Joan of the Journal

JOAN OF THE JOURNAL

By

Helen Diehl Olds

ILLUSTRATED BY ROBB BEEBE

GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers New York
By arrangement with D. Appleton-Century Company

COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be
reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher.

Copyright, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930 by
the Methodist Book Concern

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To my sons
Bob and Jerry
just because ...

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[It was the story of the Charity Play]

[“I’ll talk with this young woman alone,” he said]

[“Mark ’em ‘first’ and ‘second’,” Tim shouted]

[“Are you a deaf-mute or aren’t you?”]

[LARGER IMAGE]

CHAPTER I
JOAN GETS A JOB

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Joan called over her shoulder to Mother, as she scurried around past the lilac bushes by the kitchen windows.

Oh, suppose she were too late!

Tim had gone into the Journal office, just as she had started doing the dishes. Joan rarely minded doing dishes, because the windows above the kitchen sink looked across at the Journal office and she could watch everything that went on over there. Usually, she lingered over the dishes, just as she hustled over the bed making because the bedrooms were on the other side of the house. But to-day, she had done the dishes in less than no time, because she wanted to be nearer the scene of action than the kitchen windows.

She hurried now, though it was rather undignified for a person fourteen years old to run in a public place like this. That was the trouble with living right down town. No privacy. Joan thought of the rows and rows of new homes out at the end of Market Street, and then looked back at her own little home—also on Market Street. It was a tiny, red brick house, tucked in between the Journal office and the county court house, set back behind a space of smooth green lawn. It was like living in a public square. But Joan had lived there all her life and really loved the excitement of it.

Uncle John, who was general manager of the paper, would probably be busy and tell Tim to wait, as though he were just anybody applying for a summer-time job and not his own nephew, Joan’s seventeen-year-old brother.

Joan crossed the green plot to the nearest window of the Journal—she had climbed in and out of those windows as a little girl. She could see Chub, the red-haired office boy, wandering around. He was never very busy this time of the afternoon after the paper was on the press. Joan was as much at home in the Journal office as in her own brick house next door. As a baby, she had often curled up on a heap of newspapers and taken her nap, regardless of the roar and throb of the presses. That was when Daddy had been alive and had been city editor. He had been so proud of his baby girl that he had often taken her to work with him in an afternoon when Mother was busy and things at the office were slack.

She had grown up with the roar and clatter of the machines, and the smell of hot ink, and she loved it all, just as other girls might love a battered old piano in the parlor—just because it spelled home.

Uncle John’s office was at the end of the editorial rooms, just by the swinging door into the composing room. “Sanctum sanctorum” she and Tim called Uncle John’s office. Joan stationed herself out of sight, under the buckeye tree, and peered through the dirty, streaked window. She could see Uncle John’s desk, with its crowded cubby-holes, frayed blotter, and books about to fall off.

She craned her neck and saw Tim standing before the desk, twisting his cap in his hands. Of course, talking to Uncle John wasn’t anything, but asking for a job as a cub reporter was. They were talking together, and Tim looked so serious, Joan would hardly have recognized him.

Oh, he had to get that job! It was during graduation week, when Tim had had to have a new outfit for the commencement exercises, that Mother had done some figuring and suddenly discovered that perhaps there would not be enough money for college for Tim, after all. Tim had had his heart set on going to the State University at Columbus that fall. Joan herself had even dreamed of attending the big football games while he was there, and when they cheered, “Martin! Atta boy, Martin!” she would say, as modestly as she could, “That’s my brother!” Tim was good in all sports—had been a leader in them all through high school. It was the only thing he really liked, but, in a town like Plainfield, excelling in sports offered no method of earning money during the summer months.

Tim had stalked about for days, gloomy as could be, after Mother’s announcement. Then one evening, when Uncle John had dropped in for supper, he had said, “Want a job, do you? Well, come over, and talk to me some time. Maybe I can fix you up. We’re adding new names to the pay roll every week, and you might as well get yours on, too.”

If he’d said anything like that to Joan, she would have been in seventh heaven, she thought. But Tim seemed only mildly thrilled. Of course, he wanted the job, but it was only a job to Tim, while a job on the Journal had been Joan’s lifelong dream.

Finally, as she watched now, she saw Uncle John get up and walk around his desk. He shook hands with Tim and patted him on the shoulder. Tim grinned all over his face, then turned and went out the door, while Uncle John went back to his cluttered desk. Joan could have watched Tim as he went through the editorial rooms and the business office and the front door of the Journal, for there were rows of windows all facing her own green yard, but instead, she turned and raced to their kitchen door.

“Mother!” her voice vibrated through the old house. “Tim got the job!”

Mrs. Martin looked up from the oven where she had slipped in a cake, and smiled. “That’s nice.”

Joan sank down on a kitchen chair that was peeling its paint. “Mother, it’s wonderful!”

“Joan, don’t get so excited.” The oven door banged. “It’s not you that’s got the job.”

“I really feel as though it was, honest,” declared the girl. “You know, I’ve always dreamed of having a job on the Journal and now I have it—or rather Tim has, but it’s all in the family.”

“You should have been a boy, Jo,” Mrs. Martin made her oft-repeated remark. As it was, Joan’s dark, straight hair was always given a boyish bob, and there were some boyish freckles on her short nose, too. “Tim may be the image of his father, but you’re just the way he was, crazy about the newspaper. I don’t see what you see in it. Though I guess it has been better since John’s been managing it. But as soon as we can sell this house without a loss, we’ll move.”

“Mother!” Joan wouldn’t feel she were living without the Journal next door. But she didn’t take her mother’s words seriously. Mother was always talking vaguely of selling the house and had suggested it in earnest recently. The interest on the mortgage was high and being in a business block, it was hard to find a buyer. If she could retain it, until some one wanted it for business purposes, they might make a nice profit. But Plainfield was a slow-growing town. Uncle John advised holding it until some one wanted it for a business.

“Your poor father just slaved for that paper, and it never got him anywhere,” went on her mother. “I hope you get over the notion of being a reporter by the time you’re Tim’s age, and take up stenography.”

