THE COMMA’S TAIL
Tim blinked at Joan’s words. “What do you mean?” He grabbed the paper
and bent his dark head over it. “Why, that’s true. The commas are O.K.
That lets me out, for this was never written on that ramshackle old
machine I wrote on. But old Nix can rot before I’ll tell him, if he
couldn’t believe me, when I was telling the truth.”
“I’ll tell him—” began Joan and then remembered how Mr. Nixon had
ordered her out of the _Journal_ office for good and all, in spite of
what Mr. Johnson had said. She was powerless to help. Just when they had
solved the Dummy mystery. At least, he wasn’t the spy. Was there one?
She thought of Chub, but he, too, was in Mr. Nixon’s bad graces, and
would probably refuse to help.
Well, she really couldn’t go back to the _Journal_, not even to save
Tim. But Tim could. He needed the job, too. How could he build up his
college fund without it? Maybe Mother would have to sell the house to
get money for Tim’s education. She coaxed him to go back to the
_Journal_, until he got peeved. He banged upstairs to his own room and
slammed the door shut.
Deserted Joan turned to Mother and the housework. There was always that
to fall back on. She made a new kind of pudding out of the cookbook and
it turned out well. Mother was pleased to have something extra nice to
cheer Tim up over the loss of his job. Mother was sorry about that, but
she was glad that Joan’s duties, whatever they had been at the
_Journal_, had mysteriously come to an end—though she had shown she was
proud when Joan wrote up the Davis window.
Tim was impressed with the pudding. “Gee, I didn’t know you could make
dessert in three colors,” he said, and Joan felt as though he had
forgiven her for bothering him about going over to see Mr. Nixon. She
still wished he would, but she did not refer to the matter.
The next day hung wearily on Joan’s hands. Amy did not even telephone.
She must be good and mad, for she adored to hold telephone
conversations. Joan tried not to look at the _Journal_ windows across
the way. She did the marketing, and straightened out her bureau drawers.
Then she walked to the library and got one of the latest books, but
somehow it did not seem half so thrilling as the mystery of the
_Journal_ office.
She was half through the book by bedtime, and the next afternoon she sat
down on the side steps to finish it. Em rubbed against her ankles, so
Joan stopped to fill a saucer of milk for the cat, and then she curled
her feet under again and started to read.
Suddenly a familiar call broke into her reading.
“Yoo-whoo!” A window in the _Journal_ office was pushed up and there was
Chub’s red head. “Come on over, you and Tim. The chief says so.”
He meant Mr. Nixon, of course. But Joan only stared. Chub had nerve to
try a joke like that, right when the office was the busiest, for the
paper was going to press about this time.
“Say!” called Chub. “Can’t you hear? He wants you both, honest. The
press is broken and everybody has to pitch in to get the paper out on
time.”
Joan rushed into the house after Tim, her heart pounding fast. Oh,
suppose Chub were teasing, after all! This would be a much better joke
than telling Amy to feel the heat from the inky roller—and would have
even more disastrous results. It took quite a few minutes to convince
Tim that it was not a joke. He went reluctantly.
But Chub wasn’t “kidding.” Mr. Nixon met them at the editorial door, and
he never even mentioned that he had sent Joan flying from the office
only twenty-four hours ago. “The press has gone flooie, and we had to
have help,” he explained simply. “I thought you might do some rewrites,
Martin, and Joan could help Betty. Everything’s almost done. We’ll have
to send the forms out to be stereotyped and printed. We can’t miss an
edition even if the Goss giant is out of whack.”
“No halt in publication.” That was the unspoken thought that spurred the
staff on. Neither Tim nor Joan referred to the circumstances surrounding
their exits from the _Journal_. Every one was busy. The paper must be
got out, as usual.
Because the forms were to be carried in trucks across the town to a
printing office of a weekly trade paper, which had generously offered to
help the _Journal_ in its trouble, the news would have to be written up
more quickly than if it were to be printed right here in the _Journal’s_
own pressroom.
Every one worked. Gertie flew about. Miss Betty showed Joan how to copy
one side of a club program and then paste the other side to save copying
it. Tim breathed new life into the usually dead rewrites. Mack was
pounding out the day’s ball scores. Cookie was doing the obits. Chub
trotted his legs almost off, running to the composing room with copy.
Dummy was there, directing things from his stool, above the tinkle of
the linotype machines. Every one seemed used to his having a voice,
already. Joan had no time to think of the mystery or to do more than
wonder about Dummy, not even when Chub confided to her that he had
somehow discovered that it was Bossy who had hid the charity play story.
“He knew that Miss Webb had tonsillitis because his sister washes for
the Webbs,” Chub explained. “And so he knew the story was wrong and hid
it.”
Well, poor, faithful Bossy wasn’t a spy. He had been trying to help. But
Joan couldn’t even think about Bossy when they were in the middle of
getting the paper out with the press broken.
