Joan opened the drawer to her dresser by sticking the buttonhook into the keyhole. The handle had been gone for years, but she never minded, except when she forgot and shut the drawer tight. Then she had to resort to the buttonhook.

She carefully tucked inside the little tan booklet Journal Style that she had been studying, and shut the drawer again tight. She borrowed it whenever she had a chance. Tim hadn’t missed it, and she hoped he would not find out that she had it. He would only tease; for he refused to believe how frightfully in earnest she herself was about getting a job on the Journal one of these days.

She went down the stairs, tying her middy tie and saying under her breath, “Never call a bridegroom a groom. A groom is a horseman.” That had been one of the bits of advice in the booklet.

Tim was just going out of the door when she reached the kitchen.

Every morning during the past week since Tim had become a reporter on the Evening Journal, he had managed to slip out of the house before Joan was up and around. But this morning he wasn’t so far ahead of her but that she could catch up with him. Perhaps her chance had come. She’d go with him this morning to see what having a beat was like.

She sat down on the edge of a chair, and poured most of the contents of the cream pitcher into her cup of cocoa to make it cool enough to swallow in a gulp or two. Then she reached for a crumbly, sugary slice of coffee cake.

“No cereal, thanks. I’m in a hurry.” Joan started for the door, the coffee cake in one hand. At her mother’s look, she added, “I’ll eat an extra egg at lunch to make up the calories, but I must go now.”

She dashed out.

What luck! Tim was just coming out of the front door of the Journal office when she reached the sidewalk. She paused there, pretending to be absorbed in nibbling her cake, her eyes ostensibly fastened on the cracks in the sidewalk. The sidewalk was worth looking at—it was brick and the bricks were laid diagonally. It had been a game, when she was small, to walk with each step in a brick.

Tim mustn’t see her. He would accuse her of tagging, and he was cross enough with her as it was. For all week she had been offering bits of information, like, “Mrs. Redfern has had her dog clipped,” and asking, “Is that news, Tim?”

And Tim, harried with his new work, would snap out an answer in the negative. Poor Tim had already, as he often remarked, written up “battle, murder, and sudden death” since he had taken the job on the Journal.

He went on, now, up the slight slope of Market Street. Joan, slipping along as though headed for the Journal office, went too. At the Journal door, she paused and watched while Tim crossed through the traffic of Main Street and started on towards Gay Street. Block by block, or “square” as they say in Ohio, she trailed after, looking into the shop windows every now and then, lest he should turn around.

He kept right on, however—straight to the Plainfield railroad station, where he disappeared through the heavy doors. Joan, across the street, stopped in front of the Star office. Somehow, the Star office seemed almost palatial with its white steps and pillars, in contrast with the somewhat shabby Journal office. That was because the Star was a government newspaper, that is, a political man owned it. Tim had once said that about one third of the newspapers in the United States were owned by politicians. The Journal wasn’t, though.

But Joan wouldn’t have traded the Journal office for the shiny new one of the Star. She loved every worn board in the Journal floor, every bit of its old walls, plastered with pictures and old photographs.

She crossed the street and opened the heavy door by leaning her weight against it. Tim was at the ticket window. The ticket agent was shaking his head, and Tim went on.

No news there, Joan guessed, as she, too, went across the sunny station and out the opposite door to where the express men were hauling trunks, and travelers were waiting for trains.

Back to Gay Street, through the musty-smelling Arcade, then Tim entered a small florist shop, crowded with flowers. Joan looked in the window. The girl at the counter reminded her of Gertie in the business office of the Journal. She was chewing gum, and as she talked to Tim, her hands were busy twisting short-stemmed pink roses onto tiny sticks of wood. Tim got his pencil and pad, and wrote leaning on the counter.

When Tim opened the door, a whiff of sweet flowers was wafted to Joan who was innocently gazing into the window of the baby shop next door.

Tim hurried on up toward the corner, brushing past two ragged children who stood by the curb, both of them crying. They might be “news,” thought Joan, but Tim was hurrying on. Joan took time to smile at the smaller child. Though she wore boy’s clothing, Joan could tell she was a girl by her mass of tangled, yellow curls. “What’s the matter, honey?” she asked.

