Jane Carter Investigates Episode One-Hundred and Thirteen
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 lamplight, 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 laughingstock of Greenville,” I moaned. “I’ll be the laughingstock of the state. The papers can’t go out that way. Stop the press!”
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