Helen Diehl Olds

“ Just as Joan was starting on her third cup of lemonade, a delivery truck with a red star on each side, drove up and the Star team, in their baseball suits of gray with blue letters, with a few of the staff as rooters, hopped out. The staff of the Star, since it was a morning newspaper, did not need to take much time away from the office for the game. They always worked at night to get their paper out, anyway. Joan had often gone to the Star office with Chub when he delivered advertising cuts, which the two newspapers sometimes shared, and she knew most of the staff by sight. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Just like a boy, always thinking of food—even in the midst of a mystery. However, the exercise of the game and the swim had given Joan a ravenous appetite, too, so she raced Chub down the steep cliff, stones clattering loose after them until it sounded in that quiet place as though mountains were falling.
When they reached the picnic table, Miss Betty was signaling that she was saving places for them next to her own and Tim’s. The Star staff had just left, she said, for they had to get back to their work. ”

“ Even Miss Betty stood up for the newspaper ethics.
“If people would only understand,” sighed Cookie, “that a reporter is a reasonable creature. It would not hurt that Miss King to give us just one picture, and then every one would be happy. Reporters will always play fair if treated right. People show their true character by the way they react to a newspaper inquiry,” he went on; “if they’re snobs, it comes out. A newspaper is a public institution and folks should help reporters instead of hindering them.”
“I’m glad he didn’t give me that assignment,” rejoiced the society editor, now. ”

“ Tell me something. Do you know much about a newspaper?”
Did she? When she had lived next to one all her life! She nodded, too surprised at his question to speak.
“Well,” he went on, “do you know where I could go to school to study running a linotype machine?”
Joan didn’t know. “But I’ll find out and write you,” she promised. He seemed to want to know so badly!
Instantly, his thin face lighted up. “Gosh, would you? I’d sure like to get a letter. The other fellers do, sometimes, but I never have. Just address it, ‘Alex White,’ and I’ll get it.”
“Don’t your parents write you?” Joan was curious. ”

“ When Joan and Chub said they wanted to hunt themselves, Tim surprisingly took their side. “Why not let the kids try? Maybe they’ll find something.”
On the main road, good-natured Lefty stopped the car when they saw the dark, unused hospital building, off by itself in the empty fields, now flooded with patches of moonlight.
“I wish we had a notebook, so we could be real detectives,” mused Joan, as she and Chub started across the dew-wet grass. The others had stayed in the car. “The Dummy mystery is nothing compared to this.” ”

“ Tim grumbled at times, Mack teased, Cookie joked, and even the editor got used to seeing her around.
“Newspaper work is hard,” Cookie would tell her when she would make a little face about being sent on so many errands for Tim. “Make up your mind to get used to hard work and nothing else. You work as hard as you can on one story; then it’s printed and over with and you start on something else. Always some new excitement on a newspaper.”
Joan understood that, for look how soon every one had forgotten the episode of the mysterious mistake about the Albert Johnson story—or appeared to. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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, having gone to trail one mystery, was completely sidetracked by Dummy’s proving such a stumblingblock to her theory. She still clutched Tim’s story in her hand. She’d let Dummy tell his story, and then as soon as he was through she’d tell her theory just the same. After all, it looked more suspicious than ever, because Dummy had apparently only played deaf and dumb in order to work his misdeeds.
“Look here, Mr. Nixon.” Dummy went right up to the editor’s desk.
Mr. Nixon gave one look and then yelled, “Holy Moses! The Dummy can talk.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even the cold stone gates and plain sign took on a different look in the moonlight, Joan thought, as they turned in and drove up to the main building.
“Just Mack and I’ll go in,” decided Lefty. “Five of us look like a gang, and that principal’s an old bear, anyway.”
The ones on the back seat sat and waited. The excitement of the fire and the smoke in her eyes had made Joan rather sleepy. It was silly to have come on to the school. Of course, the boys had all returned. From within, they could hear the low drone of voices, rhythmic and even.
Mack rushed down the steps. “What a wow of a story! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Girls couldn’t do things like this; things like masquerading and snatching things off people’s mantels were for men to do. Chub had come to the Journal office, full of stories he had read about newspaper reporters. Of course, he supposed things like that didn’t really happen in real life, though old Cookie was always saying stranger things happened than were ever read in books. Hadn’t Cookie played the rôle of chore boy in order to get that story when he was on the New York Banner? And the secret about Dummy and the mysterious mistakes—gosh, now, that’d make a swell detective story. ”

