Eric Reynolds! The winner of the second prize was in trouble and was calling on Joan to help him. Still, he did not know her name was Martin or that she was the girl who had interviewed him at his home a few days ago, when she had informed him that he was one of the winners.

What could the mysterious trouble be? Of course, she must go and help him, if she could, even though he was a sissy. “I’ll come,” she said, and heard Eric’s “Thank you very much,” as he hung up.

She could at least find out what Eric or Abie had wanted with Tim. No use to bother any one in the office with this until she knew more. Probably Abie wanted to give Tim a scolding about something. Cub reporters were always being summoned for all sorts of things. Perhaps something Tim had written for the paper had aroused Abie’s ire. Still, what had Eric to do with it? And what was a rich boy like Eric doing in a pawnshop?

Joan trotted along up Market Street and around the corner on Main. It was just a few blocks to Abie’s Pawnshop. Every one called him just Abie. The shop was in the cheap part of Main Street—the wrong side of Buckeye, which divided the two districts. The shop was a tiny place, crowded with everything from furs to fruit dishes. Three gold balls, a bit tarnished, hung in front, and inside at the right was a wire cage, where Abie, framed by a background of watches and clocks, usually held forth. To-day, however, he was in the center of the shop. Eric Reynolds was there, too, holding a black violin case under his arm.

“Hey, are you Mr. Martin?” Abie growled when he saw her.

Joan explained that Mr. Martin was her brother and that she had come in his place, as he was busy on an assignment.

“Your brother—he signed this, hey?” Abie brandished a bit of paper under her nose. He was a small man, in shirt sleeves and a vest, with a heavy gold chain across his plump stomach. The chain was wobbling, he was so angry. “This boy here—” he indicated Eric with a jerk of his pudgy thumb—“he wants to buy violin off me and he gives me check for twenty-five dollars—and it ain’t signed.”

Not signed! Why, she had watched Uncle John sign it. Anyway, how did Eric happen to have the check? Had the awards really been mixed, after all? Perhaps, even now, Jimmy was speeding toward Cleveland to the big game. Or—perhaps Eric had stolen the check, for some reason. But surely he had plenty of money. He looked especially stylish in the sweater and hose-to-match set he was wearing to-day. But how did he get the check?

She remembered having seen Jimmy’s name on it. And now, Eric had it, and somehow it was blank where Uncle John had signed his name.

It certainly was a mystery. The word reminded her of Dummy. Could he have mixed the prizes, thinking that he would get the paper in bad with the public? The mistake might, too, for, of course, a paper awarding prizes ought to award them correctly. Dummy could certainly think up strange things to do—for she was sure he had had a hand in this.

“Is this Miss Martin?” Eric asked. Didn’t he recognize her in the old middy? “You’re the girl who came to see me, aren’t you? Will you kindly tell this man that your brother did sign this check when he sent it to Jimmy, and that it’s perfectly O.K.?”

“My brother is Mr. Martin,” Joan smiled. “But not the one you think. That’s my uncle. The girl called Tim to the phone, and he wasn’t there, and I got your message to come around. But—” she broke off her explanation. “The check was signed. I saw it. It was sent to Jimmy, though.” And she had been so anxious that no more mistakes should be made.

“I can explain,” the boy began. “You see, I was disappointed when I didn’t get first prize, because I wanted, not the honor, but the money.” He looked embarrassed but went on. “My music teacher told me there was a really good violin here at Abie’s shop. It was twenty-five dollars, and I have only a small allowance. My parents wouldn’t get it for me. They didn’t know I’d been taking secret lessons since Christmas. Professor Hofman gives them to me, free. Mother wants me to be an athlete and she suggested my trying in the contest, and I did in hopes of winning the money.”

Abie was getting impatient during this recital. Evidently he had heard the explanation before. He was waving his hands. “It ain’t signed,” he muttered.

“Yes, but how did you get the check?” Joan asked Eric.

“Well, it’s funny,” he drawled. Did he talk slowly, naturally, or was he trying to infuriate Abie? Eric was such an odd boy, you never could be sure about him. “I didn’t want the tickets, but it seems that the other boy did. I was certainly surprised to have a voice over the phone ask me if I wanted to sell the tickets and passes for twenty-five dollars. It was Jimmy. I told him I’d give them to him. But he insisted that we swap prizes. I did it, because I wanted the violin so much. It hardly seemed right, but Jimmy said my letter was better than his.”

“It was,” Joan admitted. “But I gave the money prize, to him, because he was—poor.”

“I don’t care anything about baseball,” Eric stated. “I wouldn’t dare play ball, for fear I’d break my finger and couldn’t play the violin. Professor Hofman says my fingers are—are precious.” He almost whispered the last word.