“Ugh.” Joan made a little face. “Office work—not me!”

No, she was going to be a reporter, no matter what. Hadn’t Daddy taught her to typewrite when she was only eleven, and didn’t even Tim think she was a “pretty good typist”? Daddy had always said she had a “nose for news,” too. She remembered feeling her pug nose speculatively the first time he said that, wondering what it meant. Her nose did turn up inquisitively. Now she knew, “nose for news” meant she had the natural curiosity that it took to make a good reporter.

Then the door opened and Tim came in, still wearing the broad grin with which he had left the Journal office.

“I’m glad you got it, son.” Mrs. Martin spoke before Tim could say a word.

“Just like that kid, to tell everything before any one else gets a chance.”

He was really cross. That’s the way he was most of the time, these days. They had been good chums until his senior year in High School, when he had assumed such superior airs. He had acted especially high and mighty since his graduation last week. As far as Joan could find out, he had nothing against her except her age. Could she help it that she was nearly four years the younger? She was almost as tall as Amy Powell, her best friend, and Amy was fifteen years old. He was usually nice to Amy, too, but then Amy had a grown-up way around the boys.

Only at times did he seem the same old brother. To think that only a year ago they had been such chums, even to having a secret code between them. When she was small, it had amused her to learn that Tim’s real name, Timothy, was also the name of a grain. “Oats and beans and barley,” she used to sing the old song at him, and somehow or other in their play that phrase came to mean, “Danger. Look out.” It had been convenient lots of times in their games, Hie Spy and Run Sheep Run. But they hadn’t used it for a long time now.

“Tim, I just couldn’t help telling. I was so excited.” She tried to make her dark eyes sober and her voice sorry sounding, now.

“She’s the limit.” Tim turned to his mother. “Reads what I’m writing over my shoulder and breathes down my neck till I’m nearly crazy.”

He, like Mother, refused to believe she was in earnest about being a reporter.

“You ought to be glad I do snoop around,” Joan told him, as she wiped off the table for Mother. “You know Edna Ferber’s Dawn O’Hara was rescued from the wastebasket by her sister, so you see! When do you start in?”

“To-morrow.” Tim drew up his shoulders, proudly. “Uncle John says they really need a cub reporter since they put Mack on Sports. That’s the place I’d really like! But—they need a cub, and I’m it. Decent enough salary, too, Mother; I’ll be able to pay you some board, besides saving for the University.”

Mother smiled. “That’s fine!”

“I stopped at Nixon’s desk and he gave me my beat.” Tim pulled a scrap of yellow paper from his pocket.

“What is your beat?” Joan squirmed to see.

He let her read:

Railway Station

Flower Shops

Library

Post Office

“I have to go round there every day and scare up news,” he said. “The rest of the time, I’ll be busy doing obits and rewrites.” (That meant obituary notices and articles rewritten from other newspapers.)

Joan gazed at him over the plates and things she was carrying into the china closet. She always just drained them, and they were dry now. “And can I go with you?”

“On my beat?” came the scandalized echo. “I should say not!”

But, as she put the plates away, Joan schemed to go. How else could she learn what a cub reporter did on his beat? And since she wanted to be a reporter some day herself, she must not miss this opportunity.

“And I mustn’t make any mistakes.” Tim followed her into the dining room. “Uncle John says we can’t stand a black eye with election time coming off in the fall.”

“Why, what has that to do with it?” Joan asked.

Tim, always willing to display his knowledge, went on to explain that a man named William Berry from Western Ohio and called “Billy Berry” in political circles, was running for governor of the state. He had bought the Journal’s rival, The Morning Star, the only other newspaper in town, and was trying every way to “get in good with the people,” to insure his election. The Journal, opposed to certain methods and past actions of Billy Berry, had had to double their efforts against this man, who was not the right one for governor at all. The Journal had its own candidate, Edward Hutton, who lived in Cleveland, but who spent a great deal of time on his estate in the beautiful Ohio Valley country near Plainfield. The Journal and Edward Hutton’s followers were striving to show every one that he was the better man for governor.

Joan listened intently and tried hard to understand. “And is the Journal Uncle John’s ‘political tool’?” she asked.

“No, he’s not interested in politics himself, but he is interested in getting Hutton elected.” Tim was really being very decent about explaining. “Everything good we can say about him will help.” He broke off and started upstairs. “I’ve got to study to be ready for my job.”

Study what, Joan wondered, but she knew better than to ask. He had been such a peach telling her so much, she mustn’t get him provoked with her. She wandered out to the yard and called Em, the cat. Em really belonged to the Journal but she spent most of her time at the Martins’. Daddy had named her Em—which is a very small newspaper measure—when she had been a tiny, black kitten that you could hold in the palm of your hand. Now, she was a big, shiny cat. She rubbed against Joan’s plaid sport hose, entreatingly. Joan picked her up and cuddled her slippery length on her shoulder.

What did it matter if Em shed black hairs over Joan’s white middy? Joan never bothered much about clothes. She wore middies almost all the time because they were easy to get into and were comfortable. She wished she might always wear knickers, but since she couldn’t, she wore pleated skirts as often as she could. The one she had on to-day was a real Scotch plaid.

Joan began to hunt for four-leaf clovers in the short-cropped grass. If she found one, she’d give it to Tim, to bring him good luck in his new work. They could have them for “talismen” like Lloyd and Rob in The Little Colonel books. She was half afraid that Tim would not be a good reporter; he was too—temperamental somehow.

She glanced often toward the Journal windows. Mother hated having her run over there so much—was afraid Uncle John wouldn’t like it, so she was never to go without an excuse. But Chub often called her to the windows to keep her posted on everything that went on.

Pretty soon, she heard his familiar, “Yoo-whoo!”

A window in the Journal office opposite was pushed up, and Chub stuck his red head out. “Come here a minute.”

