Tim was being careful these days. His whole job depended on his accuracy. The editor had said to Mack when he commissioned the sport editor once to read copy, “You have to watch Martin’s stuff. He’s apt to make mistakes.”

Tim had made but one mistake, though Joan could not prove it. So he had to be extra careful.

Joan was out in the grassy yard, one morning, playing a game of croquet with Em, the cat. Joan did the playing for both herself and her opponent, who stalked about with a very disinterested air. Joan was playing with one eye on the Journal office. Suddenly Chub rapped on the window and called her over.

When she reached the Journal office, Chub was standing outside one of the phone booths, waving the telephone receiver at her. “It’s for you.”

Joan went inside the airless booth—still partly filled with smoke because one of the men of the staff had been in there recently. The booth had penciled numbers all over the woodwork. That list of numbers in one corner were those of the undertakers. Tim let her call them once in awhile, when he was pretty sure there were no deaths, and had instructed her to call him to the phone if there were any to be reported. Joan had learned to know the different voices at the other end of each number. She did not like that part of the cub’s job. It seemed so cold-blooded to ask, “Anything for the Journal?” She was always relieved to have the politely mournful voice say, “No, nothing to-day.”

“Listen, Jo,” it was Tim at the other end of the wire. His voice sounded excited. “I’m stuck out here in Baiting Town, covering a Lodge picnic, and I can’t get back in time. I just realized that I’ve let a mistake go through. It’s that story about the charity play. I wrote it up from the dress rehearsal yesterday morning. It was to come off last night, but the leading lady came down with tonsillitis and it’s been postponed. So kill the story for me, won’t you? Grab it off the hook, if it hasn’t been set.”

Kill it! That had a horrible sound, but that meant only voiding the story—throwing it out. She hoped it hadn’t really got into print, for then they would have to stop the presses. That would be dreadful. Chub had told her once that it cost the Journal a great deal of time, expense and labor to stop the presses. But it would have to be done. The paper couldn’t come out with a long story about a play that had not come off. Tim had been so proud of that play assignment, too. “Give me about a column on this,” the editor had said and had consented to Tim’s attending the dress rehearsal in order to have the story all set up, ready to come out on the heels of the performance.

Joan slammed down the receiver and dashed through the swinging door to the composing room. She went straight to the big hook where the day’s copy hung and began thumbing through it. As she stood there, she became aware of some sort of confusion going on in the proofreader’s corner. He and Mack seemed to be having an argument.

Dummy could argue, though he seldom did. It was too much trouble for any one to carry on his part in writing. Mack would write something, Dummy would read the pad, and he would write. Mack would write again. Then Dummy would merely point to an item already written on his pad. This seemed to provoke Mack even more, for he would have to write new arguments.

Joan had gone through all the stories on the hook and had not found the one about the charity play. As she started over again to look once more, she glanced back at the two men over in the corner.

Dummy was beginning to write something, asserting whatever it was with fierce strokes of his pencil. Mack, reading as Dummy wrote, seemed crosser than ever and grabbed Dummy’s pencil. This infuriated the proofreader, and Joan did not wonder. To have his pencil taken away from him like that! Why, that was as if some one seized your tongue and held it so you could not speak.

Well, the story wasn’t here. She’d have to ask Dummy what happened to it. Maybe he had not read proof on it yet.

As she approached, both men glanced up and dropped their quarrel, pretending that there had been no argument. Joan was puzzled. Perhaps Mack had been merely teasing poor old Dummy. But no, the proofreader’s eyes were hard and glittering with real anger. Joan felt it had been more than a mere bandying of words. Mack strolled off, abruptly, sauntering with his important little way, that caused Amy to call him “high hat.” Being on the copy desk once in a while was giving him the big head, Chub said.

Joan looked at Dummy. He did not look like a villain. However, she felt again as she had when she had discovered his eyes upon her that first day Tim was on the paper. What was there peculiar about him? Was it shyness or secretiveness?

He had regained his pencil now, and Joan borrowed it to write on the clean pad sheet that he presented, “Where is the story about the charity....”

“Yes,” he wrote without waiting for her to finish. “Where is it? That’s what I want to know.”

That’s what they had been arguing about, Joan guessed.

“The story was wrong—” Joan began.

“I know it,” Dummy had the pencil again. “I went to the hook to get it to keep it out, because another story came through about Miss Florence Webb having tonsillitis.”

Joan was sure he had intended to make changes in one of Tim’s stories. But she did not say or write anything. She was too worried. Had the story gone through? Suddenly, as she stood there, thinking, there sounded in her ears a familiar and terrible racket, unearthly and unending. The presses were running.

“Stop the presses!” She ran toward the big Goss giant in the pressroom. She could not let that story come out. The Journal would look ridiculous, printing something that hadn’t happened.

Dummy sensed her words and followed, trying with gestures to soothe her. If she had not known he was a villain, she would have thought him very nice. He always treated her as though she were grown up. But she knew he really wanted that story to go through.

