Joan, with pounding heart, lifted her eyes and looked at Mr. Albert Johnson. He was a man of about fifty and was seated in the chair at Tim’s desk. His hair was thin and his face was round. He was holding his gray felt hat and his yellow gloves in his hands resting upon a yellow cane between his knees. He was tapping the cane on the floor—not with impatience, Joan realized, but it was that cross kind of a tapping noise that a person makes when he is very angry and is trying to control himself. Mr. Johnson’s face told her the same thing. It was red, now, and his mouth was set like a bulldog’s. His eyes glared at her. Tim was standing there, too, silent. The rest of the office staff was watching the scene, and pretending not to.

“And are you the young woman who typed this—this—” Mr. Albert Johnson lifted up his hat and his hand shook as he held a folded newspaper toward her, “this ridiculous story about me?”

“Yes,” was Joan’s faint answer. “But—”

“Why,” the man seemed to be seeing her now for the first time, “why, you’re nothing but a child. Are you really able to run a typewriter?”

“Yes,” she said again. She hated to be called a child.

“Very, very peculiar.” Mr. Johnson tapped his yellow cane harder than ever.

Joan could bear it no longer. “But I’m just positive I wrote that name Albert Jackson,” she burst out.

The bulldog man eyed her. “Can you prove it?”

“No, the copy was different. It was changed.” She was full of the mystery, having just come from the discussion over it with Chub and Amy. “We’re working on it—the mystery—now, and maybe we’ll have it cleared up. We have a suspect already.”

The man still glared at her. “Young woman, do you know that I’m part owner of this paper with your Uncle John—the general manager is your uncle, isn’t he?—and that I’m a lifelong friend and chief backer of the Journal’s candidate for the coming election?”

“Oh, dear!” Joan almost sobbed. “I knew you lived out on North Market Street, so I imagined you must be somebody, but I never dreamed you were all that!”

The bulldog man’s eyes actually twinkled and the yellow cane was still.

“Well, I am,” he snapped, “all that. Of course, you’re too young to understand about politics, but if you’re big enough to help around a newspaper office, you must know how disastrous it is to have a mistake like this come out in the paper.” He waggled the newspaper again.

“Oh, I do!” breathed Joan, fervently.

“It’s going to cost this young man his job, I’m afraid.” Mr. Johnson turned his head slightly toward Tim. Her brother’s face was white.

“Oh, no, please!” beseeched the girl. “It wasn’t his fault, at all. I did it, so why should he lose his job? He needs the money so badly for college this fall.” Why, it’d be terrible to have Tim lose his job.

Tim gave her a look that said, “You didn’t need to say that.”

“But your brother admits he read the copy over, after you’d typed it.” Mr. Johnson leaned over his cane. “First off, I suspected something crooked, but when I found out just a kid had made the mistake.... Your brother did read it over, didn’t he?”

Joan nodded dumbly. Then her mind, in its wretchedness, went back to the mystery. “But, Mr. Johnson,” she began, unmindful of Tim’s watchful eyes, “don’t you think that when we both read the story over, it’s mighty queer that it had a mistake like that in it, and neither of us saw it?”

“But you probably did it unconsciously. You’re young. The boy’s new at the job and was in a hurry. He let it slip,” answered the man. “You see, I know a lot about newspaper work.”

“Do you know anything about mysteries?” Joan couldn’t help but ask. Somehow this fierce little man was not so fierce as he seemed. He had had a perfect right to be angry. Indeed, there was something really rather likable about him.

A smile played about his bulldog features. “Well,” he drawled. “I ought to. I have indigestion bad, lots of times, and then I can’t get to sleep, so I keep a good detective story right by my bed, all the time. I guess I read about one a week.”

“And don’t you think we have a mystery here?” Joan dropped her voice.

In answer, Mr. Johnson motioned Tim to leave. “I’ll talk with this young woman alone,” he said, and shoved a chair toward her. “Now, let’s get this straight. To begin with, before we go on to your little mystery, let me ask you, do you realize how serious a mistake like that is?”

“It’s libel,” said Joan, sadly. “I’ve lived next to the Journal”—she pointed through the smudgy window to her red brick home—“all my life, and I do know how terrible mistakes are. Daddy was city editor, and I know how particular he was about it.”

“Well, then what about me?” asked Mr. Johnson.