“ Joan was silent as they all trooped along the footpath and up a little slope to the sunny field where the game was to be held. Rude bleachers had been erected by placing boards across wooden boxes. The Journal folks, except some of the women who declared it was too hot up there, and the children too young to be interested in baseball, lined up on one side. The Star rooters took the other. Chub and Bossy sat on the bench for substitutes. Joan hung about.
“Have we a bat boy?” asked the editor captain, glancing toward the newsboys on the sidelines. ”

“ Dugan, the floorwalker, will be glad to tell you about the window, Joan,” Tommy’s mother said. “He adores kids, and that window is a pet of his.”
Mr. Dugan was lovely (Joan’s word) , a tall man in striped trousers and a cutaway coat, who looked more like an usher at a stylish wedding than a floorwalker. He took her to the window and explained about the suits, saying that Davis’ was the first store in Plainfield to show them. Joan made a note of that on her pad and underscored it. ”

“ I’ll never speak to him again—”
“He was only fooling, Amy,” cheered Joan.
But Amy’s sobs rose higher. “Look at my hands. I’ll never get the stuff off. I just stopped in to see if you were here, Jo, and he stopped me—”
Mr. Nixon was waving his hands about like a madman. “Such an office! One dumb-bell reporter isn’t enough. The whole force is dumb! I won’t put up with this. I guess I’m still city editor. Clear out of here, you kids.” He turned from Amy to Joan. “And you, too.”
“Me?”
He nodded.
“But Mr. Johnson said—” she began.
“I don’t care what Mr. Johnson said!” he cut her short. ”

“ Nixon. He sounded as though he still believed that Tim had made the first mistake, too—the one about the deserted children.
“Perhaps he will learn more from the mistake than they themselves are worth,” Uncle John said. “But be careful, Tim.”
Be careful! He would have to be now, Joan realized. She was more puzzled than ever. Even if Tim had made this mistake, she knew she hadn’t written Mr. Johnson’s name in that other story. She’d have to stick around the office even more than ever now to be ready to help Tim. ”

“ There’re too often deaths and accidents to write up, too, with a fire story.”
“That’s so,” answered Joan, soberly.
“Fires are like bananas—they come in bunches,” said the old reporter.
Joan laughed. “Cookie, remember, just the other day, you promised to tell us some of your experiences on the New York newspaper. Can’t you do it, now?”
“Um—I guess so.” Cookie glanced out of the corner of his eye at the editor. But Mr. Nixon was totally absorbed in retying the strings on the baby’s frilly bonnet. He was clumsy about it, but he would not let his wife help him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Joan slammed down the receiver and dashed through the swinging door to the composing room. She went straight to the big hook where the day’s copy hung and began thumbing through it. As she stood there, she became aware of some sort of confusion going on in the proofreader’s corner. He and Mack seemed to be having an argument.
Dummy could argue, though he seldom did. It was too much trouble for any one to carry on his part in writing. Mack would write something, Dummy would read the pad, and he would write. Mack would write again. ”

“ Nixon, of course. But Joan only stared. Chub had nerve to try a joke like that, right when the office was the busiest, for the paper was going to press about this time.
“Say!” called Chub. “Can’t you hear? He wants you both, honest. The press is broken and everybody has to pitch in to get the paper out on time.”
Joan rushed into the house after Tim, her heart pounding fast. Oh, suppose Chub were teasing, after all! This would be a much better joke than telling Amy to feel the heat from the inky roller—and would have even more disastrous results. ”