On Tuesday, three days after he had written his application, Joe Carlin received a letter from FKIP:

We have arranged a dramatic audition for you on June 22 at 2:15 P.M.

The reception clerk at the fourth floor desk will direct you to the proper studio.

Please bring with you to read for us two or three excerpts from plays. The selections need not exceed fifteen or twenty lines in length and should be varied in type.

An everyday Joe Carlin, not expecting to hear from the studio for several weeks, had taken the letter from the box on the porch. An agitated Joe Carlin had noted the FKIP in the corner of the envelop. An almost incoherent Joe Carlin burst into the house.

“Mother! A letter—”

“Yes, Joe.” She took it from his frantic hands.

“It’s about an audition. A radio audition.”

“That’s what it says. An audition.”

“To-morrow. An audition to-morrow.”

“I understand that.” She shook him gently. “What are you going to read?”

“Oh!” said the boy. Her calmness washed the incoherence out of him. “I—I’m not sure,” he said and went upstairs. After that he paced his room with a book. The sun passed over the front of the house and sent long, slanting rays out of the west across the lawn. And still he paced.

“Joe!” his mother called. “Do radio actors bother with food?”

He ate, spoke to two shadows who were his father and his mother, and went upstairs again. At midnight, when Tom Carlin looked into the bedroom, he found Joe standing in front of the mirror trying to achieve gauntness by lengthening his face and sucking in his cheeks.

“I’m reading an Abe Lincoln part,” the boy croaked. “I’m getting in the mood.”

Tom Carlin closed the door and stared helplessly at his wife.

Kate Carlin’s laugh was pure joy. “Don’t look so tragic, Tom. This is priceless if it doesn’t become a pose.”

Joe managed a sizable breakfast next morning, but shrank from lunch. He came downstairs with three books under his arm.

“Shaky,” he said, his voice high and cracked. “Why should I be? Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Fred Allen—they all had to audition for the first time. Why should I be shaky?”

“Nonsense!” his mother told him. “I’ve seen you with the jitters waiting for the curtain to go up on a high-school play.”

He considered that. “You didn’t tell anybody I’m taking an audition? Please don’t.”

His mother watched him go down the street. “Tom,” she said, “I don’t think we need to worry about pose.”

Cold panic gripped him on the bus. The parts he had read over and over again last night seemed bloodless and thin. He tried to call them up, to recreate them in his mind, but panic scrambled his thoughts. If he was bad.... That’s what gave him the shakes. An audition either started you off or stopped you right there.

The blonde receptionist gave him a warming smile. “Your letter must have caught them arranging an audition. Fifth floor, Studio K.”

The fifth floor had none of the ornate trappings and blue leather of the fourth floor reception-room. This was the part of the world of radio that did not have to put on a display for the public. There was no glass-walled gallery looking into glass-walled studios. Joe found himself on a barren floor of unpretentious wooden doors, plastered, roughly painted walls, and shabby corridors that led to hidden quarters occupied by the mechanical departments and the engineers. A door almost at the elevator had painted on it: Studio K.

But the fifth floor was also FKIP. A speaker filled the barrenness with “Miss America and what she’ll wear. Munson’s brings you to-morrow’s styles.” ...

Joe sat on a hard wooden bench. The loudspeaker went on and on, the only sound, the only evidence of life on this floor. Once the elevator stopped and a porter carried a kit of tools into one of the corridors. The hard, lonely bench became harder, lonelier. Joe’s legs began to shake and twitch. Ten minutes past two, and he was still alone in this tomb of a fifth floor. So this was radio, was it? Two-fifteen. A trickling river of sweat ran down his back.

The elevator stopped again and two men and a girl stepped out. One of the men was short and stout. The other was tall, lean, and brisk, with a penciling of black mustache across his upper lip. The short stout man took some keys from his pocket and they walked past the bench. The girl said: “Only six scheduled for to-day.” They went into Studio K.

Joe’s heart gave a smothering thud.

The door of the studio opened again. It was the girl. “Mr. Carlin? This way, please.”

Joe’s feet were lifeless, without feeling. Studio K might have been any one of the smaller studios he had seen from the fourth-floor gallery—same microphone, same chairs along the walls, same control-room at the far end. Behind the glass front of the control-room sat the stout man and the brisk man with the microscopic mustache. The girl joined them, going into the little room through a door at the side. It seemed to Joe that all three glared out at him with malice. He dropped two of his books on a chair.

