Joan continued to stare at Dummy. Could it have been his voice? As Gertie had said, he was a creepy sort of person. While she was standing there, the voice came again—and Dummy’s lips were moving!

“I hope you’re not carrying off that fire story, Miss Joan,” he said in a slow sort of voice as though he were not sure of his speech. Joan wondered whether his voice had suddenly been restored to him, but no, he talked too naturally for that. “You’re not supposed to run off with copy that way.”

“But—” Joan was embarrassed. It was hard to explain to him just why she had taken the story. And hearing him speak gave her a spooky feeling all up and down her spine. It was queer to be talking to him. She had a feeling she should shout and her voice rose without her knowing it. “But,” she shouted, “there’s something wrong with this story.”

“I know it,” nodded Dummy, calmly.

Yes, and she knew he knew it! But—Mr. Johnson had told her not to accuse any one. It was hard to know what to do.

Dummy held out his hand, with bulgy blue veins. “Just let me look at that story, please.”

But Joan clutched it to the front of her sweater. “What for?” she demanded.

Dummy resented this. “Look here, girl, you have no right to take that off the hook like that, and I want it.”

“But—” Well, she would tell him. “There’s a terrible mistake in it, and you let it go through.” That wasn’t really accusing him, she defended herself.

“I know it.” Was that a sigh that escaped Dummy’s lips? “I just realized that there was something phony about that story. It said the fire was caused by defective wiring and then in that last paragraph, it said something different. It just struck me, now—and I did let it go through.”

Forgetting all about Mr. Johnson’s caution about accusing, Joan gazed straight into Dummy’s mild, blue eyes. “Didn’t you put it there?” she asked as innocently as she could.

“Put it there!” Poor Dummy got red all over his face. Was it a guilty kind of red or a mad kind? Joan decided that if he were not showing righteous indignation, then he was one of the best actors she had ever seen. But she knew he was a good actor. Look how he had fooled them all into believing he was a deaf-mute.

No, he wasn’t acting. He was genuinely mad. “Are you—are you—” his voice fairly shook, “are you accusing me of putting that libelous paragraph on to that story? Why how could I, and why should I?”

“Well, the hook is right there, and you might have done it.” Joan wasn’t going to give up without a struggle. “We—Chub and I—figured it all out—” she might as well go on, “that you were a spy from the Star, to get Mr. Hutton and the paper in bad.”

Dummy’s mouth dropped completely open, showing two gold teeth. “You thought that! And may I ask whether you and that red-headed imp have broadcast your insinuations?” he drawled.

“Oh, no!” began Joan, and then stopped. Chub had told the office force that afternoon, when Gertie was laughing about Dummy. “Why—” she faltered.

“So-o!” Dummy glared indignantly. “And do you know, young woman, that I could have you put in jail for that?”

Joan turned scarlet. Then she clutched at straws. “But,” she sputtered, “you did act spooky. And why did you act like a Dum—like a deaf person?” Oh, my goodness, he had often heard them all call him Dummy. Oh, how horrid they had been!

“Go on and say it. Call me Dummy,” said the man, without a smile. “I’m used to it now.”

He paused and seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

“Well,” she began, “we saw you with Tebbets of the Star at the picnic. It did look suspicious—because he’s such an awful man, and we thought he had you under his thumb—because, of course, you wouldn’t do such a thing unless you had to—” she hardly knew what she was saying.

“And what else?” he asked.

“Then, I found the story about the charity play. That was another clew. It was stuffed behind some rolls of paper in the pressroom.”

“Was it?” Dummy looked innocent. “I never did find it, though I hunted. You thought I was a spy, did you?” His eyes were glittering as they had the day he and Mack had been arguing over that lost story. “Well, now, I’ll tell my story, but as long as you did your talking before the staff, I want to tell my story to them all, too. I’ll go tell Mr. Nixon, now.”

Mr. Nixon was sitting at his desk. Joan hated to meet him for he was really cross, since he was thoroughly convinced that Tim had made the mistake in the fire story.

Tim’s desk was vacant—the green swinging light above it, with the cord knotted to make it the right length, looked mournful and lonely, somehow. The desk was suspiciously clean and bare.