Chub was just Joan’s age and her special pal. He knew almost everything there was to know about a newspaper office. He was sympathetic with Joan’s ambitions to newspaper fame, and was always willing to answer any of her questions. When work was slack at the Journal, the two often had games together—even playing mumble-peg on the worn, splintery floor of the editorial office.

“I suppose you know the news?” he grinned, as she came to the window.

“About Tim? Sure thing,” she answered. “Say, Chub, do me a favor, and think up something to call me over to the Journal about, to-morrow afternoon, will you? It’ll be Tim’s first day, and I’ll be so anxious to know how everything goes, but I don’t dare let on to him.”

“O.K.” That was Chub’s favorite expression at the present. He got a new one every few weeks.

“Say, Jo,” he lowered his voice. “There’s something queer going on over here. Mystery. I’m working on it—oh, gee, there’s Cookie waving some copy at me. I gotta go. But I’ll tell you more as soon as I really find out something.”

The red head was withdrawn, and Joan went back to the kitchen steps, depositing Em beside her saucer of milk.

A mystery at the Journal! What could it be? And would it affect Tim? Joan rather guessed so, from Chub’s remarks. Joan loved mysteries, and Chub knew it. Besides, if Chub had discovered it, then it was bound to be a really good one. A real man’s mystery—nothing silly, like the mysteries Amy tried to concoct.

In a little bit, Tim came out, in a radiant mood, Joan could tell at a glance. “Grab your swimming suit, kid. I want to get in a last swim before I start my job—I’ll be too busy as a cub, and don’t want to go alone.”

It was wonderful having Tim decent to her, Joan thought as she flew to do his bidding. Would he always be this agreeable, now that he was happy and important over having a job? She hoped so.

After supper, Joan sat on the side steps and listened to the drone of the humming bird that visited the honeysuckle vines, and looked up at the stars above the Journal office roof.

“To-morrow, I start my job,” she thought. She really could not have been more interested if she herself, instead of Tim, were to report at the Journal at eight o’clock in the morning.

Soon, there was a little jingle behind her. It was Tim, putting out the milk bottle, with its pennies and nickels, for Mother—also a signal that Joan should come on to bed.

As she went through the dining room to the stairs, a slim tan booklet lying there on the dining room table caught her eye. It was entitled Journal Style, and was a little pamphlet on what a cub should and should not do. She had never seen a copy of it before. She supposed they were just given to the new men and that was why. That was what Tim had been studying that afternoon up in his room, and this evening, too, probably while she sat on the steps.

She opened it. “The lead of every story should answer, if possible, the questions: Who? What? Where? When? and How?”

Why, this was just exactly what she wanted! She hooked one of the chairs up to the table with her foot and began to read.

About an hour later, Mother’s voice called her. “Joan, aren’t you ever coming up to bed?”

She left the book where she had found it, and stumbled up the stairs, trying to remember all the hints to reporters she had read.

To-morrow. The Job! That reminded her of Chub’s mystery. What could he mean, and when would he tell her?

CHAPTER II
THE JOURNAL FAMILY

Next morning, Joan did not even hint to Tim that she was planning some time to follow him. It would seem like “tagging” to him. But she must learn all she could about his job. Maybe she could really help him in some way, and then he’d be glad she had taken such an interest.

She hustled about making beds and putting the house in order. She had her regular duties, and in the summer-time they were heavier than when she went to school. Joan did not like housework. But she always tackled it the way she did everything, and was done before she really had much time to think how she hated it. Whenever she demurred at having to do household tasks, when she would rather be over at the Journal, learning about newspapers, Mother would say, “Joan, remember that Louisa Alcott often had to drop her pen for her needle or broom.” Sometimes, Mother almost seemed to understand.

Joan had to stop in the middle of her dusting this morning to answer the telephone. It was Amy asking her to go for a swim.

“I can’t—I tell you, I’ve got a job.” Joan told her for the fourth time. Joan adored swimming, even though the inland city of Plainfield offered nothing more than a dammed-up creek.

A laugh buzzed through the wire. “Jo, don’t be silly.”

It was hard to refuse Amy. She was one of those bossy girls. But Joan hung on, and though Amy coaxed at great length, she was firm.

“You’re going to spoil our vacation!” Finally Amy banged down at her end.

Joan, rising with cramped muscles to resume her work, thought to herself that this was going to be the best vacation she ever had because she—well, Tim really—had a job on the Journal. As she turned from the telephone, she saw her mother’s face full of disapproval. Mother always wanted her to go with Amy, rather than hang around the Journal office.

“How could I go, to-day,” she appealed, “when Tim just starts his job? I don’t know when something may break, and Tim might miss a big story. Why, there might be a big fire right in this block. I have to stick around.”

The disapproval did not leave Mother’s face, but she said nothing.

Everything finished, Joan found it impossible to settle down to reading. It seemed strangely lonesome in the house without Tim. Their vacation had been going on for a whole week now, and the two had been together most of that time, laughing, chattering and bickering with each other. She missed Tim, even if he often did fail to treat her with proper respect.

She wandered down to the kitchen and was grateful for Mother’s timid suggestion that the ice box needed cleaning. Anything to keep busy! She discovered a quantity of milk. Enough for fudge, she decided. Tim would love some when he came home from work that afternoon. She’d make it for a surprise. She followed the directions Amy had written for her in the back of the thick cook book—a new kind of fudge. It turned out beautifully. Mother praised it with lavish adjectives. Joan knew it wasn’t that wonderful, but Mother was always pleased when she took an interest in anything domestic.

Tim came home for lunch and between mouthfuls he told Joan what he had written up that morning—one really sizable obituary. She hoped he had put in all the details that the Journal Style booklet had said were necessary for the well-written obit. That was pretty good for him actually to report something the first day, she thought. She wished he would tell her in minutest detail, moment by moment, what he had done that morning, but boys were so vague in their conversations. He merely said he had “legged” it all over town—a leg man, is what he was called on the newspaper.

Joan was eager to go over to the Journal for the paper as soon as it was off the press to see Tim’s story. Would Chub remember to call her?