The stout man spoke from the control-room through the two-way mike. “What are you going to give us, Mr. Carlin?”

“A bit from—”

“The other side of the mike, please. You’re on the dead side.”

A badly confused Joe Carlin crossed over. “A bit—”

“A little closer. Don’t be nervous.”

But Joe’s nerves were tight clamoring strings. He opened the book and found his page. “Robert Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois.” He tried desperately for control. “Abe is at the cabin of Mentor, the school-teacher. Mentor remarks that Abe seems to do a lot of thinking about death. Abe replies—” Joe struggled to create a drawling twang:

“‘I’ve had to, because it has always seemed to be so close to me—always—as far back as I can remember. When I was no higher than this table, we buried my mother. The milksick got her, poor creature. I helped Paw make the coffin—whittled the pegs for it with my own jackknife. We buried her in a timber clearing beside my grandmother, old Betsy Sparrow. I used to go there often and look at the place—used to watch the deer running over her grave with their little feet. I never could kill a deer after that. One time I catched hell from Paw because when he was taking aim I knocked his gun up.’”^[1]

Joe closed his copy of the play.

In the control-room the stout man said impatiently: “What does a kid of his age know about death? Why do they come in here and try to read stuff crammed with emotion? They’re not mature enough.” He pressed a button and at once the two-way mike was open so that Joe could hear what was said in the control-room. “Anything else, Mr. Carlin?”

“Deval’s Tovarich,” said Joe, “adapted by Mr. Sherwood.” This was more like his own voice. He brought another book to the mike. “Mikail and Tatiana, formerly chamberlain and lady-in-waiting at the Russian court, are in Paris without a franc. Tatiana has suggested that they go into domestic service as butler and housemaid. Mikail speaks in excitement:

“‘My sainted darling! I believe it is possible! I see myself again, throwing open the windows of the Imperial Palace and announcing: “Majesty, there is snow”—and then, with perfect grace, presenting belt and tunic to Nicholas Alexandrovitch. And you doing the fair hair of Her Imperial Highness, fetching her gloves, telling poor Frederiks that her Majesty will not be visible to-day. We were good servants, Tatiana. We will be good servants again! I must find my boots!’”^[2]

The stout man sighed and touched the button. “Haven’t you anything a little more juvenile?”

Joe said an uncertain: “Well—” Evidently he hadn’t been so hot. He went over to the wall and brought back another book.

“How is he?” the brisk man with the thin mustache asked in the control-room.

John Dennis, director of programs for FKIP, shrugged.

Joe was back at the mike. “A twenty-two-year-old boy has inherited a factory. But he finds the factory closed as the result of a trade war. A friendly old lawyer advises him to sell it for what he can get. The boy speaks:

“‘I inherited a property worth $35,000. Can I get $35,000 for it? No. Why? Because one man says I can’t have its value. One man says he’ll leave me penniless if I try to create its value. A dollar isn’t worth a dollar up here; it’s only worth what Jake Grimmer says it’s worth. I can’t swallow anything like that. Maybe I’m a fool for not accepting $7,000 for the plant and letting them short-change me out of $28,000—$7,000 would be better than nothing. But if I took that $7,000, for the rest of my life I’d be licked. A shadow would be walking at my side day and night and talking to me. What about Eastport? Why had I let them kick me out and refuse me what was mine? Don’t you see, Mr. Graves? I wouldn’t be selling the factory for $7,000. I’d be selling my self-respect.’”

In the control-room John Dennis said: “There you are, Amby. That was much better: he wasn’t shooting at rÔles out of his reach. A good voice when he doesn’t strain it.”

Ambrose Carver’s interest quickened. “Think he has something, John?”

“I have a show in mind. I may be able to use him.”

Mr. Carver became avid. “Is his letter here? What’s he ever done? Let me get a line on him.” He read Joe’s letter rapidly.

The program director touched the button. “Thank you, Mr. Carlin.” That was all.

The girl came out of the little room of fate and led Joe to the door. A middle-aged man now sat on the wooden bench. The girl said: “Mr. Westfall? This way please.” The door of Studio K closed.

