As she approached, both men glanced up and dropped their quarrel, pretending that there had been no argument. Joan was puzzled. Perhaps Mack had been merely teasing poor old Dummy. But no, the proofreader’s eyes were hard and glittering with real anger. Joan felt it had been more than a mere bandying of words. Mack strolled off, abruptly, sauntering with his important little way, that caused Amy to call him “high hat.” Being on the copy desk once in a while was giving him the big head, Chub said.
Joan looked at Dummy. He did not look like a villain. However, she felt again as she had when she had discovered his eyes upon her that first day Tim was on the paper. What was there peculiar about him? Was it shyness or secretiveness?
He had regained his pencil now, and Joan borrowed it to write on the clean pad sheet that he presented, “Where is the story about the charity....”
“Yes,” he wrote without waiting for her to finish. “Where is it? That’s what I want to know.”
That’s what they had been arguing about, Joan guessed.
“The story was wrong—” Joan began.
“I know it,” Dummy had the pencil again. “I went to the hook to get it to keep it out, because another story came through about Miss Florence Webb having tonsillitis.”
Joan was sure he had intended to make changes in one of Tim’s stories. But she did not say or write anything. She was too worried. Had the story gone through? Suddenly, as she stood there, thinking, there sounded in her ears a familiar and terrible racket, unearthly and unending. The presses were running.
“Stop the presses!” She ran toward the big Goss giant in the pressroom. She could not let that story come out. The Journal would look ridiculous, printing something that hadn’t happened.
Dummy sensed her words and followed, trying with gestures to soothe her. If she had not known he was a villain, she would have thought him very nice. He always treated her as though she were grown up. But she knew he really wanted that story to go through.