Monday Joe Carlin kept away from the world of radio. Sonny Baker was shooting at the Larry Logan part he had expected to play and at the Dick Davis part he had been playing—and he was licked. Licked by a little bug that had invaded his throat. His voice was still a whisper. To-day, either at Vic Wylie’s office or at Tony Vaux’s office, he’d have felt like a Pop Bartell, wistfully hoping for a miracle. Old Pop, pathetically youthful and gallant, at least had something to give a microphone. He, with his voice gone, would have absolutely nothing. He wouldn’t even have a front.

And so Joe Carlin, who up to last week had been an actor in the bright world of radio, raked the yard and tried not to think that to-day Tony Vaux was scheduled to sponsor-audition the Bush-League Larry show and that this morning Vic Wylie had held another dress of the Sue Davis Against the World show at FKIP. Toward noon the telephone rang inside the house. His hands gripped the rake. Tony had said he’d call if— A minute passed. Joe began to rake again.

He gave up trying not to think. Why should Tony have shied away from his offer to come in to-day unless the Everts-Hall Agency producer had known Sonny was on his way? Vic Wylie, brooding over a platter, must have vetoed a suggestion that Mrs. Munson’s Baltimore nephew step into the Sue Davis cast. But Vic had not known that Sonny was back in town. Joe was sure of that.

He raked slowly. If you took your time, raking could kill the crawling hours of fate. Thinking built up facts, and facts fitted together like bricks in a wall. Ambrose Carver still had Mrs. Munson’s ear. Sonny had not been a glittering success on the coast, else he would not have returned for a part in a show paying twenty-five dollars a week. Playing small time on the coast, Sonny would not have accumulated money for a return journey across a continent. Somebody had paid for his railroad ticket. Amby? Joe couldn’t imagine the dapper little agent buying anybody’s ticket. Then it must have been Mrs. Munson, still piqued because of the failure of her nephew.

Joe put the rake away. Every leaf was garnered and burned, and raking had become a fiction. When he came into the house, his mother was upstairs. He dialed the radio, brought in FKIP, and left the station on.

By and by Vic Wylie’s four o’clock show went on and went off. A watch company gave a spot announcement of the time, and a commentator gave five minutes of news flashes from around the world. A quartet sang. They’d be off in ten minutes. They were off.

A voice broke into the silence of the room.

“To-day Munson brings you a story from the pen of Curt Lake, Sue Davis Against the World—” The Munson plug followed—a Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday sale of coats on the third floor. Then came that momentary pause that always comes between the commercial plug and the show itself. Joe’s mouth was dry. He had heard no sound on the stairs, yet he knew his mother sat behind him.

“And now,” came an announcer’s crisp voice, “what has become of Dick Davis? Six days ago, with slender family finances almost exhausted, he left home to get to Fairfield as best he could, taking with him his only possession of possible value, an album containing a modest collection of stamps. For six days Sue Davis has anxiously awaited her son’s return. Is he all right? Has he reached Fairchild? Have the stamps which he has been patiently soaking from discarded envelops for several years any real value? Perhaps we are to learn, for the scene is the small office of Landis, the Stamp Man. The door opens and a boy enters. Listen.”

Voices came out of the speaker, and the first voice was boyish, and troubled and hesitant:

Are you Mr. Landis?

Hello, son. Yes; I’m Mr. Landis. Close the door, please. You look as though you’ve been traveling.

I have. I’m Dick Davis. I come from Maple Grove.

That’s a good piece back in the mountains, isn’t it?

Yes, sir. I—I thought—Do you buy stamps?

Something that was like ice prickled and crawled on Joe’s scalp. A miracle was happening. Vic Wylie had prepared him for the miracle, and yet he had not expected so stupendous a miracle. One of the voices coming out the speaker was his. Not his exactly—but his.

Frozen, he listened. Curt Lake had written a good script. A show that was dying on its feet was suddenly alive and glowing. The story unfolded with a wealth of sympathetic feeling—a boy’s suspense as pages of the album were turned, the sudden finding of some stamps of value, an offer at last of thirty-five dollars. With the business completed, the stamp man was ready to relax, and grow mellow, and talk shop. But the boy, a fortune in his pocket, was on fire to be away. His voice throbbed through the speaker:

I can’t stay, Mr. Landis. Maybe I’ll come back some day and we can have a long talk. I can’t talk now. I—I want to get home.

It was the curtain line—a good curtain line. A curtain line for a good show. Joe’s hand, leaden, turned off the radio.

“Who was it?” Kate Carlin asked.

“Sonny.”

“Sure?”

