Joan rushed into the house after Tim, her heart pounding fast. Oh, suppose Chub were teasing, after all! This would be a much better joke than telling Amy to feel the heat from the inky roller—and would have even more disastrous results. It took quite a few minutes to convince Tim that it was not a joke. He went reluctantly.
But Chub wasn’t “kidding.” Mr. Nixon met them at the editorial door, and he never even mentioned that he had sent Joan flying from the office only twenty-four hours ago. “The press has gone flooie, and we had to have help,” he explained simply. “I thought you might do some rewrites, Martin, and Joan could help Betty. Everything’s almost done. We’ll have to send the forms out to be stereotyped and printed. We can’t miss an edition even if the Goss giant is out of whack.”
“No halt in publication.” That was the unspoken thought that spurred the staff on. Neither Tim nor Joan referred to the circumstances surrounding their exits from the Journal. Every one was busy. The paper must be got out, as usual.
Because the forms were to be carried in trucks across the town to a printing office of a weekly trade paper, which had generously offered to help the Journal in its trouble, the news would have to be written up more 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 copy one side of a club program and then paste the other side to save copying it. Tim breathed new life into the usually dead rewrites. Mack was pounding out the day’s ball scores. Cookie was doing the obits. Chub trotted his legs almost off, running to the composing room with copy. Dummy was there, directing things from his stool, above the tinkle of the 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 than wonder about Dummy, not even when Chub confided to her that he had somehow discovered that it was Bossy who had hid the charity play story.
“He knew that Miss Webb had tonsillitis because his sister washes for the Webbs,” Chub explained. “And so he knew the story was wrong and hid it.”
Well, poor, faithful Bossy wasn’t a spy. He had been trying to help. But Joan couldn’t even think about Bossy when they were in the middle of getting the paper out with the press broken.
Finally, it was all over—the truck with the locked forms had chugged away from the curb. Tim and Joan, now in the Journal office, remained there. Cookie sent Chub out for cherry ices in paper cups and treated the entire staff all around. After the tension of the office for the past few hours, the staff was relaxing and the place took on an air of gayety.
Miss Betty and Mack had their heads together over their cherry cups and were 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 of doing it.”