ERIC
Eric Reynolds! The winner of the second prize was in trouble and was
calling on Joan to help him. Still, he did not know her name was Martin
or that she was the girl who had interviewed him at his home a few days
ago, when she had informed him that he was one of the winners.
What could the mysterious trouble be? Of course, she must go and help
him, if she could, even though he was a sissy. “I’ll come,” she said,
and heard Eric’s “Thank you very much,” as he hung up.
She could at least find out what Eric or Abie had wanted with Tim. No
use to bother any one in the office with this until she knew more.
Probably Abie wanted to give Tim a scolding about something. Cub
reporters were always being summoned for all sorts of things. Perhaps
something Tim had written for the paper had aroused Abie’s ire. Still,
what had Eric to do with it? And what was a rich boy like Eric doing in
a pawnshop?
Joan trotted along up Market Street and around the corner on Main. It
was just a few blocks to Abie’s Pawnshop. Every one called him just
Abie. The shop was in the cheap part of Main Street—the wrong side of
Buckeye, which divided the two districts. The shop was a tiny place,
crowded with everything from furs to fruit dishes. Three gold balls, a
bit tarnished, hung in front, and inside at the right was a wire cage,
where Abie, framed by a background of watches and clocks, usually held
forth. To-day, however, he was in the center of the shop. Eric Reynolds
was there, too, holding a black violin case under his arm.
“Hey, are you _Mr._ Martin?” Abie growled when he saw her.
Joan explained that Mr. Martin was her brother and that she had come in
his place, as he was busy on an assignment.
“Your brother—he signed this, hey?” Abie brandished a bit of paper under
her nose. He was a small man, in shirt sleeves and a vest, with a heavy
gold chain across his plump stomach. The chain was wobbling, he was so
angry. “This boy here—” he indicated Eric with a jerk of his pudgy
thumb—“he wants to buy violin off me and he gives me check for
twenty-five dollars—and it _ain’t signed_.”
Not signed! Why, she had watched Uncle John sign it. Anyway, how did
Eric happen to have the check? Had the awards really been mixed, after
all? Perhaps, even now, Jimmy was speeding toward Cleveland to the big
game. Or—perhaps Eric had stolen the check, for some reason. But surely
he had plenty of money. He looked especially stylish in the sweater and
hose-to-match set he was wearing to-day. But how did he get the check?
She remembered having seen Jimmy’s name on it. And now, Eric had it, and
somehow it was blank where Uncle John had signed his name.
It certainly was a _mystery_. The word reminded her of Dummy. Could he
have mixed the prizes, thinking that he would get the paper in bad with
the public? The mistake might, too, for, of course, a paper awarding
prizes ought to award them correctly. Dummy could certainly think up
strange things to do—for she was sure he had had a hand in this.
“Is this Miss Martin?” Eric asked. Didn’t he recognize her in the old
middy? “You’re the girl who came to see me, aren’t you? Will you kindly
tell this man that your brother did sign this check when he sent it to
Jimmy, and that it’s perfectly O.K.?”
“My brother is Mr. Martin,” Joan smiled. “But not the one you think.
That’s my uncle. The girl called Tim to the phone, and he wasn’t there,
and I got your message to come around. But—” she broke off her
explanation. “The check _was_ signed. I saw it. It was sent to Jimmy,
though.” And she had been so anxious that no more mistakes should be
made.
“I can explain,” the boy began. “You see, I was disappointed when I
didn’t get first prize, because I wanted, not the honor, but the money.”
He looked embarrassed but went on. “My music teacher told me there was a
really good violin here at Abie’s shop. It was twenty-five dollars, and
I have only a small allowance. My parents wouldn’t get it for me. They
didn’t know I’d been taking secret lessons since Christmas. Professor
Hofman gives them to me, free. Mother wants me to be an athlete and she
suggested my trying in the contest, and I did in hopes of winning the
money.”
Abie was getting impatient during this recital. Evidently he had heard
the explanation before. He was waving his hands. “It ain’t signed,” he
muttered.
“Yes, but how did you get the check?” Joan asked Eric.
“Well, it’s funny,” he drawled. Did he talk slowly, naturally, or was he
trying to infuriate Abie? Eric was such an odd boy, you never could be
sure about him. “I didn’t want the tickets, but it seems that the other
boy did. I was certainly surprised to have a voice over the phone ask me
if I wanted to sell the tickets and passes for twenty-five dollars. It
was Jimmy. I told him I’d give them to him. But he insisted that we swap
prizes. I did it, because I wanted the violin so much. It hardly seemed
right, but Jimmy said my letter was better than his.”
“It was,” Joan admitted. “But I gave the money prize, to him, because he
was—poor.”
“I don’t care anything about baseball,” Eric stated. “I wouldn’t dare
play ball, for fear I’d break my finger and couldn’t play the violin.
Professor Hofman says my fingers are—are precious.” He almost whispered
the last word.