“A little of his own voice came through.”

“How did Vic Wylie do it?”

“Platters. He must have had Sonny listening to platters of the show for hours. Any good actor can mimic a voice if he hears it often enough and practises an imitation.”

“Do you think he played the part well?”

The admission was hard to make. “Yes.”

The woman stood up abruptly. “I like you better.”

“You’re swell,” Joe whispered huskily. Was his reading better or was his mother voicing blind Carlin loyalty? Munson would like Sonny, but how about Vic Wylie? How about Tony Vaux? If the Larry show had not been auditioned to-day for the He people, if something had gone sour and put the audition off, his voice might be right for the postponed audition. At least, he wouldn’t have to rake a yard and let Sonny walk off with the plum.

He reached for the telephone. “Joe Carlin, Tony,” he whispered.

Tony boomed jovially. “Hello, Joe. How are you? Glad to hear from you. You’re beginning to sound like yourself.”

Tony, Joe thought with cynical understanding, was putting on his “Howdy, folks” act. To-day it seemed like the artificial sweetness on a doctor’s bitter pill. “Did you audition to-day?”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have you, Joe.” Tony sounded as though his heart was torn. “If there was a chance to postpone— But you know how it is, Joe. When a sponsor’s ripe on the tree, that’s the day you have to pick him. We couldn’t get the spot we wanted at FKIP.”

So the show had been sold!

“We’ll go on at FFOM. I surely wanted you, Joe. Not that Sonny didn’t give me a good show. Smooth as oil. But ... well, you seem to work better with Pop Bartell. If anything turns up—”

“Sure,” said Joe.

Kate Carlin was back in the room.

“I’ve lost that show, too,” Joe said.

“Oh!” The word held distress.

“Something’s bound to turn up; shows keep coming along.” But Joe didn’t try to tell himself that if you were good enough for Wylie, you were good enough for any of them. He had been good enough for Wylie—and he was out. And shows didn’t keep coming along this late in the season.

Tom Carlin came home an hour earlier than usual. Coming down the stairs, Joe heard low-voiced talk in the kitchen. Conversation died away with his appearance.

“Didn’t the show seem to have more body to-day?” his father asked.

Evidently there was to be no telling him the show had been bad. He was grateful for that. What good was family loyalty that blindly deceived itself?

There was no talk of Sue Davis at the evening meal. Tom Carlin felt through his pockets.

“Care to walk to the corner, Joe? I’m out of tobacco.”

Joe thought: “He wants to talk to me alone.”

“You told Mother something would turn up,” his father said as soon as they reached the street. “I’ve been trying to figure out if you really meant that. Men usually try to shield the women at home from their business worries. Was what happened to-day a situation that turns up habitually in radio or was it serious?”

Joe did not hesitate. “It was serious.”

“Munson didn’t want you originally and has resented you. Is that what you mean?”

Joe nodded.

“Do you think you’re out of the show permanently?”

“I don’t know. I might never have had the part if Sonny Baker had been in town last month.” He had never before talked to his father so freely and so easily, man to man, without restraint.

The owner of the neighborhood store greeted them. “Glad to hear you back on the air, Joe. You acted good—better than I ever heard you before. Nothing like a little vacation.”

“Nothing,” Tom Carlin said dryly.

Joe winced.

Walking home, Tom Carlin said: “That hurt, Joe, didn’t it? I was working at your age in a country store for two dollars a week. There was another merchant in town with a more imposing store, and I expected to go to work for him the next month for two-fifty a week. In those days a great many persons bought bean coffee and ground it at home. A customer came in for a coffee-mill. I took a heavy mill down from the shelf and dropped it. It smashed, and the handle flew up and knocked off the customer’s hat. He left in a rage. My employer fired me. The other merchant decided he didn’t want a clumsy lout for a clerk. I was out of the job I was holding and out of the job I had expected to hold. I thought it might help if I told you.”

It seemed incredible that the man who owned one of the brightest stores in the city should have lost two jobs in one day. Two jobs—two parts.

“It does help,” Joe said.

Suddenly he knew that to-morrow he’d go downtown. Downtown was his world with or without a voice, with or without a part. But he wouldn’t go downtown with a swaggering, theatrical front. Front was a fake.

Moving through the mid-morning traffic of narrow Royal Street, Joe heard the familiar blare of FKIP’s speaker, broadcasting a tune that, having leaped into the Hit Parade, would be murdered by radio bands before the week was out. FKIP piled on the program in its usual pattern of gaudy layers. One brassy layer that went out into the street, a tinny, metallic layer for the hall, a softer layer for the elevator. Joe sighed. It was raucous and overdone, but he’d missed it. The operator started to close the door, craned his neck to look out into the hall, and held the door open. Stella Joyce stepped into the car.