He wasn’t a sissy, only a genius. What if her decision had kept him from fulfilling his ambition? She could sympathize with him, for didn’t she want to be a newspaper reporter, while Mother thought it unladylike? She had put a stumblingblock in his way when she had decided the prizes, thinking he did not need money.

“So I took the check,” Eric continued, “since Jimmy said he didn’t need it and would much rather have the tickets. We met at the bank, and the man there explained how Jimmy was to write payable to me on it. And I wrote ‘Payable to Abie Goldstein’ on it and brought it here. We didn’t show the check to any one there; just asked. I didn’t notice it then, and when I got here, there was no signature. Jimmy hadn’t mentioned anything about it.”

“He’s been coming in here, looking at that violin, two, t’ree times every week for long time,” nodded Abie. “To-day, he say he take it. I think it lot money for him to have, but he look rich, and I give it him. Then he give me check not signed. I not so dumb as I look, maybe! I tell him I put him in jail for that! I call Mr. Martin at the Journal, like he say—and you come.”

He seemed to consider her a poor substitute. She remembered now that Abie had shouted something about putting some one in jail when she had talked to him over the telephone. She did not doubt but that the irate little man would do something awful to Eric if he could not prove his innocence. To think how she had misjudged Eric. She must help him now, for in a way, it was through her that he was in this mix-up. It was certainly a mystery, though. How could a check be signed one day and unsigned the next? Even Dummy could hardly do such a thing.

It was clear that she must do two things. She must get hold of Jimmy, somehow, to prove that Eric’s story was true, and then get Uncle John to untangle the knotty problem of the signature. She went back of the counter to Abie’s phone. It was on the wall. She had to tilt the mouthpiece down and then stand on tiptoe. Joan doubted whether Jimmy had a telephone and when Information Operator assured her he did not, she asked for the nearest one. Miss Betty often did that. The telephone next door proved to be that of a Mrs. Kelly who was willing to send one of her children over to deliver a message to Jimmy Kennedy. “Tell him to come to the Journal office as quickly as possible,” Joan told her. “It’s important.”

“Sure and he’ll be there quick as you like,” came Mrs. Kelly’s answer. “He’ll likely use his bike and he’s fast as the wind on that.”

Then, the three of them started over to the Journal office. Before he left, Abie called his assistant to “mind the shop.” Joan and Eric led the way, and Abie followed, his hands wildly waving. Eric seemed a little sober now at the outcome of the exchange of prizes. He said nothing but still hugged the violin.

Uncle John was busy and while they were waiting Jimmy appeared. Tim was back now, the paper was out, and Joan explained things to him. When they went into Uncle John’s office, Tim went in, too. They seemed to fill the little room, the sanctum sanctorum. Em was there, curled up on the window sill, her tail hanging straight down. Silhouetted against the light, she looked like a spook. Joan picked her up and held her. Uncle John got up from his swivel chair that creaked gratefully when he hoisted his stout self from it and greeted them with raised eyebrows. Joan started to explain the situation, but Abie, flashing the check, broke in with his mumblings.

Uncle John took the check. “Well, what’s it all about? This is the check I sent to the Kennedy boy.”

“Yes, but I wanted the tickets to the game—they’re hard to get—and the trip to Cleveland and the autographed ball,” Jimmy said. “And when I didn’t win ’em, and read in the Journal that a kid named Eric Reynolds did, I went to the drug store and telephoned him.”

“And we traded prizes,” put in Eric. “But the check wasn’t signed.”

“Well, this is a mystery,” Uncle John examined the check. “I’m positive I signed it. This is the same check, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Jimmy twisted at his blouse pocket and produced an envelope. “Here’s what the letter and the check came in, addressed to me. The letter’s at home, but I brought the check along in this to keep it clean for Eric.”

“Yes, it’s the same check,” Uncle John said, holding it out.

The bit of paper brushed against Em’s long white whiskers as Uncle John placed it on his desk. The cat squirmed in Joan’s arms. She wrinkled up her black face and began to sneeze and hiss, wrenching herself away, as if to spring toward the check.

“Why—” Joan put Em down and the cat immediately rolled over and over on the floor, casting sidewise glances at them from her big yellow eyes. Then Joan picked up the check, held it to her own nose and sniffed. “Why, it does! It smells like sassafras!”

“Well, and what has that to do with it?” snapped the pawnshop owner. “Maybe the boys was drinking sassafras sodys at the drug store and spilled some on it. What does that prove, if you’re so smart?”

But Joan would not give up. “Did you?” she turned to the boys.

They both shook their heads. “I don’t like sassafras,” Eric said.

Joan opened the office door and called Chub. He came right in, for he had been standing outside, listening and watching their shadows on the frosted door window. “Chub,” she demanded, “where did you hide that magic ink?”