Finally, it was all over—the truck with the locked forms had chugged
away from the curb. Tim and Joan, now in the _Journal_ office, remained
there. Cookie sent Chub out for cherry ices in paper cups and treated
the entire staff all around. After the tension of the office for the
past few hours, the staff was relaxing and the place took on an air of
gayety.
Miss Betty and Mack had their heads together over their cherry cups and
were laughing over their wielding of the microscopic spoons.
“Oh, Jo,” Miss Betty addressed Joan, “do something for me, will you?
That’s an angel. Clear off my desk. It’s such a mess, I hate to think of
doing it.”
“Sure,” agreed Joan, readily, and turned to the desk. It was a mess,
truly, snowed in under pages of copy paper, clippings, photographs of
babies and of brides, and proofs of pictures.
Joan loved tidying up when one could see the improvement like this. She
began by sticking all Miss Betty’s notes on the big hook on the side of
the desk, where she kept them for a week, and then threw them away, as
did all the reporters. The photographs she gave to Chub to file in the
tall green files, where they would be taken out when the blushing brides
or proud mothers came in to claim them.
Then she was down to the desk top, and blew the dust off. A paper
fluttered to the floor. Joan picked it up and could not help reading
it—a note from Mack, about a social item that some one had left during
Betty’s lunch hour. He had typed her a message about it, put down the
phone number for her to call, and had added his name.
There was something awfully familiar about the typing. The capitals were
all jumped halfway off the line. Why, so were they in that final
paragraph in the fire story. She remembered, because since yesterday,
she had been studying the idiosyncrasies of that last paragraph until
she knew them by heart. But still she couldn’t be sure, without getting
it to compare.
She rushed from the _Journal_ office, and bounded home. Good thing she
knew where she had left that story—under the scarf on her dresser. Back
in the _Journal_ office, she looked from the typed note to the last
paragraph of the page in her hands, and then back again. Yes, both of
them did have capitals halfway above the line.
And—she bent over it more closely and wished for a magnifying glass. Her
heart thrilled as she looked over at Tim scowling into his machine—that
was because Miss Betty and Mack were acting so chummy—and at Chub
opening and closing the sliding drawers of the green files as he put the
photographs in their proper places. Tim didn’t know she was saving him.
Chub didn’t know she was about to solve the baffling mystery.
She bent closely—yes, it was the same, and the commas were all perfect
ones, too. The final paragraph had no more been written on Tim’s machine
than the note on Miss Betty’s desk.
There was a soft noise behind her and she jumped. It was Dummy clearing
his throat and looking at her with his mild blue eyes.
“Have you that fire story, Miss Joan?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “I
didn’t get to see it, again, and I wanted to.”
Joan glanced up. It would do no harm to trust him. He did seem nice.
Perhaps it was because he called her Miss Joan. “Look, Mr. Marat,” she
said, and held up the two pieces of typing. “Who wrote these, would you
say?”
Dummy smiled at her respectful use of his name and took them into his
own hands. “It’s that sport editor,” he mused, motioning to the final
paragraph in the story. “I know ’most every one’s typewriting from
comparing the proof sheets with the original copy, and he put this extra
paragraph on to this story of your brother’s.”
He pointed with a crooked finger. “Typing is really just as
characteristic as handwriting. That fellow, Mack, is always in such a
hurry that he never holds his shift key down when he typewrites, and the
capitals are always a bit above the line.” The man’s face wrinkled up.
“Besides, I hated to tell this until I was sure it was serious, but one
day, I heard Mack telephoning news tips to the _Star_. The city editor
over there, that Tebbets, is his foster uncle, I’ve just discovered, and
he’s in their employ. And that day of the picnic, I did some spying
myself, following the two of them while they hatched their schemes.
Dirty business, but it’s sometimes done.”
Joan’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but the
proofreader grabbed her elbow. “Keep mum on this, and we’ll break it to
Nixon when he comes back.”
It seemed ages, waiting. Chub asked her a half-dozen times what she was
dreaming about, for she hardly listened to his chatter. Her head was
going round. They had thought Dummy was scheming with Tebbets at the
picnic. Mack must have been on ahead, in front of his adopted uncle. And
Mack had told her he suspected Dummy! Was Mack the spy? It seemed
possible. She remembered how peeved he had been that time she had
mentioned that his machine had heads on the commas.
Finally, Mr. Nixon came; he had stayed until the edition was safely out
and had brought back some loose papers in his hands. The rest were on
the truck for the newsboys. Things began to hum again. Gertie’s voice,
busy on the front office phone, floated out to them. She was assuring
the subscribers who were calling that they would get their papers soon,
that the delivery wasn’t going to be very late, after all.
Dummy took Joan’s arm and led her up to Mr. Nixon’s desk.