“Joe!” Her hands went out to him impulsively. “Say something.”

Joe spoke a few words from an old Sue Davis script: “Mother, you must listen—”

“Your voice is stronger.”

“A little.” He had noticed the change that morning. Six days too late! He said: “You had a good show yesterday.”

“You should have been around last night,” said Stella, and cast up her eyes. “Sonny had his teeth in the part and decided to do a little ad libbing. You’ve seen Vic in his production rages, but have you ever seen him in one of his subtle moods? He’s an artist. For one hour he had Sonny on a page of script following each line the way a child reads and stammers through a primer. He made Sonny spell every word; then he made him read every word very slowly. ‘So you can actually read,’ Vic said with an air of surprise. ‘I was beginning to have my doubts. Now let me hear you read the part the way it was written.’ After that Sonny read the part—the way Curt Lake wrote it.”

Joe’s lips twitched. The elevator let them out into the reception-room and they sat together on one of the blue leather settees.

“I don’t think Vic’s troubles with Sonny are over,” Stella said thoughtfully. “Sonny’s had a touch of the coast; he may have picked up some of the Hollywood technic. When you get in a jam, yell for your agent.”

Joe couldn’t picture little, dapper Amby Carver bearding Vic Wylie. “Does Sonny make a steady practice of ad libbing?”

“It’s his specialty.”

“But doesn’t that ball up the cues?”

“Sonny’s only interested in building up his own part and stealing the show. He’s clever. Very often he gets away with it.”

“He was in City Boy last season. What happened there?”

“Ask the cast that played with him.”

“You mean he’s permitted to mangle the lines? Who produced that show?”

Stella said: “Tony Vaux.” She stood up. “Coming in?”

Joe hesitated. “I’m not in the cast now. Wylie may not want—”

“Don’t be foolish,” the actress said and took his arm.

Walking into Studio B was like coming home after a long absence. Bert Farr, reading the radio department of the Journal, tossed the paper away. “We are now cursed,” he said gloomily, “with a genius in the cast.” He might be out of the show, Joe thought, but these people were his friends.

Beside him Stella said in sharp undertone, “I thought so.”

Amby Carver and the tall, pale youth Joe had seen talking to Archie Munn outside the FKIP building were in the studio.

“Vic around yet?” Amby asked briskly.

“No.” Bert Farr was short.

Little Amby Carver had steered a client into a sponsored show; little Amby was beginning to count himself a somebody in show business. The rebuff left him unruffled. He saw Joe and instantly the cane waggled with pointed carelessness.

“Hello, Joe. Throat better? Too bad you weren’t around yesterday; I might have been able to throw something your way. Why not drop in some morning? I can’t promise to do anything for you, but there may be a part.”

Joe’s neck burned. Amby’s front of superiority and condescension was something he couldn’t take. He asked flatly: “Are you still in the same rat-hole?”

Bert Farr chuckled.

Amby flushed. His hand touched the tracing of mustache. “Sour, Joe?” he asked softly. “Does that get you anything? Sonny, this is Joe Carlin.”

“Who?” Sonny asked languidly.

“Carlin? You remember. Joe Carlin.”

“Oh!” Sonny held out a hand that was limp and moist. “Didn’t they try you out in my part?”

My part! “No,” said Joe. “I played it.” He didn’t like this Sonny Baker.

“Really?” Sonny’s drawl was insolent.

“Sonny!” Amby chided in sly malice. “Is that nice? I ask you. Must you forget Joe’s only a high-school amateur?”

Joe remembered the day he had found Amby out and had scorned him, and how Wylie had said: “Kid, he’ll never forgive you.” But he was too young, too raw and inexperienced, to cope with this acid baiting.

A light switched on in the control-room. The hollow eyes of Vic Wylie stared out at them.

“This is a rehearsal,” the producer snapped through the two-way mike. “Those not connected with the show will leave the studio.”

Joe walked toward the door.

“Not you, kid.”

Fire ran through Joe. If he was still connected with the show ... Sonny Baker, languidly amused, was watching him.

“Look here, Wylie,” dapper Ambrose Carver cried angrily, “if you think—”

The light in the control-room snapped off. Vic Wylie came out to the studio, hollow-eyed and tired.

“Where’s your spot in this show. Carver?”

“I’m Sonny’s agent.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing to me. I’m not dealing with agents on this show.”

“You’ll deal with me,” Amby sputtered.