“Oh, I’m sure the Journal will make it right some way—write a contradictory story and explain that the Albert Johnson who lived on North Market Street is not the Albert Jackson who deserted his two children. Tim’ll write you something nice, I know. And the publicity may even help you.” She smiled encouragingly. Oh, if she could only get Tim out of this mess!

“Well, all right, I’ll risk that.” The man cleared his throat. “And now to business. Who’s the suspect?”

Joan slid her chair up until her red plaid skirt touched the gray-trousered knees of Mr. Albert Johnson. His cane was leaning back against his arm now. She told him all about the Dummy—how the copy must have been changed, and Dummy had insisted that it had been handed to him like that, when she knew she hadn’t written it wrong.

Then she went on and told him how she and Chub and Amy had jumped to the conclusion that Dummy was a spy. “Every crime has a motive, you know,” she assured him earnestly. “And so we thought it all out. Of course, we’ll have to have more evidence than just that before we can accuse him.”

“Of course,” nodded Albert Johnson. “Now, listen here. I’m part owner here and I’ll fix it for your brother to stay on here, and for you to stick around this office as much as you like, on one condition.”

“Yes, indeed.” Joan felt she would promise anything to save Tim.

“I want you to promise me to watch out for ‘developments’ as you call them, and come to me the next time anything suspicious happens. I don’t mind admitting things look queer. And don’t you accuse any one until you come to me. Remember?”

That would be easy! They were going to watch for developments, anyway. And Tim’s job would be safe.

Mr. Johnson got Tim back to the desk, and shook his hand, before he went into Uncle John’s little office with the frosted glass door and the “John W. Martin” on it. Joan watched his bulldog profile shadowed there until Mother telephoned to Tim to “send Joan home to help with dinner.” Amy had left long ago.

Nothing very exciting happened anyway, Joan learned later. Uncle John had been on the verge of firing Tim, but after his talk with Mr. Johnson, he said Tim could remain on probation, providing no more mistakes happened. That evening, Tim spent hours wording an apology concerning Mr. Johnson for the paper, and Joan insisted that he tell the public what a nice man Mr. Johnson was.

Tim told her that Mr. Johnson was a wealthy man who dabbled in politics as a pastime, so she understood how he had time to bother with mysteries. The Journal staff would be interested in it, but they were all too busy to do much more than wonder. She did not tell any one that she had enlisted Mr. Johnson’s services in the detective work.

Tim’s write-up of Mr. Johnson must have met with his approval, because he telephoned Joan about twenty minutes after the paper was out, that he was about ready to forgive the entire affair. He asked Joan whether she were watching out for the mystery.

She was. Now that she had gained permission from Uncle John and the editor, through Mr. Johnson, to “stick around” the office, she fairly camped there every waking moment. Of course, Miss Betty and Tim took advantage of having such a willing young worker around. Miss Betty let her copy the news from the suburban towns, which usually came in in longhand. Joan loved it and worked painstakingly. Tim grumbled at times, Mack teased, Cookie joked, and even the editor got used to seeing her around.

“Newspaper work is hard,” Cookie would tell her when she would make a little face about being sent on so many errands for Tim. “Make up your mind to get used to hard work and nothing else. You work as hard as you can on one story; then it’s printed and over with and you start on something else. Always some new excitement on a newspaper.”

Joan understood that, for look how soon every one had forgotten the episode of the mysterious mistake about the Albert Johnson story—or appeared to. But she and Chub had not. The office boy had a new solution to offer every day.

“The life of a newspaper is just ten minutes,” Cookie told her another time.

Ten minutes. She glanced around at the staff all working feverishly to get out the paper. And the actual interest in the paper lasted only about ten minutes. That was true, she guessed. Still, all the Journal family seemed to enjoy their jobs.

After a week, Joan suddenly realized that she had joined the staff just in time for the annual outing. June nineteenth was just June nineteenth to a lot of people in Plainfield, but to the members of the Journal family, it was the big day of the year—the one day when they dropped their labors of supplying the town with news and took an afternoon and evening off. The Journal members were jolly for the most part while they worked. But when they took time off to play they were a perfect circus. Joan looked forward to the picnic.

A neat “box,” that is, a little outlined notice, appeared on the front page of the paper at the beginning of the week, announcing that the Journal would come out early on Friday in order that the staff and all employees could attend the annual picnic. Of course, it would be an unusually slim paper that day, but the subscribers did not mind one day in the year. Always by one o’clock on June nineteenth the paper was out on the street and the staff ready to pile into the two big busses chartered for the occasion.