She would go over sooner if an excuse offered itself, she decided as she settled down restlessly with a book on the side steps. If only Uncle John would need her for something; or Miss Betty, who did the society notes, would send her out for candy to nibble on, or for an extra hair net or something, as she often did.

About the middle of the afternoon the call came.

“Yoo-whoo!” It was Chub at the Journal window. “Come on over.”

Joan’s book fell on the ground and she hurried over. In the editorial room, she glanced around. Tim was not at his desk—he had told her that he was to have the one right next to Mack’s. He was probably out on a story. She hoped it was a big one.

Mr. Nixon, the editor, was in a good humor and gave the manager’s niece a smile. The editor seldom wore a coat these days. He was usually in vest and shirt sleeves which made him seem younger than he really was. The collar button at the back of his neck always showed. Often he was cross and would bellow, “Get a job on a monthly,” at all the unlucky ones who tried to plead that their stories were not quite finished. He was just as apt to call pretty Miss Betty a nincompoop if she made a mistake, as he was to say, when she wrote up a good article, “A few more stories like this, and the Journal won’t be able to hold you.”

Miss Betty Parker waved hello from her desk by the window. Miss Betty had the distinction of being the only woman on the editorial staff. “Here, woman!” was the way the men often summoned her to the telephone.

There was a pink rose on Miss Betty’s desk. Had Mack, the sport editor, who was there with a green eye shade and a pencil behind his ear, given it to her? Joan thought it must be lovely to write all those society items about the people who lived on the North Side and who gave teas and parties and luncheons and things. Beside that, Miss Betty conducted an Advice to the Lovelorn Column, which Joan read every evening. She signed her answers, Betty Fairfax. Mack tried to make Joan believe that he wrote the questions, but she knew better than that, because they had had them before he came to the Journal, which was only a few months ago.

Somehow, Joan did not like Mack, although he was really almost as good-looking as Tim. Tim was dark, with wavy hair and dark eyes, while Mack was very blond, with a reddish mustache. Tim had been loud in his protest against Mack when he first joined the Journal family, and especially when he had been made sport editor. “That sissy! Imagine him a sport editor.” But later, he admitted that Mack was a smart fellow. “He has a ‘nose for news’ all right and he certainly can write,” Tim had added admiringly.

Mack’s corner had been fixed up with appropriate sport pictures before he came. He had added no new ones. Tim would have.

There was a member of the Journal staff, of whom Joan approved whole-heartedly. That was old James Cook, a veteran reporter, called Cookie by all who knew him. He was fat and old, but kind, and always as gracious to Joan as though she had been Miss Betty’s age.

“Well, well,” he greeted her now, as he shuffled over to the files. “I thought the day wouldn’t be complete without your shining face around here. Especially now with brother Tim on the pay roll. When are you going to steal Miss Betty’s job away from her?”

He was not teasing, like Mack. But Joan was embarrassed. She really did hope to have Miss Betty’s job in a few more years, but it hardly seemed polite to admit it.

“Just as soon as I get to be the star reporter around here on double space rates,” Miss Betty laughed in reply to Cookie, and Joan did not need to answer.

Cookie was one of the nicest men in the world—always ready to help any one. He would even pitch in and help Miss Betty write up social items, pink teas and things when she got rushed. “I can describe a wedding gown as well as any one,” he would brag. He had once been on the New York Banner, but his health had failed and now he was content to putter along here on the Journal, doing desk work. He was liked by every one. He was always willing to answer all Joan’s questions about the newspaper. He had taught her long ago that “news is anything timely that is of interest,” and Joan had learned that phrase by heart before she was ten. He had told her that the word “news” came from the letters of the four points of the compass, north, east, west, and south.

“Cookie,” Joan reminded him, “you’re always saying you are going to tell Chub and me some of your experiences on that big New York newspaper. When are you?”

“Oh—some time,” he drawled, as he ambled off.

Another member of the Journal tribe sauntered up. It was Bossy, the colored janitor. His steel-rimmed spectacles gave his dark face an owlish look. He sniffed at Betty’s rose. “Hit sho looks just like an artificial one, don’t hit now?” he asked, amiably.

There was no squelching Bossy. He was a great talker and every one let him ramble on. He had been the janitor so long that he felt almost as though he owned the paper. No one felt it more keenly when the Journal was “scooped” by the Star, than did this same, good-natured Bossy. He prided himself that he read every word in the Journal every day.

“Your brother gwine be a newspaper reporter, dat what?” He turned to Joan. “Well, he’ll hab to be careful and not make no mistakes. De Journal got to be careful. Mistakes is bad. Bossy knows.” He muttered something to himself.

Tim came back into the office now, with a rather disgusted look on his face, and began pounding his typewriter keys, for all the world like a provoked small boy doing his detested piano practice. Joan went over and glanced over his shoulder at what he was writing. It was a short article asking for cast-off baby things, toys and clothing for the babies of the crowded-to-overflowing day nursery on Grove Street. Of course, Tim would hate a “sissy” assignment like that, but Joan would have enjoyed seeing all the babies and having the matron tell her of the things recently donated.

When he finished that story, he started on the rewrites, stories from the Morning Star dished up in a different style. Joan glanced at his desk. It was cluttered like a real reporter’s. The whole editorial office was untidy. The staff seldom used the tall, green metal wastebasket in the corner. They wadded up papers and aimed at it. Chub often said, “The first person to hit the wastebasket around here will be fired.”

Joan noticed that Tim had tacked a slip of yellow copy paper on the wall just above his typewriter. It read, in the editor’s handwriting:

Martin—

Call Undertakers twice a day, at 9:30 and 1:15.

Call Medical Examiner at the same time.

Read other papers and clip any local deaths.

Ugh! Being a cub reporter was sort of a gruesome job. But Tim did not seem to mind that part of it. Would he really like the work, she wondered. He had never been half so crazy about the Journal as she was.

“They’re running, Jo!” called Chub from the swinging door to the composing room, and Joan hurried after him.

