Dummy with Tebbets of the Star! What could that mean, Joan wondered. “Let’s peep over,” she whispered to Chub. “Maybe we’ll get some clews.”

Noiselessly, they crept to the edge of the elevation, fearful of being seen if they stood upright. Stretched out on the ground, clutching the roots of clumps of weeds, they peered over the edge.

There was Dummy, treading with stealthy steps along the path below, and just a few paces ahead of him, just about to disappear into a bushy thicket, was the broad back of the city editor of the Star. Why should the Star editor and Dummy go for a stroll way up here together unless to talk over some guilty secret? It was clear now to Joan that Dummy was a spy, hired by Tebbets. No true member of the Journal family would think of being friends with that awful Tebbets of the rival paper. The two newspapers were often forced to work together, and the two staffs were friendly enough, but just at this time, they were at strained relations over the coming election.

“Tebbets must know the deaf and dumb language.” Joan hardly knew what to think.

“Sure!” Chub snorted. “It’s not so hard. How else could he hire Dummy to do his dirty work? He couldn’t write everything he wanted to tell him—too dangerous. Tebbets didn’t want the picnic people to see him talking sign language, so they came up here.”

“Sh! Some one might hear.” But there was no one at all in sight now and no sound except for the swaying of the trees and the drowsy hum of unseen insects. “I wish Mr. Johnson hadn’t had to hurry off to Cincinnati. You know I promised him not to jump to conclusions, so we can’t do anything.”

“No, I guess not,” agreed the office boy. “Come on, let’s get back before all the food’s eaten.”

Just like a boy, always thinking of food—even in the midst of a mystery. However, the exercise of the game and the swim had given Joan a ravenous appetite, too, so she raced Chub down the steep cliff, stones clattering loose after them until it sounded in that quiet place as though mountains were falling.

When they reached the picnic table, Miss Betty was signaling that she was saving places for them next to her own and Tim’s. The Star staff had just left, she said, for they had to get back to their work.

“Oh, boy, fried chicken!” Chub whistled as he viewed the table.

It was a wonderful spread, every one declared. Besides the fried chicken, there was cold baked ham, golden mounds of potato salad, sliced tomatoes, pickles, olives, and towering plates of bread and butter sandwiches.

During the meal, Betty motioned across the table to Mr. Nixon. “Listen to this, will you, chief?” She unfolded a page of familiar yellow copy paper, and cleared her throat preparing to read something aloud. Every one became quiet and listened.

“This is our cub reporter’s write-up of the game this afternoon,” she said and began to read: “‘Lefty Dale did a Dick Merriweather stunt this afternoon, when in the ninth inning in the game between the Journal and the Star, he poled a circuit clout À la Babe Ruth, with the bases loaded to bring his team from behind with two outs in the last frame.’”

The account went on in Tim’s best baseball manner and told of the game, inning by inning, up to the victorious end.

“Why, that’s good, Martin!” the editor said when Miss Betty had finished reading. “Wish I could publish it as it is, but the general reading public of Plainfield doesn’t want to read about our triumphing over our rivals with all the gory details. Since we aim to give them what they want, just a mere note of the picnic and game score will have to suffice. But your write-up is fine.”

Tim was eating and grinning all at the same time. Mack was scowling at his forkful of salad. Was he afraid that Tim would steal his job from him? Or—was it that he was provoked that Miss Betty was promoting the cub reporter this way? Joan had tried to decide whether Miss Betty wasn’t beginning to like Tim better than she did Mack. But the society editor treated them both as two brothers whom she expected to be pals. Joan was disappointed that the office romance wasn’t blossoming faster.

“That’s a big compliment the editor’s giving Tim,” Joan whispered to Chub, now. He nodded over a cold drumstick in reply.

Talk rattled on. Jokes and clever banter were battered about the table, flung from one to another, like a baseball. The head pressman’s three little boys, up at the other end of the table, were almost choking with the effort of trying to eat and giggle at the same time. The only one who was apparently taking no part in the fun was Dummy. He was sitting on the other side of the table, with the editor’s family and was feeding little Ruthie something out of a bowl. Zweiback and milk was her supper, but she was contented with it.

“Ice cream and cake coming. Save room!” one of the refreshment committee cautioned Chub. He blushed as every one laughed.

