CHAPTER XIX
THE COMMA’S TAIL
Tim blinked at Joan’s words. “What do you mean?” He grabbed the paperand bent his dark head over it. “Why, that’s true. The commas are O.K.That lets me out, for this was never written on that ramshackle oldmachine I wrote on. But old Nix can rot before I’ll tell him, if hecouldn’t believe me, when I was telling the truth.”
“I’ll tell him—” began Joan and then remembered how Mr. Nixon hadordered her out of the _Journal_ office for good and all, in spite ofwhat Mr. Johnson had said. She was powerless to help. Just when they hadsolved the Dummy mystery. At least, he wasn’t the spy. Was there one?
She thought of Chub, but he, too, was in Mr. Nixon’s bad graces, andwould probably refuse to help.
Well, she really couldn’t go back to the _Journal_, not even to saveTim. But Tim could. He needed the job, too. How could he build up hiscollege fund without it? Maybe Mother would have to sell the house toget money for Tim’s education. She coaxed him to go back to the_Journal_, until he got peeved. He banged upstairs to his own room andslammed the door shut.
Deserted Joan turned to Mother and the housework. There was always thatto fall back on. She made a new kind of pudding out of the cookbook andit turned out well. Mother was pleased to have something extra nice tocheer Tim up over the loss of his job. Mother was sorry about that, butshe was glad that Joan’s duties, whatever they had been at the_Journal_, had mysteriously come to an end—though she had shown she wasproud when Joan wrote up the Davis window.
Tim was impressed with the pudding. “Gee, I didn’t know you could makedessert in three colors,” he said, and Joan felt as though he hadforgiven her for bothering him about going over to see Mr. Nixon. Shestill wished he would, but she did not refer to the matter.
The next day hung wearily on Joan’s hands. Amy did not even telephone.She must be good and mad, for she adored to hold telephoneconversations. Joan tried not to look at the _Journal_ windows acrossthe way. She did the marketing, and straightened out her bureau drawers.Then she walked to the library and got one of the latest books, butsomehow it did not seem half so thrilling as the mystery of the_Journal_ office.
She was half through the book by bedtime, and the next afternoon she satdown on the side steps to finish it. Em rubbed against her ankles, soJoan stopped to fill a saucer of milk for the cat, and then she curledher feet under again and started to read.
Suddenly a familiar call broke into her reading.
“Yoo-whoo!” A window in the _Journal_ office was pushed up and there wasChub’s red head. “Come on over, you and Tim. The chief says so.”
He meant Mr. Nixon, of course. But Joan only stared. Chub had nerve totry a joke like that, right when the office was the busiest, for thepaper was going to press about this time.
“Say!” called Chub. “Can’t you hear? He wants you both, honest. Thepress is broken and everybody has to pitch in to get the paper out ontime.”
Joan rushed into the house after Tim, her heart pounding fast. Oh,suppose Chub were teasing, after all! This would be a much better jokethan telling Amy to feel the heat from the inky roller—and would haveeven more disastrous results. It took quite a few minutes to convinceTim that it was not a joke. He went reluctantly.
But Chub wasn’t “kidding.” Mr. Nixon met them at the editorial door, andhe never even mentioned that he had sent Joan flying from the officeonly twenty-four hours ago. “The press has gone flooie, and we had tohave help,” he explained simply. “I thought you might do some rewrites,Martin, and Joan could help Betty. Everything’s almost done. We’ll haveto send the forms out to be stereotyped and printed. We can’t miss anedition even if the Goss giant is out of whack.”
“No halt in publication.” That was the unspoken thought that spurred thestaff on. Neither Tim nor Joan referred to the circumstances surroundingtheir exits from the _Journal_. Every one was busy. The paper must begot out, as usual.
Because the forms were to be carried in trucks across the town to aprinting office of a weekly trade paper, which had generously offered tohelp the _Journal_ in its trouble, the news would have to be written upmore quickly than if it were to be printed right here in the _Journal’s_own pressroom.
Every one worked. Gertie flew about. Miss Betty showed Joan how to copyone side of a club program and then paste the other side to save copyingit. Tim breathed new life into the usually dead rewrites. Mack waspounding out the day’s ball scores. Cookie was doing the obits. Chubtrotted his legs almost off, running to the composing room with copy.Dummy was there, directing things from his stool, above the tinkle ofthe linotype machines. Every one seemed used to his having a voice,already. Joan had no time to think of the mystery or to do more thanwonder about Dummy, not even when Chub confided to her that he hadsomehow discovered that it was Bossy who had hid the charity play story.
“He knew that Miss Webb had tonsillitis because his sister washes forthe Webbs,” Chub explained. “And so he knew the story was wrong and hidit.”
Well, poor, faithful Bossy wasn’t a spy. He had been trying to help. ButJoan couldn’t even think about Bossy when they were in the middle ofgetting the paper out with the press broken.