That meant that the paper was being printed. Joan followed Chub “out back” into the composing room where the linotype machines were all silent now. This part of the Journal was just as important as the writing and business end, Joan knew, though Amy did not agree with her. Amy had visited “out back” only once, and then had brushed daintily by the printers in their ink-smeared aprons. Joan didn’t mind the dirty, dim old place, or the rough men. They might be inky and stained, but they were kind, always joking together just as the men in the front offices did. The “front” and “back” were like brothers of an oddly assorted family.

Joan knew all the men back here. The head pressman, the linotype men who often printed her name in little slim lines of lead for her when they weren’t busy. But she had to hold the lines up to the looking glass to read her name. It always made her feel like Alice in Through the Looking Glass.

All about on shelves under the long tables stood little tin trays of type, stacked—stuff ready set for a dearth of news. Joan had learned to read type, too. It was just as easy as anything when you got used to it.

They passed a gray-haired man sitting hunched on a tall stool, reading yards and yards of proof.

“Meet the Dummy!” Chub said, with a wave of his hand.

Joan looked at the man, whom she had seen only once before, with some interest. Chub’s remark was not so impolite as it seemed, for “dummy” is a word used for the plan of the newspaper before it is made up, and names apropos of their work delighted the Journal family. Just like Em, the cat.

He was a middle-aged man, and seemed rather dignified for a proofreader, with his gray hair and blue eyes.

“The office Dummy. He can’t hear a sound or say a word,” Chub stated in his ordinary voice, just at the man’s elbow. “But I’d forgotten that you were introduced to him the other day when you were over. He came last week, you know.”

The man gave Joan a half-smile of recognition. There was something puzzling about him. Perhaps there was about every deaf-mute. It really must be terrible to have to write everything you wanted to say, Joan mused. And not to be able to hear, but still he couldn’t hear the rumble and clatter of the presses, and that might be a blessing, though Joan liked it.

Joan recalled what Chub had told her of Dummy. That he had applied for the job in writing. “I do not speak,” he wrote, “but I can work. I can read proof. I do not have to talk to read proof.” He got the job.

“Dat new proofreader gives me de creeps,” said a voice behind Joan and Chub, and there was Bossy. “Never saying a word, like dat. Hit ain’t natural.”

“Well, it is for a deaf-mute,” explained the office boy.

They went on out to the cement-floored pressroom where the big presses were. They were roaring like thunder, and whirling endlessly back and forth, over and over. Little ridges of tiny blue flames, to speed up the drying of the ink, made blobs of color in the drabness. Leather straps above the presses were slap-slapping to a dull rhythm. It was a dim place, old, musty, ink-reeking, but romantic to Joan. And to think that to-day, this big press was multiplying Tim’s story for the thousands of Journal readers!

The place had a spell for Chub, too, for it was here that he chose to mention the mystery.

“Say, Jo, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, there’s nothing new for me to tell you. When there is, I will. It’s just a mystery, that’s all.”

“But what’s it about?” pleaded Joan. She hated to be kept in the dark.

“It’s—well, I guess I can tell you this much,” he granted. “It’s about—mistakes.” He shouted the last word, to be heard above the roar.

“Sh!” warned Joan. She was bewildered. Mistakes. It seemed to be in every one’s mind. First Tim had mentioned mistakes, then Bossy, and now Chub! She wanted to ask more about the mysterious mistakes, but she knew Chub would tell her when he was ready and no sooner.

They went around to the other side of the big Goss press, where a crowd of newsboys, both white and colored, were waiting for the papers. Joan hardly noticed their grins. She rushed to the levers that were shoving the papers, already folded, and let one be shot right into her hands.

She looked down at the folded paper, opened it out, and searched the front page. Tim’s story wasn’t there. She had expected it would be, with a two-column head, at least. But now she realized that was silly. A new cub reporter wouldn’t make the front page, right off like that! She turned the pages and hunted. On the back page, she found it—about two paragraphs long and under the regular obituary heading. She was thrilled, anyway.

She clasped the damp paper, reeking of fresh ink, to her chest and the inky letters reprinted themselves in a blur upon the front of her white middy. “My brother wrote that!”

Over the paper she caught a glimpse of Dummy, who had left his corner in the other room and appeared now around the big press. Why, the man had rather a scared look. Had he read her lips and was he afraid of her brother, perhaps? Maybe Tim’s job wasn’t so safe as they thought. The man might be plotting against the manager’s nephew. Joan had read of such things, but her thoughts were rather vague.

CHAPTER III
JOAN ON THE BEAT

Joan opened the drawer to her dresser by sticking the buttonhook into the keyhole. The handle had been gone for years, but she never minded, except when she forgot and shut the drawer tight. Then she had to resort to the buttonhook.

She carefully tucked inside the little tan booklet Journal Style that she had been studying, and shut the drawer again tight. She borrowed it whenever she had a chance. Tim hadn’t missed it, and she hoped he would not find out that she had it. He would only tease; for he refused to believe how frightfully in earnest she herself was about getting a job on the Journal one of these days.

She went down the stairs, tying her middy tie and saying under her breath, “Never call a bridegroom a groom. A groom is a horseman.” That had been one of the bits of advice in the booklet.

Tim was just going out of the door when she reached the kitchen.

Every morning during the past week since Tim had become a reporter on the Evening Journal, he had managed to slip out of the house before Joan was up and around. But this morning he wasn’t so far ahead of her but that she could catch up with him. Perhaps her chance had come. She’d go with him this morning to see what having a beat was like.

She sat down on the edge of a chair, and poured most of the contents of the cream pitcher into her cup of cocoa to make it cool enough to swallow in a gulp or two. Then she reached for a crumbly, sugary slice of coffee cake.

“No cereal, thanks. I’m in a hurry.” Joan started for the door, the coffee cake in one hand. At her mother’s look, she added, “I’ll eat an extra egg at lunch to make up the calories, but I must go now.”

She dashed out.

What luck! Tim was just coming out of the front door of the Journal office when she reached the sidewalk. She paused there, pretending to be absorbed in nibbling her cake, her eyes ostensibly fastened on the cracks in the sidewalk. The sidewalk was worth looking at—it was brick and the bricks were laid diagonally. It had been a game, when she was small, to walk with each step in a brick.

