“They’ve gone over to the Everts-Hall Agency to put through the contract.”
Then, Joe decided, it was true. Hadn’t he watched the taxi leave?
“Look!” he said, happily reckless. “I have four dollars.”
“Infant,” Lucille drawled, “you don’t know how much wealth four dollars is until you need four dollars. Hold on to it.”
“I’m buying the dinners. We celebrate. Do you know where we can get a good seventy-five-cent dinner, Arch?”
“Mr. Carlin,” Archie’s deep voice pronounced gravely, “I know them all, from swanky hotel dining-rooms down to the joints where you eat for a dime.”
Oh, but they were gay. Gay as only show people can be gay when luck is running. Archie brought them to a table for four in an Italian basement restaurant. The food was good. But the talk, Joe thought, was better. Archie, Stella, and Lucille were all at their best. There was a bright play of drollery and a great deal of laughter. This, too, was show business.
A happy Joe Carlin, still chuckling over some of Archie’s quips, rode out to Northend. To-morrow Ambrose Carver might steer Sonny Baker into the He show, but the Munson show was his. Once, the time FKIP had cut the I Want Work platter, he had hurried home with a false alarm. What he would have to tell his folks to-night would be real.
Inside the house the telephone rang as he reached the porch. He heard his mother’s voice:
“I’m sorry; he’s not here now. If you’ll leave your num—Just a moment. I think I hear him on the porch. Joe!”