“Out of the way.” Wylie moved the microphone. It didn’t need moving, but moving it gave him the opportunity to brush the agent aside.

Amby was pushed back on his heels. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t hound Sonny. He’s an artist. He’s too big to be told he’s a Vic Wylie rubber stamp. He’s no high-school—”

Wylie swung about with a snarl. “Get out.”

The impact of the two words jolted the little agent as though they were blows.

The scrap of ridiculous mustache quivered. “Now, now, Vic—”

“Get out. If I have to tell you again, you’ll take your star out with you.”

Amby Carver cleared his throat. Whatever he meant to say died under the producer’s glare.

“This is no time to upset the cast,” Amby said pompously. “I’ll take this up with you later.” The usually jaunty cane trailed as he made his exit with an attempt at frigid dignity. Sonny languidly polished the nails of one hand against the palm of the other and hummed.

Wylie said: “Five minutes to clear out the bad smell.”

Joe thought: “Vic wants the tension to ease before he puts on the dress.” The sound-effects engineer superintended the arrival of a sound-effect door, and the boy wondered if Wylie would blow up because the property was late. The cast said very little. Sonny, still humming, opened and closed the portable door several times.

“Why don’t you buy yourself a rattle?” the engineer asked.

Sonny gave him a slant-eyed glance, opened and closed the door again, ran his hands into his trouser pockets, and unconcernedly strolled to the control-room and back.

The five minutes were up. Instead of directing the dress from the control-room, Wylie straddled a chair and motioned for the cast to begin. Bert Farr handed Joe a script.

The show opened with a lonely, worried Sue Davis still awaiting the return of her son. Then came a knock on the door and the appearance of Israel Tice, the local skinflint who wanted to get his hands on this piece of mountain property that would some day have value. Tice, played by Bert Farr, knew of Sue’s desperate necessity. He renewed his offer for the property, reluctantly edging up the price. Sue, for the first time, wavered. Their credit at the general store was stopped, and there seemed so little hope that Dick’s trip to sell his stamps would be successful.

An absorbed Joe Carlin followed the script:

Tice: I ain’t seen your boy, Dick, lately.

Sue: No.

Tice: Been away-like?

Sue: For a while.

Tice: You ain’t communicative, widder, are you? He ain’t trying to raise some money?

Sue (alarmed): Who told you that?

Tice (with satisfaction): Reckon I don’t need telling. It ain’t fitting for a boy to be out of school because his mother’s stubborn ’bout a piece of wuthless land. Suppose something’s gone and happened to Dick?

Sue: Please!

Tice: Widder, with some money handy there’d be no call for Dick to be away. You think of that for a while. Then you do some thinking on this paper—

Sound—Crinkle of paper

Sue: What is that?

Tice: A paper, all legal, to sell for one thousand dollars. You put your name down here—

Sue: No. I won’t.

Tice: And this other paper, widder, is a check for one hundred dollars for down payment. Cash money. Cash money so a boy stays home where he belongs. One hundred dollars right in your hand and no call to be fretting about where a boy is and what mischief’s a-brewing. You think on it hard and I’ll be back in an hour.

Sound—Footsteps crossing floor and door closing

Sue: What shall I do? What shall I do?

Dick (off mike): Mother!

Sue (overjoyed): It’s Dick. He’s home.

Dick (coming on mike): Mother, wait—

Sound—Door bursts open

Dick (full mike): Wait until you hear—What’s that paper?

Sue: Mr. Tice left it—

Dick: Tice? What’s that other paper? A check from Tice? You didn’t—Oh!

Sound—Door closes

Curtain

Motionless, silent, Vic Wylie had sat through the dress. He lifted his head.

“No. You’re expecting a bomb-shell and all you get is a bubble. The curtain’s a phony.”

The studio was silent.

What was it, Joe wondered, that left that sensation of hollowness? There should have been drama. Sue’s distress, Dick’s return—and a door closed. That was all—a door closed. He brought his hands together with a clap.

“Got something, kid?” Wylie’s eyes, despite their weariness, burned.

“What happens?” Joe asked. “A door shuts. You don’t know whether Dick’s simply shut the door or whether he’s walked out. It’s just a sound. The show’s too human for that. It must end on a human note. The door’s an anti-climax. Dick says: ‘A check from Tice? You didn’t—’ That’s where the door should close, slowly, as though all the pep’s been knocked out of him. Then he says that one word. ‘Oh!’ Isn’t that your curtain?”

Once before, on the day he had suggested a change in Pop Bartell’s reading in the Bush-League Larry show, the producer had studied him with that strange intentness.

