any undue excitement almost a tragedy for her.
The mysterious disappearance of the moving picture scenario, which had been on her heart and mind for months and which she had finally brought, she believed, to a successful termination, actually shocked Ruth Fielding. She could not control herself for the moment.
Against Tom Cameron's uniformed shoulder she sobbed frankly. His arm stole around her.
"It never blew away, Tom," she said.
"Why, of course it did!"
"No. The sheets of typewritten manuscript were fastened together with a big brass clip. Had they been lose and the wind taken them, we should have seen at least some of them flying about. And the notebooks!"
"And the pen?" murmured Tom, seeing the catastrophe now as she did. "Why, Ruthie! Could somebody have taken them all?"
"Somebody must!"
"But who?" demanded the young fellow. "You have no enemies."
"Not here, I hope," she sighed. "I left them all behind."
He chuckled, although he was by no means unappreciative of the seriousness of her loss. "Surely that German aviator who dropped the bomb on you hasn't followed you here."
"Don't talk foolishly, Tom!" exclaimed the girl, getting back some of her usual good sense. "Of course, I have no enemy. But a thief is every honest person's enemy."
"Granted. But where is the thief around the Red Mill?"
"I do not know."
"Can it be possible that your uncle or Ben saw the things here and rescued them just before the storm burst?"
"We will ask," she said, with a sigh. "But I can imagine no reason for either Uncle Jabez or Ben to come down here to the shore of the river. Oh, Tom! it is letting up."
"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.
THE DERELICT
"Didn't you find anything, Tom?" Ruth Fielding asked, as Helen's twin re-entered the summer-house.
His long automobile coat glistened with wet and his face was wind-blown. Tom Cameron's face, too, looked much older than it had--well, say a year before. He, like Ruth herself, had been through much in the war zone calculated to make him more sedate and serious than a college undergraduate is supposed to be.
"I did not see even a piece of paper blowing about," he told her.
"But before we came down from the house you said you saw a paper blow over the roof like a kite."
"That was an outspread newspaper. It was not a sheet of your manuscript."
"Then it all must have been stolen!" she cried.
"At least, human agency must have removed the things you left on this table," he said.
"Oh, Tom!"
But she recovered a measure of her composure almost immediately. Unnerved as she had first been by the disaster, she realized that to give way to her trouble would not do the least bit of good.
"An ordinary thief," Tom suggested after a moment, "would not consider your notes and the play of much value."
"I suppose not," she replied.
"If they are stolen it must be by somebody who understands--or thinks he does--the value of the work. Somebody who thinks he can sell a moving picture scenario."
"Oh, Tom!"
"A gold mounted fountain pen would attract any petty thief," he went on to say. "But surely the itching fingers of such a person would not be tempted by that scenario."
"Then, which breed of thief stole my scenario, Tom?" she demanded. "You are no detective. Your deductions suggest two thieves."
"Humph! So they do. Maybe they run in pairs. But I can't really imagine two light-fingered people around the Red Mill at once. Seen any tramps lately?"
"Could anybody have done it for a joke?" asked Tom suddenly.
"If they have," Ruth said, wiping her eyes, "it is the least like a joke of anything that ever happened to me. Why, Tom! I couldn't lay out that scenario again, and think of all the details, and get it just so, in a year!"
"Oh, Ruth!"
"I mean it! And even my notes are gone. Oh, dear! I'd never have the heart to write that scenario again. I don't know that I shall ever write another, anyway. I'm discouraged," sobbed the girl suddenly.
"Oh, Ruth! don't give way like this," he urged, with rather a boyish fear of a girl's tears.
"I've given way already," she choked. "I just feel that I'll never be able to put that scenario into shape again. And I'd written Mr. Hammond so enthusiastically about it."
"Oh! Then he knows all about it!" said Tom. "That is more than any of us do. You wouldn't tell us a thing."
"And you've got the idea yet, haven't you? Cheer up! Of course you can do it over."
"Suppose," demanded Ruth quickly, "this thief that has got my manuscript should offer it to some producer? Why! if I tried to rewrite it and bring it out, I might be accused of plagiarizing my own work."
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