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.