DOROTHY DEANE, “SOCIETY EDITOR”
“GOOD AFTERNOON, Mr. Williams.” The managing editor of the Washington
_Tribune_ twisted about in his revolving-chair, and his frown changed
into a smile of welcome at sight of his society editor standing in
the doorway, a roll of soiled copy clutched in one hand, while a much
blue-penciled daily newspaper dangled from the other.
“Come in, Miss Deane,” he said, pointing toward a chair by his desk.
“How are you feeling today after last night’s gayety at the White
House?”
“Rather wintry, thank you.” A twinkle in Dorothy Deane’s eyes belied
her serious expression. “Your compositors spoiled my beauty sleep.”
“What’s their latest offense?”
“This--” She spread the morning newspaper before him, and pointed to a
paragraph in the middle of the second column, beneath the sub-heading:
“Beauty at the White House.” The sentence read: “Mrs. Anson Smith, wife
of Senator-elect Smith, wore a handsome string of pearls.”
“Beauty unadorned,” quoted the managing editor dryly. “Your description
would fit nine out of ten women of the ultra-smart set of today.”
“But it is not my description,” retorted Dorothy hotly. “Here’s my
copy, perfectly legible,” displaying it. “The compositors simply did
not set up the remainder of the sentence. If you could have heard Mr.
Smith’s language to me on the telephone this morning--”
“The irate husband, eh!” Williams laughed unsympathetically. “Mrs.
Smith must have had a gown made especially for the occasion--”
“She did, and sent me a full description of it yesterday--”
“And it did not get published--ah, take it from me, Miss Deane,
_that’s_ where the shoe pinched.”
“Possibly; but that doesn’t excuse the blunder in the composing-room or
the stupidity of the men on the copy desk,” declared Dorothy. “I have
to stand for their mistakes.”
Williams frowned, then smiled. “They will read your copy more carefully
in the future, I promise you,” he said. “I never saw you angry before,
Miss Deane; now you look like the picture I have of you.”
“Picture?” Dorothy’s blue eyes opened to their widest extent. “_You_
have a picture of me?”
“Your emphasis is not very flattering,” responded Williams, chuckling.
“Our staff photographer snapped you and your sister one day last
autumn, and I found the boys were going to run the picture in a Sunday
supplement to surprise you. I didn’t think you’d like it, so took
it away from them.” As he spoke he opened a drawer of his desk and,
tumbling its contents about, finally pulled out a photograph. “I meant
to have given it to you before.”
“Thanks,” and Dorothy glanced at the photograph with interest as she
took it.
“What were you two squabbling about?” demanded Williams, staring at the
photograph. “Your sister looks a veritable Lady Macbeth.”
“Oh, she doesn’t approve of my spendthrift ways,” answered Dorothy
lightly. “Vera says I never will learn by experience,” and an
involuntary sigh escaped her.
“It’s a shame she lectured you in public,” grumbled Williams, whose
friendly interest in Dorothy’s career had already smoothed many rough
places.
“Oh, I don’t know--couldn’t find a more convenient place than the steps
of the Emergency Hospital to receive the _coup de grâce_,” laughed
Dorothy. “And Vera doesn’t mean half she says.”
“By the way, didn’t you once tell me that your sister was nursing Craig
Porter at their country place in Virginia?”
“Yes, she is.”
Williams gazed at her with quickened interest. “Seen the afternoon
papers?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t had time.” The imperative ring of the telephone
interrupted her, and Williams, waving an impatient hand in farewell,
jerked the desk telephone toward him.
Still holding her photograph, but leaving her copy and the morning
paper behind on the desk, Dorothy closed the door of the private
office, made her way through the city room, borrowed an afternoon
newspaper from several lying on the city editor’s desk, and disappeared
into the small room set aside for her exclusive use. She was some
minutes placing her hat, coat, and handbag on their accustomed peg,
then ensconcing herself before her desk she sorted her mail; that done,
she picked up the photograph given her by the managing editor and
studied it more closely.
The photograph was, like many an unposed snapshot, a good likeness;
too good, she thought, noting her sister’s determined expression and
her own rebellious countenance. For all her jesting with the managing
editor, the conversation she and Vera had had that autumn afternoon
lingered in her memory with a bitter flavor; remarks had been made
which neither could forget.
Dorothy turned over the photograph and read with a wry smile the
“legend” pasted there:
Two members of famous family adopt professions--Left to right, Miss
Vera and Miss Dorothy Deane, daughters of the late distinguished
jurist, Stephen Deane, Chief Justice of the District Court of
Appeals, desert the ballroom and pink teas for professional life.
Miss Vera Deane is a graduate trained nurse, while her younger sister
has found her _métier_ as a journalist, and ably conducts the society
section of the _Morning Tribune_.