“I should have seen it, kid. Tired. We’ll see how it goes. Got your script marked? Stella. Take it from ‘Mr. Tice left.’”

They read again:

Sue: Mr. Tice left it—

Dick: Tice? What’s that other paper? A check? A check from Tice? You didn’t—

Sound—Door closes

Dick: Oh!

“That does it,” Vic Wylie said at last. “The real McCoy. It stands.” He picked up his brief-case and left them.

Sonny draped a top-coat across his arm. “First an actor and now a producer. You should try script-writing, Carlin.” He sauntered toward the door.

“He makes me furious,” Stella snapped. Joe had never before seen her ruffled.

“In the movies,” Bert Farr said, “they tried to hog the camera. On the stage they have a trick of spoiling another actor’s big scenes by moving about and distracting the audience. How long will Vic put up with him?”

Stella looked at Joe. “I want to be around the day Vic lets down his hair.”

Clear understanding came to Joe. Stella had suspected that Amby, flushed with a new importance, would not be able to resist the temptation to impress that importance on Vic Wylie; Stella had urged him into the studio so that Wylie would make a fresh mental comparison.

“Thanks, Stella,” he said.

Stella gave a faint smile. “Not that Vic needed the lesson,” she said.

A new Joe Carlin walked out of FKIP, the old high-spirited lilt back in his stride. Amby Carver sputtered angrily in Royal Street and Sonny Baker listened with languid amusement. Joe’s dislike of Sonny increased. Amby had brought Sonny back from the coast and had put him in a part; the actor should at least have remembered that. But Sonny, Joe saw in a flash of wisdom, would be a taker and never a giver, egotistical and selfish, and contemptuous even of his friends.

One thought ran happily through the boy’s mind: Vic, ousting Amby as having nothing to do with the show, had told him to stay. Sonny taking liberties with script, and Amby trying to get tough! His voice couldn’t have begun to come back at a better time. All his worries of the past week had been unnecessary worries. Well, he’d be smart. He’d stay away and, along toward the end of the week, call Vic and tell him he was all right. After that, he might have another few days to wait. Waiting, when you waited in sick uncertainty, was hard; but those last few days of waiting would be comparatively easy. He’d be on his way back.

The heady pulse of show business once more throbbed in his blood. Sentiment took him back to the restaurant off Royal Street where Vic had once rehearsed him across a table. He had hoped to have the table to himself, but a girl sat where Wylie had sat. Disappointed, he walked past the table. Then the girl turned her head and he recognized Miss Robb.

Vic Wylie’s stenographer said in a rush of words: “When did you get back in circulation, Joe? Were you at FKIP? Did you hear Lucille Borden goes on the air next Monday? The show’s a comedy—Never Tell a Woman. I didn’t know she could play comedy. Did you?”

The girl was plainly flustered. Was she afraid he’d begin to ask her questions about the Sue Davis show, about Sonny Baker, about the rehearsals? He had, Joe reflected, learned all he needed to know this morning.

Miss Robb rattled on: “I saw a movie last night, Joe. Guns Along the Rio.”

Joe’s mind was elsewhere. “That’s an old picture, isn’t it?”

“Not so very old. Two or three months ago Cecil de Mille gave it on the air. I thought I’d like to see the picture if it ever was revived. Last night I discovered it was showing at a neighborhood playhouse. What’s the matter, Joe?”

His inattention was gone. “You mean you heard a short radio version and then wanted to see the complete picture?”

“Why, yes. I suppose what I heard whetted my appetite for more. Is that so strange?”

“I suppose not,” Joe said slowly. “Does it happen often?”

“To me? It’s happened several times. It’s happened to my sister. It’s happened to people I know. You do think it’s strange, don’t you?”

“Strange isn’t the word,” said Joe. He shook off a hovering waitress. “No dessert; I’m in a hurry.” Miss Robb’s face showed relief as he stood up to go. He shook that off, too. Strangeness lay in the fact that this had been in front of him all the time and that he hadn’t seen it.

Royal Street swallowed him and hurried him along with the crowd. Thomas Carlin Presents To-day’s Book! He’d always felt there was a way for his father to put on a broadcast and sell books. The movies did a selling stunt every day. COMING ATTRACTIONS, and then half a dozen shots from next week’s picture. The trick was to dramatize a scene from a book and make people want to read the whole book. Vic probably wouldn’t use him until next Monday’s show. He had almost a whole week.

The Thomas Carlin store was busy with men and women from the tall office buildings, shopping during the lunch hour. One of the clerks raised a cupped hand to his lips and Joe shook his head. No; he wasn’t back on the air. His father was out.

