The work of picture making that day
went without a hitch. Mr. Hooley sent several
men into the woods above the spot on the shore of the
“Kingdom of Pipes,” as Helen insisted
upon calling the island where the prologue of the
picture was made, and they remained on watch there
during the activities of the company below.
When the film was developed and run
off in the projection room that evening it was pronounced
by all even by Mr. Hammond as
good in detail as the spoiled reel.
From that point the work went on briskly,
for the weather remained perfect for picture taking.
Ruth was busy; but she could give some time to enjoyment,
too, especially in the evening; and that next evening
when Chess Copley appeared in his own motor-boat,
the Lauriette, she was glad to join a moonlight
boating party which ventured as far as Alexandria
Bay, where they had supper and danced at the pavilion,
returning to the picture camp in the early hours of
the morning.
Ruth was Chessleigh’s particular
guest on this occasion, and Tom and Helen Cameron
went in another launch.
The moonlight upon the islands and
the passages of silvery water between them was most
beautiful. And Ruth enjoyed herself immensely.
That is, she found the occasion enjoyable until they
got back to the bungalow and had bidden the Copleys
and their party good night. Then the girl of the
Red Mill found her roommate rather irritable.
Helen pouted and was frankly cross when she spoke.
“I don’t see what you
find so interesting in Chess Copley,” she observed,
brushing her hair before the glass.
“He is nice I think,” replied Ruth placidly.
“And you just ignore Tommy-boy.”
“I could not very well refuse
Chess when he invited me into his launch. I did
not know you and Tom were going in the other boat.”
“Well, I wasn’t going
with Chess. And I wouldn’t let Tommy tag
after you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be
so foolish, Helen,” sighed her chum.
“If you act this way,”
declared the rather unreasonable Helen, “you’ll
spoil our whole visit at the Thousand Islands.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed
Ruth, for once showing exasperation, “you do
not talk very sensibly, Helen. I have come here
to work, not to play. Please bear that in mind.
If you think I spoil your sport I will not join any
other evening parties.”
The next evening when the Copley party
came over to get acquainted with some of the moving
picture people and arrange for a big dance on Saturday
night, Ruth was as good as her word, and remained in
Mr. Hammond’s office, recasting certain scenes
in her story that Mr. Hooley proposed to make next
day.
Helen was sure Ruth was “mad”
and kept out of the way intentionally. She told
Tom so. But she did not choose to relieve Chess
Copley’s loneliness when she saw him mooning
about.
Whenever Chess tried to speak to Helen
in private she ran away from him. Whether it
was loyalty to her brother, Tom, or some other reason
that made Helen treat Copley so unkindly, the fact
remained that Chess was plainly not in Helen’s
good books, although she made much of the two Copley
girls.
The next day Ruth was quite as busy,
for the making of the picture was going ahead rapidly
while the good weather lasted. This story she
had written was more of a pageant than anything she
had yet essayed. The scenes were almost all “on
location,” instead of being filmed under a glass
roof.
Helen and Tom did not seem to understand
that their friend could not go off fishing or sailing
or otherwise junketing whenever they would like to
have her. But picture making and directors, and
especially sunlight, will not wait, and so Ruth tried
to tell them.
It was Chess Copley, after all, who
seemed to have the better appreciation of Ruth’s
situation just at this time. Before a week had
passed he was almost always to be found at Ruth’s
beck and call; for when she could get away from the
work of picture making, Chess turned up as faithfully
as the proverbial bad penny.
“You are not a bad penny, however,
Chess,” she told him, smiling. “You
are a good scout. Now you may take me out in your
motor-boat. If it is too late to fish, we can
at least have a run out into the river. How pretty
it is to-day!”
“If everybody treated me as
nicely as you do, Ruth,” he said, rather soberly,
“my head would be turned.”
“Cheer up, Chess,” she
said, laughing. “I don’t say the worst
is yet to come. Perhaps the best will come to
you in time.”
“You say that only to encourage me I fear.”
“I certainly don’t say
it to discourage you,” she confessed. “Going
around like a faded lily isn’t going to help
you a mite and so I have already told you.”
“Huh! How’s a fellow
going to register joy when he feels anything but?”
“You’d make a poor screen
actor,” she told him. “See Mr. Grand
to-day. He has an ulcerated tooth and is going
to the Bay to-night to have it treated. Yet,
as the French voyageur, he had to make love to Wonota
and Miss Keith, both. Some job!”
“That fellow makes love as easy
as falling off a log,” grumbled Chess. “I
never saw such a fellow.”
“But the girls flock to see
him in any picture. If he were my brother or
husband I would never know when he was really
making love or just registering love. Still actors
live in a world of their own. They are not like
other people if they are really good actors.”
Copley’s Lauriette shot
them half way across the broad St. Lawrence before
sunset, and from that point they watched the sun sink
in the west and the twilight gather along the Canadian
shore and among the islands on the American side.
When Chessleigh was about to start
the engine again and head for the camp and
dinner they suddenly spied a powerful speed
boat coming out from the Canadian side. It cleaved
the water like the blade of a knife, throwing up a
silver wave on either side. And as it passed the
Lauriette Ruth and her companion could see several
men in her cockpit.
“There are those fellows again,”
Chess remarked. “Wonder what they are up
to? That boat passed our island yesterday evening
and the crowd in her then acted to me as though they
were drunk.”
“I should think Why!”
exclaimed Ruth suddenly breaking off in what she was
first going to say, “one of those men is a Chinaman.”
“So he is,” agreed Chessleigh Copley.
“And that little fat man see him?
Why, Chess! it looks like ”
“Who is it?” asked the young fellow, in
surprise at Ruth’s excitement.
“It’s Bilby!” gasped
Ruth. “That horrid man! I I hoped we
had seen the last of him. And now he’s
right here where we are working with Wonota.”
She had said so much that she had
to explain fully about Bilby, while they sat and watched
the speed boat disappear up the river. Ruth was
sure she had made no mistake in her identification
of the rival picture producer who had made her so
much trouble back at the Red Mill.
“I must tell Mr. Hammond at
once,” she concluded. “If Bilby is
here, he is here for no good purpose, I can be sure.
And if he has a boat like that at his command, we
must keep double watch.”
“You think he would try to abduct
Wonota again?” queried Chess.
“I would believe that fellow
capable of anything,” she returned. “I
mean anything that did not call for personal courage
on his part.”
“Humph!” murmured Chess
thoughtfully. “I wonder what he was doing
with the Chinaman in his party. You know, sometimes
Chinamen are smuggled across from Canada against the
emigration laws of the States.”
He headed the Lauriette for
the camp then, and they arrived there in a rather
serious mood.