Jeremiah drew a deep sigh. “And that’s just what happened. I ain’t got no job an’ no more home than an old fox. I’s sure bubblin’ over with trouble. It all come from seein’ that ghost you says I didn’t see.”
“I’m sure you thought you saw a ghost, anyway,” I told Jeremiah. “Although I’m inclined to believe there’s some other more worldly explanation for the figure you saw pacing the fence at Oaklands. If you’ll promise to attend strictly to your duties hereafter, I’ll ask Mr. Pim to reinstate you on the payroll.”
Mr. Jones brightened. “I sure nuff will!” he promised. “I won’t have no mo’ truck with that ghost. No sir!”
To face Mr. Pim once more was a most unpleasant ordeal for me. Nevertheless, I went straight to his office.
“I am very busy,” Mr. Pim answered my apology for intruding. “What is it you want?”
I explained that I had talked with Jeremiah Jones and was convinced that his offense would not be repeated.
“I want you to put him back on his old job,” I told Mr. Pim.
“Impossible!”
“Dad always liked Jeremiah.”
“One can’t mix sentiment with business. I have a job to do here, and I intend to do it efficiently.”
“Dad probably will show up before another day.”
“I don’t like to dash your hopes,” said Mr. Pim. “We’ve tried to spare your feelings. Perhaps your father will be found, but you know I tried to warn him he was inviting trouble when he mixed with that gang of bootleggers.”
“So you believe Dad has fallen into the clutches of those men?”
“I do.”
“What makes you think so? Have you any evidence?”
“Not a scrap.”
“And how did you learn that my father intended to expose the higher-ups?”
“I don’t mind telling you I heard him talking to Jack Bancroft about it.”
“Oh, I see.”
“We’re getting nowhere with this discussion,” Mr. Pim said impatiently. “I really am busy—”
“Will you reinstate Jeremiah Jones?” I asked, reverting to the original subject.
“I’ve already given my answer.”
“After all, this is my father’s paper,” I said, trying to control my voice. “It’s not a corporation. Only Dad’s money is invested here.”
“So what?”
“As a personal favor, I’m asking you to reinstate Mr. Jones.”
“You’re going to make an issue of it?”
“Call it that if you like.”
Mr. Pim’s dark eyes blazed. He slammed a paperweight across the desk, and it dropped to the floor with a hard thud.
“Very well,” he said stiffly, “we’ll restore your pet to the payroll.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pim.”
“But get this, Miss Fielding,” the editor continued. “We may as well have an understanding. While your father is absent, I’m in full charge here. In the future, I’ll have no more interference from you or anyone else.”
Chapter Nine
Rather flattened by my interview with Mr. Pim, I was glad to leave Examiner plant. As I returned down in the elevator, I requested that Alfred tell Jeremiah Jones that he had been restored to his old job.
“That’s fine!” the janitor beamed. “Mighty glad to hear it.” Opening the cage door, he enquired: “Will you be going to see Mr. DeWitt?”
“I thought I would.”
“He’s at City Hospital. You might tell him that we all miss him around here.”
“I’ll certainly deliver the message,” I promised.
I bought flowers and hailed a cab for City Hospital. After a brief wait in the lobby, I was allowed to see Mr. DeWitt for a few minutes.
Mr. DeWitt, pale and weak, stirred and turned his head so that he could see me.
“Good morning,” I greeted him.
“What’s good about it?” he muttered with a trace of his old spirit. “They won’t even let me sit up.”
“I should think not,” I told him as I sat down in a chair beside the bed.
“Of all times to get laid up,” the editor went on. “Heard from your father?”
I shook my head. A long silence followed before I spoke again: “But I’m convinced he’ll be found—probably today.”
It was false bravado, and DeWitt knew it.
Mr. DeWitt lay with his eyes closed. “I’ve been thinking—” he mumbled drowsily.
“Yes?”
