Joe Carlin “hung up his hat” in the radio department of the Everts-Hall Agency.

“Joe,” Tony Vaux said jovially, “I hope you won’t find the job dull. Over here we try to stay sane.”

Joe read this as a good-natured crack at Vic Wylie.

“How is Vic?” Tony boomed. “Still carrying fifty pounds of steam? They tell me a Vic Wylie rehearsal’s an endurance contest.”

Joe grinned in affectionate remembrance.

“I wonder how long Vic would keep that up if he had to pay rehearsal time?”

Joe had an idea that Vic, with a passion for perfection, would still seek perfection. “No producer around here pays rehearsal time,” he pointed out.

Tony chuckled. “Vic should be glad of that; he’d go broke. Besides, Vic’s a free agent; we’re salaried employees. We have just so many hours to spend on a show. If Vic doesn’t like a show he won’t touch it; over here, all we can do is try to steer a client away from a bad egg. If he still wants the egg, we have to produce it. If we were right and it turns out to be a bad egg, he insists that it’s our fault, that we gave him a bad show. You’ll get to know all about eggs over here, Joe; we walk on them all day long. We try to smooth the sponsor, we try to smooth Everts-Hall, we try to smooth the script-writer and the cast. Sometimes it takes some doing.”

“The most miles to the gallon of pleasant gas,” said Joe.

Tony glanced at him sharply. “You might call it that. Did you know Mrs. Munson helped Amby Carver to hook himself a job with her husband?”

“Did Amby get it?” This was news to Joe. “Is that a warning?”

“Now, now, Joe.” Tony spread placating hands. “We have to remember that he has Munson’s ear. Temporarily, anyway. Munson doesn’t really want him, and, some fine day, Munson’ll toss him out. But while he’s there, he’s there. Hold down the fort and remember your eggs. When in doubt, tread softly. I’ll be at FKIP until eleven.”

A literary agent arrived with a platter, and another platter came by express. “The show radio’s been waiting for,” the agent assured Joe earnestly. “Tell Tony to move fast if he wants an option.” A boy laid mail on Tony’s desk, and in the mail were three scripts. The scripts were accompanied by letters; each letter claimed that here was the show for which radio had been panting. The platters would have to be indexed and auditioned, the scripts would have to be indexed and read. An Everts-Hall account executive demanded to know when Tony would return. Joe began to understand why the ruddy, genial producer could give only so much time, and no more, to a show.

Curt Lake brought in a week’s run of Sue Davis script.

“I thought you gave these to Vic,” Joe said.

“Carbons. Reading copies. Everybody reads—agency, sponsor, producer. Sometimes I think they call in a traffic cop. Anybody may throw a red flag and then you may have to rewrite. Munson never used to bother with script, but now he has a public relations radio counsel—Mr. Carver. When Vic goes into rehearsal, he’s using script with a production O.K.”

“Do you do much rewriting?” Joe was thinking of a Thomas Carlin Presents script that would never be rewritten.

“Some,” Curt said dryly.

Ten minutes later the telephone rang. “Mr. Carver,” said the girl outside.

Amby had blossomed. His cane gleamed with a brilliant polish and his spidery mustache had taken on the elegance of waxed, pin-point tips. “Joe, my boy, congratulations.” The little man was bursting with effusive cordiality, but his eyes were shifty and apprehensive. “I’m delighted. Absolutely. I had the word a week ago you were slated to come in here with Tony.”

Joe took that with an inward hoot.

“Tony and I are great pals, Joe—like that.” Two of Amby’s fingers hooked together to indicate a close relationship. “Did you get a boost? Amby Carver’s telling you you did. Didn’t I bring you into radio? Didn’t I get you your start? I went down the line, all the way.”

Amby was an open book. A future producer might some day prove valuable. But Joe had been given his cue. In this shop you smoothed everybody.

“Thanks, Amby. That was nice of you.”

“Does Amby Carver ever forget a pal? Didn’t I tell you you’d some day know you had me wrong?” Mr. Munson’s public relations radio counsel was no longer apprehensive. “I’ve brought back some Sue Davis script,” he said pompously, “without my approval. Get a load of how I’m changing this show, Joe. Sue gets typhoid. She doesn’t feel so good, but she’s around. While she’s alone and getting delirious, she signs for Tice. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Will she lose the house? Suspense. Will she get better? Big suspense. Dick has to fight Tice in court to get the property back. More suspense. It’s colossal.”

“Where’s Dick getting the money for a lawyer?” Joe asked.