Joe Carlin laid the three books on the wooden bench and mopped his face. He was tired and weary, discouraged and whipped. You read a rÔle, and eyes glared at you from the control-room, and you didn’t have the slightest idea whether you were good, bad or indifferent. Nobody bothered to tell you. “Thank you, Mr. Carlin.” They might just as well tell you to get out and let it go at that. Get out and let the next victim come in. Didn’t they have any heart in radio? Didn’t they know what an audition meant—the worry, the nervous, sick all-goneness, the strain? Didn’t radio care?

The door of Studio K opened with a hasty rattle of the knob. “Mr. Carlin.”

Joe swung about.

The man with the shadow of black mustache shook hands warmly. “I was afraid you’d get away before I got out here. Congratulations. I wasn’t surprised and John Dennis shouldn’t have been, either. That was the stout man—director of programs. Great friend of mine, Dennis. I told him you’d wow them.”

Joe knew an unbelievable, an incredible warmth. “You mean I was good?”

“Ambrose Carver don’t call them wrong. Last week I saw you at Northend High in—in—” Mr. Carver snapped annoyed fingers. Why couldn’t he remember that letter?

Joe said eagerly: “The Prince Laughs Last.”

“When you see shows, shows, shows, titles get away from you,” Amby Carver said ruefully. A nice touch, he assured himself; just matter-of-fact enough. “I spotted you before the first-act curtain.”

Joe’s lips parted.

“I came to tell Dennis to call you in for an audition and there was your letter on his desk. I told him here was a kid he wasn’t going to keep waiting; it had to be now. Well, wasn’t it? Weren’t you in there to-day? That’s record speed for an audition. Ambrose Carver’s telling you.”

Yes, Joe thought, he’d been in Studio K to-day—and all at once he was living the bleakness of his discouraged walk back to the wooden bench. “Did Mr. Dennis like me?”

“He thinks you’re tops.”

“He didn’t say so.”

“You don’t know radio. They never say so. If they like you, some day you may get a call. If they think you smell, you’re never sent for. Get the picture?”

Joe didn’t.

“Suppose you come in for an audition and Dennis says you’re colossal.” Amby Carver was brisk. “Your father and mother tell the neighbors—FKIP says you’re colossal. Down the street some family thinks its daughter is colossal. They send her in, and all Dennis gives her is a ‘Thank you.’ So what? Anybody can write that answer; that’s no Information, Please. The girl’s mother, father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and nieces all gang up on FKIP. Now do you see why everybody gets a ‘Thank you’ and no more? Dennis steps softly and keeps FKIP out of trouble. That’s radio.”

The memory of heartache in Studio K was gone from Joe, and the warmth in him grew and swelled. “Are you with FKIP?”

“Well—not officially.” Amby Carver’s voice took on a vast tolerance. “Why tie up with even a 50,000-watt station? Why cramp myself? I’m a discoverer. Actors, singers, bands, script-writers, gag men—that’s my field. Talent. I find it and market it. We all make money.”

Joe caught it. “An agent?”

One of the man’s hands made a flourish. “Mr. Carlin—”

The boy said: “My name’s Joe.”

“Mine’s Amby. Let’s go where we’ll be more comfortable and talk business.”

Joe gripped the books. He had read about agents and the part they played in show business. No actor could get any place without an agent; but no agent would bother with an actor unless the actor was good. His head swam.

They rode down to the lights and the ebb and flow of visitors, to the cheerfulness and blue leather of the fourth floor. The receptionist looked questioningly at Joe; he put his hands together and shook them. The blonde seemed pleased. The loudspeaker gave them Lucille Borden tough-girling through another episode of Years of Danger.

Amby Carver led the way to one of the blue window-seats. “You’re eighteen, Joe?”

“Yeah.”

“How would you like me to handle you?”

Joe said a fervent: “What could be sweeter?”

“Not much,” Amby admitted without hesitation. “When Ambrose Carver says he’s putting a man over, that man’s over. You’re going to be a headliner, Joe; I’ll have your name in lights. I’ll have you playing coast-to-coast chain shows. I’ll—Is your father home nights?”

“Except Wednesdays. That’s bowling night.”