Tim mustn’t see her. He would accuse her of tagging, and he was cross enough with her as it was. For all week she had been offering bits of information, like, “Mrs. Redfern has had her dog clipped,” and asking, “Is that news, Tim?”

And Tim, harried with his new work, would snap out an answer in the negative. Poor Tim had already, as he often remarked, written up “battle, murder, and sudden death” since he had taken the job on the Journal.

He went on, now, up the slight slope of Market Street. Joan, slipping along as though headed for the Journal office, went too. At the Journal door, she paused and watched while Tim crossed through the traffic of Main Street and started on towards Gay Street. Block by block, or “square” as they say in Ohio, she trailed after, looking into the shop windows every now and then, lest he should turn around.

He kept right on, however—straight to the Plainfield railroad station, where he disappeared through the heavy doors. Joan, across the street, stopped in front of the Star office. Somehow, the Star office seemed almost palatial with its white steps and pillars, in contrast with the somewhat shabby Journal office. That was because the Star was a government newspaper, that is, a political man owned it. Tim had once said that about one third of the newspapers in the United States were owned by politicians. The Journal wasn’t, though.

But Joan wouldn’t have traded the Journal office for the shiny new one of the Star. She loved every worn board in the Journal floor, every bit of its old walls, plastered with pictures and old photographs.

She crossed the street and opened the heavy door by leaning her weight against it. Tim was at the ticket window. The ticket agent was shaking his head, and Tim went on.

No news there, Joan guessed, as she, too, went across the sunny station and out the opposite door to where the express men were hauling trunks, and travelers were waiting for trains.

Back to Gay Street, through the musty-smelling Arcade, then Tim entered a small florist shop, crowded with flowers. Joan looked in the window. The girl at the counter reminded her of Gertie in the business office of the Journal. She was chewing gum, and as she talked to Tim, her hands were busy twisting short-stemmed pink roses onto tiny sticks of wood. Tim got his pencil and pad, and wrote leaning on the counter.

When Tim opened the door, a whiff of sweet flowers was wafted to Joan who was innocently gazing into the window of the baby shop next door.

Tim hurried on up toward the corner, brushing past two ragged children who stood by the curb, both of them crying. They might be “news,” thought Joan, but Tim was hurrying on. Joan took time to smile at the smaller child. Though she wore boy’s clothing, Joan could tell she was a girl by her mass of tangled, yellow curls. “What’s the matter, honey?” she asked.

The little girl hung her head and was too shy to answer, but the brother spoke up. “Mamma’s dead and papa’s gone,” he said.

Tim was up at the corner, now, going into the public library, and Joan hurried on. Maybe it wasn’t true anyway.

Joan stood behind a tall rack of out-of-town newspapers while she listened as Tim asked the stiff-backed, white-haired librarian, “Anything for the Journal to-day?” That must be the formula cub reporters used. But Miss Bird had said no, softly but surely, almost before he had the question asked.

Then, across the street to the post office. Joan, feeling safe in the revolving door, watched while Tim approached the stamp window. He was getting some news, for the clerk was talking to him.

Just then, a brisk business man of Plainfield, hurrying into the post office to mail a letter while the engine of his car chugged at the curb, banged into the section of the revolving door behind Joan with such force that she was sent twirling twice around the circle of the door, and in the dizziness of the unexpected spin, she shot out of the door—on the post office side, instead of the street side. Tim, leaving the stamp window and coming toward the door, bumped into her!

“I beg your pardon—” he began, before he recognized his sister. Then, “Jo, you imp! Where’d you come from?”

“Tim, I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “But I had to see what you did on your beat.”

“Tagging me—making a fool of me,” Tim fairly sputtered.

“Tim, there’s two children on Gay Street, crying—I think it’s ‘news.’”

“News! What do you know about news?” scoffed Tim. “Probably lost the penny they were going to spend on candy.”

“No, the boy said that their mother was dead and their father went away. If the mother just died, you could at least get an obit out of it,” she explained.

“Sounds like a decent human interest story,” Tim admitted. “Say, maybe the father couldn’t pay the rent and got dispossessed.”

They came successfully through the revolving doors and started down Gay Street together. “Is that the gang over there?” He pointed across at the boy and girl. “They do look forlorn. Maybe I’ve found a big story. You go on home, Jo. I don’t want you following me around on my beat. Looks crazy.”

No use trying to explain her real motive to him. “Did the flower shop girl give you a story?” she asked, partly to make conversation and partly because she was curious.

“A wedding. I’ll hand it over to Betty.”

“What’d the post office man give you?”

“Just a notice about the letter carriers organizing a bowling team,” he told her. “Run on, now. Maybe this isn’t anything. You can meet me at the Journal and I’ll tell you.”

She did go on, then. Tim might tell Mother if she didn’t, and then she’d be told not to bother her brother. She couldn’t expect them to understand that she’d only been trying to help.

Joan was sitting on the sunny stone step of the Journal office, half an hour later, when Tim returned.

“It’ll be a dandy feature,” he announced. “May even make the front page.” He forgot it was just his “kid” sister to whom he was talking. He had to tell some one. “That father deserted those children. I turned them over to the Welfare Society.” He told her details, excitedly.

Joan hung about the Journal office, though Tim hinted openly that she should go home. She wasn’t going to leave now. Tim was working hard over his story of the deserted children. The father’s name was Albert Jackson and he lived in South Market Street, a poor section of the city.

Tim was getting nervous over the story. He was sitting on the edge of his chair and squinting at the machine before him. Finally, he jerked the page out, crushed it into a wad and dropped it on the floor.

“Nixon’ll jump on me for such awful-looking copy,” he muttered. “I’ll have to do the whole thing over.”

The editor often remarked that “copy” didn’t need to be perfect, but it had to be understandable to avoid mistakes, and he often told the young reporters, when they handed him scratched-up copy, “Don’t economize on paper. There’s plenty around here and it’s free. Do it over, if there are too many changes.”