“I want a book,” he said eagerly to Mr. Fairchild, his father’s assistant. “I don’t care whether it’s an old book or a new book, but it must be a good book with lots of action.”

“The jitterbug influence,” Mr. Fairchild smiled.

Joe’s hands made an impatient gesture. “Life. Something you can feel. The McCoy.” Vic Wylie might have been speaking.

“Something—dramatic?” the man asked with a shrewd glance.

Joe went blank. He didn’t want to say anything about this until he saw how it worked out. Mr. Fairchild took a book down from a shelf; the telephone rang, and he had to go to the office. Joe made his escape, winking at the clerks as he passed out toward the street.

The next three days were busy days. He was making a show. A book to read and one particular scene to be picked for dramatization. What scene? Chapter Eight offered a scene tense and climactic. But the action called for four characters. Four were too many—a twenty-dollar cast. There was a scene in Chapter Two between the lead and the heavy. Was it strong enough? He walked the floor of his room, reading the passage aloud. Perhaps that run in Chapter Nine with three characters.... Sometimes his brain grew bewildered. He thought of Curt Lake sweating, and swearing, and knocking out a new script under pressure the day his throat had gone bad.

There were interruptions—lunch, the Sue Davis broadcast, the family dinner in the evening. But even as he described Sonny Baker or told of Amby Carver’s rout, his mind was upstairs with the book. It would have to be the scene from Chapter Two.

He worked behind the closed door of his room and rattled a portable typewriter. He knew the mechanics of writing script, and the dialogue of the scene was before him on the printed pages. The first two sheets of script spun out of the typewriter. Then Joe ran into a passage in the book that analyzed the thought passing through a character’s mind. How did you get a character’s thoughts into a script? Radio had to be dialogue. He wrote, and tore up what he had written, and wrote again. He gave up in despair and fooled with a cross-word puzzle. He pushed that aside and went back to writing. Nothing would jell. He tried talking the scene aloud.

Kate Carlin cried: “Joe, are you all right?”

Sure, he was all right. He was swell. Curt Lake could have script-writing—he wanted no part of such a headache. Why couldn’t he find the words? It shouldn’t be so hard to express a thought. Just about two sentences. Inspiration came to him from whatever void it is that gives birth to inspiration. He went back to the typewriter.

Thursday night he finished the script in an exultation of authorship. Nine pages—that’s how long a Curt Lake script ran for a fifteen-minute show. Now he had to have a signature that would mark the start of every program, and he had to have an opening plug and a closing plug.

A rough idea for a distinctive signature came Friday morning. He put it down:

Voice: I am ink, and paper, and the thoughts of men.

Sound—Faint rumble of printing press

Voice: I am the printed word.

Sound (full mike)—Rumble of printing press

Voice: I am BOOKS.

Sound—Press rumble fades to—

Announcer: Thomas Carlin presents to-day’s book—

Absorbed, he worked on the plugs. He came to the close:

He told himself that he had something.

In imagination he heard an announcer’s voice speaking the lines into a mike. Boy, those lines were good. He had something there. The fascination of creation warmed him. This was show business; this was radio. But it was also something else he did not suspect.

It was Thomas Carlin Presents.

He read over what he had written. He read it over a second time and a frown pinched his forehead. The plugs didn’t seem to have all the zip he had thought was there. The feeling grew on him that he hadn’t quite caught the boat. Probably, with a little tinkering here and there.... He put the script in a small upper drawer of his desk where he kept razor blades, cuff links, tie clasps, odds and ends. He wouldn’t hand his father this show until he had licked it into shape. It had to be right. If the plugs proved too much for him, if he couldn’t make them right, he’d take them to Vic.

Instantly his thoughts were back with the Sue Davis show. This was Friday, about time for Vic to give the word. On the chance that he might catch the producer he called his office.

“He’s not here, Joe,” Miss Robb said.

“Tell him my voice is all right, will you?”

“Why—yes. I’ll tell him, Joe.”

Joe thought: “The call ought to come to-morrow.”

There was no call the next day. And the telephone bell was silent all through the long, dragging hours of Sunday.

Premonition whispered, and the long knife of radio uncertainty touched him once more. Vic might be tied up. He knew this wasn’t so. The Monday show had to be rehearsed Sunday afternoon or Sunday night. When had Vic ever been so busy that a show went neglected? Perhaps he should have spent the week downtown and not have buried himself in a dramatization. But this wasn’t a case where he had to visit a station and keep himself fresh in a casting director’s memory. This was a Wylie show.