“Mind’s still fogged with that blamed ether,” DeWitt muttered. “About your father—” His voice trailed off.
“Do you think he could have been waylaid? Mr. Pim believes his disappearance has a connection with the bootleggers.”
Mr. DeWitt’s eyes opened again. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Your father was planning to break a big story—didn’t tell me much about it.”
“You don’t know what evidence he carried in the portfolio when he went to see the state prosecutor?”
DeWitt shook his head. “Jack’ll know.”
“He doesn’t,” I told DeWitt. “I already asked him. Jack knew there was a story, but Dad kept the details strictly to himself.”
DeWitt fell silent for several minutes, lost in thought.
“Have you tried your father’s safe?” he asked.
“Dad took a lot of papers out just before he started for the prosecutor’s office,” I told DeWitt. “But some of the evidence may have been left. It’s worth looking through any papers he left behind.”
The nurse returned to the room with a vase for the flowers.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to remain much longer,” she told me.
As she arose to go, I remembered to deliver Alfred Hodges’ well-wishes.
“How’s everything at the office?” Mr. DeWitt asked. “Who’s in charge?”
“Jonathon Pim.”
Mr. DeWitt’s forehead wrinkled. “Now I know I’ve got to get out of this hospital. Things will be in a nice state by the time I get back.”
I agreed with DeWitt but did not wish to worry him. “Oh, everything seems to be ticking along all right,” I said. “Mr. Pim is very efficient in his methods.”
“I guess you could call him efficient,” muttered DeWitt. “Oh, well, I’ll be back on the job in ten days. How much damage can one man do in that little time?”
I was afraid that Pim could do plenty of damage in only ten days, but I did not voice my misgivings. I said goodbye to Mr. DeWitt and returned to the newspaper office.
Jack was still out, so I decided to act on Mr. DeWitt’s suggestion that some evidence against the bootleggers might be still be in my father’s safe. I still knew the combination.
I did not wish to face Jonathon Pim a second time, and I debated waiting until after four o’clock when the editor doubtless would leave the building. But time was precious, and I could not afford to wait.
I walked straight to my father’s office. The door was closed.
“Mr. Pim isn’t in conference?” I asked my father’s private secretary.
“No, just go right on in,” she said.
Without knocking, I opened the door. On the threshold, I paused, startled. Jonathon Pim was down on his knees in front of the open safe. Evidently he had been going through Dad’s private papers in a systematic fashion, for he was circled by little piles of manila envelopes.
Mr. Pim was even more startled than I. He sprang to his feet, the picture of guilt. Then, recovering his poise, he scowled and demanded: “Here again?”
I carefully closed the office door before I spoke. I was furious, and I didn’t care if Mr. Pim knew it.
“Mr. Pim, kindly explain what you are doing in my father’s safe.”
“Looking for information about the bootleg expose.”
“A story you emphatically claimed the Examiner should suppress.”
“That’s neither here nor there.” A deep flush had crept over Pim’s cheeks, but his manner remained cavalier. “As e
ditor, I have a right to know what’s going on.”
“Who gave you permission to open the safe?”
“You forget that I am editor here, Miss Fielding.”
“I’ve certainly been reminded of it enough times,” I said. “How did you learn the combination?”
“Mr. Fielding left it with me in case of emergency.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “He expressly told me just the day before he went missing that he’d shared the combination with no one. You saw the numbers written under my father’s desk.”
Mr. Pim did not deny the charge. Turning his back, he started to remove a rubber band from a small stack of yellowed letters. The act infuriated me.
I recognized the packet. Decades ago, during their courtship, those letters had been written by my own mother, and Dad had treasured them, rereading them countless times as he mourned her loss.
“Don’t you touch those!” I cried, darting forward. “They’re personal.”
I snatched the letters from Mr. Pim, then gathered up the other papers and envelopes from the floor. Thrusting everything back into the safe, I closed and locked the door.