Tossing aside the photograph, Dorothy picked up the afternoon newspaper
and was about to turn to the society page when she stopped, her
attention arrested by a display heading:
BRUCE BRAINARD A SUICIDE
KILLS HIMSELF AT PORTER HOMESTEAD
The lines beneath were meager as to details, but Dorothy absorbed the
printed words a dozen times before their whole meaning dawned upon
her. At the end she drew a long, long breath. Bruce Brainard! His
very name conjured up scenes she had prayed to forget; and now he was
dead, a suicide. She raised her hands to her throbbing temples and
burst into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter. Truly the Fates had
a perverted sense of humor--to bring Bruce Brainard, Vera, and Hugh
Wyndham together for a final meeting! Suddenly her laughter changed to
tears, and noiseless sobs shook and racked her slender body until she
sank back in her chair exhausted with emotion. She was regaining some
hold on her customary composure when the insistent clamor of her desk
telephone effectually aroused her.
“Hello! Yes,” she called into the instrument, steadying her voice.
“Society editor, yes; no, we don’t take engagements over the ’phone--
No, we can’t break the rule; sorry, but you will have to send it in
signed, or bring the news in person. Good-by,” and she rang off.
Her right hand instinctively sought her assignment book; the telephone
message had brought her back to the everyday routine; she could not
permit her thoughts to wander afield; but first there was one thing she
must do, and she again turned to the telephone. It was some minutes
before she got the toll station, and there she met disappointment--the
telephone at the Porter homestead had been temporarily disconnected;
she could not talk to her sister.
But why had not Vera telephoned her? The question worried her as she
turned the pages of her book, searching for the entries falling on that
date. Then she recalled that, after her talk with the indignant Mr.
Anson Smith that morning, she had covered her ears with the bedclothes
and gone comfortably to sleep, letting the telephone ring itself out.
The fact that she had been up all night “covering” the White House
entertainment and had crawled into bed at twenty minutes past five in
the morning did not, at the moment, seem an adequate excuse for having
neglected the telephone--she had deliberately but unintentionally cut
herself off from communication with Vera, and bitter tears came to her
eyes at the thought. Vera might be needing her at that very moment! The
thought was not quieting, and she had reached for her hat when again
the telephone broke the silence.
“What is it?” she demanded, and her voice sounded shrill even in her
own ears.
“Society editor,” came a woman’s voice over the wire. “Please look in
the Congressional Directory and tell me if Mr. John Graham is still a
representative.”
“What state is he from?” questioned Dorothy.
“I don’t recollect,” was the reply, and with a subdued, “Wait a
moment,” Dorothy set down the receiver and feverishly turned the pages
of the Congressional Directory until she reached the index and ran
down the list of names. “There’s no John Graham in the book,” she
shouted into the telephone a second later.
“Sure you have the last edition? Thanks.”
Dorothy put back the receiver with a relieved sigh. A glance at her
wrist watch showed her that it was already a quarter of five--and the
foreman was waiting for early copy. There was no time to hunt up Vera,
and with her nerves on edge she turned to her list of assignments and
telephoned to first one hostess and then another, getting dinner and
lunch lists until she had a formidable number before her. But one
hostess remained uncalled, and with renewed zeal she resorted to the
telephone again.
“This is Miss Deane, society editor, _Morning Tribune_,” she explained.
“I will be greatly obliged if you will give the names of your dinner
guests tonight for tomorrow’s paper.”
“I give dinners to my friends, not for the newspapers,” came the frigid
reply, and Dorothy heard the bang of the telephone receiver at the
other end of the wire.
“Waugh!” she exclaimed aloud, turning back to her typewriter. “So Mrs.
Purse thinks she has arrived--and last year she was sending in her
own dinner lists to the newspapers, as well as the names of guests at
entertainments to which she was invited.”
Dorothy’s skilled fingers flew over the typewriter as her active
brain put in fitting phrases the information she had secured over the
telephone, and later, in some instances, she rewrote the important
social events chronicled in the evening newspapers. She had almost
completed her task when the door opened and the office boy ushered in a
much-talked-about divorcée whose career had provided entertainment for
staid Washingtonians.
Dorothy was a favorite of hers and she greeted her warmly. “No, I can’t
sit and gossip,” she announced, standing by the partly open door. “I
only came to bring you this data about our dramatic club,” laying a
folded manuscript on the desk perilously near the paste pot. “Dress
it up in your own style, Dorothy. I congratulate you on your society
column; it’s the best in town.”
“Indeed,” and Dorothy flushed with pleasure. “I did not think you would
ever bother to read it.”
“I always read the social news to keep track of the entertainments to
which I am not bidden given by women who owe me invitations.” A faint
hardness crept into her voice, and was gone instantly as she bade
Dorothy a cordial good-by and departed.