He wasn’t a sissy, only a genius. What if her decision had kept him from
fulfilling his ambition? She could sympathize with him, for didn’t she
want to be a newspaper reporter, while Mother thought it unladylike? She
had put a stumblingblock in his way when she had decided the prizes,
thinking he did not need money.
“So I took the check,” Eric continued, “since Jimmy said he didn’t need
it and would much rather have the tickets. We met at the bank, and the
man there explained how Jimmy was to write payable to me on it. And I
wrote ‘Payable to Abie Goldstein’ on it and brought it here. We didn’t
show the check to any one there; just asked. I didn’t notice it then,
and when I got here, there was no signature. Jimmy hadn’t mentioned
anything about it.”
“He’s been coming in here, looking at that violin, two, t’ree times
every week for long time,” nodded Abie. “To-day, he say he take it. I
think it lot money for him to have, but he look rich, and I give it him.
Then he give me check not signed. I not so dumb as I look, maybe! I tell
him I put him in jail for that! I call Mr. Martin at the _Journal_, like
he say—and you come.”
He seemed to consider her a poor substitute. She remembered now that
Abie had shouted something about putting some one in jail when she had
talked to him over the telephone. She did not doubt but that the irate
little man would do something awful to Eric if he could not prove his
innocence. To think how she had misjudged Eric. She must help him now,
for in a way, it was through her that he was in this mix-up. It was
certainly a mystery, though. How could a check be signed one day and
unsigned the next? Even Dummy could hardly do such a thing.
It was clear that she must do two things. She must get hold of Jimmy,
somehow, to prove that Eric’s story was true, and then get Uncle John to
untangle the knotty problem of the signature. She went back of the
counter to Abie’s phone. It was on the wall. She had to tilt the
mouthpiece down and then stand on tiptoe. Joan doubted whether Jimmy had
a telephone and when Information Operator assured her he did not, she
asked for the nearest one. Miss Betty often did that. The telephone next
door proved to be that of a Mrs. Kelly who was willing to send one of
her children over to deliver a message to Jimmy Kennedy. “Tell him to
come to the _Journal_ office as quickly as possible,” Joan told her.
“It’s important.”
“Sure and he’ll be there quick as you like,” came Mrs. Kelly’s answer.
“He’ll likely use his bike and he’s fast as the wind on that.”
Then, the three of them started over to the _Journal_ office. Before he
left, Abie called his assistant to “mind the shop.” Joan and Eric led
the way, and Abie followed, his hands wildly waving. Eric seemed a
little sober now at the outcome of the exchange of prizes. He said
nothing but still hugged the violin.
Uncle John was busy and while they were waiting Jimmy appeared. Tim was
back now, the paper was out, and Joan explained things to him. When they
went into Uncle John’s office, Tim went in, too. They seemed to fill the
little room, the sanctum sanctorum. Em was there, curled up on the
window sill, her tail hanging straight down. Silhouetted against the
light, she looked like a spook. Joan picked her up and held her. Uncle
John got up from his swivel chair that creaked gratefully when he
hoisted his stout self from it and greeted them with raised eyebrows.
Joan started to explain the situation, but Abie, flashing the check,
broke in with his mumblings.
Uncle John took the check. “Well, what’s it all about? This is the check
I sent to the Kennedy boy.”
“Yes, but I wanted the tickets to the game—they’re hard to get—and the
trip to Cleveland and the autographed ball,” Jimmy said. “And when I
didn’t win ’em, and read in the _Journal_ that a kid named Eric Reynolds
did, I went to the drug store and telephoned him.”
“And we traded prizes,” put in Eric. “But the check wasn’t signed.”
“Well, this is a mystery,” Uncle John examined the check. “I’m positive
I signed it. This is the same check, I’m sure.”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Jimmy twisted at his blouse pocket and produced an
envelope. “Here’s what the letter and the check came in, addressed to
me. The letter’s at home, but I brought the check along in this to keep
it clean for Eric.”
“Yes, it’s the same check,” Uncle John said, holding it out.
The bit of paper brushed against Em’s long white whiskers as Uncle John
placed it on his desk. The cat squirmed in Joan’s arms. She wrinkled up
her black face and began to sneeze and hiss, wrenching herself away, as
if to spring toward the check.
“Why—” Joan put Em down and the cat immediately rolled over and over on
the floor, casting sidewise glances at them from her big yellow eyes.
Then Joan picked up the check, held it to her own nose and sniffed.
“Why, it does! It smells like sassafras!”
“Well, and what has that to do with it?” snapped the pawnshop owner.
“Maybe the boys was drinking sassafras sodys at the drug store and
spilled some on it. What does that prove, if you’re so smart?”
But Joan would not give up. “Did you?” she turned to the boys.
They both shook their heads. “I don’t like sassafras,” Eric said.
Joan opened the office door and called Chub. He came right in, for he
had been standing outside, listening and watching their shadows on the
frosted door window. “Chub,” she demanded, “where did you hide that
magic ink?”