Finally, it was all over—the truck with the locked forms had chuggedaway from the curb. Tim and Joan, now in the _Journal_ office, remainedthere. Cookie sent Chub out for cherry ices in paper cups and treatedthe entire staff all around. After the tension of the office for thepast few hours, the staff was relaxing and the place took on an air ofgayety.
Miss Betty and Mack had their heads together over their cherry cups andwere laughing over their wielding of the microscopic spoons.
“Oh, Jo,” Miss Betty addressed Joan, “do something for me, will you?That’s an angel. Clear off my desk. It’s such a mess, I hate to think ofdoing it.”
“Sure,” agreed Joan, readily, and turned to the desk. It was a mess,truly, snowed in under pages of copy paper, clippings, photographs ofbabies and of brides, and proofs of pictures.
Joan loved tidying up when one could see the improvement like this. Shebegan by sticking all Miss Betty’s notes on the big hook on the side ofthe desk, where she kept them for a week, and then threw them away, asdid all the reporters. The photographs she gave to Chub to file in thetall green files, where they would be taken out when the blushing bridesor proud mothers came in to claim them.
Then she was down to the desk top, and blew the dust off. A paperfluttered to the floor. Joan picked it up and could not help readingit—a note from Mack, about a social item that some one had left duringBetty’s lunch hour. He had typed her a message about it, put down thephone number for her to call, and had added his name.
There was something awfully familiar about the typing. The capitals wereall jumped halfway off the line. Why, so were they in that finalparagraph in the fire story. She remembered, because since yesterday,she had been studying the idiosyncrasies of that last paragraph untilshe knew them by heart. But still she couldn’t be sure, without gettingit to compare.
She rushed from the _Journal_ office, and bounded home. Good thing sheknew where she had left that story—under the scarf on her dresser. Backin the _Journal_ office, she looked from the typed note to the lastparagraph of the page in her hands, and then back again. Yes, both ofthem did have capitals halfway above the line.
And—she bent over it more closely and wished for a magnifying glass. Herheart thrilled as she looked over at Tim scowling into his machine—thatwas because Miss Betty and Mack were acting so chummy—and at Chubopening and closing the sliding drawers of the green files as he put thephotographs in their proper places. Tim didn’t know she was saving him.Chub didn’t know she was about to solve the baffling mystery.
She bent closely—yes, it was the same, and the commas were all perfectones, too. The final paragraph had no more been written on Tim’s machinethan the note on Miss Betty’s desk.
There was a soft noise behind her and she jumped. It was Dummy clearinghis throat and looki
ng at her with his mild blue eyes.
“Have you that fire story, Miss Joan?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “Ididn’t get to see it, again, and I wanted to.”
Joan glanced up. It would do no harm to trust him. He did seem nice.Perhaps it was because he called her Miss Joan. “Look, Mr. Marat,” shesaid, and held up the two pieces of typing. “Who wrote these, would yousay?”
Dummy smiled at her respectful use of his name and took them into hisown hands. “It’s that sport editor,” he mused, motioning to the finalparagraph in the story. “I know ’most every one’s typewriting fromcomparing the proof sheets with the original copy, and he put this extraparagraph on to this story of your brother’s.”
He pointed with a crooked finger. “Typing is really just ascharacteristic as handwriting. That fellow, Mack, is always in such ahurry that he never holds his shift key down when he typewrites, and thecapitals are always a bit above the line.” The man’s face wrinkled up.“Besides, I hated to tell this until I was sure it was serious, but oneday, I heard Mack telephoning news tips to the _Star_. The city editorover there, that Tebbets, is his foster uncle, I’ve just discovered, andhe’s in their employ. And that day of the picnic, I did some spyingmyself, following the two of them while they hatched their schemes.Dirty business, but it’s sometimes done.”
Joan’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but theproofreader grabbed her elbow. “Keep mum on this, and we’ll break it toNixon when he comes back.”
It seemed ages, waiting. Chub asked her a half-dozen times what she wasdreaming about, for she hardly listened to his chatter. Her head wasgoing round. They had thought Dummy was scheming with Tebbets at thepicnic. Mack must have been on ahead, in front of his adopted uncle. AndMack had told her he suspected Dummy! Was Mack the spy? It seemedpossible. She remembered how peeved he had been that time she hadmentioned that his machine had heads on the commas.
Finally, Mr. Nixon came; he had stayed until the edition was safely outand had brought back some loose papers in his hands. The rest were onthe truck for the newsboys. Things began to hum again. Gertie’s voice,busy on the front office phone, floated out to them. She was assuringthe subscribers who were calling that they would get their papers soon,that the delivery wasn’t going to be very late, after all.
Dummy took Joan’s arm and led her up to Mr. Nixon’s desk.
