CHAPTER XXI
A HERMIT FOR REVENUE ONLY
The bays and inlets of the coast of Maine have the bluest water dotted bythe greenest islands that one can imagine. And such wild and romanticlooking spots as some of these islands are!
Just at this time, too, a particular tang of romance was in the air. TheGermans had threatened to devastate our Atlantic coast from Eastport toKey West with a flock of submersibles. There actually were a fewsubmarines lurking about the pathways of our coastwise shipping; but, asusual, the Hun's boast came to naught.
The young people on the _Stazy_ scarcely expected to see a Germanperiscope during the run to Reef Harbor. Yet they did not neglect watchingout for something of the kind. Skipper Phil Gordon, a young man with onearm but a full and complete knowledge of this coast and how to coax speedout of a gasoline engine, ordered his "crew" of one boy to remain sharplyon the lookout, as well.
The _Stazy_ did not, however, run far outside. The high and rocky headlandthat marked the entrance to Reef Harbor came into view before they hadmore than dropped the hazy outline of Beach Plum Point astern.
But until they rounded the promontory and entered the narrow inlet to ReefHarbor the town and the summer colony was entirely invisible.
"If a German sub should stick its nose in here," sighed Helen, "it wouldmake everybody ashore get up and dust. Don't you think so?"
"Is it the custom to do so when the enemy, he arrive?" asked ColonelMarchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the Yankee was still a puzzle.
"Sure!" replied Tom, grinning. "Sure, Henri! These New England women wouldclean house, no matter what catastrophe arrived."
"Oh, don't suggest such horrid possibilities," cried Jennie. "And they areonly fooling you, Henri."
"Look yonder!" exclaimed Captain Tom, waving an instructive hand. "Behold!Let the Kaiser's underseas boat come. That little tin lizzie of the sea isready for it. Depth bombs and all!"
The grim looking drab submarine chaser lay at the nearest dock, the faintspiral of smoke rising from her stack proclaiming that she was ready forimmediate work. There was a tower, too, on the highest point on theheadland from which a continual watch was kept above the town.
"O-o-oh!" gurgled Jennie, snuggling up to Henri. "Suppose one of thoseGerman subs shelled the movie camp back there on Beach Plum Point!"
"They would likely spoil a perfectly good picture, then," said Helenpractically. "Think of Ruthie's 'Seaside Idyl!'.
"Oh, say!" Helen went on. "They tell me that old hermit has submitted astory in the contest. What do you suppose it is like, Ruth?"
The girl of the Red Mill was sitting beside Aunt Kate. She flushed whenshe said:
"Why shouldn't he submit one?"
"But that hermit isn't quite right in his head, is he?" demanded Ruth'schum.
"I don't know that it is his head that is wrong," murmured Ruth, shakingher own head doubtfully.
Here Jennie broke in. "Is auntie letting you read her story, Ruth?" sheasked slyly.
"Now, Jennie Stone!" exclaimed their chaperon, blushing.
"Well, you are writing one. You know you are," laughed her niece.
"I--I am just trying to see if I can write such a story," stammered AuntKate.
"Well, I am sure you could make up a better scenario than that old grouchof a hermit," Helen declared, warmly.
Ruth did not add anything to this discussion. What she had discoveredregarding the hermit's scenario was of too serious a nature to be publiclydiscussed.
Her interview the evening before with Mr. Hammond regarding the matter hadleft Ruth in a most uncertain frame of mind. She did not know what to doabout the stolen scenario. She shrank from telling even Helen or Tom ofher discovery.
To tell the truth, Mr. Hammond's seeming doubt--not of her truthfulnessbut of her wisdom--had shaken the girl's belief in herself. It was astrange situation, indeed. She thought of the woman she had foundwandering about the mountain in the storm who had lost control of both hernerves and her mind, and Ruth wondered if it could be possible that she,too, was on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck.
Had she deceived herself about this hermit's story? Had she allowed hermind to dwell on her loss until she was quite unaccountable for her mentaldecisions? To tell the truth, this thought frightened the girl of the RedMill a little.
Practical as Ruth Fielding ordinarily was, she must confess that the shockshe had received when the hospital in France was partly wrecked, anaccount of which is given in "Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound," had shakenthe very foundations of her being. She shuddered even now when she thoughtof what she had been through in France and on the voyage coming back toAmerica.
She realized that even Tom and Helen looked at her sometimes when shespoke of her lost scenario in a most peculiar way. Was it a fact that shehad allowed her loss to unbalance--well, her judgment? Suppose she wasquite wrong about that scenario the hermit had submitted to Mr. Hammond?The thought frightened her!