Joan, having gone to trail one mystery, was completely sidetracked by Dummy’s proving such a stumblingblock to her theory. She still clutched Tim’s story in her hand. She’d let Dummy tell his story, and then as soon as he was through she’d tell her theory just the same. After all, it looked more suspicious than ever, because Dummy had apparently only played deaf and dumb in order to work his misdeeds.

“Look here, Mr. Nixon.” Dummy went right up to the editor’s desk.

Mr. Nixon gave one look and then yelled, “Holy Moses! The Dummy can talk.” Then he looked embarrassed a bit, as though trying to remember what he had ever said in Dummy’s presence that he shouldn’t have. When he got over that feeling, he demanded, “Well, what’s the big idea? Are you a deaf-mute or aren’t you?”

“I pretended to be one, and I’ll tell you why, if you’ll only give me a chance. It seems that this young woman has spread a malicious report concerning me—”

“Cut it short,” ordered the editor. He was used to saying that to reporters. It would have been natural to have him add, “Hold it down to five hundred words.”

But Dummy, having been silent for so long a time, found it most agreeable to talk, and he drawled worse than ever.

“Well, I’ll begin at the beginning and tell you my right name.” The whole office force, Miss Betty, Mack, and Cookie, clustered around and Dummy waved them into the group. Chub ventured out from the front office, but Mr. Nixon motioned him to go back to his work. “It’s Richard Marat,” stated Dummy.

Mr. Nixon looked as though the name were slightly familiar, and he wrinkled up his nose a bit, trying to remember. But mostly he looked rather bored at Dummy. He seemed to think that the Journal family had had enough excitement for one day without all this disturbance coming up.

Cookie looked a bit puzzled over the name, but Mack and Miss Betty showed plainly that they had never heard of the name before, as far as they could remember.

Richard Marat! Richard Marat! The name began to burn in Joan’s mind. Why, it did sound familiar. She was sure she had heard it somewhere—and not so very long ago, either. There, she had it—! She remembered the “Ten Years Ago To-Day” story.

“Why, that’s the bookkeeper who had such a large deficit!”

Every one looked at her as though she were absolutely crazy, but Dummy leaped forward and took both her hands in his, and looked into her face.

“Just so, little maid,” he said, quaintly. “The first time I noticed you was when I heard you say, ‘My brother wrote that!’ the first day Tim was on the paper. I hoped then that he appreciated his sister’s great interest in him. And when I realized what an inquisitive little miss you were, I was actually scared that you’d somehow discover I was not a Dummy. But it’s to you, perhaps that I owe my good fortune, for you were the one to pick my story out of the files to reprint—but I mustn’t get ahead of my story. Yes, I am Richard Marat, the bookkeeper, who thought he had a deficit. I’ve always been a moody and impulsive sort of person, and when I discovered I had—or thought I had—such a great mistake in my books, I took the easiest way out, and ran away.”

“I remember that,” said Cookie. “It was just about ten years ago, I guess. But you didn’t have a mistake, after all.”

“That’s why he was so quick and accurate, because he was a bookkeeper,” Miss Betty whispered to Mack.

“Oh, lawsy!” said a voice. Bossy had come in through the swinging door, and was standing there, his eyes getting larger and whiter all the time. “Dummy kin talk! There’s quare goin’s on around heah. Dummy kin talk!”

No one paid any attention to Bossy.

“I was afraid of being arrested,” Dummy went on, “and I beat it, as the saying goes. These ten years, I have been wandering, scared as a rabbit. I began to act hard of hearing to escape what I thought might be embarrassing questions, and gradually I pretended to be a Dummy.” He smiled around at the Journal staff when he said the nickname they had given him. “That was easier and safest of all, just to be a deaf-mute.”

“I got to hankering for little old Plainfield,” he continued. “And so I came back. Not a soul knew me or remembered and if it hadn’t been for that column here, Ten Years Ago To-Day, I’d probably still be thinking I was guilty of a mistake that never happened. One day last week the column told of a bookkeeper named Richard Marat, who had discovered a deficit in his books, and fearing arrest, had fled—no one knew where. Then to-day, the paper has the story that experts had gone over my books, had found no deficiency and reported that I had simply made a mistake. But I never knew all this until to-day. My panic cost me ten years of weary wandering....”

A piercing, feminine scream sounded from the front office.

