“Sure, that’s why they sound as though they couldn’t possibly have happened,” laughed Tim. “Because they actually did.”
Well, wasn’t their mystery as impossible-sounding as any made up one? All the while she was watching Dummy every possible chance. She had come upon him suddenly several times “out back” and he had scurried out of the way, like a cat caught in the cream. She and Chub spent every minute they could “sleuthing the office” as he called it. “Watch everything! That’s the only way,” he told her.
So Joan watched, and discovered that Betty didn’t go out to lunch with Mack any more, but she and Tim went out at the same time and often lunched together at a white-tiled place, with copper bowls of scarlet apples and golden oranges in the window. Mother thought it was silly of him to spend his salary on lunches when he lived right next door to his job, and said so.
Of course Miss Betty couldn’t help but like Tim when he tried to be nice, and he did try. He would leave foolish notes addressed to “Betty Barefacts” on Miss Betty’s desk. Joan discovered one on the society editor’s hook when she was destroying her notes for her. It read:
Dear Miss Barefacts,
I am a young man with passes to the stock company. Is it proper to ask a girl to go to a show on passes?
T. M.
Mack didn’t tease so much any more, either. He seemed provoked that Betty was preferring Tim. Once when Tim was busy at his machine, and Mack was going out to lunch, his hat punched down over his eyes, Joan asked him timidly, “Mack, may I use your machine to copy this Ten Years Ago To-Day?”
He seemed about to give a nod of assent, when Joan added, coaxingly, “Your typewriter is better than Tim’s. His commas have no heads.”
Instantly the sport editor’s face changed. “You keep out of here.” He jammed the cracked, black canvas cover down over his machine, and strode out of the office, muttering what he thought about a newspaper in a jay town like this that let a kid stick around every minute!
Joan was bewildered, until she looked across the office now and saw Betty and Tim laughing together over some letter she had received for the Advice to the Lovelorn column. Then she thought she understood. Mack was peeved because Betty liked Tim—and about the lunches and notes and shows. But why shouldn’t she prefer big, broad-shouldered, dark-haired Tim to that silly, pink-mustached sport editor, even though Tim was only seventeen? And, of course, Mack wasn’t going to treat his rival’s sister nicely.
Things seemed rather at a standstill. To be sure, Mr. Johnson stopped in at the office about every other day, when he was in town, and he always asked after the mystery. He was interested in learning that Dummy was seen in the woods with Mr. Tebbets, but didn’t seem to think that it proved anything. Almost every time Mr. Johnston came he had a box in his hand.