“I’ll drop in and see him to-night. About eight.”

Joe couldn’t figure that. “What for?”

“You’re a minor. I’ll bring a contract for your father to sign. Everything open and above-board.”

A real contract, legal and binding, with a real agent! Joe’s cup was full.

A man came like the wind from the glass-walled studio. Joe saw a wild disorder of reddish hair, a tan raincoat trailing along the ground from one arm, a brief-case only partly closed. Somebody cried “Vic!” and the raincoat was jerked up from the ground. The hidden voice went on: “You forgot that script.” A hand went into the brief-case, came out with a mass of papers, and waved them impatiently. Somebody came running from the direction of the glass-walled studios.

“Know him?” Amby Carver asked.

Joe didn’t. “I saw him rehearsing a show.”

“Then,” Mr. Carver said with brisk conviction, “you saw the best producer in the city in action. That’s Vic Wylie. Great friend of mine. Won’t work for any station—produces independently. A great pal.”

The producer was again on his way toward the elevators. His eyes were the eyes of a man with fifty things to do and an hour to do them in.

Amby Carver’s voice throbbed with good fellowship. “Hi, Vic! How’s the boy?”

Vic Wylie looked around, saw who had called the greeting, glanced at Joe and back to Carver—and grunted. The elevator took him down.

“A great kidder,” Amby Carver said jovially. “A rich kidder. You’ve got to understand a guy like Vic. Dramatizes himself. Gets up in the morning and puts on a rÔle with his collar. Plays it all day. I’ll bet he’s doing a show with a hard heavy; he’ll be a Simon Legree until the show’s in the bag. To-morrow, if he’s producing a Pollyanna, he’ll be smiling like an angel and God-blessing everybody. A great guy. A great pal.”

Another elevator carried them down. FKIP was now broadcasting baseball from Chicago. The speaker in the car said: “Right over the dish, but too low. Ball two.” The lobby speaker roared. “There it goes—goes—and it’s gone. Mac hits into the right field bleachers—” They passed out into Royal Street.

“Amby,” said Joe, “are you Sonny’s agent?”

“Who?”

“Sonny Baker?”

Amby’s laugh rolled out, mellow and deep. “Joe, that’s funny. A great friend of mine, Sonny, but you can’t stay in this agency racket on friendship. You got to have winners. Also-rans don’t pay off.”

“But isn’t Sonny—”

“A winner? Momentarily, Joe; momentarily. He had no competition last season. He happened to be the only available juvenile who had anything on the ball. That happens in radio sometimes, when you get away from the big broadcasting centers like New York, Chicago, and Hollywood. The parts were there and he fell into them. One was a good, fat part. Next season when he auditions for a show, he’ll find somebody named Joe Carlin reading script.”

“The fat part,” said Joe, “was that in City Boy.”

“That was it.”

“You—” Joe had to wait a moment. “You think I’ll have a chance for some parts?”

“A chance?” The agent rolled his eyes skyward. “You think Ambrose Carver goes out to the Northend because he feels like taking a bus ride? To-day you wouldn’t have a chance, but to-day isn’t September. By September I’ll have had you under my wing for three months. You and Sonny won’t belong in the same league. That’s how I do it.”

Joe’s blood ran fire.

Amby Carver’s hand made a flourish. “Eight to-night, Joe.”

Joe Carlin bought a Journal at the corner and waited for a Northend bus. His brain built golden, gleaming air castles. Next September he might have Sonny Baker’s fat part in City Boy. And there’d be other shows, other parts. Or perhaps some new sponsor would come along with a new five-a-week and he wouldn’t try out for the part in City Boy. He felt sorry for Sonny. It would be tough to play a part one season and lose it the next.

There were plenty of empty seats on the bus. Money? Next fall he ought to roll in money. He opened the Journal to the radio page. A column of gossip and comment carried a short, routine paragraph:

Sonny Baker, local radio star, left this morning for the coast to play in summer stock. There’s a whisper that Hollywood talent scouts engineered the engagement.

Hollywood? Talent scouts? That could mean only a possible moving-picture contract. Perhaps another Mickey Rooney in the making. Fame. The real money.

Joe Carlin thought in dizzy happiness: “And Amby says I’m going to be a better actor than Sonny.”