Joe said: “Mr. Wylie asked me to come in.”
“He won’t be here until about two,” the stenographer told him.
The telephone rang once more. The telephone kept ringing. A young man came in and talked to the stenographer about a script. He was, Joe thought, the Mr. Lake who had telephoned earlier.
And then the door of 921 flew open and Vic Wylie arrived. “Did Munn call, Miss Robb?” He charged for the inner office, swinging the inevitable brief-case, and saw Joe. “With you in a minute.” He saw the other man. “A good script, Curt, but I can’t find a spot for it. Take it to New York and show it to Kate Smith’s agency. Now and then her show emotes.”
“What would it pay?” Curt Lake asked.
“Fifteen minutes on a Kate Smith? About two hundred and fifty dollars.” The door of the inner office closed upon Wylie and the script writer.
An intangible flavor of show business lingered in the outer office, and words echoed in Joe’s mind. Script—two hundred and fifty dollars—Kate Smith—emote. Emote meant, of course, that the Kate Smith show occasionally used a highly emotional sketch. There had never been talk like this in Amby’s office. Joe thought with a thrill: “This is radio.” What did Wylie want with him? The inner door opened, and his heart began to throb.
“No more scripts,” Wylie told Curt Lake with decision. “If Munson can’t make up his mind about the show after reading ten, he’ll still be yes and no if he reads fifty. If he yells for more, we’ll shoot him a synopsis.”
Lake was gone, and Wylie was at the desk of Miss Robb. His finger snapped.
“Telegram. Thompson, Chicago. The Wings in the Sky platter goes air-mail. See that it makes the three o’clock plane.”