“Sure,” said Joan, weakly.
The editor groaned and they all filed back into the editorial room. Joan couldn’t follow—even though Mr. Johnson had said she could stay at the Journal as much as she liked. It was all Amy’s fault, screaming like that and acting so silly. Mr. Nixon had just banished her, too; because she was Amy’s friend. As they went past the front counter, there was Gertie with an expression of horror on her face as great as Amy’s had been over her contact with the inky roller. “To think of the things I’ve said to that Dummy!” she was wailing. “I’ve said, ‘Oh, you dear, darling Dummy,’ and ‘Oh, angel of light!’ and all kinds of crazy things like that. I have, really. And he heard me all the time!”
But Joan went on. She had troubles of her own. She was anxious to tell Tim about Dummy’s not being a dummy. She was disappointed not to find him at home—he had stalked off for a walk, gloomily, mother explained. Joan went on up to her own room to muse over events. She had been ousted from the Journal, but she was still vitally interested in the office and its unsolved mystery. She stood by the dresser, looking down at the fire story she still held in her hand. The mystery of the mistakes hadn’t been solved. She remembered now that Chub had mentioned mistakes to her the day Tim got the job. That proved it wasn’t Tim. Maybe it was Dummy, after all. He hadn’t explained about being with Mr. Tebbets at the picnic, anyway.
Finally, she heard the front door bang and knew Tim had come in. By the time she got downstairs, she found him slouched in the morris chair in the living room, his long legs stretched halfway across the room, it seemed. He nodded sullenly and silently to her question, “Are you really fired?”
She had to tell him the thrilling news. “Tim, Dummy’s not a deaf-mute. He can talk.”
Tim sat up. “Are you stringing me?”
“No, really, it’s a fact. Every one was so surprised. You should have seen Bossy! Dummy spoke to me, and I was so scared I nearly jumped out of my skin!” she explained. “You see, I had gone to the composing room for your fire story.” She suddenly realized that she still had it in her hand. “I wanted to look at that extra paragraph that got stuck on there, to see if it really was on the copy. And it was.” She held it up, and glanced at the final paragraph to reassure herself. Then she gave a gasp, as she gazed at the end of the long story in her hand. “Why, Tim! The commas in this last paragraph have heads!”
CHAPTER XIX
THE COMMA’S TAIL
Tim blinked at Joan’s words. “What do you mean?” He grabbed the paper and 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 old machine I wrote on. But old Nix can rot before I’ll tell him, if he couldn’t believe me, when I was telling the truth.”
“I’ll tell him—” began Joan and then remembered how Mr. Nixon had ordered her out of the Journal office for good and all, in spite of what Mr. Johnson had said. She was powerless to help. Just when they had solved the Dummy mystery. At least, he wasn’t the spy. Was there one?