“Just like a nice murder story to break after we’ve gone to press!” said Mack.

Every one rushed to the front office. There was Amy, in her pale orchid sweater, standing in front of the rear counter, her face frozen with horror, her mouth open for another scream. Her hands were held, fingers extended stiffly, out in front of her, as though paralyzed.

“What’s all the rumpus?” asked Mr. Nixon from the doorway.

Joan caught a glimpse of Chub’s grinning face. Then she saw that Amy’s hands were held over the counter, where Chub had been inking the hand-roller for the advertising stuff. The wide sheet of inky paper was spread there. Amy’s palms were blacker than Em’s fur.

“He told me to hold my hands over it, and feel how the heat rushed out from it,” sobbed Amy. “And I did. Then he slapped ’em right down on to all that fresh ink. I’ll never speak to him again—”

“He was only fooling, Amy,” cheered Joan.

But Amy’s sobs rose higher. “Look at my hands. I’ll never get the stuff off. I just stopped in to see if you were here, Jo, and he stopped me—”

Mr. Nixon was waving his hands about like a madman. “Such an office! One dumb-bell reporter isn’t enough. The whole force is dumb! I won’t put up with this. I guess I’m still city editor. Clear out of here, you kids.” He turned from Amy to Joan. “And you, too.”

“Me?”

He nodded.

“But Mr. Johnson said—” she began.

“I don’t care what Mr. Johnson said!” he cut her short. “I won’t have this office turning into a kindergarten. Where is that boy? I’ll skin him alive for this.” But the red-haired office boy had vanished from the scene.

There was nothing to do but depart. Amy went ahead, stalking out with dignity, holding her inky hands aloft, her tear-wet nose high in the air.

Joan gave a wild glance around, appealingly. No one dared go against the city editor. Mack was scowling. Dummy looked bewildered. Cookie was sympathetic but helpless. Miss Betty flashed her a smile, in spite of everything.

“I’ll see you to-morrow, Jo,” she said. “I may want you to pay a bill at the toggery shop for me.”

“Sure,” said Joan, weakly.

The editor groaned and they all filed back into the editorial room. Joan couldn’t follow—even though Mr. Johnson had said she could stay at the Journal as much as she liked. It was all Amy’s fault, screaming like that and acting so silly. Mr. Nixon had just banished her, too; because she was Amy’s friend. As they went past the front counter, there was Gertie with an expression of horror on her face as great as Amy’s had been over her contact with the inky roller. “To think of the things I’ve said to that Dummy!” she was wailing. “I’ve said, ‘Oh, you dear, darling Dummy,’ and ‘Oh, angel of light!’ and all kinds of crazy things like that. I have, really. And he heard me all the time!”

But Joan went on. She had troubles of her own. She was anxious to tell Tim about Dummy’s not being a dummy. She was disappointed not to find him at home—he had stalked off for a walk, gloomily, mother explained. Joan went on up to her own room to muse over events. She had been ousted from the Journal, but she was still vitally interested in the office and its unsolved mystery. She stood by the dresser, looking down at the fire story she still held in her hand. The mystery of the mistakes hadn’t been solved. She remembered now that Chub had mentioned mistakes to her the day Tim got the job. That proved it wasn’t Tim. Maybe it was Dummy, after all. He hadn’t explained about being with Mr. Tebbets at the picnic, anyway.

Finally, she heard the front door bang and knew Tim had come in. By the time she got downstairs, she found him slouched in the morris chair in the living room, his long legs stretched halfway across the room, it seemed. He nodded sullenly and silently to her question, “Are you really fired?”

She had to tell him the thrilling news. “Tim, Dummy’s not a deaf-mute. He can talk.”

Tim sat up. “Are you stringing me?”

“No, really, it’s a fact. Every one was so surprised. You should have seen Bossy! Dummy spoke to me, and I was so scared I nearly jumped out of my skin!” she explained. “You see, I had gone to the composing room for your fire story.” She suddenly realized that she still had it in her hand. “I wanted to look at that extra paragraph that got stuck on there, to see if it really was on the copy. And it was.” She held it up, and glanced at the final paragraph to reassure herself. Then she gave a gasp, as she gazed at the end of the long story in her hand. “Why, Tim! The commas in this last paragraph have heads!”