Joe sat on a hard wooden bench. The loudspeaker went on and on, the only sound, the only evidence of life on this floor. Once the elevator stopped and a porter carried a kit of tools into one of the corridors. The hard, lonely bench became harder, lonelier. Joe’s legs began to shake and twitch. Ten minutes past two, and he was still alone in this tomb of a fifth floor. So this was radio, was it? Two-fifteen. A trickling river of sweat ran down his back.
The elevator stopped again and two men and a girl stepped out. One of the men was short and stout. The other was tall, lean, and brisk, with a penciling of black mustache across his upper lip. The short stout man took some keys from his pocket and they walked past the bench. The girl said: “Only six scheduled for to-day.” They went into Studio K.
Joe’s heart gave a smothering thud.
The door of the studio opened again. It was the girl. “Mr. Carlin? This way, please.”
Joe’s feet were lifeless, without feeling. Studio K might have been any one of the smaller studios he had seen from the fourth-floor gallery—same microphone, same chairs along the walls, same control-room at the far end. Behind the glass front of the control-room sat the stout man and the brisk man with the microscopic mustache. The girl joined them, going into the little room through a door at the side. It seemed to Joe that all three glared out at him with malice. He dropped two of his books on a chair.
The stout man spoke from the control-room through the two-way mike. “What are you going to give us, Mr. Carlin?”
“A bit from—”
“The other side of the mike, please. You’re on the dead side.”
A badly confused Joe Carlin crossed over. “A bit—”
“A little closer. Don’t be nervous.”