The little girl hung her head and was too shy to answer, but the brother spoke up. “Mamma’s dead and papa’s gone,” he said.

Tim was up at the corner, now, going into the public library, and Joan hurried on. Maybe it wasn’t true anyway.

Joan stood behind a tall rack of out-of-town newspapers while she listened as Tim asked the stiff-backed, white-haired librarian, “Anything for the Journal to-day?” That must be the formula cub reporters used. But Miss Bird had said no, softly but surely, almost before he had the question asked.

Then, across the street to the post office. Joan, feeling safe in the revolving door, watched while Tim approached the stamp window. He was getting some news, for the clerk was talking to him.

Just then, a brisk business man of Plainfield, hurrying into the post office to mail a letter while the engine of his car chugged at the curb, banged into the section of the revolving door behind Joan with such force that she was sent twirling twice around the circle of the door, and in the dizziness of the unexpected spin, she shot out of the door—on the post office side, instead of the street side. Tim, leaving the stamp window and coming toward the door, bumped into her!

“I beg your pardon—” he began, before he recognized his sister. Then, “Jo, you imp! Where’d you come from?”

“Tim, I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “But I had to see what you did on your beat.”

“Tagging me—making a fool of me,” Tim fairly sputtered.

“Tim, there’s two children on Gay Street, crying—I think it’s ‘news.’”

“News! What do you know about news?” scoffed Tim. “Probably lost the penny they were going to spend on candy.”

“No, the boy said that their mother was dead and their father went away. If the mother just died, you could at least get an obit out of it,” she explained.

“Sounds like a decent human interest story,” Tim admitted. “Say, maybe the father couldn’t pay the rent and got dispossessed.”

They came successfully through the revolving doors and started down Gay Street together. “Is that the gang over there?” He pointed across at the boy and girl. “They do look forlorn. Maybe I’ve found a big story. You go on home, Jo. I don’t want you following me around on my beat. Looks crazy.”

No use trying to explain her real motive to him. “Did the flower shop girl give you a story?” she asked, partly to make conversation and partly because she was curious.

“A wedding. I’ll hand it over to Betty.”

“What’d the post office man give you?”

“Just a notice about the letter carriers organizing a bowling team,” he told her. “Run on, now. Maybe this isn’t anything. You can meet me at the Journal and I’ll tell you.”

She did go on, then. Tim might tell Mother if she didn’t, and then she’d be told not to bother her brother. She couldn’t expect them to understand that she’d only been trying to help.

Joan was sitting on the sunny stone step of the Journal office, half an hour later, when Tim returned.

“It’ll be a dandy feature,” he announced. “May even make the front page.” He forgot it was just his “kid” sister to whom he was talking. He had to tell some one. “That father deserted those children. I turned them over to the Welfare Society.” He told her details, excitedly.

Joan hung about the Journal office, though Tim hinted openly that she should go home. She wasn’t going to leave now. Tim was working hard over his story of the deserted children. The father’s name was Albert Jackson and he lived in South Market Street, a poor section of the city.

Tim was getting nervous over the story. He was sitting on the edge of his chair and squinting at the machine before him. Finally, he jerked the page out, crushed it into a wad and dropped it on the floor.

“Nixon’ll jump on me for such awful-looking copy,” he muttered. “I’ll have to do the whole thing over.”

The editor often remarked that “copy” didn’t need to be perfect, but it had to be understandable to avoid mistakes, and he often told the young reporters, when they handed him scratched-up copy, “Don’t economize on paper. There’s plenty around here and it’s free. Do it over, if there are too many changes.”

Tim reached for the sheet and straightened it out. “It’s written all right, I guess—”

“Just copying?” Joan queried. “Oh, Tim, let me do it.”

“Think you can?” Tim glanced around the office. Mr. Nixon was out to lunch, or he would have refused right off.

“Of course,” Joan assured him. “I’ve often copied lists of guests for Miss Betty. You know, sometimes folks write up their own parties and lots of the county correspondents write in longhand. She lets me copy them for her.”

