"Betty, Betty, Betty!"
Betty Roberts cringed as she heard the familiar call ring out once again down the halls of Pittsburgh radio station WENN. "Yes, Scott?" she inquired, politely but coolly, as she turned from the Green Room door to face the man who had called out her name thrice.
Scott Sherwood bounded along the hallway towards Betty, his eyes gleaming, his smile beaming. "You'll be pleased to know that I just scored a major coup for our humble little station."
Betty arched an eyebrow. "Oh, really?" She paused, realizing that she'd recently been arching her eyebrows rather too much when Scott Sherwood was around, and promptly smoothed her face. No sense in thinking he's constantly raising my eyebrows, she thought wryly. Then again...
"You bet, Betty," Scott gushed on. "Wait here!" Scott hurried back to theradio station's entrance, and came back to Betty carrying a box. "Ta-da!"
Betty looked at the box, looked back up at Scott, and looked back down at the box. "A box? That's your proud accomplishment?"
"No, no, no, it's what's inside that counts, Betty. That's what I keep telling you."
Betty chuckled in spite of herself. "OK, I'll bite. What's inside the box?"
Scott's grin grew even larger, if such a thing were possible, which Betty was beginning to doubt at this point in their relationship. Relationship? Well, their working relationship, she reasoned with herself. Yes, that sounds more proper.
Opening the box, Scott lifted out three heavy books. "It's a couple of books by Jules Verne. The nice people over at the Pittsburgh Public Library want us to come up with dramatizations of each of these books for their show. We've got 'Around the World in 80 Days', 'Journey to the Center of the Earth', and '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'."
Betty's eyes lit up. "Gee, Scott, I love those books! I used to read them over and over when I was a young girl back in Elkhart. Such imagination! I felt I was being taken on a special trip far away from my own home every time I read them. Oh, Scott, this is going to be so much fun!"
"I kinda thought you'd get a kick out of them," Scott said. "The thing is, they want them all written by next Friday."
Betty's smile dropped quickly from her face. "What did you just say?"
"They want them all written by next Friday."
"That's what I thought you said. Scott, I can't do all three books by next Friday. Not with all of our regular programming to write as well."
"I've got that all figured out. Mr. Foley's been pestering me day and night to do some writing. For some reason, he feels his voice just hasn't been heard enough around here lately. So, I thought we could let him do some of the usual weekly programs. He's in every show, he knows the characters. And besides, I'd love to hear what kind of words Mr. Foley would put in our character's mouths, wouldn't you? That would leave you with plenty of time to work on the Verne scripts."
Betty looked at Scott. "Gee, I don't know, Scott. It's one thing to do sound effects. It's a totally different world when you start using words."
"Oh, come on, Betty, you know as well as I do that Mr. Foley is one of the most quotable fellas around. He's actually quite a wordsmith."
"Wordsmith? Where'd you pick that one up, Scott?"
"Somewhere between here and five minutes ago. What do you say, Betty?"
Betty grabbed one of the books from Scott. "It's certainly tempting..." She paused, her eyes gazing at the richly illustrated cover of "Around the World in 80 Days". "Oh, why not?"
"Great!" Scott beamed. "Let's get to work!"
"We?"
"Well, sure, I'm a big Verne fan myself. C'mon, remember that science-fiction story I whipped up a while back?"
"I'm still recovering from that one."
"Well, this is gonna be better than that, because we'll be working together...alone...on a special project..."
Betty frowned at Scott. "And that's precisely what it's going to be. Work." She thumped the copy of "80 Days" against Scott's chest. "Write up a 12 page scene-by-scene summary of this book for me, by tomorrow morning."
Scott took the book. "Uh, sure, OK, I can do that. 12 pages. Do you need that typed, or will handwriting do? Because frankly, my typing skills aren't up to your standards."
"Whichever. Just have it done by tomorrow morning. I suggest you start right away."
Scott nodded. "Fine. Whatever you say, Betty." He opened the cover of the book, and flipped through some pages as he headed down the hallway. Suddenly he stopped, and turned around to face Betty once more. "Um, Betty?"
Betty turned back from the Green Room door yet again. "What is it?"
"It's a box," Scott said.
"Haven't we been through all this?" Betty asked, confused.
"Not with this box." Scott held aloft a rather small, finely carved wooden box. A tiny lock clamped the lid shut. "It was inside the book, where the pages should have been. Boxes don't come with every book, do they, Betty?"
"No, they don't, Scott." Betty took the small box, and examined it closely. Apart from the steel lock, there were no decorations or markings of any kind on the outside. "Well, the lock is rather small, I don't think we should have a problem unlocking it. Let me find a knife or something."
Scott fished in a pocket and produced a set of small keys. "Or we could try one of these."
Betty shook her head. "I won't even ask."
"Good thing, too. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. That's what I was told when I asked about them."
"Too bad other people aren't as committed to their promises as I am."
*****
Ten minutes later, in the Green Room, Scott and Betty had finally managed to pick the lock of the small box using one of Scott's skeleton keys. Inside they found two objects, wrapped in a piece of cloth.
"It looks like a handkerchief," Betty said, as she examined the dusty white cloth. "Look, there are some intials on it. "'P.F." she read aloud. "Hmmm. Not Jules Verne, then. I wonder whose they could be?"
"'P.F.'," Scott mused. "I wonder..."
Betty carefully opened the handkerchief, to reveal two objects. One was most definitely a key, and a rather ornate one at that. The second object could have been almost anything. It was a small glass sphere, about the size of a golf ball, with a crystal pyramid embedded at its center. The sides of the pyramid were engraved with the letter "A".
"Well, this makes no sense," Betty said, dumbfounded.
"I've got it!" Scott cried out triumphantly. "P.F. stands for Phileas Fogg! From the book, he's a character in the book we found the box in!"
"I know who Phileas Fogg is, Scott, I've read the book. But why would his initials be on a handkerchief inside a box inside a Jules Verne book? It makes no sense."
"But it might. What if Phileas Fogg were a real person?"
Betty laughed out loud. "You have got to be kidding me, Scott. Everyone knows that Jules Verne made him up. The book is a work of fiction, for heaven's sake!"
"Betty, Betty, Betty, you've got to learn to keep your mind open to new ideas!" Scott picked up the small sphere.
Betty looked back inside the wooden box. "Hey, there's a piece of paper in here at the bottom!" She picked it up and read it. "'Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.' And there's a series of letters and numbers handwritten on the card, too."
Scott looked at Betty over the glass sphere. "Well, at least now we know what we'll be doing tomorrow..."
Betty paused, looked up at Scott, and rolled her eyes and groaned. "Why do I ever listen to you, Scott Sherwood?"
Where the Air is Rarified
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