CHAPTER IV
“NO MORE MISTAKES”
Joan, with pounding heart, lifted her eyes and looked at Mr. Albert Johnson. He was a man of about fifty and was seated in the chair at Tim’s desk. His hair was thin and his face was round. He was holding his gray felt hat and his yellow gloves in his hands resting upon a yellow cane between his knees. He was tapping the cane on the floor—not with impatience, Joan realized, but it was that cross kind of a tapping noise that a person makes when he is very angry and is trying to control himself. Mr. Johnson’s face told her the same thing. It was red, now, and his mouth was set like a bulldog’s. His eyes glared at her. Tim was standing there, too, silent. The rest of the office staff was watching the scene, and pretending not to.
“And are you the young woman who typed this—this—” Mr. Albert Johnson lifted up his hat and his hand shook as he held a folded newspaper toward her, “this ridiculous story about me?”
“Yes,” was Joan’s faint answer. “But—”
“Why,” the man seemed to be seeing her now for the first time, “why, you’re nothing but a child. Are you really able to run a typewriter?”
“Yes,” she said again. She hated to be called a child.
“Very, very peculiar.” Mr. Johnson tapped his yellow cane harder than ever.
Joan could bear it no longer. “But I’m just positive I wrote that name Albert Jackson,” she burst out.
The bulldog man eyed her. “Can you prove it?”
“No, the copy was different. It was changed.” She was full of the mystery, having just come from the discussion over it with Chub and Amy. “We’re working on it—the mystery—now, and maybe we’ll have it cleared up. We have a suspect already.”