“I didn’t know that.” Tim gave her his chair. “Well, go ahead. That typewriter makes me nervous. Some of the letters don’t hit. The comma’s nothing but a tail. See? It doesn’t write the dot part at all. You’d think I’d rate a better typewriter than this old thrashing machine.”

Joan made no reply. She was too thrilled to speak—to think of helping Tim! She must do her best and not make any mistakes. She smoothed out the copy sheet and placed it on the sliding board.

“Albert Jackson of—” her fingers struck the keys slowly but surely.

When she finished the sheet, Tim read it over and placed it on Mack’s desk. He read copy while Nixon was out at lunch, rather than let the work pile up.

The sport editor’s face was always smile-lit, like that of an Æsthetic dancer. He teased every one. When Gertie from the front office walked through, with stacks of yellow ads in her hands, he had a tantalizing remark ready for her. He started the rumor in the office that Gertie was making love openly and loudly to Dummy’s silent back.

Joan went back to the Journal after lunch to bask in the last-minute rush, just before the paper was locked up, or “put to bed”—that last, breathless pause to see whether anything big is going to break before the paper is locked into the forms. She was glad school was over—suppose she’d have had to miss all this excitement of Tim’s job!

She and Chub went out into the press room again and she grabbed another folded newspaper, damp with fresh ink, from the press. She turned the pages, the narrow strips of cut edges peeling away from them as she opened out the paper. There was the story she’d typed—on the back page, among the obituary notices. It was almost as though she herself had written it. Why, the name was wrong. Instead of starting “Albert Jackson,” as she had written it, the story began, “Albert Johnson of North Market Street—” a different name and address.

“I guess that won’t make much difference,” reflected Joan, as she carried the paper back to the editorial office to show to Tim.

“You never can tell,” grinned Chub, as he trotted along beside her, his rubber sneakers slipping over the oil spots on the cement floor. He had not been an office boy in a newspaper office for two summers for nothing. He knew any mistake was apt to be serious. “That’s what I was telling you about, Jo—mistakes.” But Joan hardly heard him.

Tim was furious when he saw the story.

Miss Betty, busy already writing up a lengthy account of a wedding that would take place to-morrow, for the next day’s paper, paused in the middle of her description of the bridal bouquet to console the cub reporter.

“Mistakes do happen, Tim,” she laughed. “Think of the day I wrote up a meeting of the Mission Band and said that the members spent the afternoon in ‘shade and conversation,’ only to have it come out as ‘they spent the afternoon in shady conversation’!”

But Tim refused to be cheered, and Joan began to realize that the mistake was serious, for Mr. Nixon, the editor, had a set look on his face, too.

“Does it really make so much difference?” she asked.

“Does it?” Tim glared at her, his eyes darker than ever. “With Albert Johnson one of the most influential men in town?”

Then Joan understood. It was the name and address of a real resident of Plainfield that had been printed, and that was bad. The man wouldn’t relish reading in the paper that he had deserted his children when he hadn’t at all.

“I can kiss my job good-by,” groaned Tim. “Why weren’t you careful?”

“I’m sure I wrote it right!” To think she had brought all this on Tim.

“But you couldn’t have, Jo,” he insisted.

“I’ll hunt up the copy for you, Tim,” offered Chub. This was often part of his duties.

Joan went with him. They went up to the high stool, before a tall, flat table, where Dummy read yards and yards of proof every day. It was such a nuisance having to write everything out to him. He directed them to the big copy hook where used copy was kept for alibis. Joan fumbled through the sheets and found the story. It had “Martin” up in the left-hand corner, the way Tim marked all his copy. The story started, “Albert Johnson of North Market Street.”

“Why, it’s written wrong!” she gasped. Her eyes fell on Dummy’s bowed gray head. He gave a start as he bent over his pad, wrote something, and held it out to her. “That’s the way the copy came to me,” she read.

It was certainly a mystery how she could write one thing, and it could be changed into something different. There was nothing to be gained by scribbling notes to the Dummy, and so Joan and Chub filed back.

Tim was glummer than ever when she told him the news. “You must have written it that way, without realizing,” he said. “We’ve asked Mack, and he says it came to him that way.” He bent over his typewriter and banged away. He was doing rewrites now.