Chub blushed until his face was almost as red as his hair. “I—I suppose I shouldn’t of, but I hid it behind those books on the General Mag.’s desk.”

The general manager was Uncle John, of course. “I did use the ink behind the books,” he stated. “I thought it was a misplaced supply bottle, and well, I must have signed the check with the vanishing ink? Here, give it to me, and I’ll sign it again—” he started to dip his pen into the filled inkwell.

“No, Uncle John, please! Let us prove it!” Joan begged. “Chub, do your stuff. Let’s see you magic the signature back again.”

Tim produced the match Chub asked for, and he cupped his hands while the younger boy held the tiny flame near the check. Breathlessly, the others watched. Abie’s brown eyes were bulging. He did not know what to expect. Eric and Jimmy were frankly interested. Uncle John was amused. Joan and Chub were the only ones watching with real assurance.

The match went out in spite of Tim’s shielding hands. Three times matches were lighted and three times they went out. Chub began to get red in the face and beads of perspiration stood out on his cheeks. Even Joan got a little worried. Maybe Chub’s magic wasn’t any good. Then they couldn’t prove that this check had been signed and that Eric was all right. She had to prove it!

“We have to have a steady, even heat,” Chub decided. “I did it over the kitchen stove at home. But there’re no gas jets here.”

“I know! The flames that dry the print!” Joan started out to the composing room, and the rest trailed along, quite a little procession, it was, with Joan and Chub leading.

The big room was fairly silent now, for the paper had just been run off the giant presses. But the rows of tiny blue flames along the top of each roller, which dried each page as it was flipped over, had not yet been turned out. Joan had always thought the flames very pretty—that little bit of bright color in this dim, cement-floored room, which was like a vast cave somehow, and usually thunderous with the roar of the presses.

Chub, as master of ceremonies, held the piece of paper up in front of the flames, moving it gently back and forth, so that it would not be scorched or burned.

The others pressed close about the office boy. Soon, there appeared upon the check down in the right-hand corner, the scrawled signature, “John W. Martin,” old-fashioned M and all.

“It’s certainly magic!” cried Joan.

“Yes, but don’t leave that ink around again,” Uncle John warned Chub.

“Very fine trick,” said Abie, while the others murmured their surprise.

“Now, let’s see, is this exchange the boys are making O.K.?” Uncle John asked, when they were all back in his little office again, and he had the check with its restored signature in his hand.

“Jimmy, don’t you know twenty-five dollars is a lot of money?”

“Well, I suppose it is,” admitted Jimmy. “But you see, I just entered the contest ’cause I wanted the ball and the trip to the game. Mom thought I won that, and I didn’t tell her any different, because we traded. It’d cost me twenty-five dollars to go to the game, and Babe Ruth wouldn’t sign a baseball for me, without I had that prize announcement letter telling him to. Anyway, I didn’t think my letter would win first, but I hoped it would win second.”

“Eric’s was the better one, really,” Joan remarked.

“Every one seems agreed.” Uncle John passed the check over to Abie. “I guess the violin is the boy’s.”

“Won’t you play something?” Joan begged Eric. “Do let him, Uncle John. The paper’s out, and no one’s busy.”

At Uncle John’s nod, Eric took the violin from its case and tucked it under his chin. A dark lock of his hair tumbled upon his forehead and made his thin face look even whiter than usual. “A regular violin face,” Joan thought to herself. “I wonder I didn’t think of it before. And I thought he’d be a speedy ball player, because he was thin. Fine reporter I’d be!”

Eric played. A dreamy but spirited thing that made you think of lads and lassies doing an old-time dance on a green countryside. Joan could picture the colors of their costumes as the couples whisked about, hopping, and smiling to each other. Every one in the little office stood perfectly still while Eric played.

When he finished, the bow drooped limp and lifeless in his hand. Uncle John strode toward the door. “Very nice, indeed,” he said, and his voice was gruff. “But this is hardly a concert hall.”

Abie was clapping his hairy hands. “Wonderful! Wonderful! Five dollars and even more you would pay to hear such playing like that!”

“The kid’s clever, no joke,” Tim remarked as he went out. “And their swapping the prizes will make a peach of a follow-up story.”

Eric held out his hand to Joan, right there in front of Jimmy and Chub. “Thank you very much,” he said in his grown-up way, “for helping us out—for solving the mystery.”

Joan laughed. “Don’t thank me. Thank Em. She did it.”

They all looked over to the corner where Em was unconcernedly licking her black paw.

“It’s the second time she proved herself a heroine,” Joan thought to herself. She had led Joan to the charity play story—and now this. Dummy had hid the story, she was sure, and had been only pretending in his argument with Mack. You couldn’t tell about the proofreader. Yet, here was another mistake that had happened and Dummy had not been to blame.