A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
Tim was being careful these days. His whole job depended on his
accuracy. The editor had said to Mack when he commissioned the sport
editor once to read copy, “You have to watch Martin’s stuff. He’s apt to
make mistakes.”
Tim _had_ made but one mistake, though Joan could not prove it. So he
had to be extra careful.
Joan was out in the grassy yard, one morning, playing a game of croquet
with Em, the cat. Joan did the playing for both herself and her
opponent, who stalked about with a very disinterested air. Joan was
playing with one eye on the _Journal_ office. Suddenly Chub rapped on
the window and called her over.
When she reached the _Journal_ office, Chub was standing outside one of
the phone booths, waving the telephone receiver at her. “It’s for you.”
Joan went inside the airless booth—still partly filled with smoke
because one of the men of the staff had been in there recently. The
booth had penciled numbers all over the woodwork. That list of numbers
in one corner were those of the undertakers. Tim let her call them once
in awhile, when he was pretty sure there were no deaths, and had
instructed her to call him to the phone if there were any to be
reported. Joan had learned to know the different voices at the other end
of each number. She did not like that part of the cub’s job. It seemed
so cold-blooded to ask, “Anything for the _Journal_?” She was always
relieved to have the politely mournful voice say, “No, nothing to-day.”
“Listen, Jo,” it was Tim at the other end of the wire. His voice sounded
excited. “I’m stuck out here in Baiting Town, covering a Lodge picnic,
and I can’t get back in time. I just realized that I’ve let a mistake go
through. It’s that story about the charity play. I wrote it up from the
dress rehearsal yesterday morning. It was to come off last night, but
the leading lady came down with tonsillitis and it’s been postponed. So
kill the story for me, won’t you? Grab it off the hook, if it hasn’t
been set.”
Kill it! That had a horrible sound, but that meant only voiding the
story—throwing it out. She hoped it hadn’t really got into print, for
then they would have to stop the presses. That would be dreadful. Chub
had told her once that it cost the _Journal_ a great deal of time,
expense and labor to stop the presses. But it would have to be done. The
paper couldn’t come out with a long story about a play that had not come
off. Tim had been so proud of that play assignment, too. “Give me about
a column on this,” the editor had said and had consented to Tim’s
attending the dress rehearsal in order to have the story all set up,
ready to come out on the heels of the performance.
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. Then
Dummy would merely point to an item already written on his pad. This
seemed to provoke Mack even more, for he would have to write new
arguments.
Joan had gone through all the stories on the hook and had not found the
one about the charity play. As she started over again to look once more,
she glanced back at the two men over in the corner.
Dummy was beginning to write something, asserting whatever it was with
fierce strokes of his pencil. Mack, reading as Dummy wrote, seemed
crosser than ever and grabbed Dummy’s pencil. This infuriated the
proofreader, and Joan did not wonder. To have his pencil taken away from
him like that! Why, that was as if some one seized your tongue and held
it so you could not speak.
Well, the story wasn’t here. She’d have to ask Dummy what happened to
it. Maybe he had not read proof on it yet.
As she approached, both men glanced up and dropped their quarrel,
pretending that there had been no argument. Joan was puzzled. Perhaps
Mack had been merely teasing poor old Dummy. But no, the proofreader’s
eyes were hard and glittering with real anger. Joan felt it had been
more than a mere bandying of words. Mack strolled off, abruptly,
sauntering with his important little way, that caused Amy to call him
“high hat.” Being on the copy desk once in a while was giving him the
big head, Chub said.
Joan looked at Dummy. He did not look like a villain. However, she felt
again as she had when she had discovered his eyes upon her that first
day Tim was on the paper. What was there peculiar about him? Was it
shyness or secretiveness?
He had regained his pencil now, and Joan borrowed it to write on the
clean pad sheet that he presented, “Where is the story about the
charity....”
“Yes,” he wrote without waiting for her to finish. “Where is it? That’s
what I want to know.”
That’s what they had been arguing about, Joan guessed.
“The story was wrong—” Joan began.
“I know it,” Dummy had the pencil again. “I went to the hook to get it
to keep it out, because another story came through about Miss Florence
Webb having tonsillitis.”
Joan was sure he had intended to make changes in one of Tim’s stories.
But she did not say or write anything. She was too worried. Had the
story gone through? Suddenly, as she stood there, thinking, there
sounded in her ears a familiar and terrible racket, unearthly and
unending. The presses were running.
“Stop the presses!” She ran toward the big Goss giant in the pressroom.
She could not let that story come out. The _Journal_ would look
ridiculous, printing something that hadn’t happened.
Dummy sensed her words and followed, trying with gestures to soothe her.
If she had not known he was a villain, she would have thought him very
nice. He always treated her as though she were grown up. But she knew he
really wanted that story to go through.
However, his glances and gestures were kind enough—as consoling as
words. He smiled as she seized one of the damp, fresh papers. What did
that smile mean? He was a puzzle.
