“Yes!” answered Vera Bundle with spirit, a big smile on her face.

“Before I ask the big question, Vera, how do you feel right now?”

“Excited.”

“Scared?”

“Not at all.”

“Good for you. Okay, Vera Bundle, here is your big question. For one…hundred…million…dollars…or that goblet of dreadful poison…”

The studio went silent.

The audience seemed frozen in their seats.

It was deathly quiet in the control room.

Even the cold-blooded producer felt his throat catch.

“The Great Wall of China was built to protect the capital city of Datong by the Ming Dynasty,” read host Rip Puckett from a five-by-seven white card. Puckett had to hold the card with two hands to stop it from shaking. “Some sections of the wall were said to date from the seventh century B.C. The wall did not always work. Often invaders merely ran around its ends. Sections built by the Ming alone are said to be long enough to stretch from Washington, D.C., as far as Wichita, Kansas.”

Rip Puckett paused dramatically, as he was instructed to do.

“Vera Bundle, for one…hundred…million…dollars…or death!…how long is the Great Wall of China? You have exactly sixty seconds to give me a correct answer…starting now!”

Vera’s expression was inscrutable.

It was hard to figure out if she did or didn’t know the correct answer.

A spotlight pinpointed Vera Bundle. Another spotlight circled the gigantic sixty-second clock in the center of the stage. Fifteen seconds had gone by.

Nothing from Vera Bundle.

The lone arm on the gigantic clock now dropped to the thirty-second mark.

Some of the studio audience had their hands clasped in prayer, their heads bent, praying Vera would think of the answer.

Outside on the street in front of the National Broadcasting Company’s main entrance, large speakers blared absolute silence to the anxious crowd standing on the pavement. It was the first time NBC had rigged speakers to the roof of their main entrance so that the large crowd on the sidewalk and in the street could hear what was happening in The Big Question studio. At Times Square, bright rolling white lights proclaimed: VERA SILENT…VERA SILENT…VERA SILENT…

Nuns, waiting for Vera’s answer, crossed themselves. Right-to-life and anti-death-penalty pickets ceased their chanting and marching in circles, standing still and waiting to hear Vera answer the question. Tourists and hardened New Yorkers alike stopped walking and waited too.

Everyone in the street and in the studio was aware by now that when Vera knew the answer to a question, she said it right away. Vera’s long pause caused enormous concern. “She doesn’t know,” was whispered from one to another inside and outside the building.

The gigantic hand on the clock was at the forty-five-second mark.

“Only fifteen seconds left, Vera,” said host Rip Puckett, suddenly worried himself.

And then the orchestra played a chord.

Time was up.

“I’m sorry, Vera. I really am,” said the obviously shaken host, “but time’s up. I need your answer now.”