Helen in the Editor's Chair

  E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan, and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)

  HELEN IN THE EDITOR'S CHAIR

  by

  RUTHE S. WHEELER

  The Goldsmith Publishing CompanyChicago

  Copyright, 1932The Goldsmith Publishing CompanyMade in U. S. A.

  CHAPTER CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I. The Weekly Herald. 13 II. Startling News. 22 III. In The Editor's Chair. 34 IV. Through the Storm. 50 V. Reporting Plus. 62 VI. A New Week Dawns. 75 VII. The First Issue. 93 VIII. Mystery in the Night. 111 IX. Rescue on Lake Dubar. 124 X. Behind the Footlights. 139 XI. New Plans. 160 XII. Special Assignment. 177 XIII. Helen's Exclusive Story. 195 XIV. The Queen's Last Trip. 209 XV. Success Attends. 225

  Helen in the Editor's Chair

  CHAPTER I _The Weekly Herald_

  Thursday!

  Press day!

  Helen Blair anxiously watched the clock on the wall of the assembly room.Five more minutes and school would be dismissed for the day. How thoseminutes dragged. She moved her books impatiently.

  Finally the dismissal bell sounded. Helen straightened the books in herdesk and, with the 162 others in the large assembly of the Rolfe HighSchool, rose and marched down to the cloak room. She was glad that schoolwas over for, to her, Thursday was the big day of the week.

  Press day!

  What magic lay in those two words.

  By supper time the _Rolfe Herald_ would be in every home in town and,when families sat down to their evening meal, they would have the paperbeside them.

  Helen's father, Hugh Blair, was the editor and publisher of the _Herald_.Her brother, Tom, a junior in high school, wrote part of the news andoperated the Linotype, while Helen helped in the office every night afterschool and on Saturdays.

  On Thursday her work comprised folding the papers as they came off theclanking press. Her arms ached long before her task was done, but sheprided herself on the neatness of the stacks of papers that grew as sheworked.

  "Aren't you going to stay for the final sophomore debate tryouts?" askedMargaret Stevens. Margaret, daughter of the only doctor in Rolfe, livedacross the street from the Blairs.

  "Not this afternoon," smiled Helen, "this is press day."

  "I'd forgotten," laughed Margaret. "All right, hurry along and get yourhands covered with ink."

  "Come over after supper and tell me about the tryouts," said Helen.

  "I will," promised Margaret as she turned to the classroom where thetryouts were to be held.

  The air was warm and Helen, with her spring coat over her arm, hurriedfrom the high school building and started down the long hill that led tothe main street.

  Rolfe was a pretty midwestern village tucked away among the hillsbordering Lake Dubar, a long, narrow body of water that attracted summervisitors from hundreds of miles away.

  The main street, built along a valley that opened out on the lake shore,was a broad, graveled street, flanked by a miscellaneous collection ofstores and shops. Some of them were of weather-beaten red brick, otherswere of frame and a few of them, harking back to pioneer days, had falsefronts. In the afternoon sun, it presented a quiet, friendly scene.

  Helen reached the foot of the school house hill and turned on to the mainstreet. On the right of the street and just two blocks from the lakeshore stood the one-story frame structure housing the postoffice and herfather's printing plant. The postoffice occupied the front half of thebuilding and the _Herald_ office was the rear.

  Helen walked down the alleyway between the postoffice and the Templefurniture store. She heard the noise of the press before she reached theoffice and knew that her father had started the afternoon run.

  The _Herald_, an eight page paper, used four pages of ready print andfour pages of home print. Each week's supply of paper was shipped fromCranston, where four pages filled with prepared news and pictures, wereprinted. The other four, carrying local advertisements and news of Rolfeand vicinity were printed on the aged press in the _Herald_ office.

  Helen hurried up the three steps leading to the editorial office. Its oneunwashed window shut out the sunlight, and the office lay in asemi-shadow. Unable to see clearly after the brightness of the sunlight,she did not see her father at his desk when she entered the office.

  "Hello, Dad," she called as she took off her tam and sailed it along thecounter where it finally came to rest against a stack of freshly printed_Heralds_.

  Her father did not answer and Helen was on the point of going on into thecomposing room when she turned toward him. His head still rested on hisarms and he gave no sign of having heard her.

  Concerned over his silence, she hurried to his desk.

  "Dad, Dad!" she cried. "What's the matter! Answer me!"