Chub blushed until his face was almost as red as his hair. “I—I suppose
I shouldn’t of, but I hid it behind those books on the General Mag.’s
desk.”
The general manager was Uncle John, of course. “I did use the ink behind
the books,” he stated. “I thought it was a misplaced supply bottle, and
well, I must have signed the check with the vanishing ink? Here, give it
to me, and I’ll sign it again—” he started to dip his pen into the
filled inkwell.
“No, Uncle John, please! Let us prove it!” Joan begged. “Chub, do your
stuff. Let’s see you magic the signature back again.”
Tim produced the match Chub asked for, and he cupped his hands while the
younger boy held the tiny flame near the check. Breathlessly, the others
watched. Abie’s brown eyes were bulging. He did not know what to expect.
Eric and Jimmy were frankly interested. Uncle John was amused. Joan and
Chub were the only ones watching with real assurance.
The match went out in spite of Tim’s shielding hands. Three times
matches were lighted and three times they went out. Chub began to get
red in the face and beads of perspiration stood out on his cheeks. Even
Joan got a little worried. Maybe Chub’s magic wasn’t any good. Then they
couldn’t prove that this check had been signed and that Eric was all
right. She had to prove it!
“We have to have a steady, even heat,” Chub decided. “I did it over the
kitchen stove at home. But there’re no gas jets here.”
“I know! The flames that dry the print!” Joan started out to the
composing room, and the rest trailed along, quite a little procession,
it was, with Joan and Chub leading.
The big room was fairly silent now, for the paper had just been run off
the giant presses. But the rows of tiny blue flames along the top of
each roller, which dried each page as it was flipped over, had not yet
been turned out. Joan had always thought the flames very pretty—that
little bit of bright color in this dim, cement-floored room, which was
like a vast cave somehow, and usually thunderous with the roar of the
presses.
Chub, as master of ceremonies, held the piece of paper up in front of
the flames, moving it gently back and forth, so that it would not be
scorched or burned.
The others pressed close about the office boy. Soon, there appeared upon
the check down in the right-hand corner, the scrawled signature, “John
W. Martin,” old-fashioned _M_ and all.
“It’s certainly magic!” cried Joan.
“Yes, but don’t leave that ink around again,” Uncle John warned Chub.
“Very fine trick,” said Abie, while the others murmured their surprise.
“Now, let’s see, is this exchange the boys are making O.K.?” Uncle John
asked, when they were all back in his little office again, and he had
the check with its restored signature in his hand.
“Jimmy, don’t you know twenty-five dollars is a lot of money?”
“Well, I suppose it is,” admitted Jimmy. “But you see, I just entered
the contest ’cause I wanted the ball and the trip to the game. Mom
thought I won that, and I didn’t tell her any different, because we
traded. It’d cost me twenty-five dollars to go to the game, and Babe
Ruth wouldn’t sign a baseball for me, without I had that prize
announcement letter telling him to. Anyway, I didn’t think my letter
would win first, but I hoped it would win second.”
“Eric’s was the better one, really,” Joan remarked.
“Every one seems agreed.” Uncle John passed the check over to Abie. “I
guess the violin is the boy’s.”
“Won’t you play something?” Joan begged Eric. “Do let him, Uncle John.
The paper’s out, and no one’s busy.”
At Uncle John’s nod, Eric took the violin from its case and tucked it
under his chin. A dark lock of his hair tumbled upon his forehead and
made his thin face look even whiter than usual. “A regular violin face,”
Joan thought to herself. “I wonder I didn’t think of it before. And I
thought he’d be a speedy ball player, because he was thin. Fine reporter
I’d be!”
Eric played. A dreamy but spirited thing that made you think of lads and
lassies doing an old-time dance on a green countryside. Joan could
picture the colors of their costumes as the couples whisked about,
hopping, and smiling to each other. Every one in the little office stood
perfectly still while Eric played.
When he finished, the bow drooped limp and lifeless in his hand. Uncle
John strode toward the door. “Very nice, indeed,” he said, and his voice
was gruff. “But this is hardly a concert hall.”
Abie was clapping his hairy hands. “Wonderful! Wonderful! Five dollars
and even more you would pay to hear such playing like that!”
“The kid’s clever, no joke,” Tim remarked as he went out. “And their
swapping the prizes will make a peach of a follow-up story.”
Eric held out his hand to Joan, right there in front of Jimmy and Chub.
“Thank you very much,” he said in his grown-up way, “for helping us
out—for solving the mystery.”
Joan laughed. “Don’t thank me. Thank Em. She did it.”
They all looked over to the corner where Em was unconcernedly licking
her black paw.
“It’s the second time she proved herself a heroine,” Joan thought to
herself. She had led Joan to the charity play story—and now this. Dummy
had hid the story, she was sure, and had been only pretending in his
argument with Mack. You couldn’t tell about the proofreader. Yet, here
was another mistake that had happened and Dummy had not been to blame.