“That’s a detail for Curt to handle,” Amby said loftily. “He writes the show. I want to see new script by Friday.” He added, as he left: “We must have lunch together some day.”

Tony Vaux’s voice boomed in the reception-room, and his step volleyed in the corridor.

“Anything stirring, Joe?”

“Amby Carver changing Sue Davis.”

Tony chuckled. “Yeah? Wait until Curt hears that.” He picked the script from the desk and, as he read, he began to choke. “Typhoid? The fat-headed lug! Can’t you see it coming, Joe? He’ll have a doctor fall in love with Sue.” Tony held his sides and howled. “Typhoid! It’s a four-star final; it’s a panic. What wouldn’t I give to show this to Curt?”

“Won’t you?”

“Curt?” Tony pulled out a handkerchief and mopped a face that had begun to mottle. “He’d run out without his hat and try to pull Amby through a key-hole. No, no, Joe. This is where we do a smooth job with our eggs.” He called Amby at the Munson store.

Joe heard the rasp of a briskly important voice: “Good morning. This is the public-relations-radio office. Mr. Carver speaking.”

Tony boomed genially. “Hello, Amby. Boy, how do you think of them? Good? It’s a natural. How do you think of them? You ought to be writing script. You come up with ideas in each hand and every idea’s a honey. But look, Amby. Isn’t this too good to waste? I mean, if it’s used now— Sure; that’s the point. We should build up to it; set the stage for a big smash. You were thinking of that? You’re absolutely right, Amby. Your idea, then, is to put it on ice for two or three weeks? Great. Couldn’t be better.” Tony put down the telephone.

“What do we do when he starts looking for typhoid?” Joe asked.

“In three weeks,” Tony chuckled, “he’ll think up a new brilliant and forget this one.”

The account executive came back seeking data for an Everts-Hall client, a soap manufacturer, who might make a cautious test of radio advertising in this area. “He doesn’t want to spend any too much, Tony.”

“They never do,” Tony boomed and brought out platters. Joe listened to show after show until it seemed that the world must be full of unsold radio shows.

“How about a spot?” the executive asked.

“FKIP’s open at 4:15.” Tony brought out the Crosley ratings and there was absorbed discussion of the competition the 4:15 spot faced and of the ratings of the competing shows.

Joe ate a hurried sandwich at a drug-store counter. This was the part of show business hidden from the public. Show business behind the scenes, the inside stuff.

An actress and an actor named Mander were in the office with Tony when Joe got back. Mander told a story and told it well. Tony threw back his head and roared.

“Folks,” he said, “here’s where I move along.” The actress went out with him. Their voices drifted back from the corridor.

Mander waited until they were gone. “Got a half-dollar that isn’t working, Joe?” he asked quietly.

Joe dug into his pocket. The bread-and-butter hunt had followed him to the Everts-Hall Agency.

“Dennis is making another Mr. America show,” Mander said. “He’s calling me in. They expect to sell the show.”

Joe thought: “They’re always expecting to sell a show—to-morrow.” The day ran on, and in the late afternoon he tuned Tony’s radio for Bush-League Larry.

Sonny Baker, as a brash, hot-headed young man beginning to make his mark in professional baseball, gave a good, clear-cut performance. But what, Joe asked himself in dismay, had happened to Pop Bartell? When Tony had been putting the show together for the He people Pop had been superb—mellowly in character. To-day he was jerky and uncertain as though he were having trouble with his lines. What was it, the old trouble? Was Pop still trying to maintain a false front of youth and refusing to wear glasses?

Tony was beaming when he returned from FFOM. Bush-League Larry was clicking; he’d been told the Journal was giving the show a nice notice to-morrow. Joe, ready to start for home, lingered.

“Is this a regular stop on the rounds, Tony?” He had never made any of the agencies a stop.

“A small stop,” said Tony. “If we have a show coming up, we become a big stop.”

“That 4:15 spot—Dennis is cutting a platter.”

“That’s off, Joe. He’s filling with studio music.”

So Mander would not be called in. Why, Joe wondered as he walked toward the bus line, should the thought of Mander stay with him? He’d handed out money to show people before. And as for Pop, he was probably all wet on that. Hadn’t Tony said the show was clicking? Pop, reading with him, had sounded swell; Pop coming out of a speaker sounded corny. Perhaps there was no difference at all. Perhaps you merely heard the same performance from different angles.

