“Well, the villain did besmirch the sister’s spotless virtue and drive her to the brink of despair,” Flo pointed out. “And you do have a history of writing similar scenes.”
“I do not!” I protested. “What scenes?”
“The worthy cowboy hero in ‘Evangeline: The Horse-thief’s Unwilling Fiancée’ lost his arm while fighting off a pack of ravening wolves.”
“That’s completely different,” I said. “That wasn’t Evangeline’s fault. It was Mr. Pittman’s. I’d wager my beloved Bouncing Betsy that never for a single moment during the entire protracted saga of ‘Evangeline: The Horse-thief’s Unwilling Fiancée’ was even one reader confused about whether the heroine might actually turn out to be the villain in disguise.”
Flo sighed, but she conceded my point.
“Well, fix the story to your liking,” she said. “I have to leave in a few minutes. It’s my afternoon to work at the library, and after I’m finished there, I promised mother that I’d visit Mr. and Mrs. Smith and deliver some soup. Mrs. Smith is poorly, and, according to my mother, Mr. Smith wouldn’t know a saucepan from a coal shovel. I’ve been instructed to heat up the soup personally and see that Mrs. Smith eats at least a bowl of it before I’m free to retire for the evening.”
“Is Mr. Smith the one who collects antique spectacles?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Flo, “and, if you have any questions on the subject, be sure and ask me later because by the time I get an entire bowl of soup down Mrs. Smith I expect I’ll be even more enlightened on the eyewear of yesteryear than I am presently. Did you know that the first pair of eyeglasses is believed to have been made in Pisa, Italy in 1290?”
I told Flo I had not previously been made privy to that vital tidbit of information.
“Well, I have apparently been predestined to become ever more educated on the subject of primitive optics,” Florence continued, “that is why I do not have time to deal with your scruples concerning homicidal heroines. Besides, we agreed I’m be working in a purely administerial capacity. You know I lack imagination.”
“For which I make up in spades,” I said. “I’ll figure out a more proportional fate for the black-hearted Malcolm McGrew, don’t you worry.”
I paused as Flo put the cover on her typewriter, stood up and collected her coat. I realized I had been remiss and unappreciative of my friend.
“Thank you, Flo,” I said. “You truly are the bee’s knees.”
“Oh?” said Florence. She arched one eyebrow and put on her hat.
“Truly, you are,” I insisted. “I persist in dragging you into one crazy scheme after another, and yet you continue to be my loyal friend.”
“Well, your schemes often sound crazy,” said Flo diplomatically. “But they generally turn out all right in the end.”
Chapter Eight
Every moment which I didn’t spend sleeping or collecting box lunches from Mrs. Timms, I spent at the plant. Long after everyone else had left the building, I remained, trying to master the intricacies of the linotype machine. Although in theory, it operated somewhat like a typewriter, I could not learn to set type accurately.
I rewrote the closing scenes of “The Black-Hearted Malcolm McGrew,” leaving him dead but with his limbs intact. As a concession to Mrs. Pruitt, I allowed a rat to gnaw off a single pinky finger, but I made clear that this loss of digit was neither the wish nor the responsibility of the heroine.
I then put the finishing touches on part one of “The Mystery of the Octopus Tattoo,” a story inspired by the near-drowning of the tattooed sailor who I had witnessed being pushed into the river.
Finally, I made minor alterations to a complete novelette and the first installments of the three older serials of my own which were to comprise the bulk of the first issue.
I had previously approved the other two short stories—‘Moon Madness’ and ‘Old Loves for New’—submitted by the remaining writers recruited from the women of the LVW.
The material for the inaugural issue was complete, rounded out by a soppily sentimental set of verses by Mrs. Dunst, which I had accepted without a murmur, despite their ghastliness (lad and withstand do not rhyme, despite Mrs. Dunst’s apparent belief that they did). Without Mrs. Dunst, Carter’s All-Story Weekly wouldn’t have gotten as far as it had, so, since the lad in question had not locked anyone in a dungeon to be dismembered by rats, I let it go.
On the Friday night preceding the deadline, alone in the building, the task of setting type finally overwhelmed me.
“Machines, machines, machines,” I grumbled to myself. “The magazine is going to be a mess, and all because I can’t run this hateful old thing!”
Dropping my head wearily on the keyboard, I wept with vexation.
I stiffened. Footsteps were coming softly down the hall toward the composing room.
Twice during the previous week, Florence had insisted that she believed someone prowled about the plant when it was deserted, but I had been too busy to take her concerns seriously. Now that I was alone, my pulse began to hammer. I reached down into my handbag which lay at my feet, retrieved my cosh from the bottom of it and turned around to face the entrance to the room.
A shadow fell across the doorway.
“Who is there?” I called out and tightened my grip around the cosh.
To my relief, a young man, his bashful grin reassuringly familiar, stepped into the cavernous room. Bob Witzel was one of my father’s best linotype operators.
“You nearly startled me out of my wits. What brought you here, Bob?”
“I noticed the light burning and the entrance door was ajar,” the operator replied, twisting his hat in his hands. “So, I dropped in to see how you were getting along.”