Monday morning the telephone rang. He was halfway down the stairs before his mother could call: “For you, Joe.”

Stella’s voice fluttered. “Lu’s show goes on at four. Are you picking it up?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Joe told her. His heart was lead.

“None of us will be able to hear it. Her show goes off fifteen minutes before we go on.”

“Leave it to me,” said Joe, and hung up.

“Was that Mr. Wylie’s office?” Kate Carlin asked.

“No; Stella Joyce. She asked me to listen to Lucille Borden.” He was silent. “I’ll pick it up at Vic’s.” Now that he was ready to resume his part, he couldn’t haunt Studio B. But Stella would want a report on Lucille. He’d have a legitimate reason for waiting until the cast came in from rehearsal. If Vic had anything to tell him, Vic could tell him then.

An afternoon romance serial was coming to the inner room when he reached Wylie’s office.

“That’s the station,” Miss Robb said. “Miss Borden’s show is next.”

Joe sat in Vic Wylie’s chair. Presently a mellow gong announced the station and the interval between programs. The click of Miss Robb’s typewriter ceased.

Lucille Borden’s voice, clipped, a little hard with a familiar hardness, went through him. The voice seemed strangely enriched with a new, deeper quality. It was impish, provocative, casually gay, and touched with unexpected moments of tears and of laughter. Joe found himself chuckling. Abruptly Lu put a yearning tenderness into a passage that caught his breath. And then his head was back and he was laughing as she gave drawling drollery to another line.

Lucille Borden’s premier was over. Joe knew she had scored a smash hit. Miss Robb dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“I can’t help it, Joe. She was so wonderful.”

Joe had to clear his throat of emotion. “She was great.” He was thinking of the day he had hurried to a Munson hosiery counter to tell a defeated actress that her chance had come, and of the way her hands had gripped the counter. The ups and downs of show business!

At 4:30 he tuned in the Sue Davis show. Any program coming on after Lucille’s triumph would have seemed flat; Lucille had fired him. He was nervous and restless, eager to return to the cast. He roamed out to Miss Robb’s desk.

“I’ll be glad,” he said, “to get back on the air.”

The girl, typing faster, did not answer.

“Vic may give me the word to-day,” he added.

Miss Robb slipped a letter from the carriage of the machine and carried a carbon to the file. The cabinet drawer held hundreds of yellow carbons. She placed the copy in its alphabetical compartment and did not speak.

Joe went back to Wylie’s chair. The inner room throbbed with memories—memories of his first days with Vic, of the hard grind of rehearsals, of the thrill of his first days on the air. When would he go back? Why hadn’t he played in to-day’s show?

Miss Robb, wearing her hat and coat, appeared in the doorway. “If you’re staying, Joe, I won’t put the catch on the door.”

“They’ll want to hear about Lucille,” said Joe.

The girl drew on her gloves. “Show business is tough,” she said impulsively, and was gone.

Daylight faded. Had she been trying to tell him something? Joe thought of the crowded carbons in the filing cabinet. Sonny Baker playing fast and loose with a script, little Amby Carver fussing impotently in Studio B—these happenings were more or less public. And he had thought them important. The real story might lie in letters locked away in the file. Letters that Wylie had received; letters he had written. Office secrets. But Miss Robb knew those secrets. He remembered her agitation the day he had met her at the restaurant, and to-day she had blurted out that show business was tough. Nobody had to tell him that. He knew it.

The inner room darkened and he turned on a light. Did Miss Robb know why he hadn’t gone back to the cast? Wylie had had knowledge since Friday that he had recovered.

The door from the hall opened and closed. Sonny Baker strolled into the inner room.

“Around again, Carlin?” he asked. His eyes reflected a sleepy, mocking amusement. He picked up a magazine and lolled on the settee.

Stella Joyce and Bert Farr came in together.

“Tell me everything,” Stella said eagerly.

Joe’s description of Lucille was a rhapsody. Stella wrote a telegram of congratulation. She read them the telegram and the list of signatures—Vic Wylie, Stella Joyce, Bert Farr, Joe Carlin.

“Miss Robb will want to be in that,” said Joe. “Why not Archie Munn? What’s become of him? I haven’t seen him in two weeks.”

Stella said slowly: “You knew he was offered a selling job? He took it. He had to. He couldn’t live on bit parts and a few funerals.”

“He’ll be back,” Joe predicted.

“I’m not so sure,” Stella said slowly. “There’s a limit.” She held the telegram and looked toward the settee. “Want your name on this, Sonny?”

One of Sonny’s eyebrows lifted blandly. “I didn’t hear the performance.”