“You’re through here!” I said, facing him with blazing eyes. “Do you understand? I’m discharging you.”
Mr. Pim looked stunned. Then he laughed unpleasantly.
“You are discharging me?” he mocked. “By what right, may I ask?”
“This is my father’s plant.”
“Which doesn’t necessarily make you the editor or the owner, Miss Fielding. If your father proves to be dead, the court will step in—”
“Get out!” I screamed, fighting to keep back the tears. “You don’t care about my father or the newspaper. You don’t care about anything but your own selfish interests!”
“Now you’re hysterical.”
I did sound hysterical, so I moderated my tone and said quietly, “I meant every word I just what I said. Please go.”
Pim smiled grimly and seated himself at my father’s desk.
“I remain as editor here,” he announced. “If you wish to contest my right, take your case to court. In the meantime, keep out of my private office.”
Chapter Ten
Close to tears, I stumbled out of Jonathon Pim’s office. As I paused just beyond the closed door, every eye in the newsroom focused upon me.
Jack, who’d evidently returned while I was in contentious conference with Mr. Pim, left his desk and took me by the arms.
Shep Murphy, camera box slung over his shoulder, shook his fist at the closed door of the office containing the odious Mr. Pim.
“Jane, we all heard that row,” Jack said.
“If you say the word, we’ll walk out of here in a body,” Shep told me.
“That would do no good,” I said. “The paper must still go out.”
“We’re through taking orders from Pim!” Shep went on, raising his voice and turning to address the newsroom. “He always has been a pain in the neck, and now that he has authority, there’s no holding him down. How about it, boys?”
A chorus of approval greeted his words.
“I’m sure Dad would want everyone to carry on,” I said evenly. “The paper must be published the same as always. We can’t let my father return to find his life’s work has been ruined in a matter of days.”
“We could all do our work and do it well if Pim would just leave us alone,” growled one of the copy readers.
“That’s right,” another copy reader chimed in. “Why don’t you take over, Mrs. Carter?”
“The truth is, we’d get along much better without interference from his kind,” said Bill Evans, the sports reporter. “We all know how to do our jobs.”
“Mr. Pim just reminded me that I’m not the editor,” I said, my voice shaking. ”Besides, I know nothing about running a newspaper.”
“You did all right running Carter’s All-Story Weekly.” Jack reminded me. “Don’t try to tell us you don’t know how to run a newspaper.”
“Putting out a story paper once a week and issuing multiple editions of the Examiner multiple seven days a week are two different propositions.”
“But your father has a fine organization here,” Shep argued. “If Pim can be kept from breaking it up, everything will go along. The boys all know what they are doing.”
“I don’t see how I could take over, much as I would like to do it. Pim has staked out rights in my father’s office, and nothing will move him short of a court order.”
“You don’t need a fancy office to run a paper,” Shep grinned. “We’ll just take our orders from you. Pim can sit tight in there until he’s had enough of it.”
I looked out over the loyal faces populating the newsroom. Nearly all of the newspaper staff were old employees, personally trained by my father and Mr. DeWitt. I knew I could depend on them.
“I’ll do it,” I announced. “As your new editor, I wish to issue my first order. Please, let’s not publish any more sensational stories about my father’s disappearance.”
“Okay, Chief,” grinned one of the deskmen. “That suits us just fine.”
I was given a seat of honor at the slot of the circular copy desk. There I was able to read and pass upon every story that flowed from the typewriters of the various reporters. With the courteous help of one of the deskmen, I remade the front page of the noon edition. A particularly sensational story about the still-missing Mr. Anthony Fielding, prepared earlier in the day, was promptly “busted.”
I found my new duties surprisingly easy. It was astonishing how much I had learned over the years about the workings of a newspaper plant. At different times I had served as reporter, society editor, and special feature writer. As for the editorial policy of the Examiner, I was thoroughly familiar with it, for my father frequently aired his views at home.
