Radio Mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

a telephone booth and called backstage at the studio. To her relief, Mrs. Piatt answered. "This is Gwen Holmes," she said._ "1 just wanted you to know I'm all right, but I'm going away. I'm at Grand Central Station and I'm — " "Well, am I glad to hear your voice!" Mrs. Piatt began. "Well, now, you— " "I just couldn't go through with it — all that awful publicity. I'm terribly sorry," Gwen interrupted her. "Honey lamb," Mrs. Piatt said reassuringly, "you forget all about it — I feel exactly the same as you do. Have a nice trip. 'Bye!" Even now, Gwen couldn't help smiling as she mentally pictured Mrs. Piatt blithely hanging up the receiver while everybody else in the studio was bending every effort to locate the missing star. SHE returned to the lunch counter, laid her bag down, and began to eat. The waitress came up, paused a few seconds, and asked, "Anything else, Miss Holmes?" "Some tea, please," Gwen answered— and realized too late she had allowed herself to be trapped. "But my name isn't Holmes, ' she added hurriedly. "It is! You're Gwen Holmes!" the waitress said, pointing an excited finger at Gwen s purse. "Listen, Miss Holmes, why don't you go back to that fellow? He seems awful nice and he's crazy about you." Gwen looked about wildly. The other customers were turning interested faces; out of nowhere, a crowd was beginning to gather. "Go call the studio," somebody told the waitress. "We'll get a thousand dollars if RADIO M IRROR we can keep her here until they come after her." A man lunged for her. She twisted her body aside, letting the man sprawl on the floor, and under cover of the confusion managed to run out of the room and out to the street. She leaped into the first taxi she saw and called breathlessly to the driver, "Is there anywhere else I can catch a train to Buffalo?" A red face and bushy white mustache peered around at her. "Sure. Hunnerd 'n Twenty-fifth Street station." "Take me there, please." The after-dinner traffic was at its peak, and her cab, a decrepit and worn affair at best, crawled along, starting and stopping with jerks. Gwen had the sensations of a hunted animal. To her frantic pleas to go faster, the driver only shook his head. At last she reached One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. She thrust a bill into the driver's hand and started to get out when a news-boy rushed up to her, waving his paper almost under her nose. "Get your paper here! All about Gwen Holmes!" he yelled. "All — " She tried to brush past him, but his voice took on a shriller note. "Hey! Here she is now!" Gwen dodged back into the cab, out again at the other side, through roaring and screaming traffic, almost under the wheels of grinding trucks. She was breathless by the time she had found another cab. "Go anywhere!" she shouted to the driver. "But get out of here quick!" He gestured boredly with his hand at the traffic jam in front of him. "Can't do anything about it, lady," he said. Gwen crouched back in a corner, trying to hide herself from the street. But it was no use. The door of the taxi was flung open and— Jack Carson stepped in. "For a little girl," he said grimly, "you can cause more trouble than six armies Do you know you're coming right back to the studio with me, for that radio wedding?" "I am not!" Gwen declared, struggling to break the grip he had on her wrist. "You are, just as soon as Bob Millet fights his way out of that nest of trucks he's in now." He glanced out of the back window. "We've chased you all over town and we aren't going to let you get awav now." "I won't marry Frank Rossman!" YOU don't have to!" Jack snapped "Sap that I am, 1 thought when you turned me down you were in love with that groaner. It took Patsy, my secretan to tell me you were really in love with Bob — and he's in 'love with you, too, only I managed to gum that up too." "But — the wedding — " Gwen gasped. "We'll have it, if we can get down there before the program is over — but Miller'll be the groom, not Rossman! Here he is now." Bob scrambled into the cab, almost into Jack's lap. His tie was askew, his hair tousled, his face white — but somehow, as his eyes lit on Gwen, he looked like a very happy man. "Hello, radio bride," he said. "Or — or am I taking too much for_ granted?" Gwen leaned toward him. "You can take me for granted, the rest of your life," she answered. Jack looked out of the window as the cab moved forward. "Ah-hum," he murmured. "So this is love." The End GOOD GRIEF, PEC TO ANYTHING?.