However, his glances and gestures were kind enough—as consoling as words. He smiled as she seized one of the damp, fresh papers. What did that smile mean? He was a puzzle.

Joan opened out the paper, and with the proofreader looking over her shoulder, she went through the whole issue, column by column.

“It isn’t in!” she cried. Tim was safe. By some miracle, the charity play story had been left out. The presses would not have to be stopped, after all. Oh, blessed relief!

Dummy had taken the paper from her limp hand, and was going through it again. Then he shook his head. Was he relieved, too? Or was he sorry that the terrible mistake hadn’t been made? Was he merely jealous of Tim’s job or was he a spy, as they thought?

Things looked suspicious, though, she thought. Mack and Dummy had been arguing about this very story. And where was the story? It seemed to have simply disappeared. She had really no facts to present to Mr. Johnson. She’d have to wait and watch some more. She and Chub had been so busy chasing that picture of Miss King, working so hard to get it that they very nearly got into hot water because they got the wrong one, while all the time something really important was brewing right under their noses here in the back room of the Journal.

Joan, hurrying out to the editorial office to tell Chub the latest details, brushed past Bossy, who was ambling into the front office with a bundle of papers on his arm. He was muttering to himself, “Quare goin’s on around heah, dat’s what I say.”

Bossy was always mumbling under his breath, and Joan paid no attention. She had had an inspiration (what she and Amy called a brain throb). Perhaps Chub in his eagerness to help Tim had realized the story was wrong and had held it from going into the paper. Chub, however, denied knowing anything about the mysterious disappearance of the charity play story. His guileless, freckled face helped corroborate his innocence. Joan felt he was telling the truth. Chub might be mischievous and full of faults, but he did not lie. He listened intently while she told him the latest developments.

When Tim came in, they had to discuss it all over again. He was relieved that the story hadn’t been printed, but he was dumbfounded that it had disappeared right off the hook. “Come on, I’m going to look over the lay of the land,” he said to Joan. “I want to get to the bottom of this. It surely looks crooked. Besides, I don’t like to lose that write-up with all my carefully phrased compliments for each and every member in the cast. I can use it whenever the play does come off.”

Dummy was still in his corner. Although the paper was out, the afternoon’s work was not over for the Journal family. No sooner was one edition out than they went to work assembling news stories and articles for the next day’s paper. Not news items, necessarily, mostly rewrites and things that had no special time value. The back office usually worked, pressmen and all, until four o’clock or after.

Tim satisfied himself that the story was not on the big hook; then he went over to the proofreader’s corner. Joan saw Dummy’s eyes upon them. “It certainly is funny how that story could vanish—” he began.

Joan wanted him to be careful how he worded his conversation to Dummy, lest the proofreader guess himself to be under suspicion. If she said, “Sh!” he would read her lips and know she was warning her brother to be on his guard and he might divine that they were suspecting him.

“Oats and beans and barley,” she said, instead. She had never expected really to use that old slogan in a crisis like this, but it came in handy.

Tim stared. Then he understood and stopped speaking. Joan gave him a look that meant, “I’ll explain later.” Tim conducted a cautious, written conversation with Dummy but found nothing new about the mystery.

“He and Mack were arguing about that story being gone,” Joan told her brother; “that’s why I didn’t want you to say anything much. He’d read your lips and be warned. See?”

But both Dummy and Mack denied any knowledge of the lost story.

“Dummy’s a crackerjack proofreader,” Tim mused, when he and Joan were back in the editorial room. “Uncle John says it’s really uncanny how quick and accurate he is.”

“That’s because his speech and hearing are gone,” said Miss Betty. “The other senses become more acute. I read that somewhere.”

“Sounds reasonable,” admitted Tim.

“But he hasn’t good sense if he’s been letting mistakes get by him,” thought Joan.

“Ye-ah,” put in Chub, “but that makes it more mysterious why he should make mistakes. Makes me think more than ever that he—”

Joan punched him to cease speaking. The whole office mustn’t be informed that they were suspecting poor old Dummy.

“Who is he, anyway?” asked Mack. “With his gentlemanly manners and his quiet ways. Still waters run deep, you know.”

Every one admitted Dummy was a mystery.

When the editor heard that the charity play had been postponed, he was wild, in the parlance of the office. He cornered Tim. “Didn’t you write up a big spiel about it?” he almost groaned. “And the play didn’t come off.”

“The story wasn’t in,” Tim told him.

“But I sent it out back early this morning.”

Tim shrugged his innocence. “I know, but it’s—well, it’s gone!”

“A lucky break for you, Tim,” conceded the editor, after he had listened to the story. “You better keep on being careful. One more bust, and out you go. You see, Tim, I like you and all that, but as editor, I’m responsible for everything in the paper. If mistakes are getting into the paper, it’s up to me to see who’s making ’em, p.d.q., and get rid of him. I’ve told you all this before.”