Shortly after the noon edition rolled from the press, the buzzer in Mr. Pim’s office sounded. My father’s private secretary, who was now my private secretary, did not answer it. The buzzer kept on for nearly five minutes. Then the door was flung open.
“What the blazes is the matter with everyone?” Pim shouted.
His gaze fastened upon me at the copy desk.
“Meet our new editor, Mr. Pim,” said Shep, who had that moment come out of the camera room.
Pim ignored me. Snatching up one of the noon editions, still fresh with wet ink, he glanced at the front page. His eyes flashed.
“Eckert,” he said to the head copy man, “come into my office. I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Eckert meekly, but he made no move to follow Pim into the adjoining room.
Soon Pim came storming back out to learn what was wrong. This time his expression was baffled.
“Mr. Eckert,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “Will you please step into my office?”
“Sorry,” replied the copy reader. “You may as well know right now that you’re no longer giving the orders around here.”
“We’ll see about that,” cried Pim.
Darting to one of the speaking tubes, he called the foreman of the pressroom.
“Pim speaking,” he said curtly. “Stop the presses! Kill that noon edition! We’re making over the front page.”
“Can’t hear you,” was the reply, for word had been passed to the men in the pressroom. “You’ll have to speak louder.”
Pim shouted until he was nearly hoarse. Then, suddenly conscious that he was making a spectacle of himself, he slammed into his office. A minute later, he reappeared, hat jammed low over his eyes.
“This is a very clever scheme, Miss Fielding,” he said, jabbing his finger inches from my face. “Well, it won’t work. I’m leaving, but I’ll be back. With a lawyer!”
He strode from the newsroom, slamming the door so hard the glass rattled.
“Don’t worry about that putrid old egg,” Jack advised me. “He’s mostly bluff.”
“I think he does mean to get a court order,” I said.
&nb
sp; “He may try,” Shep shrugged. “But we can handle him.”
Following Pim’s departure, everything moved smoothly along at the Examiner plant. I stayed busy, but not so busy that it kept worry and doubt at bay. Nevertheless, everyone made the way as easy as possible for me, and as the day wore on, I gained confidence that we could collectively continue to issue the paper on time, even in the absence of an experienced editor. The boys were so good at their jobs, the truth was I was little more than a figurehead to keep the odious Pim at bay.
Throughout the afternoon, news stories kept pouring in, but no word of my father. Several times I called the police station.
After lunch, I called home to Mrs. Timms. The housekeeper, fearful that I would become ill—and doubtless in need of activity to divert her worried mind—insisted upon bringing a hot evening meal to the office.
“Jane, you’ve been here all day,” she chided anxiously. “You must come home with me.”
“I can’t just yet,” I told her. “There’s too much to do. By tomorrow, if Pim doesn’t make trouble, things will smooth out, and I’ll be able to slow down.”
“You’re working so hard you’ll be sick abed.”
“I want to work,” I said grimly. “It keeps me from thinking. Anyway, Dad would want me to do it.”
Mrs. Timms sighed as she gathered up the lunch basket and thermos bottle. I’d barely tasted the black pepper stuffed chicken. Even the slice of chocolate pie, my favorite, had gone untouched.
“When will you be home?” Mrs. Timms asked me.
“I can’t say exactly. After the night editions are out. Don’t sit up for me.”
“You know I couldn’t go to bed until you are back,” Mrs. Timms responded. “Jack will bring you home?”
“I’m sure he will,” I told Mrs. Timms, ”and if he can’t, I’ll get a taxi home.”
After Mrs. Timms had gone, I plunged into my duties once more. I wrote headlines, copy-read stories, and passed on all matters of policy. I suspected that I was being given things to do just to keep my mind occupied. The boys in the newsroom kept me so busy that by the time Jack suggested that he drive me home, it was eleven-thirty.
The Jane Carter Historical Cozies Box Set 2 Page 51