Poor Dummy. He was missing all the jibes, but he seemed to be enjoying himself anyway. Was he only acting a part in being nice to little Ruthie? Wouldn’t he be surprised if he knew that they had seen him there with Mr. Tebbets, and that they knew his wicked secret? Now he was playing a silent game of peekaboo with the baby. Silently, Dummy would remove wrinkled hands from his dull blue eyes and little Ruthie would bubble over with baby chuckles.

“I don’t see,” Joan mused to herself, as she ate another olive, “how a man can seem so nice and make a baby like him like that and still be such a deep-dyed villain.”

Every one was tired the next day, for the Journal family had lingered at the picnic woods to make the trip home by moonlight. Perhaps that was why a mistake occurred the very next afternoon. It was in a story Tim had written, too. He was not in the office when the error was discovered. Mr. Nixon had sent him up to the library to get a list of new books, in response to a request from Miss Bird, the librarian.

Chub told Joan about the mistake. “Old Nix’s on his ear.” He seemed as worried as though it were his own brother. “There’s another mistake in one of Tim’s stories. That write-up about the patronesses of the flower show the Women’s Club gives every year for the benefit of the hospital. Old Mrs. McNulty’s name was left off the list.”

“But is that anything so terrible?” Joan asked. Oh, dear, another mistake!

“Well, you see, the old lady is Mr. Hutton’s mother-in-law, you know,” he explained. “She likes publicity, too, even though she pretends not to. She called the chief up and gave him a good raking over, I guess. The whole office was pretty blue. Seems she gives lavishly to things she’s interested in and is sore as a boil about her name being left off. Besides, the paper wants to stand in good with her.”

“Do you think Dummy—?” Joan began.

“Sure thing!” nodded the office boy. “They probably doped it up at the picnic. But I don’t know how we can prove that Dummy left that name off. It wasn’t on the copy, for Nixon compared that first thing.”

Joan’s head was swimming as she waited in the Journal office for Tim to return. When he came in, he was called to the editor’s desk right off, and every one heard Mr. Nixon confronting him with the mistake.

The office was silent, waiting for Tim’s reply.

“Guess I am guilty this time,” he acknowledged. “I realized afterwards that I had left some names off. I took the notes in a hurry, and filled one piece of paper, and took the last two or three names of the list on another piece, and then I forgot that second page.”

He went for his notes on the big hook by his desk. Every one at the Journal was required to keep all notes one week, for alibis. Every Saturday, the stuff on the hooks was thrown out. Tim thumbed through the papers on the hook—there were a great many, for this was Saturday, but the one he was looking for was near the top. He found the scrawled list and discovered that two names besides Mrs. McNulty’s were written on an extra bit of paper and had been left out of the printed list.

“Well, I guess it’s not serious, for no one complained but Mrs. McNulty. Give her a ring and make peace with her.” The editor looked relieved, then provoked the very next minute. “But, Martin, really, as a reporter, I must say you’re a better ball player. Why can’t you be accurate? You’ve shown you can write. Now, take that baseball write-up yesterday. That was dandy.”

“That was fun,” Tim showed his relief at being let off. “Writing this other junk isn’t.”

“That’s the regular cub assignment,” snapped the editor, turning back to his work. “Remember now, second warning, no more mistakes.”

“What’s all this about a mistake?” It was Uncle John hurrying out from his sanctum sanctorum.

So he had to be told. “The boy’s had the grace to admit that he made it this time,” finished up Mr. Nixon. He sounded as though he still believed that Tim had made the first mistake, too—the one about the deserted children.

“Perhaps he will learn more from the mistake than they themselves are worth,” Uncle John said. “But be careful, Tim.”

Be careful! He would have to be now, Joan realized. She was more puzzled than ever. Even if Tim had made this mistake, she knew she hadn’t written Mr. Johnson’s name in that other story. She’d have to stick around the office even more than ever now to be ready to help Tim. It was too bad that the only time he had really let her help, that terrible mistake had had to happen. She supposed he was afraid to trust her again. Well, she’d hang around anyway to be on hand if he did want her.

“Say, I’m in an awful rush,” Tim said one afternoon. He was always in a rush, it seemed. “Can you look up the stuff for the Ten Years Ago column?”

It was her chance, the first really big thing he had asked her to do since he allowed her to type that story about the deserted children. Of course, he had let her do little things, like looking up telephone numbers and checking initials.

She’d be extra careful, she resolved, as she picked up Em, who was curled up for a nap on the coverless dictionary. Then she lifted off the dictionary and tugged at the heavy, bound file.

