HELEN IN THE EDITOR'S CHAIR
by
RUTHE S. WHEELER
The Goldsmith Publishing Company
Chicago
Copyright, 1932
The Goldsmith Publishing Company
Made in U. S. A.
CHAPTER CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Weekly Herald. 13
II. Startling News. 22
III. In The Editor's Chair. 34
IV. Through the Storm. 50
V. Reporting Plus. 62
VI. A New Week Dawns. 75
VII. The First Issue. 93
VIII. Mystery in the Night. 111
IX. Rescue on Lake Dubar. 124
X. Behind the Footlights. 139
XI. New Plans. 160
XII. Special Assignment. 177
XIII. Helen's Exclusive Story. 195
XIV. The Queen's Last Trip. 209
XV. Success Attends. 225
Helen in the Editor's Chair
CHAPTER I
_The Weekly Herald_
Thursday!
Press day!
Helen Blair anxiously watched the clock on the wall of the assembly room.
Five more minutes and school would be dismissed for the day. How those
minutes dragged. She moved her books impatiently.
Finally the dismissal bell sounded. Helen straightened the books in her
desk and, with the 162 others in the large assembly of the Rolfe High
School, rose and marched down to the cloak room. She was glad that school
was over for, to her, Thursday was the big day of the week.
Press day!
What magic lay in those two words.
By supper time the _Rolfe Herald_ would be in every home in town and,
when families sat down to their evening meal, they would have the paper
beside them.
Helen's father, Hugh Blair, was the editor and publisher of the _Herald_.
Her brother, Tom, a junior in high school, wrote part of the news and
operated the Linotype, while Helen helped in the office every night after
school and on Saturdays.
On Thursday her work comprised folding the papers as they came off the
clanking press. Her arms ached long before her task was done, but she
prided herself on the neatness of the stacks of papers that grew as she
worked.
"Aren't you going to stay for the final sophomore debate tryouts?" asked
Margaret Stevens. Margaret, daughter of the only doctor in Rolfe, lived
across the street from the Blairs.
"Not this afternoon," smiled Helen, "this is press day."
"I'd forgotten," laughed Margaret. "All right, hurry along and get your
hands covered with ink."
"Come over after supper and tell me about the tryouts," said Helen.
"I will," promised Margaret as she turned to the classroom where the
tryouts were to be held.
The air was warm and Helen, with her spring coat over her arm, hurried
from the high school building and started down the long hill that led to
the main street.
Rolfe was a pretty midwestern village tucked away among the hills
bordering Lake Dubar, a long, narrow body of water that attracted summer
visitors from hundreds of miles away.
The main street, built along a valley that opened out on the lake shore,
was a broad, graveled street, flanked by a miscellaneous collection of
stores and shops. Some of them were of weather-beaten red brick, others
were of frame and a few of them, harking back to pioneer days, had false
fronts. In the afternoon sun, it presented a quiet, friendly scene.
Helen reached the foot of the school house hill and turned on to the main
street. On the right of the street and just two blocks from the lake
shore stood the one-story frame structure housing the postoffice and her
father's printing plant. The postoffice occupied the front half of the
building and the _Herald_ office was the rear.
Helen walked down the alleyway between the postoffice and the Temple
furniture store. She heard the noise of the press before she reached the
office and knew that her father had started the afternoon run.
The _Herald_, an eight page paper, used four pages of ready print and
four pages of home print. Each week's supply of paper was shipped from
Cranston, where four pages filled with prepared news and pictures, were
printed. The other four, carrying local advertisements and news of Rolfe
and vicinity were printed on the aged press in the _Herald_ office.
Helen hurried up the three steps leading to the editorial office. Its one
unwashed window shut out the sunlight, and the office lay in a
semi-shadow. Unable to see clearly after the brightness of the sunlight,
she did not see her father at his desk when she entered the office.
"Hello, Dad," she called as she took off her tam and sailed it along the
counter where it finally came to rest against a stack of freshly printed
_Heralds_.
Her father did not answer and Helen was on the point of going on into the
composing room when she turned toward him. His head still rested on his
arms and he gave no sign of having heard her.
Concerned over his silence, she hurried to his desk.
"Dad, Dad!" she cried. "What's the matter! Answer me!"
Her father's head moved and he looked up at her. His face was pale and
there were dark hollows under his eyes.