  Her father's head moved and he looked up at her. His face was pale andthere were dark hollows under his eyes.

  "I'm all right, Helen," he said, but the usual smile was missing. "Justfelt a little faint and came in here to take a few minutes rest. I'll beall right shortly. You go on and help Tom. I'll be with you in a while."

  "But if you don't feel well, Dad, you'd better go home and rest,"insisted Helen. "You know Tom and I can finish getting out the paper. Nowyou run along and don't worry about things at the office."

  She reached for his hat and coat hanging on a hook at one side of thedesk. He remonstrated at the prospect of going home with the work onlyhalf done, but Helen was adamant and her father finally gave in.

  "Perhaps it will be best," he agreed as he walked slowly toward the door.

  Helen watched him descend the steps; then saw him reach the street andturn toward home.

  She was startled by the expression she had just seen on her father'sface. He had never been particularly robust and now he looked as thoughsomething had come upon him which was crushing his mind and body.Illness, worry and apprehension had carved lines in his face thatafternoon.

  Helen went into the composing room where the Linotype, the rows of typecases, the makeup tables, the job press and the newspaper press werelocated. At the back end of the room was the large press, moving steadilyback and forth as Tom, perched on a high stool, fed sheets of paper intoone end. From the other came the freshly printed papers of that week'sedition of the _Herald_.

  "Shut off the press," called Helen, shouting to make herself heard abovethe noise of the working machinery.

  "What say?" cried Tom.

  "Shut it off," his sister replied.

  Tom scowled as he reached for the clutch to stop the press. He likednothing better than running the press and when he had it well under way,usually printed the whole edition without a stop unless the paper becameclogged or he had to readjust the ink rollers.

  "What's the idea?" he demanded. "I'm trying to get through so I can playsome baseball before dark."

  "Dad's sick," explained Helen, "and I made him go home. Do you knowwhat's the matter?"

  "Gosh, no," said Tom as he climbed down from his stool. "He wasn'tfeeling very well when I came down from school and said he was going inthe office to rest, but I didn't know he felt that badly."

  "Well, he did," replied Hele
n, "and I'm worried about him."

  "We always take him more or less for granted. He goes on year after yearworking in the office, getting enough together to make us all comfortableand hoping that he can send us to college some day. We help him when wecan, but he plugs away day after day and I've noticed lately that hehasn't been very perky. Mother has been worried, too. I can tell from theway she acts when Dad comes home at night. She's always asking him how hefeels and urging him to get to bed early. I tell you, Tom, something'swrong with Dad and we've got to find out and help him."

  "Let's go get Doctor Stevens right now," said the impetuous Tom, and hereached to shut off the motor of the press.

  "Not now," said Helen. "If Dad thought we weren't getting the paper outon time he'd worry all the more. We'll finish the paper and then haveDoctor Stevens come over this evening. We can fix it so he'll just dropin for a social call."

  "Good idea," said Tom as he climbed back on his stool and threw in theclutch.

  The press started its steady clanking and Helen picked up a pile ofpapers and spread them out on one of the makeup stones. Her father hadprinted two of the pages of home news during the morning and these sheetswere stacked in a pile in one corner. She arranged two piles of papers onthe makeup table, one pile which her father had printed and one of paperswhich were coming off the press as fast as Tom could keep it rolling.

  Helen put on a heavy, blue-denim apron to protect her school dress andwent to work. With nimble hands she put the sheets of paper together,folded them with a quick motion and slid the completed paper off thetable and onto a box placed close by for that purpose.

  The press, of unknown vintage, moved slowly and when Helen started at thesame time as Tom she could fold the papers as rapidly as they wereprinted. But that day Tom, who had managed to be excused half an hourearly, had too much of a start and when he finished the press run Helenstill had several hundred papers to fold.

  Tom stopped the press, shut off the motor, raised the ink rollers andthen pulled the forms off the press and carried them to the other makeuptable. After washing the ink off the type with a gasoline-soaked rag, hegathered an armful of papers Helen had folded and carried them into theeditorial office. There he got out the long galleys which held the namesof the subscribers. He inked each galley, placed it in the mailingmachine, and then fed the papers into the mailer. They came out with thename of a subscriber printed at the top of each paper.

  The young Blairs worked silently, hastening to complete their respectivetasks so they could hurry home. Tom had forgotten his plans to playbaseball and all thought of the outcome of the debate tryouts had leftHelen's mind. There was one thought uppermost in their minds. What wasthe matter with their father?