Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1942)

PEPSODENT POVfDER makes feet h IWICE AS BRIGH¥ f^ ITS A PHOTO-FINISH TIE... WE'RE BOTH USING PEPSODENT NOW! ■ViSf . Jack and Alan, the Sampson Twins of Norwood Park, Illinois, champion swimmers, tournament golfers, team up in a new contest. "Honors are usually pretty even between us, in swimming, golf, or track... almost any sport. But when we made the tooth powder test. .. wow ! Jack beat me a mile because he was using Pepsodent ... I had chosen another wellknown leading brand." for ffie safety of your smile . . , i "It wasn't even close! At school, friends knew Jack at a glance... because his teeth were twice as bright/ No question about it— Pepsodent made the difference! That's why the family began using it, too, even before the test was over!" ^''S^fy "^® Pepsodent twice a day... ^^ ji# see your dentist twice a year. plane. There was a strap around his waist, holding him tightly in his chair, and he tilted and shook before her eyes, buffeted by the winds outside. She called to him to be careful, but of what she did not know, only that the plane was heading into some frightful doom. Suddenly the plane was gone, Joe was gone, and she could see only darkness and drifting clouds. A scream like that of a tormented soul pierced her ears, then a crash, and the crackle of flames. "Joe! Joe!" she cried — and woke at the sound of her own voice, shaking with terror. THE familiar outlines of her own room drifted into place before her eyes, dimly revealed in the dawn light — yet it was they which were insubstantial and only the dream which retained reality. She got out of bed, hoping to shake off the oppressive sense of calamity, but got little comfort from the feel of the cold floor under her bare feet, the sight of snow-covered streets gleaming palely outside. With difficulty she restrained herself from putting in a telephone call to Eve Underwood in Washington; Eve would be the first to know if anything had happened, the State Department would get in touch with her even before calling Mary herself. The sun came up, and she dressed and went downstairs; had breakfast, saw Davey, telephoned an order of groceries to the market downtown, did everything she would have done on an ordinary day. But this was no ordinary day. She waited, filled with dread. Night came, and she would not go to bed, but built a roaring fire in the living room fireplace and sat beside it, trying to warm her chilled heart. And at last, near midnight, the telephone rang. It was the message she had known all day would come, yet now, as she listened, she could not believe. Eve's voice was thick with unshed tears. "Mary — you mustn't be frightened. We've just had news that Joe's plane crashed, somewhere on the steppe east of the Urals. They hope he escaped ... I didn't want to call you, with so little news, but the State Department said I must — it'll be in the papers tomorrow." Mary heard herself saying, "Yes. Yes. I know. I . . . Thank you. Eve. You'll call me the minute there's anything—" Stupid, incoherent words. Dead words, dropping like stones into the black maw of the telephone mouthpiece. Meaningless words. Joe — lying blackened and still on the short grass of a Siberian steppe; dead, never again to laugh and say, "Where's that son of mine? I want to see him!" Never again to delight or wound her heart. "No!" She cried the word out loud in the silent room. It was not possible. Joe could not be dead. Rather — a picture he himself had described flashed into her mind: a vast dark plain, stretching away farther than the eye could reach, and one small twinkling light. Joe would be struggling to reach that light, bent almost double against the wind, because there he knew he would find all the things he loved. "But the light never got any nearer . . ." A S Eve had said, the news of the -^* disaster was in all the papers the next morning. People came and went in the Main Street house; messages of hope and comfort poured in from all over the state. Mary did what there was to be done. She nodded and said "Yes" and "No" and "They expect a report from the rescue party soon." Through the day, the picture of what had happened so far away began to take shape. Joe's plane had left Alma Ata for Irkutsk, traveling over a desolate region. Six hours after it should have landed in Irkutsk, aviation authorities there grew alarmed and sent out a search party of four planes. The transport was found, then, a twisted a charred mass of wreckage. In a peasant's hut five miles from the scene of the accident, the rescuers discovered the pilot. "The peasants had picked him up, some distance from the wreckage, and carried him back to their home. They had found no other living creature. The plane had been blazing so fiercely they had been unable to approach it. The pilot was still unconscious, but it was hoped he would recover sufficiently to make a statement. David Post had talked to Mary on the telephone several times during the long day, and that evening he came to the house. Annie, red-eyed and subdued, admitted him. Mary herself had not cried, not once since she heard the news. She and David tried, for their souls' sakes, to talk about ordinary things. 56 RADIO AND TELEVISION UMBROB