“Ambrose Carver always has something there. Take another angle. Without an agent Joe tries to sell himself where there is no market. One station is foreign language; another has mostly spot commercials and recordings. There’s nothing for Joe at these stations, but he doesn’t know it. He finds it out in time. I save him all that time. For fifty per cent he buys everything it has taken me years to learn. I save him from mistakes.” The silence lingered. Amby asked shrewdly: “Would it be worth money to be saved from mistakes in your business, Mr. Carlin?” Tom Carlin cleared his throat. Joe waited anxiously. Nothing was said. “Another mistake,” Amby went on, “is to think because Joe has a good audition he’s a radio actor. He has to learn. Will a station teach him? No. Not after he’s sixteen; they say eighteen is too late. They haven’t time. So who rehearses him? I do. I worry for him, and think for him, and plan for him. You know what radio stars get? You know what is paid for the Eddie Cantor show?” “Don’t give Joe those ideas,” Mrs. Carlin said sharply. “Mustn’t he have a beginning?” Amby asked. He walked to the table and laid a fountain pen beside the contracts. Tom Carlin glanced at his wife. Whatever he saw there sent his glance to his son’s face. Slowly, after a moment, he picked up the pen. “Here,” said Amby expansively, “is where we start to go.” He folded one copy of the contract. Joe went with him to the porch. Tom Carlin spoke in an undertone. “Why did you want me to sign?” “You saw Joe’s face?” Kate Carlin was quiet. “He won’t wake up to-morrow thinking we hanged him.” “A successful agent couldn’t waste time with buses. He’d have a car.” “Carver hasn’t fooled me, even though he’s dazzled Joe.” “But if he’s a bag of wind—” “It’s a short contract. When it terminates, Joe will still be Joe. Is anything more important than that?” Flushed and jubilant, Joe returned from the porch. “Thank you, Dad.” Half-way up the stairs he paused. “Amby wants me to report at his office at ten to-morrow for a rehearsal.” “Where is his office?” Mr. Carlin asked. “McCoy Building.” Upstairs a door closed. “One of the old, run-down rat-trap buildings,” the man said slowly. But to Joe Carlin there was nothing dismaying about the McCoy Building. The elevator creaked and groaned and finally reached the sixth floor. Down at the end of a drab hall pale sunlight came in through a smudged window, and motes of dust danced in the pallid shaft of light. To Joe, the dust was a thrilling reminder of the dusty wings, and the dusty drops and props of the stage of Northend High. Even the mustiness of the hall brought memories of the damp brick wall at the rear of the high school stage. Joe thought in fascination: “It smells the way an agent’s building ought to smell—a stagey, theater smell.” He tried the door of 615. The door was locked. He banged on the panels.