As the days passed, the range of Tony Vaux’s activities amazed him. The booming, jovial producer had a Thursday night quiz show, Time To Remember, a Sunday night musical-variety with guest stars, Bush-League Larry three times a week, and the Sue Davis five-a-week which had to be watched. And then there were agency clients who might go on the air if they could find the right show, and clients the agency thought should go on the air—and the spot announcements. This week there were seventy-eight spots. A girl sat before a radio in a small room off Tony’s office and checked a sheet as she tuned from station to station and caught the spots. “Worth, the House of Watches, brings you the correct time. It is now—” or it might be “Young’s, where your foot always meets a friendly shoe—” The skill with which these spots were shuffled, juggled, spaced through the day was almost uncanny. But it all took care, and thought, and time, which was another reason why Tony was limited on how much he could give a show.

“How’s the job going?” Tom Carlin asked.

“I like it,” said Joe. To-morrow they’d be playing platters for three different clients. Tony Vaux called it “trotting out the drama.”

It was mad, this business of trotting out the drama—as mad and as unpredictable as a Vic Wylie rehearsal. Perhaps the client wanted comedy, and you played him every comedy platter you had. Then he decided he didn’t want comedy after all: how about romance and heart throb? Or perhaps you took out a forgotten turkey that had been gathering dust for two years, and the client became rapt. That didn’t mean the show was sold. For every show sold you had thirty you figured would sell, or hoped would sell, or slowly gave up hope of selling. Sometimes a client heard a platter and brought back officials of his company and kept bringing them back. Finally he’d go out shouting a rave, and you’d think the show was a sure sell for to-morrow morning—and that was the last you ever heard about it. And sometimes a client heard a platter, and liked it, and bought it. Actually bought it at once.

That’s what happened with the soap manufacturer. He heard three platters and the third was Poisoned Fangs. Next day he returned with a delegation, and the platter was played four times. The following morning the contract was signed.

“Joe,” Tony said genially, “I was ready to ship that platter back. We never know.”

“Nobody?” Joe demanded. Radio was a mad turmoil, but somebody ought to know.

“Who?” Tony chuckled. “The boys in big time? We guess and they guess. Amos ’n’ Andy were on sustaining. The station decided the show wasn’t getting a tumble and took it off. Then came a flood of telephone calls and letters. On the strength of listener response Amos ’n’ Andy went back and found a sponsor. They’ve had a sponsor ever since.”

Another platter came in and Joe put it away. Platters and scripts, casts and producers, sustaining shows and sponsored shows, the bread-and-butter hunt—it was all mad. When a show came in to be sold, you never knew what you’d sell. Vic Wylie, with a live cast, had sold Munson what radio calls “a package”—production, script, and cast. The whole show. But on Poisoned Fangs the sponsor was buying only script. Tony would select a new cast and make his own production.

“My first agency show from the beginning,” Joe told himself, and was on fire to see production start.

No announcement of a new show was made; no hint of a new show appeared in the radio column of the Journal. But almost overnight show people made Tony’s office a big stop on the rounds.

Laughter, bursts of gaiety, lightened the heavy boom of Tony’s voice. Show people strolled in leisurely, singly and in pairs. Nobody was in a hurry, nobody asked about the new show, nobody spoke about a part. This might have been John Dennis’ office at FKIP the first day Joe had made the rounds. Bright, sparkling gags. This was a sponsored show; this show was going to pay money. Sometimes the laughter was a little too eager and too high.

Joe laughed with them. These gatherings of show people were grand if—he tried not to look at an actress who kept moistening her rouged lips—if you could forget that you’d been through it, if you could forget the courage often required to maintain a front, if you could forget the raw anxiety behind the mask of gay drollery. Laughter began to hurt.

Mander cocked his hat to one side, did an intricate little step, and departed alone. But at the door he paused and, glancing back, caught Joe’s eye significantly. Joe, exploring a pocket for a half-dollar, joined him.

Mander wasn’t thinking of money. “What show is this?” he asked hurriedly.

Joe thought: “I’m a kid in this game; he doesn’t think it necessary to front me.” He said: “Drama. Poisoned Fangs. Four characters.”

“Any comedy?”

“A pop-off. Comedy relief.”

“Thanks, Joe; thanks a million.” Somebody else was coming out and Mander went quickly toward the elevators.

Next day there was another parade of light-hearted gaiety, a new stock of bright gags. “Did you hear this one, Tony—” But to-day tension was tighter; it would be tighter to-morrow and still tighter the day after that. There would be more and more laughter.