Tim reached for the sheet and straightened it out. “It’s written all right, I guess—”

“Just copying?” Joan queried. “Oh, Tim, let me do it.”

“Think you can?” Tim glanced around the office. Mr. Nixon was out to lunch, or he would have refused right off.

“Of course,” Joan assured him. “I’ve often copied lists of guests for Miss Betty. You know, sometimes folks write up their own parties and lots of the county correspondents write in longhand. She lets me copy them for her.”

“I didn’t know that.” Tim gave her his chair. “Well, go ahead. That typewriter makes me nervous. Some of the letters don’t hit. The comma’s nothing but a tail. See? It doesn’t write the dot part at all. You’d think I’d rate a better typewriter than this old thrashing machine.”

Joan made no reply. She was too thrilled to speak—to think of helping Tim! She must do her best and not make any mistakes. She smoothed out the copy sheet and placed it on the sliding board.

“Albert Jackson of—” her fingers struck the keys slowly but surely.

When she finished the sheet, Tim read it over and placed it on Mack’s desk. He read copy while Nixon was out at lunch, rather than let the work pile up.

The sport editor’s face was always smile-lit, like that of an æsthetic dancer. He teased every one. When Gertie from the front office walked through, with stacks of yellow ads in her hands, he had a tantalizing remark ready for her. He started the rumor in the office that Gertie was making love openly and loudly to Dummy’s silent back.

Joan went back to the Journal after lunch to bask in the last-minute rush, just before the paper was locked up, or “put to bed”—that last, breathless pause to see whether anything big is going to break before the paper is locked into the forms. She was glad school was over—suppose she’d have had to miss all this excitement of Tim’s job!

She and Chub went out into the press room again and she grabbed another folded newspaper, damp with fresh ink, from the press. She turned the pages, the narrow strips of cut edges peeling away from them as she opened out the paper. There was the story she’d typed—on the back page, among the obituary notices. It was almost as though she herself had written it. Why, the name was wrong. Instead of starting “Albert Jackson,” as she had written it, the story began, “Albert Johnson of North Market Street—” a different name and address.

“I guess that won’t make much difference,” reflected Joan, as she carried the paper back to the editorial office to show to Tim.

“You never can tell,” grinned Chub, as he trotted along beside her, his rubber sneakers slipping over the oil spots on the cement floor. He had not been an office boy in a newspaper office for two summers for nothing. He knew any mistake was apt to be serious. “That’s what I was telling you about, Jo—mistakes.” But Joan hardly heard him.

Tim was furious when he saw the story.

Miss Betty, busy already writing up a lengthy account of a wedding that would take place to-morrow, for the next day’s paper, paused in the middle of her description of the bridal bouquet to console the cub reporter.

“Mistakes do happen, Tim,” she laughed. “Think of the day I wrote up a meeting of the Mission Band and said that the members spent the afternoon in ‘shade and conversation,’ only to have it come out as ‘they spent the afternoon in shady conversation’!”

But Tim refused to be cheered, and Joan began to realize that the mistake was serious, for Mr. Nixon, the editor, had a set look on his face, too.

“Does it really make so much difference?” she asked.

“Does it?” Tim glared at her, his eyes darker than ever. “With Albert Johnson one of the most influential men in town?”

Then Joan understood. It was the name and address of a real resident of Plainfield that had been printed, and that was bad. The man wouldn’t relish reading in the paper that he had deserted his children when he hadn’t at all.

“I can kiss my job good-by,” groaned Tim. “Why weren’t you careful?”

“I’m sure I wrote it right!” To think she had brought all this on Tim.

“But you couldn’t have, Jo,” he insisted.

“I’ll hunt up the copy for you, Tim,” offered Chub. This was often part of his duties.

Joan went with him. They went up to the high stool, before a tall, flat table, where Dummy read yards and yards of proof every day. It was such a nuisance having to write everything out to him. He directed them to the big copy hook where used copy was kept for alibis. Joan fumbled through the sheets and found the story. It had “Martin” up in the left-hand corner, the way Tim marked all his copy. The story started, “Albert Johnson of North Market Street.”

“Why, it’s written wrong!” she gasped. Her eyes fell on Dummy’s bowed gray head. He gave a start as he bent over his pad, wrote something, and held it out to her. “That’s the way the copy came to me,” she read.

It was certainly a mystery how she could write one thing, and it could be changed into something different. There was nothing to be gained by scribbling notes to the Dummy, and so Joan and Chub filed back.

Tim was glummer than ever when she told him the news. “You must have written it that way, without realizing,” he said. “We’ve asked Mack, and he says it came to him that way.” He bent over his typewriter and banged away. He was doing rewrites now.

“Much as we all like you, Tim, we can’t let any mistakes like this happen,” the editor said. “I’m responsible for everything in the paper, and if anything gets in wrong, I have to discover who’s the guilty party and get rid of him.”

Joan and Chub crept away to the open back window, perched themselves on the broad sill, with their legs outside.

“I bet that Dummy’s like Dumb Dora in the comic strip, ‘She ain’t so dumb,’” remarked Chub. “There’s something queer about him. I’ve always said so. And there’s been queer things going on. You know what I told you about the mysterious mistakes. They’ve been happening before Tim got on the paper. But I couldn’t prove who made ’em. Now, I’m sure it’s Dummy.”

“He couldn’t help it, when the story came to him wrong.”

“But, Jo, if you’re sure you wrote it right, then somebody changed it and I think Dummy did. He’s got it in for Tim somehow, or for the paper, and put that mistake there on purpose. He thinks no one would dare accuse him, being a deaf-mute.”

“But nothing was erased. I looked especially to see. Perhaps I did write it wrong,” began Joan, and then broke off, “Oh, there’s Amy.”

A figure in an orchid sweater was waving to them from the corner. It was Amy in a new sweater. She adored clothes. Amy didn’t know a thing about a newspaper, and Chub was always disgusted with her for that. Tim, surprisingly enough, thought her a “decent kid” and really treated her with respect. Amy openly admired Tim—she thought him so romantic looking.

