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.