Laughter, Joe thought bitterly, was tragedy, a fake. The closer they came to the hour the call would go out to audition, the more gaily they’d laugh, the more spectacularly they’d wear a front of cheerful vivacity. Tony had to be out for an hour in the afternoon, and he met them alone. His smile, answering theirs, became fixed, wooden. When Tony came back he disappeared into the little room where a girl checked spot announcements.

“They seem to be awfully happy,” the girl said enviously.

“They seem to be,” Joe agreed.

He knew better. And suddenly he knew why Mander, borrowing fifty cents, had given him a wrench, and why making the rounds after he was out of Sue Davis had depressed him. All the glamour was worn thin, and now the tarnish showed. He couldn’t take it. Not this way. Not through the peep-hole on show business that was called a producer’s office. He knew why that was, too.

Making the rounds, he had had only fleeting glimpses. He had been a part of the tide, meeting it as it passed and meeting it in fragments. But here the whole tide came at him at once and overwhelmed him. The laughter and the gay talk became vapor. All he could see was the feverishness of hope, the sharp thorns of anxiety and uncertainty. And they were such fine people, so buoyant and so brave on so little. Small-time radio! Dreaming a dream that could never come true. Or, if it did come true, it would be for only a few.

“Joe,” Tony boomed. He had to go out. “The blue slip,” said Tony, and handed him script. The blue slip was the Everts-Hall rejection slip.

Mander sauntered in, his hat on the back of his head and his shoulders swaying. “Tony, wait until you get this. I’m in a restaurant for a spot of lunch and there’s an I Am boy at the next table. I’ll give him to you.” Without make-up or props, Mander gave an impersonation of a pop-off. He made it a cameo, a sharply-etched portrait of a living character. He was good.

Tony looked at him thoughtfully.

Joe thought: “He must have rehearsed that for hours.” The bread-and-butter hunt!

Next day was Bush-League Larry day. With Tony producing the show at FFOM, Joe again had to meet the gay crowd alone. He tried to rise to it, to meet them smile for smile. He knew some stories, too. But Tony wasn’t there, and the fever of anxiety made them restless. They didn’t stay long. “Tell Tony I was in, Joe, will you?” Joe had a stock reply. “Too bad you can’t wait.” He knew they wouldn’t wait and spend unprofitable time with him. He wasn’t Tony; he wasn’t casting this show. He saw the last of the crowd leave and felt tired, weary.

“All gone?” Tony boomed on his arrival. “I thought they’d still be waiting. What a day! Thank God we don’t have a new show come up every month.” He took a cigar from his pocket and studied the boy. “You don’t like it, Joe, do you?”

“No,” said Joe.

Tony’s voice had changed. “You get used to it. It’s the system; it’s show business. Will they feel any better if we slam the door on them and lock them out? Anyway, we’re not guilty of sustaining. When we put on a show we have a paid cast.”

Joe said slowly: “How long before you’re used to it?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said in that same changed voice. “I’ve been here only five years.” He went to his desk, wrote for a while, and swung around with a paper in his hands. “Last year I laid out more than four hundred dollars in small loans. Most of it’s gone for good. How are they going to pay back? Where are they going to get it?” He held out the paper. “Call these people in, Joe. We’ll start to audition.”

Joe, sitting at a telephone, went down the list of calls. Mander at ten to-morrow morning, somebody else at eleven, somebody else at noon. The list ran two and one-half days. Fourteen actors and actresses coming in—and only four parts. Waiting for a number to answer, he thought of Tony with a stir of emotion. This Tony who boomed and glad-handed wasn’t the real Tony at all. The boom and the glad hand were front. The real Tony was as soft-hearted as brooding Vic Wylie.

Mander arrived next morning at ten sharp. Joe thought: “He’s dressed for the part.” Mander wore a shriekingly loud tie, an exaggerated high collar, and shoes glaringly yellow. Did this trick of dressing like a small-town wise guy add anything to a reading? Joe wondered.

“Greetings,” Tony boomed. “Waiting for you.”

“Considering what you’re going to get,” Mander popped off, “you should have stayed awake all night.” He looked toward Joe and made a blithe motion with one hand. “A little music, Professor.”

Tony, chewing a cigar, mumbled cues, and Mander read.

And, while the reading went on, the elevators were bringing show people to the reception-room, and the girl at the desk was telling them that Tony was busy. That was all they had to be told—they went away. Soon the news would spread up and down Royal Street that the Tony Vaux show was cast. By late afternoon the Everts-Hall Agency would no longer be a big stop.

The reading ended. Tony lit a fresh cigar.

“Let me hear it again, Frank.”