At least, she had nothing to say upon the puzzling subject, not even toher best and closest friends. She was sorry indeed two hours later whenthey were at lunch on the porch of the Reef Harbor House with some of theCamerons' friends that Helen brought the conversation around again to theBeach Plum Point "hermit."
"A _real_ hermit?" cried Cora Grimsby, a gay, blonde, irresponsible littlething, but with a heart of gold. "And is he a hermit for revenue only,too?"
"What do you mean by that?" Helen demanded.
"Why, we have a hermit here, you see. Over on Reef Island itself. If yougive us a sail in your motor yacht after lunch I'll introduce our hermitto you. But you must buy something of him, or otherwise 'cross his palmwith silver.' He told me one day that he was not playing a nut for summerfolks to laugh at just for the good of his health."
"Frank, I must say," laughed Tom Cameron.
"I guess he's been in the hermit business before," said Cora, sparkling atTom in his uniform. "But this is his first season at the Harbor."
"I wonder if he belongs to the hermit's union and carries a union card,"suggested Jennie Stone soberly. "I don't think we should patronizenon-union hermits."
"Goody!" cried Cora, clapping her hands. "Let's ask him."
Ruth said nothing. She rather wished she might get out of the trip to ReefIsland without offending anybody. But that seemed impossible. She reallyhad seen all the hermits she cared to see!
She could not, however, be morose and absent-minded in a party of whichCora Grimsby and Jennie Stone were the moving spirits. It was a gay crowdthat crossed the harbor in the _Stazy_ to land at a roughly built dockunder the high bluff of the wooded island.
"There's the hermit!" Cora cried, as they landed. "See him sitting on therock before the door of his cabin?"
"Right on the job," suggested Tom.
"No unlucky city fly shall escape that spider's web," cried Jennie.
He was a patriarchal looking man. His beard swept his breast. He woreshabby garments, was barefooted, and carried a staff as though he werelame or rheumatic.
"Dresses the part much better than our hermit does," Helen said, incomment.
The man met the party from the _Stazy_ with a broad smile that displayed atoothless cavity of a mouth. His red-rimmed eyes were moist looking, notto say bleary. Ruth smelled a distinct alcoholic odor on his breath. Acomplete drouth had evidently not struck this part of the State of Maine.
"Good day to ye!" said the hermit. "Some o' you young folks I ain't neverseed before."
"They are my friends," Cora hastened to explain, "and they come from BeachPlum Point."
"Do tell! If you air goin' back to-night, better make a good v'y'ge of it.We're due for a blow, I allow. You folks ain't stoppin' right on thep'int, be ye?"
Ruth, to whom he addressed this last question, answered that they were,and explained that there was a large camp there this season, and why.
"Wal, wal! I want to know! Somebody did say something to me about a gangof movin' picture folks comin' there; but I reck
oned they was a-foolin'me."
"There is a good sized party of us," acknowledged Ruth.
"Wal, wal! Mebbe that fella I let my shack to will make out well, then,after all. Warn't no sign of ye on the beach when I left three weeks ago".
"Did you live there on the point?" asked Ruth.
"Allus do winters. But the pickin's is better over here at the Harbor atthis time of year."
"And the man you left in your place? Where is your house on the point?"
The hermit "for revenue only" described the hut on the eastern shore inwhich the other "hermit" lived. Ruth became much interested.
"Tell me," she said, while the others examined the curios the hermit hadfor sale, "what kind of man is this you left in your house? And who ishe?"
"Law bless ye!" said the old man. "I don't know him from Adam's off ox.Never seed him afore. But he was trampin' of it; and he didn't have muchmoney. An' to tell you the truth, Miss, that hutch of mine ain't wuth muchmoney."
She described the man who had been playing the hermit since the AlectrionFilm Corporation crowd had come to Beach Plum Point.
"That's the fella," said the old man, nodding.
Ruth stood aside while he waited on his customers and digested thesestatements regarding the man who claimed the authorship of the scenario of"Plain Mary."
Not that Ruth would have desired to acknowledge the scenario in itspresent form. She felt angry every time she thought of how her plot hadbeen mangled.
But she was glad to learn all that was known about the Beach Plum Pointhermit. And she had learned one most important fact.
He was not a regular hermit. As Jennie Stone suggested, he was not a"union hermit" at all. And he was a stranger to the neighborhood ofHerringport. If he had been at the Point only three weeks, as this old mansaid, "John, the hermit," might easily have come since Ruth's scenario wasstolen back there at the Red Mill!
Her thoughts began to mill again about this possibility. She wished shewas back at the camp so as to put the strange old man through across-examination regarding himself and where he had come from. She had nosuspicion as to how Mr. Hammond had so signally failed in this verymatter.