TIM’S SECOND WARNING
Dummy with Tebbets of the _Star_! What could that mean, Joan wondered.
“Let’s peep over,” she whispered to Chub. “Maybe we’ll get some clews.”
Noiselessly, they crept to the edge of the elevation, fearful of being
seen if they stood upright. Stretched out on the ground, clutching the
roots of clumps of weeds, they peered over the edge.
There was Dummy, treading with stealthy steps along the path below, and
just a few paces ahead of him, just about to disappear into a bushy
thicket, was the broad back of the city editor of the _Star_. Why should
the _Star_ editor and Dummy go for a stroll way up here together unless
to talk over some guilty secret? It was clear now to Joan that Dummy was
a spy, hired by Tebbets. No true member of the _Journal_ family would
think of being friends with that awful Tebbets of the rival paper. The
two newspapers were often forced to work together, and the two staffs
were friendly enough, but just at this time, they were at strained
relations over the coming election.
“Tebbets must know the deaf and dumb language.” Joan hardly knew what to
think.
“Sure!” Chub snorted. “It’s not so hard. How else could he hire Dummy to
do his dirty work? He couldn’t write everything he wanted to tell
him—too dangerous. Tebbets didn’t want the picnic people to see him
talking sign language, so they came up here.”
“Sh! Some one might hear.” But there was no one at all in sight now and
no sound except for the swaying of the trees and the drowsy hum of
unseen insects. “I wish Mr. Johnson hadn’t had to hurry off to
Cincinnati. You know I promised him not to jump to conclusions, so we
can’t do anything.”
“No, I guess not,” agreed the office boy. “Come on, let’s get back
before all the food’s eaten.”
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.
“Oh, boy, fried chicken!” Chub whistled as he viewed the table.
It was a wonderful spread, every one declared. Besides the fried
chicken, there was cold baked ham, golden mounds of potato salad, sliced
tomatoes, pickles, olives, and towering plates of bread and butter
sandwiches.
During the meal, Betty motioned across the table to Mr. Nixon. “Listen
to this, will you, chief?” She unfolded a page of familiar yellow copy
paper, and cleared her throat preparing to read something aloud. Every
one became quiet and listened.
“This is our cub reporter’s write-up of the game this afternoon,” she
said and began to read: “‘Lefty Dale did a Dick Merriweather stunt this
afternoon, when in the ninth inning in the game between the _Journal_
and the _Star_, he poled a circuit clout _à la_ Babe Ruth, with the
bases loaded to bring his team from behind with two outs in the last
frame.’”
The account went on in Tim’s best baseball manner and told of the game,
inning by inning, up to the victorious end.
“Why, that’s good, Martin!” the editor said when Miss Betty had finished
reading. “Wish I could publish it as it is, but the general reading
public of Plainfield doesn’t want to read about our triumphing over our
rivals with all the gory details. Since we aim to give them what they
want, just a mere note of the picnic and game score will have to
suffice. But your write-up is fine.”
Tim was eating and grinning all at the same time. Mack was scowling at
his forkful of salad. Was he afraid that Tim would steal his job from
him? Or—was it that he was provoked that Miss Betty was promoting the
cub reporter this way? Joan had tried to decide whether Miss Betty
wasn’t beginning to like Tim better than she did Mack. But the society
editor treated them both as two brothers whom she expected to be pals.
Joan was disappointed that the office romance wasn’t blossoming faster.
“That’s a big compliment the editor’s giving Tim,” Joan whispered to
Chub, now. He nodded over a cold drumstick in reply.
Talk rattled on. Jokes and clever banter were battered about the table,
flung from one to another, like a baseball. The head pressman’s three
little boys, up at the other end of the table, were almost choking with
the effort of trying to eat and giggle at the same time. The only one
who was apparently taking no part in the fun was Dummy. He was sitting
on the other side of the table, with the editor’s family and was feeding
little Ruthie something out of a bowl. Zweiback and milk was her supper,
but she was contented with it.
“Ice cream and cake coming. Save room!” one of the refreshment committee
cautioned Chub. He blushed as every one laughed.