A fine dew of sweat appeared on Mander’s forehead.

“A little too much steam,” Tony said when the second reading was finished. “Now, now.” Fat hands spread out in a placating gesture. “Not bad; not bad at all, Frank. But I’m thinking of the other characters. They’re tense with drama. If you give me high comedy I get too much contrast. No belly laughs, just chuckles. Take it from ‘I don’t mean I’m the best in the world—’ Page four.”

There was only a hair-line of change in Mander’s reading, but the part shaded into an entirely different part. This was what Wylie meant by a producer touching the strings and producing vibrations. But to give these vibrations, an actor had to be an actor.

Tony beamed; Tony’s cigar moved from one side of his mouth to the other. “A nice reading,” he said genially. “It’s your part, Frank.”

The dew was gone from Mander’s forehead. “How about a twenty-five dollar advance, Tony? I’m in to my landlady for six weeks. The old girl’s getting peeved.”

Tony chewed the cigar. “The office is starting to get tough on advances. Can’t you tell her you’re working?”

“I’m afraid,” Mander said lightly, “she’s heard that one before.”

Tony wrote an order on the cashier. Mander, passing out, was a new man. Pop Bartell had been a new man on two borrowed dollars.

One by one actors and actresses came in to read. Joe found this harder to bear than the parade of show people making the rounds. On the rounds they accepted the possibility of long, idle periods, but now everything was crystallized into a single effort. A part in a sponsored show that paid real money was won or lost in a single hour, perhaps in the reading of a single line. They laughed and jested, but the smiles trembled under the heightened tension of nervousness and strain.

Joe found escape in the little room of spot announcements.

The girl tuned a station, checked her list, and tuned another station. “I’d love to be out there listening, Joe.”

“I guess I’ve gone sour,” said Joe. He hadn’t meant to say that. He was startled.

The afternoon brought quiet. Tony was at FFOM and the last of the Poisoned Fangs auditions would be held to-morrow. It seemed to Joe that it was weeks since he had heard Bush-League Larry. With the office echoing with laughter and gag the radio had not been touched. He tuned in FFOM and waited for the show to come on.

His mind wandered. Archie Munn and Lucille Borden. He never heard Lu’s show any more. Amby Carver and Sonny Baker. He hadn’t seen Sonny since the afternoon of Lu’s premier. Tony rehearsed at the studio and paid off at the studio; the cast never came to the office. Amby had fawned, but Sonny would have remained unchanged. Sonny would always be the whole world to Sonny. Vic Wylie telling him he couldn’t act....

He stiffened. Bush-League Larry was on. Good Lord, could that be Pop Bartell?

It was Pop. But this was a Pop who murdered lines, who fumbled, who didn’t seem to know what to say or how to say it. Character? There was no character. Any ham could have read the part better. Joe shuddered and turned a knob quickly. The office was silent. What, he wondered bleakly, had become of the grand old trouper who needed only a word of suggestion to tinge a part with a new color and new harmonies?

Tony Vaux came back from FFOM an hour past his usual time. To-day no booming greeting to the girl at the reception-desk announced his arrival. “I thought you’d be gone, Joe.” He took some papers from his pocket and, preoccupied, tapped them against the other hand.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Joe said. “I heard the show—part of it. Why don’t you make Pop wear glasses?”

“It’s not glasses, Joe. He’s been wearing glasses before the mike since the show went on the air.”

“What is it then?”

“Sonny’s pulling his old trick of stealing the show. Pop follows script faithfully. Sonny reads a cue line and Pop starts to come in. But Sonny ad libs an extra line or two and Pop is left floundering. He never knows whether to come in or to wait. Years ago he’d have handled Sonny, but now he’s too old for that kind of rough-and-tumble. He’s cracking wide open. He’s lost. He’s shot.”

Joe trembled. “Are you standing for that, Tony?”

“I’m not Vic Wylie,” Tony said with bitter regret. “Vic answers to nobody but himself. If he wanted to give Sonny the hook, he’d give it to him. I’m a salaried employee. They give me a script; they expect a production. Pop’s a stooge in this show; Sonny’s the star. Suppose I go after Sonny the way Vic did? How long will I have a show? How long before they’ll have me on the carpet inside? Am I a producer? Then what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I produce? That’s the only question they ask. Why don’t I produce a show?”

Stenographers and office clerks were on their way home; an orchestra of feet shuffled and tapped along the corridor leading to the elevators.

“This can’t go on,” Joe cried in protest.

