“You’ll give him a script, won’t you, Mr. Lake?” “Vic?” The man was amazed at the question. “I’d give him my right arm.” It was madly unbelievable, fantastic and unreal—and yet so very real. It was show business. Curt Lake paced the inner office. He sat before the typewriter, pecked at the keys, paced restlessly once more. He ripped off his tie. He drummed on the window, swore fervently, and opened his shirt. Suddenly he was back at the machine and talking to himself. His fingers began to pound. When he finished, shortly before noon, he had a pile of manuscript. Joe asked in a hoarse whisper: “Script finished?” “Script?” Curt Lake’s voice was thick with scorn. “It’s tripe.” Listening to the _Sue Davis_ show come out of Vic Wylie’s radio that afternoon, Joe suffered. It was tripe. There was no spice, no spirit, no punch. Lines and speeches that went on and on until they had gone on for thirteen and a half minutes. Then they stopped. Vic was right; the curtain was corny. He shut off the radio and went home. Kate Carlin brought him a glass of hot milk. “Throat pain much, Joe?” He shook his head. There was no pain. That was the maddening phase. “Did I imagine the show was bad to-day?” “It was very bad.” Talk was an effort. “They had to build a new script in a hurry. To-morrow’ll be better.” To-morrow was no better. He sat in on the dress, and it was torture not to be at the mike reading the Dick Davis part. It was torture to listen to dialogue that had become lifeless and spiritless. Vic Wylie’s eyes seemed sunken. “Five minutes after we signed off last night,” Stella Joyce fluttered, “Amby Carver was around wanting to know what had happened. He knew the script had been fluffed up with an egg-beater.” “Amby’s worried about his ten per cent,” Joe whispered bitterly. Amby, his agent, hadn’t bothered to phone him. Wylie, strained, came from the control-room and drew him aside. “Kid, stay away. I know how you feel, but worry won’t get you anything. The script’s blue, the cast’s blue, and your face’s as long as four Sundays. Forget radio until you clear up. Interest yourself in something else. Read a book, steal a car, make a mud pie. Do anything so long as it isn’t radio. See me Saturday.” Vic had said to read a book. Books flashed a picture before Joe of his father’s business. He tried to force his mind to dwell on how the Thomas Carlin store could sell more books. Fifty thousand listeners! What could you say that would make them book-hungry? Thomas Carlin Presents To-day’s Book. Curt Lake had been right, too. You couldn’t snip an idea out of the air; you couldn’t deliberately dig up an idea as you would a garden bulb. Thomas Carlin Presents.... The effort died in failure. His mind refused to freshen, to come alive. A mound of letters awaited him at the Everts-Hall Agency. He signed them and rode dully out to the Northend.