Francis Durbridge - Paul Temple Intervenes

Temple smiled.

‘I’m sure the Laughing Cavalier is quite a delightful person to meet,’ he replied, urbanely, ‘but I doubt if we’d have much time for each other at the moment.’ The blonde raised her eyebrows almost imperceptibly and favoured him with a noncommittal stare.

‘Were you wanting to see someone?’ she asked.

‘Yes – a Mr. Cranmer Guest,’ replied Temple, casually.

‘Cranmer Guest? Oh, you can’t see him. He’s busy with his programme – goes on the air at nine,’ she quickly informed him.

‘I’m afraid Mr. Guest won’t go on the air at nine, unless I happen to be present,’ said Temple suavely. The receptionist took a quick glance at her copy of the programme schedule.

‘Say – you wouldn’t be Paul Temple?’

‘I usually manage to keep my appointments,’ he smiled.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Temple,’ she apologised, pushing in a plug on the nearby switchboard. ‘I’ll tell Mr. Guest right away.’

She spoke into the receiver, and presently announced: ‘Mr. Guest will be right down.’

As Temple was turning away she reached for a pale blue envelope that lay in a pigeon-hole at her side.

‘Mr. Temple, this message came for you over short-wave from London. It’s been sent on from New York.’

Temple scrutinised the envelope, then thrust it into his pocket. He was just moving away when he turned and asked the girl: ‘Supposing there’s an answer to this – can I send it from here?’

‘Sure thing,’ she smiled. ‘We’ve got a special short-wave service here for priority stuff; it’s working day and night.’

‘Whatever can it be, darling?’ Steve asked as they sat down on a settee near the information desk.

‘I expect it’s in code – it’ll have to wait till after the broadcast,’ he replied, as a thickset man with a very large head, slightly crooked nose and a mobile mouth came towards them.

He exchanged a glance with the receptionist, then addressed Temple.

‘Welcome to GSKZ, Mr. Temple.’

Temple rose and shook hands, then introduced Steve.

‘This is a pleasure,’ said Cranmer Guest with a disarming smile. ‘Shall we go up to my office?’

‘Would you like me to wait here?’ interposed Steve.

Guest waved aside the idea.

‘Certainly not, Mrs. Temple. We have a comfortable lounge and restaurant upstairs. Come along with us – and after the broadcast I’ll show you round.’

He led the way to the elevator, past the doors of the auditorium, now closed, through which came the very faint strains of a popular dance tune.

The elevator stopped on the fourth floor, and Guest led them down a broad corridor containing numerous signs: Studio 4A, Control, Studio 4B, Artistes’ Room, Announcers, News Room, Lounge and Restaurant. They saw Steve settled with a magazine and a cup of coffee, then went into Guest’s office, which had his name painted on the door in small black letters.

‘This is Miss Wharton, my secretary – Mr. Temple,’ announced Guest as they entered the room, and a dark, intelligent girl looked up from her typewriter. ‘Now Lesley, here’s another rush job. Take down Mr. Temple’s answers to my questions and let’s have your copies right away. We’re on the air in’ – he looked at the wall clock – ‘less than two hours.’

Without any further ado, Guest began to fire questions at his visitor. They were chiefly concerning Temple’s crime experiences. The questions were shrewd and, in an indirect manner, displayed a considerable knowledge of the subject. But Guest was not interested in airing his own knowledge. He let Temple go on talking as long as he wished; then after about half-an-hour’s conversation, during which the secretary had busily filled several pages of her notebook, Guest sighed in some relief.

‘There, I think that’s about all, Mr. Temple. I think this should make just about the best interview I’ve tackled this year. Glad the network’s taking it.’ He paused, then added as an afterthought: ‘Oh, just one more question. Do you know anything about this person who calls himself The Marquis?’

Temple shook his head.

‘Only what I’ve read in the papers. His – er – activities seem to have come to light since I sailed.’

‘H’m,’ murmured Guest, ‘the police over there don’t seem to be making much headway. The fellow just commits one murder after another and, so far as I can make out, gets away with it. You ought to see the headlines in a batch of English papers I received yesterday.’ He paused, then added curiously: ‘I suppose Scotland Yard haven’t sent for you by any chance?’

Temple smiled. ‘Not to my knowledge,’ he replied, in some amusement.

‘Oh well,’ shrugged Guest, turning to his secretary. ‘That last question’s off the record, Lesley.’

As quickly as Miss Wharton typed out the contents of her notebook, Guest and Temple went through them, deleting a sentence here and there, adding an occasional explanatory phrase, sometimes re-writing a whole paragraph. When they had finished, Guest read through the final version with a stopwatch in his hand, and discovered that they would over-run by two minutes. So another question and answer were cut out. The final result was passed back to Miss Wharton to make a final draft.

Guest stood up and stretched himself.

‘Twenty-five minutes before we’re due on the air. Time for a cup of coffee with Mrs. Temple,’ he announced, offering Temple a cigarette.

In the lounge, a loudspeaker, turned right down, was playing dance music which was being broadcast at that moment on a network programme from New York. Just as they had joined Steve, a breathless young man in an open shirt came up to Guest.

‘Same layout, Cran?’ he asked.

Guest nodded.

‘Twelve minutes,’ he replied. ‘One minute commercial to start and finish, and the introduction for Mr. Temple I gave you this morning.’

The young man smiled at Temple.

‘This is Harvey Lane, one of our announcers – Mr. and Mrs. Temple,’ Guest introduced them briefly. Lane chatted pleasantly for a minute, then made a hurried departure.

‘Never a minute to breathe, poor devils,’ commented Guest, stirring his coffee. ‘Oh well, we’ve all had to go through it – station breaks, forenoon plugs, lunchtime commercials – it’s all in the game.’

Temple and Steve exchanged a smile.

‘How’s it going, darling?’ she asked.

‘I shan’t be sorry to see the clock pointing to nine-fifteen,’ he admitted, dryly.

‘Perhaps Mrs. Temple would like to come in the studio,’ suggested Guest.

Steve shook her head. ‘I’d much sooner listen in here,’ she declared.

At ten minutes to nine, Guest led the way into a small studio, where the main object of furniture was a flat-top desk with two microphones on it. There was a chair in front of each microphone, and on the opposite wall was a large clock with a red second hand slowly moving round the dial. Under the clock stood a large window commanding a view of the control room, complete with its gramophone turntables and banks of meters.

At one minute to nine, after Temple and Guest had settled themselves comfortably in their chairs, Miss Wharton rushed in with the completed scripts.

Guest began glancing through his copy. ‘Plenty of time to look through it,’ he told Temple, as the announcer came in and took his stand in front of a microphone.

The engineer behind the glass panel held up his hand. Ten seconds to go. Temple had always found these last few seconds before a broadcast completely awe-inspiring. One hardly dared to breathe. It was as if some world-shattering event, like the downfall of an empire, was due to take place at the split second of nine o’clock.