“It isn’t going to go on. The He people caught me at FFOM; I had to get over there at once.” He opened a drawer of his desk and dropped in the paper he had been tapping against his hand. “Pop’s out,” he said roughly.

Joe couldn’t speak.

“Curt must write in a new character and thin Pop’s lines. Thinner and thinner. Friday week he’ll be out of the show. Finished. Call him in for two o’clock to-morrow.”

A one-word hammer beat against Joe’s mind. Even small-time radio would have no place for a veteran who murdered a part. Finished!

He dreaded to-morrow, but to-morrow came. He dreaded the passing of the morning hours, but they passed. Out in the city the noon whistles blew. After that, time was a racing despair.

Youthfully slim and gallant, Pop Bartell was with them. “Good afternoon, Tony. Good afternoon, Joe. A beautiful day.”

Tony did not try to beam. “Pop, I’m afraid I have bad news. The He people want the Larry show jazzed. They think the action’s too slow and want more bang-bang.”

The old trouper took the news without blinking. “Is that definite, Tony?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And you think that’s bad news? Tony, my boy, you’re doing me a favor.” Pop coughed. “A very great favor.”

Joe thought dismally: “Front. He knew this was coming.” The boy’s throat was in a vise.

“Something else will turn up, Pop,” Tony said. “As a matter of fact, we have a platter—”

Joe knew there wasn’t a platter in the cabinet that had a possible old-man part.

“Tut, tut, Tony. Something has turned up.” Pop was actually twinkling. “As a matter of fact, this relieves me from a distressing predicament. I was going to ask you for my release if you could let me go without putting the show in a hole. I have friends in Cleveland and there’s a part coming up. To be exact, it has come up. A character part that’s a lead. Something of a tear-jerker—Sunset of Life. The part’s waiting for me. How soon could I be released?”

“Friday week.”

“This is providential, Tony. They’d like me to be at Cleveland Saturday week. Actually providential.”

Joe’s heart lifted. This couldn’t be front. This was too real, too sincere.

Tony had his hat and coat; Tony was booming again. “Then everything’s jake, Pop? I’m auditioning a specialty for the Sunday night variety. If I’m not back by five, Joe, run along. I’ll be seeing you, Pop.” Tony was gone.

The lift in Joe’s heart became song. “Mr. Bartell, that’s swell.”

“All but the ride to Cleveland,” Pop Bartell said whimsically. “I had ten years of one-night stands, Joe; I could live happily without ever seeing a railroad. In case I don’t get over this way again”—his hand made a sweep—“au revoir, Joe, and lots of good luck.”

“Send me your notices,” Joe said eagerly.

“From what I’ve been told, Joe, this new show should get some nice notices. Some very nice notices.” Youthful and light of step the veteran walked out of the office.

Joe Carlin’s lips were parted in breathless exultation. Kicked out of one show and stepping right into another. Oh, but this was grand! This was one of those moments that paid for the heartache of the bread-and-butter hunt. Without warning the strain of the day took its toll and his nerves were limp and ragged. He went to the cooler, but water was flat. What he needed was a quick pick-up, coffee hot and strong. He went along the corridor through which Tony and Pop had preceded him and paused at the reception-desk. “I’ll be back in five min—” His voice went dead.

Pop Bartell stood near the elevators staring into vacancy.

The mouth of the girl at the desk opened to ask a question and Joe touched her arm for silence.

Abruptly Pop roused from his abstraction and stepped toward the elevators. There was no change in his jaunty, youthful stride. He touched a button. A down light flashed and he moved over toward the indicated door. And then, in the interval of waiting, a quick, sick change took place in him. Suddenly he seemed to shrink and to sag. His coat wrinkled like an old coat across the shoulders, and his head drooped as though there was no longer strength to hold it upright. An elevator stopped, and he entered it with a faltering, uncertain step. All in an instant he was a beaten, broken, hopeless old man.

“What did you say, Mr. Carlin?” the girl asked.

“Nothing,” Joe said hoarsely.

He went back to Tony’s office. So it had been front, the pathetically brave front of show business. Poor old Pop! A languidly contemptuous climber had thrust him aside as a relic, and this is what he came to after forty years of gallant trouping. This was show business. And making the rounds was show business, and washing out your only shirt and hanging it to dry overnight was show business, and Lucille Borden eating out her heart behind a Munson counter was show business. Radio small-time! Hunger and uncertainty!

He sat at Tony’s desk and thought of the day Vic Wylie had told him he’d see things that would make him want to cry. The telephone rang fitfully and he made note of the calls on Tony’s desk pad. A clock whirred the five o’clock signal and Tony had not returned.