Poor Dummy. He was missing all the jibes, but he seemed to be enjoying
himself anyway. Was he only acting a part in being nice to little
Ruthie? Wouldn’t he be surprised if he knew that they had seen him there
with Mr. Tebbets, and that they knew his wicked secret? Now he was
playing a silent game of peekaboo with the baby. Silently, Dummy would
remove wrinkled hands from his dull blue eyes and little Ruthie would
bubble over with baby chuckles.
“I don’t see,” Joan mused to herself, as she ate another olive, “how a
man can seem so nice and make a baby like him like that and still be
such a deep-dyed villain.”
* * * * *
Every one was tired the next day, for the _Journal_ family had lingered
at the picnic woods to make the trip home by moonlight. Perhaps that was
why a mistake occurred the very next afternoon. It was in a story Tim
had written, too. He was not in the office when the error was
discovered. Mr. Nixon had sent him up to the library to get a list of
new books, in response to a request from Miss Bird, the librarian.
Chub told Joan about the mistake. “Old Nix’s on his ear.” He seemed as
worried as though it were his own brother. “There’s another mistake in
one of Tim’s stories. That write-up about the patronesses of the flower
show the Women’s Club gives every year for the benefit of the hospital.
Old Mrs. McNulty’s name was left off the list.”
“But is that anything so terrible?” Joan asked. Oh, dear, another
mistake!
“Well, you see, the old lady is Mr. Hutton’s mother-in-law, you know,”
he explained. “She likes publicity, too, even though she pretends not
to. She called the chief up and gave him a good raking over, I guess.
The whole office was pretty blue. Seems she gives lavishly to things
she’s interested in and is sore as a boil about her name being left off.
Besides, the paper wants to stand in good with her.”
“Do you think Dummy—?” Joan began.
“Sure thing!” nodded the office boy. “They probably doped it up at the
picnic. But I don’t know how we can prove that Dummy left that name off.
It wasn’t on the copy, for Nixon compared that first thing.”
Joan’s head was swimming as she waited in the _Journal_ office for Tim
to return. When he came in, he was called to the editor’s desk right
off, and every one heard Mr. Nixon confronting him with the mistake.
The office was silent, waiting for Tim’s reply.
“Guess I am guilty this time,” he acknowledged. “I realized afterwards
that I had left some names off. I took the notes in a hurry, and filled
one piece of paper, and took the last two or three names of the list on
another piece, and then I forgot that second page.”
He went for his notes on the big hook by his desk. Every one at the
_Journal_ was required to keep all notes one week, for alibis. Every
Saturday, the stuff on the hooks was thrown out. Tim thumbed through the
papers on the hook—there were a great many, for this was Saturday, but
the one he was looking for was near the top. He found the scrawled list
and discovered that two names besides Mrs. McNulty’s were written on an
extra bit of paper and had been left out of the printed list.
“Well, I guess it’s not serious, for no one complained but Mrs. McNulty.
Give her a ring and make peace with her.” The editor looked relieved,
then provoked the very next minute. “But, Martin, really, as a reporter,
I must say you’re a better ball player. Why can’t you be accurate?
You’ve shown you can write. Now, take that baseball write-up yesterday.
That was dandy.”
“That was fun,” Tim showed his relief at being let off. “Writing this
other junk isn’t.”
“That’s the regular cub assignment,” snapped the editor, turning back to
his work. “Remember now, second warning, no more mistakes.”
“What’s all this about a mistake?” It was Uncle John hurrying out from
his sanctum sanctorum.
So he had to be told. “The boy’s had the grace to admit that he made it
this time,” finished up Mr. 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. It
was too bad that the only time he had really let her help, that terrible
mistake had had to happen. She supposed he was afraid to trust her
again. Well, she’d hang around anyway to be on hand if he did want her.
“Say, I’m in an awful rush,” Tim said one afternoon. He was always in a
rush, it seemed. “Can you look up the stuff for the Ten Years Ago
column?”
It was her chance, the first really big thing he had asked her to do
since he allowed her to type that story about the deserted children. Of
course, he had let her do little things, like looking up telephone
numbers and checking initials.
She’d be extra careful, she resolved, as she picked up Em, who was
curled up for a nap on the coverless dictionary. Then she lifted off the
dictionary and tugged at the heavy, bound file.