“That’s nice of you, Bob,” I said and surreptitiously dropped the cosh back into my handbag.
Bob was looking at me intently, I was afraid he could tell that I had been crying.
“The boys say you’re doing right well.” Bob moved nearer the linotype machine.
“Don’t look at my work,” I pleaded. “It’s simply awful. I can’t get the hang of this horrid old machine. I wish I hadn’t started a weekly—I must have been crazy just as everyone says.”
“You’re tired, that’s what’s the trouble,” said Bob. “Now there’s nothing to running a linotype. Give me a piece of copy, and I’ll show you.”
He slid into the vacant chair, and his fingers began to move over the keyboard. As if by magic, type fell into place, and there were no mistakes.
“You do it marvelously,” I said. “What’s the trick?”
“About ten years practice. Shoot out your copy now, and I’ll set some of it for you.”
“Bob, you’re a darling! But dare you do it? What about the union?”
“This is just between you and me,” he grinned. “The union needn’t know about it. You need a helping hand, and I’m here to give it.”
Until eleven Bob remained at his post, setting more type in three hours than I had done in three days.
“Your front page should look pretty good at any rate,” he said as we left the building together.
When I arrived home—a full hour earlier than I had warned Mrs. Timms to anticipate my homecoming—I stabled Bouncing Betsy and let myself into the kitchen with my key. There were no lights on, save the light of a lamp filtering in from the living room. I assumed that Mrs. Timms was sitting up for me. Our housekeeper had a habit of falling asleep in the lamp-lit living room while she read a magazine and waited for me to come home.
I was about to call out to Mrs. Timms when I heard my father’s voice:
“I love you, Doris.”
“Not here, Anthony. What if Jane—”
I crept to the door of the living room. There, haloed in lamp light were my father and Mrs. Timms, locked in embrace on the couch. My father was kissing Mrs. Timms, whose carefully-coiffured hair ejected bobby pins like a porcupine shedding its quills.
I decided it was best not to disturb
them. I quietly shed my shoes and tiptoed noiselessly around the back of the davenport and up the stairs, smiling broadly to myself all the way to my own bedroom.
Saturday was another day of toil, but by six o’clock, aided by Bob, the last stick of type was set, and the pages locked and transported to the Examiner ready for the Sunday morning run.
“I’ll be here early tomorrow,” I told the pressman. “Don’t start the edition rolling until I arrive. I want to press the button myself.”
Dad, Jack Bancroft, Shep Murphy, and several other members of the Examiner staff, came to view the stereotyped plates waiting to be fitted on the press rollers.
“You’ve done well, Jane,” my father said. “I confess I never thought you would get this far. Still figuring on a street sale of six thousand?”
“I’ve increased the number to seven,” I said. “It would be a shame to sell out with another thousand protentional sales lost to small-minded thinking.”
“And how do you plan to get the papers sold?”
“Oh, that’s my secret, Dad. You may be surprised.”
Exhausted but happy, I went home and to bed. I was up at six, and after a hastily-eaten breakfast, arrived at the Examiner office early Sunday morning in time to greet the workmen who were just coming on duty.
“Everything is set,” the foreman informed me. “You can start the press now.”
I was so nervous that my hand trembled as I pressed the electric switch. There was a low, whining noise as the wheels began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Pressmen moved back and forth, oiling the machinery and tightening screws.
I watched the long stream of paper feeding into the press. In a moment, the neatly folded newspapers would slide out at the rate of eight hundred a minute. Only slightly over an hour and the run would be completed.
The first printed paper dropped from the press, and the foreman reached for it.
“Here you are,” he said, offering it to me.
Almost reverently I accepted the paper. Even though there were only twenty pages, three of which were taken up by full page admonishments from the LWV—“Don’t Let Granny Down! She won the vote in 1920...it’s your job to make it count. Join the League of Women Voters”—each page represented many hours of labor. I had turned out a professional job and could rightly feel proud of it.
My eyes fell on the top line of the page. I gasped and fell back against the wall.
“I’m ruined!” I moaned. “Ruined! Someone has played a cruel joke on me!”
“What’s wrong?” the press foreman asked, reaching for another paper.
“Look at this,” I wailed. “Just look!”
I pointed to the name of the paper, printed in large black letters. It read: Carter’s All-Story Weakly.
“I’ll be the laughing stock of Greenville,” I moaned. “I’ll be the laughing stock of the state. The papers can’t go out that way. Stop the press!”
Chapter Nine
As the foreman turned off the rotary press, the throb of machinery died away and the flowing web of paper became motionless.
“How could such a mistake have been made?” I said. “I know that originally the name-plate was set up right.”
“You should have taken page proofs and checked the mat,” said the foreman.
“But I did! At least I took page proofs. I’ll admit I was careless about the mats.”
“Well, it looks as if someone played a joke on you. Well, it’s done anyway,” said the foreman with a shrug. “What will you do about the run?”
“I’ll never let it go through this way. I’d rather die.”
The foreman reminded me that, with paid advertisements, I was compelled to print an issue. I knew that it would not be possible to make a change in the starter plate. The entire page must be recast.
