“Burr Atwell,” declared Tom. “The editorial office had been ransacked for the circulation records. It’s a good thing I moved them this afternoon.”
“Can we prove Atwell had a hand in this?”
“I don’t suppose so,” admitted Tom, “but we’ll run a story in this week’s issue that will scare him. We’ll say the fire chief is investigating and may ask for state secret service men to help him run down the fire bug who started it. That ought to give Atwell a queer feeling.”
They telephoned for another supply of print paper for the week’s issue and the next morning were back at the office. The men who had worked through the night had done a good job of cleaning and there was little evidence of fire other than the charred casings of the back door and smudgy condition of the walls and ceiling.
Thanksgiving was brightened by word from their father that he would be able to return home in the spring but despite that it was a sad day in the Blair home for there was none to fill his chair at the head of the table.
“Christmas,” thought Helen, “is going to be terribly lonesome for mother with Dad so far away,” and the more she thought about it the more determined she became. Without saying anything to Tom or her mother, she made several guarded inquiries at the station and elicited the desired information.
The days before the annual meeting of the supervisors passed rapidly. The ground whitened under the first snow of the year and the auditor for whom Tom had arranged in Cranston arrived to audit their circulation list officially. For a week before his arrival Tom and Helen concentrated every effort on their circulation with the result that when the audit was completed the Herald could boast of 1,411 paid up subscriptions.
“You’ve done a remarkably fine piece of work,” Curtis Adams, the auditor, told Helen, “and I’m sure you young folks deserve the county work.”
The supervisors met on Thursday, December 15th, and in order to attend the meeting Tom and Helen worked most of Wednesday night getting the final pages of the Herald on the press, assembling and folding the papers. It was three o’clock in the morning when they reached home and their mother, who had been sleeping on a davenport awaiting their return, prepared a hot lunch and then sent them to bed.
At nine o’clock Tom teased their venerable flivver into motion and with their records and the auditor in the back seat, they started for Gladbrook. It was well after ten o’clock when they reached the courthouse and they went directly to the supervisors’ rooms where a clerk asked them to wait.