Every day the Journal carried a few items culled from these files. It was part of Tim’s work to pick out those which he thought would interest the present readers of the Journal, and to copy them off verbatim. The beginning of this column was always the same—the type was always left set up in the forms. It said, “The following article was printed in the issue of the Plainfield Evening Journal for June—19—” and then came the date, ten years ago. Joan loved the old files; she liked to pore over the yellow pages and laugh at the queer fashions that were in vogue in the fifteen and twenty years ago numbers—long skirts that trailed on the ground, veils and funny hats. Why, Mother had a queer old silk blouse up in the attic, almost like that picture.

She learned to pick out items about prominent men—men who had not been so prominent ten years ago. Some of the issues were as interesting as stories, real stories, not just news ones. Then she’d type them off, so very carefully.

“Those old files are full of good stories,” Betty told her. “Don’t you know that half of the authors nowadays get their plots from newspaper clippings?”

“Do they?” Joan was interested.

“Sure, that’s why they sound as though they couldn’t possibly have happened,” laughed Tim. “Because they actually did.”

Well, wasn’t their mystery as impossible-sounding as any made up one? All the while she was watching Dummy every possible chance. She had come upon him suddenly several times “out back” and he had scurried out of the way, like a cat caught in the cream. She and Chub spent every minute they could “sleuthing the office” as he called it. “Watch everything! That’s the only way,” he told her.

So Joan watched, and discovered that Betty didn’t go out to lunch with Mack any more, but she and Tim went out at the same time and often lunched together at a white-tiled place, with copper bowls of scarlet apples and golden oranges in the window. Mother thought it was silly of him to spend his salary on lunches when he lived right next door to his job, and said so.

Of course Miss Betty couldn’t help but like Tim when he tried to be nice, and he did try. He would leave foolish notes addressed to “Betty Barefacts” on Miss Betty’s desk. Joan discovered one on the society editor’s hook when she was destroying her notes for her. It read:

Dear Miss Barefacts,

I am a young man with passes to the stock company. Is it proper to ask a girl to go to a show on passes?

T. M.

Mack didn’t tease so much any more, either. He seemed provoked that Betty was preferring Tim. Once when Tim was busy at his machine, and Mack was going out to lunch, his hat punched down over his eyes, Joan asked him timidly, “Mack, may I use your machine to copy this Ten Years Ago To-Day?”

He seemed about to give a nod of assent, when Joan added, coaxingly, “Your typewriter is better than Tim’s. His commas have no heads.”

Instantly the sport editor’s face changed. “You keep out of here.” He jammed the cracked, black canvas cover down over his machine, and strode out of the office, muttering what he thought about a newspaper in a jay town like this that let a kid stick around every minute!

Joan was bewildered, until she looked across the office now and saw Betty and Tim laughing together over some letter she had received for the Advice to the Lovelorn column. Then she thought she understood. Mack was peeved because Betty liked Tim—and about the lunches and notes and shows. But why shouldn’t she prefer big, broad-shouldered, dark-haired Tim to that silly, pink-mustached sport editor, even though Tim was only seventeen? And, of course, Mack wasn’t going to treat his rival’s sister nicely.

Things seemed rather at a standstill. To be sure, Mr. Johnson stopped in at the office about every other day, when he was in town, and he always asked after the mystery. He was interested in learning that Dummy was seen in the woods with Mr. Tebbets, but didn’t seem to think that it proved anything. Almost every time Mr. Johnston came he had a box in his hand.

“It’s typewriter supplies,” he would say as he handed it to Joan, with a grin upon his bulldog features.

Expecting to find a new ribbon for the machine, she would open it always to find that it was candy.

“Aren’t you a typewriter?” he would explain, amused at his own joke. He was always surprised to realize that she could type.

Joan would pass the candy all around, to the girls in the front office, to the business staff and to the men out back. Dummy always wrote a polite “Thank you” on his pad, when he took a piece, and always gave her a smile.

Poor old Dummy, he might seem innocent enough, as Mr. Johnson appeared to believe, but it was he, Joan was sure, who had changed the name and address on the story she had typed for Tim his second day at the Journal and had brought about all the trouble. For Tim was still on trial.

Tim’s probation brought one good result, however. He was working harder than ever and turning in more and better copy, and at the end of the week he got his first real assignment.