“Why don’t you get wise to yourself?” Stella snapped. “Lu was always good.”

“Not bad,” Sonny murmured languidly, and returned to the magazine.

A door slammed, and Vic Wylie was upon them. The producer’s hat was dented, his top-coat collar was half up and half down, the brief-case, closed by a single strap and gaping at one end, swung past his knee. He dumped the brief-case on the desk.

“You gave me a lousy show to-day,” he snarled at the cast. “Dish-water! Hello, kid. How was she?”

“I never heard anything better,” said Joe. He spoke slowly and distinctly so that Wylie could get the full, strong timbre of his voice. Of course, Vic couldn’t very well talk up in front of Sonny. But he could say: “Come out here a minute, kid,” and tell him where he stood.

Wylie’s tired face cracked into a smile. “A grand gal, Lu; one of the best. Give her a part that fits her and she’s tops. What did she do with the comedy shots?”

“She put them over beautifully.”

“I always figured she’d be tops on smooth comedy.” Wylie opened the brief-case. “Let’s get going.” He distributed to-morrow’s show—a script to Stella, a script to Bert, a script to Sonny....

Joe walked out.

He was bitter. Archie Munn had advised him in the early days to stick to Vic, had said that Vic took care of his people. Well, he’d called himself one of Vic Wylie’s people. He’d auditioned the Sue Davis show; he’d originated the Dick Davis role. Vic had told him he was still in the show. He pushed through the crowd standing in the street outside FKIP and was deaf to the news broadcast coming from the speaker. Had Wylie kept him in Studio B as a piece of scenery, a prop threat to Sonny Baker that Sonny had better be good? Was that what Miss Robb knew and was afraid she might reveal? He said in growing bitterness: “Show business!”

He ate a belated, warmed-over dinner in the Carlin kitchen. His father sat across the table.

“See Wylie to-day, Joe?”

Joe nodded. “I don’t know any more than I did yesterday. Sonny’s playing the show to-morrow.”

“Have you any plans?”

“No, sir.” But Joe did have plans. He’d lay siege to casting directors’ offices until he found a part. Did Vic think radio began and ended in the office of Vic Wylie Productions? When Vic wanted him again, Vic could send for him.

Next day Joe Carlin once more started to make the rounds.

He told himself: “I’ve been in a successful show; they know me now.” But making the rounds didn’t have the hopeful outlook it had worn last night. The bread-and-butter hunt depressed him. He had been all through this before; he was back where he had started.

Now that he was at liberty, no actor, beginning to look a little seedy, led him into a quiet nook to negotiate a small loan. None of the show people mentioned the Sue Davis show. Nothing else had changed. There was the same sharp anxiety that showed itself only in off-guard moments, the same glib talk of fat parts about to turn up, the same business of having a bright gag ready for casting directors, the same sham front that fooled nobody. Lucille Borden had carried a front while living on coffee and rolls. But Stella Joyce had said there was a limit.

He made the rounds thinking about Archie Munn, who had at last reached his limit. He made the rounds from FKIP to FFOM to FWWO. Casting directors were brightly glib. “Hello, Carlin; how are you?” or “Hello, Joe; how’s the boy?” Nothing more; nothing about parts. Casting directors’ routine hadn’t changed, either. You might make the rounds for weeks and for months. Playing a part in a successful show was something that had happened yesterday. Hadn’t Archie played in successful shows?

Friday added another to the growing list of fruitless days. Gossip was a thread running through the stations. Practically all the September programs were renewing their radio time, and that meant few new shows and few new parts. Joe, coming out of FFOM, met Pop Bartell. Pop was a gilded lily—new suit, new coat, new hat, new shoes. Show business always dresses when it is in the money.

“Joe,” the veteran announced impressively, “I owe you two dollars, and an apology for not having discharged my obligation earlier, and a round of dinners.” He made the paying of the debt a ceremony. “Are you following Lucille Borden? Join me in a cup of coffee. I am familiar with a coffee house that does very little business at this hour. We can pick it up there. I highly recommend the cheese cake.”

The raftered ceiling of the coffee house was dark and smoky, the paneled walls were lined with sporting prints, the tables were bare wood, scarred and grooved. In the dim light thrown by the Dutch lamps Pop Bartell seemed to have torn ten years from what the world calls age.

Lucille’s performance held Joe spellbound.

“Brilliant,” Pop said softly, “truly brilliant. A remarkable characterization. I salute her. Have you heard my show, Joe?”

Lucille’s performance held Joe spellbound. “Brilliant,” Pop said softly. “I salute her.”