Joan opened out the paper, and with the proofreader looking over her
shoulder, she went through the whole issue, column by column.
“It isn’t in!” she cried. Tim was safe. By some miracle, the charity
play story had been left out. The presses would not have to be stopped,
after all. Oh, blessed relief!
Dummy had taken the paper from her limp hand, and was going through it
again. Then he shook his head. Was he relieved, too? Or was he sorry
that the terrible mistake hadn’t been made? Was he merely jealous of
Tim’s job or was he a spy, as they thought?
Things looked suspicious, though, she thought. Mack and Dummy had been
arguing about this very story. And where _was_ the story? It seemed to
have simply disappeared. She had really no facts to present to Mr.
Johnson. She’d have to wait and watch some more. She and Chub had been
so busy chasing that picture of Miss King, working so hard to get it
that they very nearly got into hot water because they got the wrong one,
while all the time something really important was brewing right under
their noses here in the back room of the _Journal_.
Joan, hurrying out to the editorial office to tell Chub the latest
details, brushed past Bossy, who was ambling into the front office with
a bundle of papers on his arm. He was muttering to himself, “Quare
goin’s on around heah, dat’s what I say.”
Bossy was always mumbling under his breath, and Joan paid no attention.
She had had an inspiration (what she and Amy called a brain throb).
Perhaps Chub in his eagerness to help Tim had realized the story was
wrong and had held it from going into the paper. Chub, however, denied
knowing anything about the mysterious disappearance of the charity play
story. His guileless, freckled face helped corroborate his innocence.
Joan felt he was telling the truth. Chub might be mischievous and full
of faults, but he did not lie. He listened intently while she told him
the latest developments.
When Tim came in, they had to discuss it all over again. He was relieved
that the story hadn’t been printed, but he was dumbfounded that it had
disappeared right off the hook. “Come on, I’m going to look over the lay
of the land,” he said to Joan. “I want to get to the bottom of this. It
surely looks crooked. Besides, I don’t like to lose that write-up with
all my carefully phrased compliments for each and every member in the
cast. I can use it whenever the play does come off.”
Dummy was still in his corner. Although the paper was out, the
afternoon’s work was not over for the _Journal_ family. No sooner was
one edition out than they went to work assembling news stories and
articles for the next day’s paper. Not news items, necessarily, mostly
rewrites and things that had no special time value. The back office
usually worked, pressmen and all, until four o’clock or after.
Tim satisfied himself that the story was not on the big hook; then he
went over to the proofreader’s corner. Joan saw Dummy’s eyes upon them.
“It certainly is funny how that story could vanish—” he began.
Joan wanted him to be careful how he worded his conversation to Dummy,
lest the proofreader guess himself to be under suspicion. If she said,
“Sh!” he would read her lips and know she was warning her brother to be
on his guard and he might divine that they were suspecting him.
“Oats and beans and barley,” she said, instead. She had never expected
really to use that old slogan in a crisis like this, but it came in
handy.
Tim stared. Then he understood and stopped speaking. Joan gave him a
look that meant, “I’ll explain later.” Tim conducted a cautious, written
conversation with Dummy but found nothing new about the mystery.
“He and Mack were arguing about that story being gone,” Joan told her
brother; “that’s why I didn’t want you to say anything much. He’d read
your lips and be warned. See?”
But both Dummy and Mack denied any knowledge of the lost story.
“Dummy’s a crackerjack proofreader,” Tim mused, when he and Joan were
back in the editorial room. “Uncle John says it’s really uncanny how
quick and accurate he is.”
“That’s because his speech and hearing are gone,” said Miss Betty. “The
other senses become more acute. I read that somewhere.”
“Sounds reasonable,” admitted Tim.
“But he hasn’t good sense if he’s been letting mistakes get by him,”
thought Joan.
“Ye-ah,” put in Chub, “but that makes it more mysterious why he should
make mistakes. Makes me think more than ever that he—”
Joan punched him to cease speaking. The whole office mustn’t be informed
that they were suspecting poor old Dummy.
“Who is he, anyway?” asked Mack. “With his gentlemanly manners and his
quiet ways. Still waters run deep, you know.”
Every one admitted Dummy was a mystery.
When the editor heard that the charity play had been postponed, he was
wild, in the parlance of the office. He cornered Tim. “Didn’t you write
up a big spiel about it?” he almost groaned. “And the play didn’t come
off.”
“The story wasn’t in,” Tim told him.
“But I sent it out back early this morning.”
Tim shrugged his innocence. “I know, but it’s—well, it’s _gone_!”
“A lucky break for you, Tim,” conceded the editor, after he had listened
to the story. “You better keep on being careful. One more bust, and out
you go. You see, Tim, I like you and all that, but as editor, I’m
responsible for everything in the paper. If mistakes are getting into
the paper, it’s up to me to see who’s making ’em, p.d.q., and get rid of
him. I’ve told you all this before.”