“I don’t suppose the type can be matched in this plant,” I said gloomily.
“We may have some like it,” replied the foreman. “I’ll see.”
Soon he returned to report that type was available and that the work could be done by the stereotypers. However, the men would expect overtime pay.
“I’ll give them anything they want,” I said recklessly. “Anything.”
After a trying wait, the new plate was made ready and locked on the cylinder. Once more the great press thundered. Again, papers began to pour from the machine, every fiftieth one slightly out of line.
“What do you want done with ’em?” inquired the foreman.
“Have the papers carried to the mailing room and stacked by the door,” I told him. “I’ll be around in the morning to arrange for deliveries.”
Monday’s first issue of the Examiner was hot off the press when I stationed myself beside the veritable mountain of Carter’s All-Story Weeklies. The room was a bedlam, with newsboys shouting noisily for their wares. As they passed by me on their way to the street, I waylaid them one by one.
“Here you are, boys. Two dozen papers each. Sell them for a nickel and keep half of it for yourself. Turn in the money at the old Morning Press building.”
“Two and a half cents!” exclaimed one of the boys. “Gee, that’s more than we get for selling the Examiner!”
“Generosity is my motto,” I said. “Just push those papers for all you’re worth.”
I left the Examiner plant and went directly to the Morning Press building. As I unlocked the front door, I noticed a faint odor of tobacco lingering in the air. No one was allowed to smoke in the building. One of Mrs. Dunst’s first acts as restorer of cleanliness and order had been to plaster “No Smoking” placards at the entrance and other prominent places as part of her cleanup of the plant.
I was too busy to search the plant for possible violators of Mrs. Dunst’s antismoking campaign, so I gave the matter scant consideration. I tossed the lunch Mrs. Timms had prepared for me on the counter and prepared for a hard day’s work.
Now and then, to rest my mind from columns of figures, I wandered to the window. Down the street, newsboys called their wares, and it pleased me that they shouted Carter’s All-Story Weekly as frequently as they did the Greenville Examiner.
By ten o’clock the boys began to straggle in with their money. Only a few had failed to sell all their papers, and not one neglected to make a report. My final check revealed that six thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine Weeklies had been sold.
I knew I couldn’t expect to do that well after the novelty wore off, but one thing was certain, my Weekly wasn’t going to be weakly.
I had a large sum of money in my possession, and I decided to take no chance of losing it. After making a careful count, I poured the coins into a bag which I loaded up into Bouncing Betsy and drove straight to the bank.
It was lunch-time when I returned to the plant. I went to the counter for Mrs. Timms’ package of sandwiches. To my surprise, it had disappeared.
I was annoyed. I did not believe that one of the newsboys had picked up the package. Accumulative evidence pointed to a likelihood that someone was hiding in the building. The moving light, tobacco smoke, and unexplained footsteps all suggested that a tramp might be using the empty plant as a comfortable shelter.
But how had he gotten in? The doors and windows were kept locked. Flo and I and a few members among the women of the LWV possessed keys, but I believed we were all conscientious about locking the door behind us whenever we entered or left the building.
As I considered whether to report the matter to police, there was a pounding on the entrance door.
I opened the door and a short, stocky brown-haired man of early middle age, well dressed, but with a sharp, weather-beaten face and a misshapen nose, pushed his way past me.
“This the office of Carter’s All-Story Weekly?” he demanded.
“Yes,” I said. “Is there anything—”
“I want to see the editor.”
“You’re looking at her now.”
“You! A Woman!”
“Mrs. Jane Carter, Editress, at yo
ur service.”
I smiled and waited. The stranger hesitated and then took a rolled-up copy of the newly-minted Carter All-Story Weekly from his overcoat pocket. With his forefinger, he jabbed at the story on page three, “The Mystery of the Octopus Tattoo.”
“You know who wrote this?” he questioned.
“I do.”
“That’s a right interesting yarn,” he said after a long pause.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“I was kind of curious to know where your writer got his idea for that story.”
“Her idea.”
The man squinted at the story again.
“That story was authored by a Miss Hortencia Higgins,” I informed him.
“And where might I find this Miss Higgins?” the man asked.
“I am Miss Higgins.”
“But you just said you were Mrs. Carter.”
“Nom de plume.”
The man stared at me blankly.
“Hortencia Higgins is my pen name. Lots of writers use them. I have three if the truth be told.”
“Alright,” said the man, “then I’ll ask you. Where did you get the idea for this story?”
“It was inspired by true events. I saw a man pushed from a bridge. I’m a lady novelist. We lady novelists are always on the lookout for inspiration. It had great dramatic possibilities. The story practically wrote itself.”
The man stared at me sullenly until I decided to try and move the conversation along. I was tired and hungry and eager to go in search of my lunch. If I did not find it, I intended to make a foray to some nearby restaurant before I succumbed to fatigue and starvation.
“Mr.—? I don’t believe you told me your name.”
“Firth. Paul Firth.”
“I was driving near the bridge at the time the man was pushed into the water,” I said.
Jane Carter Historical Cozies: Omnibus Edition (Six Mystery Novels) Page 47