“This young lady has been doing a bit of sleuthing around here,” he
said, “and has hit on something really big!” And then they told him,
Dummy writing the important words on a pad on the desk and motioning
with his head toward Mack, so that the rest of the staff wouldn’t know
what they were talking about. Dummy told Mr. Nixon about shadowing Mack
and Tebbets at the picnic, saying he was about to relate all this
yesterday when his story had been so untimely interrupted by Amy’s
screams. “I couldn’t explain until I was sure,” Dummy stated. “Then when
that charity play story was lost, I was sure he was up to mischief
again. I tried to get him to confess. We had an argument and he grabbed
my pencil away. But I knew then that he was not on the level.”
Mr. Nixon wasn’t convinced right away. He was puzzled. “I’ve always
believed that young Martin made the mistakes and then was scared to
admit them. But—maybe, now—and if Mack is really Tebbets’ ward. Tebbets
is a hard fellow. He probably bullied Mack into doing it—if he did.” And
he fussed over the papers and stroked his chin.
Joan said nothing. She was recalling Tebbets at the picnic—how he had
spoken to Mack, and how he had ignored cunning little Ruthie. He was
just the type of man who could make Mack do most anything.
Suddenly, the editor marched over to Mack with the copy in his hand.
Mack was bending over his machine with his green shade over his eyes.
“Look here Mack, did you write that extra bit on this fire story?”
Mack looked up, startled, pulled off the eye shade, and stared. His face
was as red as the rouge Gertie used. He didn’t need to say a word to
show that he was guilty.
Joan could hardly help feeling sorry for him.
“Maybe,” she ventured, coming over, “maybe he did it because he
was—jealous of Tim.”
Miss Betty, who had by this time sensed what had happened, gave a little
gasp of protest. “Oh, no,” she cried.
Joan suddenly realized that while Mack may have disliked her somewhat on
the grounds that she was his rival’s sister, still, he had been afraid
all along that she and Chub, in their investigations, might suspect him.
“Jealous, nothing!” shouted the editor. “He’s on the staff of the
_Star_. He’s been deliberately trying to ball us up with the
administration.”
Mack wrenched his hands away. He looked sorry and ashamed. “Let go,” he
said. “I’m leaving anyway.”
Joan always believed that there was some story back of it that excused
Mack a little. Maybe he needed the money—or something. But Mr. Nixon did
not share her leniency.
“You bet you’re going,” he roared, and he took Mack by the collar. “But
not until you make a full confession to the manager.” The editor marched
him into Uncle John’s office.
Tim hardly knew what to say. He gave Joan a grateful look and murmured,
“Gee, kid, I never dreamed there was a real spy.”
“Didn’t I say so all along?” demanded Chub. “I knew mistakes were
happening before Dummy and Tim came to work here.” He acted as though he
had done all the detective work himself, but Joan was too happy to mind.
Tim had intimated that she had really helped him. Why, it was almost as
if he had told her she was a good sport.
Even Bossy added his bit. “So it was that feller, Mack, that let wrong
stuff get in the papah. Mistakes is bad!”
If Mack had added the paragraph to this fire story, then, Joan thought,
he had probably typed a new beginning to that story of the deserted
children—the very first mistake she had known anything about.
When Mack came out of Uncle John’s office, he did not say good-by to any
one, not even to Miss Betty, but just grabbed his hat and went out of
the office. Gertie, on seeing him go past her counter, guessed by his
manner that something was wrong, and rushed back into the editorial room
to find out what, brushing past the printers and linotype men who were
filing out, their day’s work over.
“Well, Joan was right,” said Mr. Nixon, as he seated himself behind his
desk again. “Martin, I guess your job’s safe enough, now. Want it back?”
Tim nodded his answer. He hardly knew what to say. Mr. Nixon opened up
his red date book and wrote something in it. He was giving Tim an
assignment for the next day. “Maybe we can make you sport editor around
here one of these days. I haven’t forgotten what a cracker jack write-up
you did of the _Journal_ team victory over the _Star_,” smiled the
editor.
Sport editor! Tim could only grin. Joan knew he would be a good
one—probably be better at that than at straight reporting. Hadn’t he
been the high school star in athletics? He could go on to college now,
for his job was safe; Mr. Nixon had said so. And with the spy, Mack,
gone, the _Journal_ was safe now, too.
But the entire staff—Miss Betty and Cookie and Chub—were rushing up to
Joan herself.
“Gee,” said Gertie, over her chewing gum, “if you keep on, Jo, you’ll be
the star reporter around here.”
“Yes, indeed,” nodded the editor. “There’ll be a desk waiting here for
you soon as you’re through high school, Miss Joan.”
He had called her Miss Joan! What did it matter that through the
_Journal_ windows, she could see Mother at the side steps, waving for
her to come home? Probably it was time to start dinner. Nothing
mattered. She had a job promised her!
THE END