"I'm all right, Helen," he said, but the usual smile was missing. "Just
felt a little faint and came in here to take a few minutes rest. I'll be
all right shortly. You go on and help Tom. I'll be with you in a while."
"But if you don't feel well, Dad, you'd better go home and rest,"
insisted Helen. "You know Tom and I can finish getting out the paper. Now
you run along and don't worry about things at the office."
She reached for his hat and coat hanging on a hook at one side of the
desk. He remonstrated at the prospect of going home with the work only
half done, but Helen was adamant and her father finally gave in.
"Perhaps it will be best," he agreed as he walked slowly toward the door.
Helen watched him descend the steps; then saw him reach the street and
turn toward home.
She was startled by the expression she had just seen on her father's
face. He had never been particularly robust and now he looked as though
something had come upon him which was crushing his mind and body.
Illness, worry and apprehension had carved lines in his face that
afternoon.
Helen went into the composing room where the Linotype, the rows of type
cases, the makeup tables, the job press and the newspaper press were
located. At the back end of the room was the large press, moving steadily
back and forth as Tom, perched on a high stool, fed sheets of paper into
one end. From the other came the freshly printed papers of that week's
edition of the _Herald_.
"Shut off the press," called Helen, shouting to make herself heard above
the noise of the working machinery.
"What say?" cried Tom.
"Shut it off," his sister replied.
Tom scowled as he reached for the clutch to stop the press. He liked
nothing better than running the press and when he had it well under way,
usually printed the whole edition without a stop unless the paper became
clogged or he had to readjust the ink rollers.
"What's the idea?" he demanded. "I'm trying to get through so I can play
some baseball before dark."
"Dad's sick," explained Helen, "and I made him go home. Do you know
what's the matter?"
"Gosh, no," said Tom as he climbed down from his stool. "He wasn't
feeling very well when I came down from school and said he was going in
the office to rest, but I didn't know he felt that badly."
"Well, he did," replied Helen, "and I'm worried about him."
"We always take him more or less for granted. He goes on year after year
working in the office, getting enough together to make us all comfortable
and hoping that he can send us to college some day. We help him when we
can, but he plugs away day after day and I've noticed lately that he
hasn't been very perky. Mother has been worried, too. I can tell from the
way she acts when Dad comes home at night. She's always asking him how he
feels and urging him to get to bed early. I tell you, Tom, something's
wrong with Dad and we've got to find out and help him."
"Let's go get Doctor Stevens right now," said the impetuous Tom, and he
reached to shut off the motor of the press.
"Not now," said Helen. "If Dad thought we weren't getting the paper out
on time he'd worry all the more. We'll finish the paper and then have
Doctor Stevens come over this evening. We can fix it so he'll just drop
in for a social call."
"Good idea," said Tom as he climbed back on his stool and threw in the
clutch.
The press started its steady clanking and Helen picked up a pile of
papers and spread them out on one of the makeup stones. Her father had
printed two of the pages of home news during the morning and these sheets
were stacked in a pile in one corner. She arranged two piles of papers on
the makeup table, one pile which her father had printed and one of papers
which were coming off the press as fast as Tom could keep it rolling.
Helen put on a heavy, blue-denim apron to protect her school dress and
went to work. With nimble hands she put the sheets of paper together,
folded them with a quick motion and slid the completed paper off the
table and onto a box placed close by for that purpose.
The press, of unknown vintage, moved slowly and when Helen started at the
same time as Tom she could fold the papers as rapidly as they were
printed. But that day Tom, who had managed to be excused half an hour
early, had too much of a start and when he finished the press run Helen
still had several hundred papers to fold.
Tom stopped the press, shut off the motor, raised the ink rollers and
then pulled the forms off the press and carried them to the other makeup
table. After washing the ink off the type with a gasoline-soaked rag, he
gathered an armful of papers Helen had folded and carried them into the
editorial office. There he got out the long galleys which held the names
of the subscribers. He inked each galley, placed it in the mailing
machine, and then fed the papers into the mailer. They came out with the
name of a subscriber printed at the top of each paper.
The young Blairs worked silently, hastening to complete their respective
tasks so they could hurry home. Tom had forgotten his plans to play
baseball and all thought of the outcome of the debate tryouts had left
Helen's mind. There was one thought uppermost in their minds. What was
the matter with their father?