Again Joan felt like shouting that Tim had made only one mistake—the omission of Mrs. McNulty’s and the two other names. Mr. Nixon was stubborn. He was convinced that Tim had made the mistakes. He would probably not believe otherwise until she and Chub cleared up the mystery and brought the guilty party to him.

She and the office boy fairly sleuthed Dummy, hoping to get something to report to Mr. Johnson. On Fourth of July, which was a week later, Joan stumbled upon another clew. “This mystery is getting to be as bad as the Alger books,” she thought.

The Journal was coming out early that day, with a diminished edition, as on the day of the annual outing, in order that the staff might have a bit of a holiday. Every one was busy, working extra hard, so busy that they did not even have time to let Joan help. She had stayed home instead, spending the time trying to console Em.

Poor Em did not like the fireworks. Living right in the heart of the town like this, she suffered agonies. The boys on the street, and the Journal newsies, hanging around waiting for the paper to come out, would hurl “two-inchers” and snakes-in-the-grass in her direction. She would meow and hiss like a wild thing. Finally, she would flee to a safer place. Now, she had just disappeared through one of the back windows of the Journal. Joan knew more newsboys were waiting back there—boys ready to tease the cat. She determined to go after her pet and lock her in the house until the terrible—to Em, at least—day of independence was over.

Joan scurried through the editorial office and through the door to out back. She caught sight of Em’s slim, black body scuttling along ahead of her over the cement floor, on velvet-soft paws. Now she was under the make-up tables, where the long galleys of print were assembled in a newspaper form.

Then the cat darted across the composing room and into the pressroom, over to the far corner where rolls of paper, as high as Joan herself, were stored. Em, frantic at being chased, even by Joan, played hide and seek about the paper rolls. Joan called her endearing names, and finally rounding her into a corner, stooped to pick her up. She quieted the cat with reassuring words. Her eyes wandered to the floor. Why, what was that, there in the corner? It looked like yellow copy paper, several sheets pasted together, the way Tim did when he wrote a long story. She started to turn the paper over, idly, with the toe of her oxford, when her foot touched something hard underneath. She pushed the paper off with her foot. The thing was long and hard and dirty with dried ink and dust; it was a galley of type, still set up in its narrow tin trough. Newspapers are notoriously untidy places; still, Joan was surprised to find the set-up type here, for the type was always melted down in a little furnace and reused in the linotype machines. She was about to go on when her eyes were attracted by Tim’s name peeping out from a fold of the yellow paper—MARTIN, written all in capitals, the way he always did in the upper left-hand corner. It must be one of his stories. She draped Em over her arm while she picked up the paper and smoothed it out on her knee.

It was the story of the charity play, the story that had disappeared off the hook. She examined the galley and found it to be the proof of the story and underneath were the proof sheets, too. No wonder it had not been in the paper, for every evidence of the story had been hidden away here in this corner. Some one had done it who had not quite dared to destroy the story. It could not have been Chub, trying in his bunglesome way to help Tim. She believed firmly in his honesty.

She’d save the story for Tim, because he had said he could use it later. She folded it up and tucked it under her middy. The proof sheets and the galley of type she put back into the corner and left.

Chub vowed he knew nothing about the story being hidden. He thought, like Joan, that Dummy must have taken it to put a mistake in it somehow and then, panicky at being almost caught, had hidden it away.

She vowed then that she would watch developments more closely than ever. But, as it happened, she did not.

Later, she recalled Cookie’s statement that reporters were always keyed up over something, forgetting the big excitement of one assignment when the next one came along. Yes, that was true. Think how wrought up she had been over the deserted children, over Miss King’s picture, and now over the charity play story.

“Something exciting every day on a newspaper,” Miss Betty told her when Joan tried to tell the older girl these thoughts. “You’d love it, Sub-Cub.” That was their new name for Joan.

“I’d like the same thing, over and over,” Tim grumbled, thumping on his typewriter keys. He was peeved that morning because he had been sent to interview a set of six-months-old triplets, whose parents had rented a garage, though they owned no car. They needed the space to park the triple baby carriage, which was too wide to enter their front door!

“At least, I mean, I’d like to write about the same kind of thing every day,” he went on. “Then I could work up a style of my own—and followers.”

“Ah, the lad aspires to be a columnist!” jeered Mack, who had a habit of overhearing everything that was said, since his desk was next to Tim’s.

“No, not exactly.” Tim was fussed. Why did Mack always tease?

Cookie looked up from his corner. “I had dreams, too, once,” he said. “Hang on to yours, Tim. They’re mighty precious.”

Cookie was right about forgetting one thrilling story for new interests and about there always being something new in newspaper life. Despite Joan’s resolve to watch developments, she was so preoccupied for the next few weeks that she hardly thought of Dummy and the mysterious mistakes at all.

For it was that very Saturday morning that she met Tommy.