Now Joan could go along. She and Tim had both gone when Daddy was editor, but that was long ago. All the employees took their families, and Joan would go. Mother, too, perhaps. But no, Mrs. Martin declined the invitation immediately.

“Bounce around in those uncomfortable, crowded busses for an hour, get eaten alive by mosquitoes and things, and come home as tired as though I’d done two weeks’ washing? No, thank you. I’ll take the day off, too, but I’ll run out and see sister Effie. She’s thinking about having her appendix taken out, and wants my advice.”

The big event at the picnic was the baseball game, and this year the Journal team was scheduled to play the Star. The Journal team this year was excellent—Mack, Mr. Nixon, Lefty the photographer, Burke the bookkeeper, Cookie, the two advertising men, and one of the pressmen. Chub and Bossy always sat on the bench—that is, they were substitutes and hardly hoped for an opportunity to play. Would Tim get to play, Joan wondered. The first day he had come to work, Chub grabbed him. “You’ll try out for the team, won’t you? I bet you’re a peacherino pitcher.” Joan could easily see that Chub thought Tim mighty near perfection. Well, she thought so, too, most of the time, herself. He had been a star in the game at high school, but the men on the Journal team were all older than he was.

The owners of the Journal were proud of the prowess of the Journal team and their interest in baseball. The owners had this year ordered baseball suits for the team, and the Journal nine had challenged the Star team to a game to be played at the annual outing.

The suits arrived one day during Tim’s first week on the paper and that afternoon no one worked. Fortunately, Bossy did not come in with the boxes until the paper was out. Bossy’s eyes were just visible over the big flat suit boxes. Instantly, every member of the staff forgot that the paper must come out to-morrow just as to-day. They’d all work overtime to-morrow and get it out in record time, but now they had to look at the suits.

They were striped gray flannel with “Journal” written across the front in flaming red letters.

Bossy’s brown eyes were almost popping out of his face. He had always played substitute, but he was a bit puzzled now. Was he to have one of the suits?

“Here’s my fat one,” Cookie held up a shirt by the sleeves across his plump front. He was a dandy catcher but a bit slow on bases.

“This skinny one must be yours, Mack!” The editor tossed him a gray bundle. “Just look through these, Bossy. There was one ordered for you.”

Bossy’s eyes blinked behind their glasses. “Deed and I will, sah.”

Then the red socks were distributed. “Double up your fist and if it goes around that, it’ll fit.” Miss Betty did the measuring.

Chub was squeezing into his suit, putting it on over his everyday clothes, and soon the others followed his example. Cookie looked like a young boy in his. They all paraded up and down, until Miss Betty rushed to her typewriter and began pounding out a poem to celebrate the occasion. She called it, “The Wearing of the Gray.” They all clapped when she read it aloud. She tried to coax Mr. Nixon to promise to print it.

“Luckily for me,” said the editor, “the Journal’s policy is never to print poetry.”

Whereupon Miss Betty made up a jingling tune to go with the words, and taught it to every one to use as a cheer.

“Let’s have a bit of practice.” The editor was in rare good humor, for they usually practiced in the late afternoons. “But, since I seem to recall a certain mishap, I suggest we step outside for our practice.”

He meant the time that they had had a few “passes” right there in the big editorial room, one day when work was slack, and Chub had missed a ball. The glass in the ticker, which reeled out yellow lengths of news bulletins, had been broken since that day.

They went through the windows to the grassy place by Joan’s home. Em scurried out of the way at the first ball.

Joan sat on her own side steps and looked on. How handsome Tim was, in that gray uniform and cap! Chub sat beside her, both of them engrossed in watching the men making catches and putting out imaginary opponents. “We have to beat the Star,” she vowed.

Suddenly, Mr. Nixon, who was captain by courtesy, called Tim. “Lefty here and I have been watching you play, Tim. You’re fast and sure. I believe I’ll put you in as shortstop.”

Tim grinned. Every one seemed delighted. Miss Betty was loud in her exclamation. Only Mack was silent. He appeared peeved. Why should he care whether Tim was on the team or not?

“No clews to the mystery,” Chub said glumly. “I’ve been watching for developments every minute. Maybe we’ll get some at the picnic.”

“Maybe.” Joan hoped so, because she did want to solve the mystery and make it up to Tim for having got him into such a mess with the Albert Johnson story.