“Much as we all like you, Tim, we can’t let any mistakes like this happen,” the editor said. “I’m responsible for everything in the paper, and if anything gets in wrong, I have to discover who’s the guilty party and get rid of him.”

Joan and Chub crept away to the open back window, perched themselves on the broad sill, with their legs outside.

“I bet that Dummy’s like Dumb Dora in the comic strip, ‘She ain’t so dumb,’” remarked Chub. “There’s something queer about him. I’ve always said so. And there’s been queer things going on. You know what I told you about the mysterious mistakes. They’ve been happening before Tim got on the paper. But I couldn’t prove who made ’em. Now, I’m sure it’s Dummy.”

“He couldn’t help it, when the story came to him wrong.”

“But, Jo, if you’re sure you wrote it right, then somebody changed it and I think Dummy did. He’s got it in for Tim somehow, or for the paper, and put that mistake there on purpose. He thinks no one would dare accuse him, being a deaf-mute.”

“But nothing was erased. I looked especially to see. Perhaps I did write it wrong,” began Joan, and then broke off, “Oh, there’s Amy.”

A figure in an orchid sweater was waving to them from the corner. It was Amy in a new sweater. She adored clothes. Amy didn’t know a thing about a newspaper, and Chub was always disgusted with her for that. Tim, surprisingly enough, thought her a “decent kid” and really treated her with respect. Amy openly admired Tim—she thought him so romantic looking.

“Jo, you wretch!” she said now, crossing the lawn to the Journal window. “You’re never at home since Tim got that job. I’ve been phoning you all afternoon and I think your mother’s tired of answering.”

Chub got off the window sill. “Here,” he offered Amy a seat.

“There’s room for all of us.” Amy was always nice to every male creature, even though he might be just a red-haired, freckle-faced, chubby office boy.

They all sat together and Joan confided the new mystery to Amy. Though Amy knew little about newspaper life, she knew mysteries. She agreed that Dummy seemed a most suspicious character.

“But he’s so refined and nice,” Joan demurred.

“Spies are always refined like that,” was Amy’s reply. Her ideas were based on prolific reading. “The more refined they are the worse they are, always.”

“Oh!” Joan’s mouth dropped open. “I wonder,” she mused. “Say, Amy, you’ve said something. I believe he is a spy.”

Amy had no notion of what the man could be spying for, but Joan’s eager mind was grasping at ideas. Bits of Tim’s conversation about the political candidate came to her—the importance of not having mistakes in the Journal just at this time. That man, Dummy, had been hired to spy upon the Journal and to see that somehow mistakes were made, mistakes that would give the Journal that “black eye” that Tim talked about; mistakes that would eventually elect the Star’s candidate. She was a little hazy about how it worked. But of course, a deaf man had been chosen because no one would bother to argue much with a deaf person. It was too much trouble to write everything.

“I’ve read of things like that,” admitted Chub, when she had explained her ideas. “We’ll be detectives,” he announced. “And we’ll be on the watch for developments. I’ve a peachy book, How to Be a Detective.”

“Maybe—maybe it’s like this,” ideas came to Joan. “Maybe Dummy wants to be a reporter himself and is jealous of Tim’s job. Maybe he doesn’t like it because Tim’s only seventeen and a full-fledged reporter. That’s why he makes the mistakes look like Tim’s. Still, I can’t help but like Dummy. He’s so kind and mild. But he is sort of spooky, somehow.”

Tim came to the window behind them now.

“Jo,” his voice was hoarse and scared-sounding. “Come in here. Mr. Albert Johnson wants to talk to you.”

Joan jumped off the sill to the soft grass, and stood for a moment trying not to tremble while she looked down at Em, who had just come up and was sniffing at her ankles. What was going to happen, now?

“Don’t let ’em scare you, Jo.” Chub’s grimy hand was pressing hers. “The Journal’s got insurance that takes care of libel suits.”

Libel suits. Oh, dear, that had a dreadful sound. Would Uncle John fire Tim for her mistake—if it had been a mistake?

“All right, Tim, I’m coming,” she called in a voice, that in spite of her, trembled, as she came in out of the sunshine, in through the window of the Journal office to meet Mr. Albert Johnson.