“All right, I’ll quit,” Tim muttered. “No sense to work for a paper that lets such things happen. I tell you I never wrote that paragraph. Whether I can prove it or not, I never did!”
Joan wanted to rush right after him as he strode out of the office, but she must work on the mystery to solve it and save him. She couldn’t lose a minute. If Dummy were a spy, she was going to find out right now and make things right for Tim. Perhaps she could prove it before Tim got home.
No need to ask Dummy anything. She wouldn’t even nod to him, but just go right to the big hook where the copy was. The usual rumble and clatter came from the pressroom, but here the linotype men had all gone home, and there was no one except Dummy over there in the corner. With fingers that trembled, Joan flipped the pages until she came to the fire story, with Tim’s name up in the left-hand corner. It was a long story, and Tim had pasted the sheets together in one long strip.
The paragraph was there, just as it had appeared in the paper. Could it be that the Dummy had borrowed some one’s typewriter and written it? Was he really a spy? He could so easily take the story off the hook, with no one questioning it, add that extra paragraph and get the Journal’s candidate in bad, which was more his job than proofreading, she was sure.
She’d take the copy right to Mr. Nixon and tell him that no one would have dared change it but Dummy.
As she was hurrying toward the swinging door, she heard a voice. “Oh, Miss Joan!” It was a voice she had never heard before—a smooth, cultured, middle-aged, masculine voice. “I want to talk to you.”
Joan turned and stared. There was not a soul in that whole vast place but Dummy over in his corner.
CHAPTER XVIII
DUMMY’S STORY
Joan continued to stare at Dummy. Could it have been his voice? As Gertie had said, he was a creepy sort of person. While she was standing there, the voice came again—and Dummy’s lips were moving!
“I hope you’re not carrying off that fire story, Miss Joan,” he said in a slow sort of voice as though he were not sure of his speech. Joan wondered whether his voice had suddenly been restored to him, but no, he talked too naturally for that. “You’re not supposed to run off with copy that way.”