Again Joan felt like shouting that Tim had made only one mistake—the
omission of Mrs. McNulty’s and the two other names. Mr. Nixon was
stubborn. He was convinced that Tim had made the mistakes. He would
probably not believe otherwise until she and Chub cleared up the mystery
and brought the guilty party to him.
She and the office boy fairly sleuthed Dummy, hoping to get something to
report to Mr. Johnson. On Fourth of July, which was a week later, Joan
stumbled upon another clew. “This mystery is getting to be as bad as the
Alger books,” she thought.
The _Journal_ was coming out early that day, with a diminished edition,
as on the day of the annual outing, in order that the staff might have a
bit of a holiday. Every one was busy, working extra hard, so busy that
they did not even have time to let Joan help. She had stayed home
instead, spending the time trying to console Em.
Poor Em did not like the fireworks. Living right in the heart of the
town like this, she suffered agonies. The boys on the street, and the
_Journal_ newsies, hanging around waiting for the paper to come out,
would hurl “two-inchers” and snakes-in-the-grass in her direction. She
would meow and hiss like a wild thing. Finally, she would flee to a
safer place. Now, she had just disappeared through one of the back
windows of the _Journal_. Joan knew more newsboys were waiting back
there—boys ready to tease the cat. She determined to go after her pet
and lock her in the house until the terrible—to Em, at least—day of
independence was over.
Joan scurried through the editorial office and through the door to out
back. She caught sight of Em’s slim, black body scuttling along ahead of
her over the cement floor, on velvet-soft paws. Now she was under the
make-up tables, where the long galleys of print were assembled in a
newspaper form.
Then the cat darted across the composing room and into the pressroom,
over to the far corner where rolls of paper, as high as Joan herself,
were stored. Em, frantic at being chased, even by Joan, played hide and
seek about the paper rolls. Joan called her endearing names, and finally
rounding her into a corner, stooped to pick her up. She quieted the cat
with reassuring words. Her eyes wandered to the floor. Why, what was
that, there in the corner? It looked like yellow copy paper, several
sheets pasted together, the way Tim did when he wrote a long story. She
started to turn the paper over, idly, with the toe of her oxford, when
her foot touched something hard underneath. She pushed the paper off
with her foot. The thing was long and hard and dirty with dried ink and
dust; it was a galley of type, still set up in its narrow tin trough.
Newspapers are notoriously untidy places; still, Joan was surprised to
find the set-up type here, for the type was always melted down in a
little furnace and reused in the linotype machines. She was about to go
on when her eyes were attracted by Tim’s name peeping out from a fold of
the yellow paper—MARTIN, written all in capitals, the way he always did
in the upper left-hand corner. It must be one of his stories. She draped
Em over her arm while she picked up the paper and smoothed it out on her
knee.
It was the story of the charity play, the story that had disappeared off
the hook. She examined the galley and found it to be the proof of the
story and underneath were the proof sheets, too. No wonder it had not
been in the paper, for every evidence of the story had been hidden away
here in this corner. Some one had done it who had not quite dared to
destroy the story. It could not have been Chub, trying in his bunglesome
way to help Tim. She believed firmly in his honesty.
She’d save the story for Tim, because he had said he could use it later.
She folded it up and tucked it under her middy. The proof sheets and the
galley of type she put back into the corner and left.
Chub vowed he knew nothing about the story being hidden. He thought,
like Joan, that Dummy must have taken it to put a mistake in it somehow
and then, panicky at being almost caught, had hidden it away.
She vowed then that she would watch developments more closely than ever.
But, as it happened, she did not.
Later, she recalled Cookie’s statement that reporters were always keyed
up over something, forgetting the big excitement of one assignment when
the next one came along. Yes, that was true. Think how wrought up she
had been over the deserted children, over Miss King’s picture, and now
over the charity play story.
“Something exciting every day on a newspaper,” Miss Betty told her when
Joan tried to tell the older girl these thoughts. “You’d love it,
Sub-Cub.” That was their new name for Joan.
“I’d like the same thing, over and over,” Tim grumbled, thumping on his
typewriter keys. He was peeved that morning because he had been sent to
interview a set of six-months-old triplets, whose parents had rented a
garage, though they owned no car. They needed the space to park the
triple baby carriage, which was too wide to enter their front door!
“At least, I mean, I’d like to write about the same _kind_ of thing
every day,” he went on. “Then I could work up a style of my own—and
followers.”
“Ah, the lad aspires to be a columnist!” jeered Mack, who had a habit of
overhearing everything that was said, since his desk was next to Tim’s.
“No, not exactly.” Tim was fussed. Why did Mack always tease?
Cookie looked up from his corner. “I had dreams, too, once,” he said.
“Hang on to yours, Tim. They’re mighty precious.”
Cookie was right about forgetting one thrilling story for new interests
and about there always being something new in newspaper life. Despite
Joan’s resolve to watch developments, she was so preoccupied for the
next few weeks that she hardly thought of Dummy and the mysterious
mistakes at all.
For it was that very Saturday morning that she met Tommy.