“This young lady has been doing a bit of sleuthing around here,” hesaid, “and has hit on something really big!” And then they told him,Dummy writing the important words on a pad on the desk and motioningwith his head toward Mack, so that the rest of the staff wouldn’t knowwhat they were talking about. Dummy told Mr. Nixon about shadowing Mackand Tebbets at the picnic, saying he was about to relate all thisyesterday when his story had been so untimely interrupted by Amy’sscreams. “I couldn’t explain until I was sure,” Dummy stated. “Then whenthat charity play story was lost, I was sure he was up to mischiefagain. I tried to get him to confess. We had an argument and he grabbedmy pencil away. But I knew then that he was not on the level.”
Mr. Nixon wasn’t convinced right away. He was puzzled. “I’ve alwaysbelieved that young Martin made the mistakes and then was scared toadmit them. But—maybe, now—and if Mack is really Tebbets’ ward. Tebbetsis a hard fellow. He probably bullied Mack into doing it—if he did.” Andhe fussed over the papers and stroked his chin.
Joan said nothing. She was recalling Tebbets at the picnic—how he hadspoken to Mack, and how he had ignored cunning little Ruthie. He wasjust the type of man who could make Mack do most anything.
Suddenly, the editor marched over to Mack with the copy in his hand.Mack was bending over his machine with his green shade over his eyes.
“Look here Mack, did you write that extra bit on this fire story?”
Mack looked up, startled, pulled off the eye shade, and stared. His facewas as red as the rouge Gertie used. He didn’t need to say a word toshow that he was guilty.
Joan could hardly help feeling sorry for him.
“Maybe,” she ventured, coming over, “maybe he did it because hewas—jealous of Tim.”
Miss Betty, who had by this time sensed what had happened, gave a littlegasp of protest. “Oh, no,” she cried.
Joan suddenly realized that while Mack may have disliked her somewhat onthe grounds that she was his rival’s sister, still, he had been afraidall along that she and Chub, in their investigations, might suspect him.
“Jealous, nothing!” shouted the editor. “He’s on the staff of the_Star_. He’s been deliberately trying to ball us up with theadministration.”
Mack wrenched his hands away. He looked sorry and ashamed. “Let go,” hesaid. “I’m leaving anyway.”
Joan always believed that there was some story back of it that excusedMack a little. Maybe he needed the money—or something. But Mr. Nixon didnot share her leniency.
“You bet you’re going,” he roared, and he took Mack by the collar. “Butnot until you make a full confession to the manager.” The editor marchedhim into Uncle John’s office.
Tim hardly knew what to say. He gave Joan a grateful look and murmured,“Gee, kid, I never dreamed there was a real spy.”
“Didn’t I say so all along?” demanded Chub. “I knew mistakes werehappening before Dummy and Tim came to work here.” He acted as though hehad done all the detective work himself, but Joan was too happy to mind.Tim had intimated that she had really helped him. Why, it was almost asif he had told her she was a good sport.
Even Bossy added his bit. “So it was that feller, Mack, that let wrongstuff get in the papah. Mistakes is bad!”
If Mack had added the paragraph to this fire story, then, Joan thought,he had probably typed a new beginning to that story of the desertedchildren—the very first mistake she had known anything about.
When Mack came out of Uncle John’s office, he did not say good-by to anyone, not even to Miss Betty, but just grabbed his hat and went out ofthe office. Gertie, on seeing him go past her counter, guessed by hismanner that something was wrong, and rushed back into the editorial roomto find out what, brushing past the printers and linotype men who werefiling out, their day’s work over.
“Well, Joan was right,” said Mr. Nixon, as he seated himself behind hisdesk again. “Martin, I guess your job’s safe enough, now. Want it back?”
Tim nodded his answer. He hardly knew what to say. Mr. Nixon opened uphis red date book and wrote something in it. He was giving Tim anassignment for the next day. “Maybe we can make you sport editor aroundhere one of these days. I haven’t forgotten what a cracker jack write-upyou did of the _Journal_ team victory over the _Star_,” smiled theeditor.
Sport editor! Tim could only grin. Joan knew he would be a goodone—probably be better at that than at straight reporting. Hadn’t hebeen the high school star in athletics? He could go on to college now,for his job was safe; Mr. Nixon had said so. And with the spy, Mack,gone, the _Journal_ was safe now, too.
But the entire staff—Miss Betty and Cookie and Chub—were rushing up toJoan herself.
“Gee,” said Gertie, over her chewing gum, “if you keep on, Jo, you’ll bethe star reporter around here.”
“Yes, indeed,” nodded the editor. “There’ll be a desk waiting here foryou soon as you’re through high school, Miss Joan.”
He had called her Miss Joan! What did it matter that through the_Journal_ windows, she could see Mother at the side steps, waving forher to come home? Probably it was time to start dinner. Nothingmattered. She had a job promised her!
THE END
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