He examined his wallet. Twenty three dollars left out of four hundred. How much had gone for that television set bought for the blonde.... What was her name? Anna? Mamie? Bought for her by a Quaker. Mr.... Who was it? Charles something? Claude? Lennox winced and shook his head. The memory was going ... going ... like the streets disappearing under the sleet. Twenty four hours, and nothing but veiled patches left. A Quaker. A blonde. A knot. "Christ," he prayed. "Dear Christ stand by me. Stand by me now." Lennox discovered he was crying. He was outraged. An austere, kindly, infallible, sophisticated man didn't weep. It was that other character he was forgetting with sickening speed ... a lurid, roaring, shameful savage. He pounded his fists together, then looked again at his watch. Nine-seven. Oliver Stacy and Kay Hill in the first song spot. Stacy dressed in sheik's robes singing to Kay wearing an English riding habit and making like Agnes Ayres. _For seven hundred and fifty dollars what famous actor was the first famous sheik? Who He? Rudolph Valentino, (Applause). Play-off from orchestra and segue into Intro for drama spot._ The cab jammed in traffic at 42nd and Vanderbilt, and again at Madison. Lennox resisted the impulse to thrust his head out the window and roar at the hacks and busses. He fought for control. Nothing remained from the lost night but a Quaker, a blonde, a knot and terror. He turned his back on the fragments and the fear and clung to the framework of the world he knew. He was Jordan Lennox who owned a piece of and wrote most of "Who He?" He had never won a Pulitzer Prize but he had never been less than a contract writer in his life. He had never auditioned for a job in his life. He had never been fired from a job in his life. In ten years of brawling and knifing his way up in the business he had never lost a fight. "No, by God!" he said suddenly. "What have I got to be afraid of? They're all afraid of me." When he got out of the cab at the stage door he was no longer tremulous. He was again the Jake Lennox we all knew, sardonic, hostile, unyielding. He poked a dollar at the driver for the fare, and another dollar for a present. "Merry Christmas, Mac," he said, not unkindly, and walked into the theater. His feet left black prints on the sidewalk. The city too was covered with sleet. It was 9:31-30. The show was two minutes off the air. Lennox pushed through the crowd of wives and friends that crammed the backstage corridor and reached the wings. Instantly, he halted. He smelled trouble, and the prospect recharged him with energy. He stared around with quick, guarded eyes.