Slowly, his lips stiff, Joe took a pen from his pocket, wrote a note, and left it on the desk:

Dear Tony: Pop was fronting; he cracked after he left here. You’ve been swell to me, but this isn’t my game. I’ll be through next Saturday. I’m sorry.

Joe

He pushed back the chair and stood in thought beside the desk. As slowly as he had taken the pen from his pocket he reached for the telephone and called Vic Wylie’s office.

“Will you give Vic a message for me, Miss Robb? We’ve been auditioning a cast and—I guess I can’t take it. Tell him Pop Bartell’s been dropped from the Larry show. I’m throwing up my job.”

Miss Robb was dumfounded. “Tony told us he was pleased with you....”

“I know,” Joe said wearily. “Vic’ll understand.”

Office buildings were emptying, and Royal Street was a packed, shuffling, slow-moving canyon. Joe moved along with the mass until he came to the Thomas Carlin store. It was almost the closing hour, and a lone customer waited for a clerk to wrap a purchase. The lights were on and facets of radiance gleamed from the polished glass of show-cases and the polished wood of shelves. To-day Joe saw the scene with a vision that had been cleaned and washed—its bright cleanliness, its subdued brilliance of display, its subtle breath of pride and courtesy and alertness. The faces of all the clerks—strange that he had never noticed them before: friendly faces that were not merely a friendly front. The lone customer left. “Hi, Joe.” The clerks grinned at him. “Hi, boys.” He grinned at them.

“Some new books came in to-day, Joe,” Mr. Fairchild announced.

“Not now,” said Joe. He added an explanation. “Something on my mind.”

“No!” Mr. Fairchild prodded his ribs. “They’ll toss you out of the Jitterbug Union for that.”

It wasn’t a brilliant gag. As a gag, it would have been scorned by any actor making the rounds. But it was good; it was homey.

The store closed, and Joe walked with his father to the parking lot. The man pushed the key into the ignition lock and reached his foot for the starter button.

“What is it, Joe? Trouble?”

“Not exactly.” Joe was still thinking of Pop Bartell. “I’m through at the agency. I’d like to come into the store.”

Tom Carlin’s foot did not touch the button. Horns honked and cars backed out of symmetrical lines as an attendant directed parking-lot traffic. Silence, brittle and strange, lingered in the Carlin sedan.

“I—I thought you’d be glad,” Joe said uncertainly.

“Is that your reason for telling me?”

The boy was startled. “Don’t you want me?”

Tom Carlin stepped on the button. The attendant waved an arm and he shook his head. The motor idled, warming.

“When you told me you wanted to be an actor,” the man said as though he debated each word, “I let you have your fling. Was there anything else for me to do? I was afraid of making you a round peg in a square hole. You failed as an actor. But you still stayed in show business and turned to production. That’s the rub, Joe.”

“What?” Joe demanded.

“Let me put it this way: After you’d failed—don’t get the idea I’m rubbing that in; as I told you, I made a miserable failure of my first job—had you come to me after that first failure, I’d have welcomed you instantly. A lot of persons change their first desires. I couldn’t ask for a better man than Fairchild; he started out to be a mechanical engineer. But you made show business both your first and second choices. You’ve made the store a very bad third choice. You leave the impression that you’re coming to me now because there’s no place else to go. That doesn’t set so well, Joe.”

Joe’s nerves were raw from a day of chafing, and this disappointment was crushing. “You mean I needn’t come around?”

“I didn’t say that. I’ll have to think this over. I’m trying to see the situation from your angle as well as from my own. What will it benefit you in the long run to use the business as a door of escape? If you come to the store as a place of last resort, you’re still a round peg in a square hole. It might be better for you to get a job on your own and try yourself out in somebody else’s business. For a while, anyway.”

Disappointment and raw nerves united to make the boy stiff with anger. “All right, Dad, if that’s how you want it.”

“That isn’t how I want it,” Tom Carlin said. “That’s how it seems to be.”

They said little more to each other on the ride out to the Northend. But they were talking as they entered the house, and talk was a lively stream around the dinner table. Front, Joe thought, wasn’t confined to show business; you could wear a front at home. The meal over, he found that morning’s Journal and went to his room.