Rewriting the dramatic club article proved more of a task than Dorothy
had bargained for; thoughts of Vera, of Bruce Brainard, and last--of
Hugh Wyndham, projected themselves before the typed words, and in
desperation she seized the scissors and, shortening the manuscript, she
pasted the remainder on her copy paper. She was busy marking her copy
when the telephone bell called her back to the instrument.
“Good evening, Miss Deane,” said a soft, purring voice, which Dorothy
instantly recognized as belonging to a well-known society belle, who
had seen more seasons than she was willing to admit. “For particular
reasons I am anxious to attend the breakfast tomorrow which the
Japanese Ambassador is giving. Can’t you use your influence to get me
an invitation?”
“But I have no influence in that quarter,” protested Dorothy. “The
invitations are strictly limited to members of the Cabinet and their
wives.”
“Oh! Don’t you know any way by which I can procure an invitation?”
“I see no way for you to be eligible for an invitation unless you can
marry the Attorney General, the only bachelor in the Cabinet circle,
before ten o’clock,” retorted Dorothy, her sense of fun getting the
better of discretion. A faint “Oh!” preceded the hanging up of the
opposite receiver, and Dorothy went back to her work. But she was again
doomed to interruption, and this time she answered the telephone with a
wrathful, “Well, what is it?”
“Mrs. Marvin, Dorothy,” sounded a cheerful voice. “I want you to
take down this list of patronesses for our charity ball. Get your
pencil--there are one hundred names.”
“Oh, Mrs. Marvin!” gasped Dorothy. “Can’t you send them into the
office? I’ll pay the messenger.”
“I haven’t time to write them out,” declared Mrs. Marvin firmly, and
Dorothy jabbed her pencil with vicious force into the pad as she
started to take down the names. “Hello, don’t ring off,” called Mrs.
Marvin at the end of five minutes. “Remember, Dorothy, those names
must appear in tomorrow’s paper, and be sure and give us an excellent
send-off; it’s for charity, you know.”
“Yes, yes, good-by,” and, dropping the receiver, Dorothy rubbed her
aching ear and stiff arm.
“Taking one consideration with another, with another,
A policeman’s life is not a happy one--”
chanted a voice from the door, and, glancing up, Dorothy saw one of
the reporters watching her. “Cheer up, Miss Deane,” he said, advancing
farther into the room. “You haven’t been standing on the ‘sacred soil’
of Virginia for hours in a biting east wind, watching a front door for
news. I’m frozen inside and out,” blowing on his hands as he spoke.
“But, oh, it’s a big story--”
At the mention of Virginia, Dorothy had glanced at him eagerly, but the
question burning her lips was checked by the telephone’s loud call.
“Do answer it for me,” she begged, sitting down at her typewriter.
“Say I’m busy,” in frenzied desperation; “say I’m dead!” And paying no
further attention to her companion she commenced her story about the
charity ball. Tom Seaton’s voice interrupted her.
“The lady wants to know if she can give a dance on January 20th without
butting in on a dozen parties that night,” he explained, hugging the
receiver against his chest.
Dorothy hunted up the date in her assignment book, and slammed it shut
with vigor.
“Tell her there are only seven dinners scheduled so far for that
night,” she directed, and in the moment’s respite she copied off the
names of the charity ball patronesses. She had completed her task when
Seaton replaced the telephone, and straddled the only other chair in
the room.
Usually Dorothy did not encourage loiterers, and had sometimes given
offense by her abrupt refusal to stand around and gossip; but she was
never too busy to listen to a hard-luck story, and her ready sympathy
for human frailty had gained her a warm place in the regard of her
happy-go-lucky co-workers on the paper.
“Have you been out to the Porter homestead?” she inquired, handing her
mass of corrected copy to a begrimed messenger from the composing-room
who appeared at that instant.
“I have; and I can’t speak highly of the hospitable instincts of the
owners of Dewdrop Inn,” answered Seaton. “This little ‘dewdrop’ was
positively congealed while waiting for the inquest to adjourn.”
“An inquest!” echoed Dorothy. “Did they hold it so soon?”
“They did, and never had the decency to let us in. Every paper was
represented, and we had to cool our heels until the coroner came out
and announced--”
“Miss Deane”--the office boy poked his head inside the door--“the
‘boss’ wants ye.”
“In a minute.” Dorothy rose and turned breathlessly to Seaton. “What
did the coroner announce?”
“He said that evidence, brought out at the inquest, proved conclusively
that Bruce Brainard was murdered, and--”
Murdered! Dorothy stared at him aghast. Dimly she realized that he
was still speaking, but his words were meaningless. Bruce Brainard
murdered--and under the same roof with her sister, Vera--and Hugh
Wyndham! Something snapped inside her brain; she felt herself going,
and threw out her hands hopelessly--
“Hully gee! Help, boys!” roared Seaton, bending over her. “She’s
fainted.”