“Jo, you wretch!” she said now, crossing the lawn to the Journal window. “You’re never at home since Tim got that job. I’ve been phoning you all afternoon and I think your mother’s tired of answering.”

Chub got off the window sill. “Here,” he offered Amy a seat.

“There’s room for all of us.” Amy was always nice to every male creature, even though he might be just a red-haired, freckle-faced, chubby office boy.

They all sat together and Joan confided the new mystery to Amy. Though Amy knew little about newspaper life, she knew mysteries. She agreed that Dummy seemed a most suspicious character.

“But he’s so refined and nice,” Joan demurred.

“Spies are always refined like that,” was Amy’s reply. Her ideas were based on prolific reading. “The more refined they are the worse they are, always.”

“Oh!” Joan’s mouth dropped open. “I wonder,” she mused. “Say, Amy, you’ve said something. I believe he is a spy.”

Amy had no notion of what the man could be spying for, but Joan’s eager mind was grasping at ideas. Bits of Tim’s conversation about the political candidate came to her—the importance of not having mistakes in the Journal just at this time. That man, Dummy, had been hired to spy upon the Journal and to see that somehow mistakes were made, mistakes that would give the Journal that “black eye” that Tim talked about; mistakes that would eventually elect the Star’s candidate. She was a little hazy about how it worked. But of course, a deaf man had been chosen because no one would bother to argue much with a deaf person. It was too much trouble to write everything.

“I’ve read of things like that,” admitted Chub, when she had explained her ideas. “We’ll be detectives,” he announced. “And we’ll be on the watch for developments. I’ve a peachy book, How to Be a Detective.”

“Maybe—maybe it’s like this,” ideas came to Joan. “Maybe Dummy wants to be a reporter himself and is jealous of Tim’s job. Maybe he doesn’t like it because Tim’s only seventeen and a full-fledged reporter. That’s why he makes the mistakes look like Tim’s. Still, I can’t help but like Dummy. He’s so kind and mild. But he is sort of spooky, somehow.”

Tim came to the window behind them now.

“Jo,” his voice was hoarse and scared-sounding. “Come in here. Mr. Albert Johnson wants to talk to you.”

Joan jumped off the sill to the soft grass, and stood for a moment trying not to tremble while she looked down at Em, who had just come up and was sniffing at her ankles. What was going to happen, now?

“Don’t let ’em scare you, Jo.” Chub’s grimy hand was pressing hers. “The Journal’s got insurance that takes care of libel suits.”

Libel suits. Oh, dear, that had a dreadful sound. Would Uncle John fire Tim for her mistake—if it had been a mistake?

“All right, Tim, I’m coming,” she called in a voice, that in spite of her, trembled, as she came in out of the sunshine, in through the window of the Journal office to meet Mr. Albert Johnson.

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.”

The man still glared at her. “Young woman, do you know that I’m part owner of this paper with your Uncle John—the general manager is your uncle, isn’t he?—and that I’m a lifelong friend and chief backer of the Journal’s candidate for the coming election?”

“Oh, dear!” Joan almost sobbed. “I knew you lived out on North Market Street, so I imagined you must be somebody, but I never dreamed you were all that!”

The bulldog man’s eyes actually twinkled and the yellow cane was still.

“Well, I am,” he snapped, “all that. Of course, you’re too young to understand about politics, but if you’re big enough to help around a newspaper office, you must know how disastrous it is to have a mistake like this come out in the paper.” He waggled the newspaper again.

“Oh, I do!” breathed Joan, fervently.

“It’s going to cost this young man his job, I’m afraid.” Mr. Johnson turned his head slightly toward Tim. Her brother’s face was white.

“Oh, no, please!” beseeched the girl. “It wasn’t his fault, at all. I did it, so why should he lose his job? He needs the money so badly for college this fall.” Why, it’d be terrible to have Tim lose his job.

Tim gave her a look that said, “You didn’t need to say that.”

“But your brother admits he read the copy over, after you’d typed it.” Mr. Johnson leaned over his cane. “First off, I suspected something crooked, but when I found out just a kid had made the mistake.... Your brother did read it over, didn’t he?”

Joan nodded dumbly. Then her mind, in its wretchedness, went back to the mystery. “But, Mr. Johnson,” she began, unmindful of Tim’s watchful eyes, “don’t you think that when we both read the story over, it’s mighty queer that it had a mistake like that in it, and neither of us saw it?”

“But you probably did it unconsciously. You’re young. The boy’s new at the job and was in a hurry. He let it slip,” answered the man. “You see, I know a lot about newspaper work.”

“Do you know anything about mysteries?” Joan couldn’t help but ask. Somehow this fierce little man was not so fierce as he seemed. He had had a perfect right to be angry. Indeed, there was something really rather likable about him.

A smile played about his bulldog features. “Well,” he drawled. “I ought to. I have indigestion bad, lots of times, and then I can’t get to sleep, so I keep a good detective story right by my bed, all the time. I guess I read about one a week.”

“And don’t you think we have a mystery here?” Joan dropped her voice.

In answer, Mr. Johnson motioned Tim to leave. “I’ll talk with this young woman alone,” he said, and shoved a chair toward her. “Now, let’s get this straight. To begin with, before we go on to your little mystery, let me ask you, do you realize how serious a mistake like that is?”

“It’s libel,” said Joan, sadly. “I’ve lived next to the Journal”—she pointed through the smudgy window to her red brick home—“all my life, and I do know how terrible mistakes are. Daddy was city editor, and I know how particular he was about it.”

“Well, then what about me?” asked Mr. Johnson.

“Oh, I’m sure the Journal will make it right some way—write a contradictory story and explain that the Albert Johnson who lived on North Market Street is not the Albert Jackson who deserted his two children. Tim’ll write you something nice, I know. And the publicity may even help you.” She smiled encouragingly. Oh, if she could only get Tim out of this mess!

“Well, all right, I’ll risk that.” The man cleared his throat. “And now to business. Who’s the suspect?”