Every day the _Journal_ carried a few items culled from these files. It
was part of Tim’s work to pick out those which he thought would interest
the present readers of the _Journal_, and to copy them off verbatim. The
beginning of this column was always the same—the type was always left
set up in the forms. It said, “The following article was printed in the
issue of the _Plainfield Evening Journal_ for June—19—” and then came
the date, ten years ago. Joan loved the old files; she liked to pore
over the yellow pages and laugh at the queer fashions that were in vogue
in the fifteen and twenty years ago numbers—long skirts that trailed on
the ground, veils and funny hats. Why, Mother had a queer old silk
blouse up in the attic, almost like that picture.
She learned to pick out items about prominent men—men who had not been
so prominent ten years ago. Some of the issues were as interesting as
stories, real stories, not just news ones. Then she’d type them off, so
very carefully.
“Those old files are full of good stories,” Betty told her. “Don’t you
know that half of the authors nowadays get their plots from newspaper
clippings?”
“Do they?” Joan was interested.
“Sure, that’s why they sound as though they couldn’t possibly have
happened,” laughed Tim. “Because they actually did.”
Well, wasn’t their mystery as impossible-sounding as any made up one?
All the while she was watching Dummy every possible chance. She had come
upon him suddenly several times “out back” and he had scurried out of
the way, like a cat caught in the cream. She and Chub spent every minute
they could “sleuthing the office” as he called it. “Watch everything!
That’s the only way,” he told her.
So Joan watched, and discovered that Betty didn’t go out to lunch with
Mack any more, but she and Tim went out at the same time and often
lunched together at a white-tiled place, with copper bowls of scarlet
apples and golden oranges in the window. Mother thought it was silly of
him to spend his salary on lunches when he lived right next door to his
job, and said so.
Of course Miss Betty couldn’t help but like Tim when he tried to be
nice, and he did try. He would leave foolish notes addressed to “Betty
Barefacts” on Miss Betty’s desk. Joan discovered one on the society
editor’s hook when she was destroying her notes for her. It read:
Dear Miss Barefacts,
I am a young man with passes to the stock company. Is it proper to
ask a girl to go to a show on passes?
T. M.
Mack didn’t tease so much any more, either. He seemed provoked that
Betty was preferring Tim. Once when Tim was busy at his machine, and
Mack was going out to lunch, his hat punched down over his eyes, Joan
asked him timidly, “Mack, may I use your machine to copy this Ten Years
Ago To-Day?”
He seemed about to give a nod of assent, when Joan added, coaxingly,
“Your typewriter is better than Tim’s. His commas have no heads.”
Instantly the sport editor’s face changed. “You keep out of here.” He
jammed the cracked, black canvas cover down over his machine, and strode
out of the office, muttering what he thought about a newspaper in a jay
town like this that let a kid stick around every minute!
Joan was bewildered, until she looked across the office now and saw
Betty and Tim laughing together over some letter she had received for
the Advice to the Lovelorn column. Then she thought she understood. Mack
was peeved because Betty liked Tim—and about the lunches and notes and
shows. But why shouldn’t she prefer big, broad-shouldered, dark-haired
Tim to that silly, pink-mustached sport editor, even though Tim was only
seventeen? And, of course, Mack wasn’t going to treat his rival’s sister
nicely.
Things seemed rather at a standstill. To be sure, Mr. Johnson stopped in
at the office about every other day, when he was in town, and he always
asked after the mystery. He was interested in learning that Dummy was
seen in the woods with Mr. Tebbets, but didn’t seem to think that it
proved anything. Almost every time Mr. Johnston came he had a box in his
hand.
“It’s typewriter supplies,” he would say as he handed it to Joan, with a
grin upon his bulldog features.
Expecting to find a new ribbon for the machine, she would open it always
to find that it was candy.
“Aren’t you a typewriter?” he would explain, amused at his own joke. He
was always surprised to realize that she could type.
Joan would pass the candy all around, to the girls in the front office,
to the business staff and to the men out back. Dummy always wrote a
polite “Thank you” on his pad, when he took a piece, and always gave her
a smile.
Poor old Dummy, he might seem innocent enough, as Mr. Johnson appeared
to believe, but it was he, Joan was sure, who had changed the name and
address on the story she had typed for Tim his second day at the
_Journal_ and had brought about all the trouble. For Tim was still on
trial.
Tim’s probation brought one good result, however. He was working harder
than ever and turning in more and better copy, and at the end of the
week he got his first real assignment.