Something that was part of this house worked its spell. His jagged nerves relaxed and anger died in him. He began to see his father’s point of view. He hadn’t been absolutely denied the store; it was simply that his father questioned the wisdom of having him come in now. After all, there was a lot to what his father had said. He had made the store a third choice. He must look like an irresponsible madcap, a harum-scarum who didn’t know his own mind. Well, he’d have to prove himself. He could do that. He’d find an outside job and make good at it. Then, after a year or two ... but a year or two seemed so long.

He opened the Journal and studied the Help Wanted columns. Christmas was approaching and all the large stores along Royal Street were clamoring for packers, sales people, delivery men, and cashiers. He could probably get a seasonal job at half a dozen places; certainly, if you rolled up your sleeves and pitched in, temporary employment might become permanent employment. But he couldn’t, he thought with a fresh pang, get a job with his own father.

There was a tap on the door and Tom Carlin walked in. “Joe, Mother thinks I may have been hasty. Her reactions are usually right. You’ve heard what I have to say, but I haven’t heard your side. Do you mind telling me why you were fired?”

Joe stared. “Fired? I wasn’t fired. What gave you that idea? I quit.”

The man reached for a chair, took a pipe from his pocket, and sat down slowly. “Why did you quit?”

Joe tried to tell him. The story used up a great many words, and he felt that he was telling it badly.

“I might have made a good producer. Vic thought I would and Tony told Vic I was doing well. But if I became a producer I’d always be meeting the sordid side of show business. All I’d see would be men and women wearing an artificial front. They’d make me a big stop when I had a show coming up. They’d stay awake nights planning to catch my attention as Mander caught Tony’s. They’d audition and try to hide how much a part meant to them. I don’t mean there isn’t struggle and uncertainty in every other line, but—oh, show business is different. I’d know too much about small time. I’d see too much: little corners of shabbiness, things that were mean and grubby, fine people trying to hide worry and apprehension behind a front. You get so you hate a front. I’d know they were getting hard knocks to-day and would get the same hard knocks to-morrow. I’d know that probably only one in a thousand would ever make the big time, just as I couldn’t make it and for the same reason. They’re good, but not good enough. Good enough for small time, and sustaining shows that pay no salaries, but only good enough for that. It got under my skin and did something to me. I used to turn on a radio, and listen to a show, and think it was all glamorous; there’s very little glamour in show business when you get behind the scenes. You see too many of the wounds.”

Tom Carlin filled his pipe.

“And then, to-day, Pop Bartell. That finished me. Sooner or later I’d have been finished, anyway. Vic says I feel too much. Maybe he’s right. I’m not sorry I tried show business. If I hadn’t, I’d probably always feel I’d thrown away a chance to see my name up in lights.”

Smoke was a thick cloud around Tom Carlin’s head. “Joe, I apologize for what I said in the car. I didn’t understand.”

“Does what I told you make a difference?”

“All the difference in the world. Instead of being up in lights, your name will some day be on a store window.”

“You mean I’m going into the store—now?”

“Any time you’re ready.”

Joe had never known it was possible to feel so good. “I’ll be ready Monday.”

Tom Carlin knocked ashes from his pipe and refilled the bowl. “I found a script in your bureau, Joe,” he said serenely.

Joe sat up straight.

“I had copies made and brought the script back. I saw no use talking to you until I had something to talk about. I wrote to five publishers—four in New York and one in Boston. Three are willing to pay a fair share of the cost on a dramatization of their books. One is doubtful, and one is definitely unfavorable.”

Joe’s voice was eager. “Are we going on the air?”

The man caught that “we.” “I’m more than half convinced we’ll have a Carlin show next September.”

Joe went hot and cold. Not because this was radio, but because it was Thomas Carlin Presents.

Tom Carlin puffed his contentment. “Every day we have customers who telephone and ask to have some purchase delivered at once. That forces me to take a clerk from behind the counter and send him out. I’ve been thinking of hiring somebody to take care of some light work and make these deliveries. This Pop Bartell. Do you think he could fit into that job after forty years of show business?”

Joe was hot and cold again. “After what happened to-day, Dad, he’d think somebody had given him a piece of Heaven.”

“Send him in to see me.”

“Perhaps,” said Joe, “I’ll run over a little later to where he lives. He’ll sleep better to-night.”

After that they sat together in understanding silence.

A light step sounded in the hall and the door was pushed open timidly. Kate Carlin stood on the threshold. Her eyes, clouded with concern, went from her husband to her son and back to her husband again.

“Come in, Kate.”

Suddenly her eyes were clear. She smiled. “This is a night you’ve looked forward to, Tom, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He held out his hand to her. “Come in, Kate, and sit with us. Carlin and Son are in conference.”