AFTER THE CURTAIN FALLS, THE REAL HORROR BEGINS: A Deadly Obsession Echoes Through a Dark Theatre

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Latensis Stations Present Escape.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh Fantasy.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
I'm gonna thank some miss.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
A man us Seal.

Speaker 5 (00:36):
Present Suspense.

Speaker 6 (00:41):
I am the Whistler.

Speaker 7 (00:43):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler, and this is retro Radio
Old Time Radio in the Dark, brought to you by
Weird Darkness dot Com. Here I have the privilege of
bringing you some of the best dark, creepy, and macabre
old time radio shows ever created. If you're new here,
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check out Weirddarkness dot com for merchandise. Sign up for

(01:05):
my free newsletter, connect with me on social media, listen
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Hope in the Darkness page. If you're struggling with depression,
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and more at Weird Darkness dot com. Now bolt your doors,
lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with

(01:25):
me into tonight's retro Radio Old Time Radio in the Dark.

Speaker 8 (01:30):
The CBS Radio Mystery Theater Presents.

Speaker 9 (01:50):
Come in. Welcome. I'm E. G.

Speaker 10 (01:55):
Marshall.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
I go to seek on many roads.

Speaker 9 (02:00):
What is to be true?

Speaker 5 (02:02):
Heart and strong with love?

Speaker 9 (02:03):
To light.

Speaker 8 (02:05):
Will they not bear me in the fight to order?
Shun or wield or mold my destiny? Destiny it waits
for all of us. But is it cast forever for
all of us in frozen letters of stone?

Speaker 9 (02:21):
Or does it change? Can each of us change it?

Speaker 11 (02:25):
Yes, sir, you're looking at the strongest, most secure vault
in the state of Arkansas.

Speaker 5 (02:31):
Is that a fact, Sirtain?

Speaker 11 (02:32):
They're the safest, most burglar proof? Hm you ever heard
of Jimmy Valentine.

Speaker 5 (02:39):
Jimmy Valentine.

Speaker 11 (02:40):
No, Well, he's only the most famous safe cracker in
the whole United States.

Speaker 9 (02:44):
Well, I'll bet you even he couldn't break in.

Speaker 5 (02:47):
You know, sir, I'm tempted to take that bet.

Speaker 11 (02:50):
Well, how could we know that Jimmy Valentine had come
down here to try to crack this vault?

Speaker 5 (02:55):
He might, He might if you asked him to.

Speaker 8 (03:07):
Our mystery drama, Jimmy Valentine's Gamble was adapted from the O.
Henry Classic Especially for the Mystery Theater by Sam Dan
and stars Robert Dryden and Paul Hecht. It is sponsored
in part by Buick Motor Division. I'll be back shortly
with Act one. This is a story by William Sidney Porter,

(03:39):
or if you prefer oh Henry, everything and everyone was
grist to his meal. The basic theme of his life
was once expressed by a Roman poet named Terence, who said,
I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me,

(04:00):
and no human being was ever alien to O Henry.
Either emaciated shop girls, overfed society, dowagers, millionaires, cops, clerks,
anyone everyone.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
If you had the breath of life, you were.

Speaker 8 (04:13):
One of O Henry's people at this time. Let us
meet one of O Henry's favorite people, a bright young
man named Jimmy Valentine. For further particulars, listened to the
master storyteller himself.

Speaker 9 (04:31):
I met Jimmy Valentine.

Speaker 8 (04:32):
And while I was in prison, what was I doing
in prison? Well, let me just say this about prison
in general. Many of the people who are in it
should be out of it, and many of the people
who are out of it should be.

Speaker 12 (04:47):
In it at any rate.

Speaker 8 (04:50):
This is Jimmy Valentine's story.

Speaker 9 (04:52):
Not mine.

Speaker 8 (04:53):
I was designed to work in the dispensary. It was
an easy, pleasant job. Well, Jimmy, I see you getting
out tomorrow.

Speaker 5 (05:02):
Happy day is Billy?

Speaker 8 (05:03):
Now, I guess you won't be coming in here to
the dispensary anymore for my good old toothache.

Speaker 9 (05:09):
G remedy. Oh I never got a toothache. I come
in for the lecture.

Speaker 12 (05:13):
The lecture.

Speaker 9 (05:13):
I've heard the lecture from professionals, Billy, from preachers and
judges and wardens, but none of them even come close
to you. Jimmy.

Speaker 8 (05:23):
Now, I hope you never come back. You're really not
a bad fellow at hell.

Speaker 13 (05:27):
I am.

Speaker 5 (05:28):
I am.

Speaker 8 (05:29):
Stop cracking safes and live straight.

Speaker 9 (05:32):
I'm the best there is. Look at these fingers. These
are the fingers of a genius. Let my fingers touch
the lock on a safe and they just don't feel.
Oh no, they can see, they can hear.

Speaker 8 (05:45):
And the net result jail. If you are smart, you
give it up.

Speaker 5 (05:50):
I can't. It's destiny. It's what I was born to do.

Speaker 8 (05:54):
Nobody is born to be a safe cracker.

Speaker 9 (05:56):
What were you born to be, Billy? A bank clerk?
Where it got you?

Speaker 8 (06:01):
No, I don't think I'll work in a bank anymore.

Speaker 9 (06:05):
A drug store clerk, I hope not. You see, Palt,
that's your problem. You don't know your destiny. You call
safe cracking a destiny. Well maybe it ain't e isn't
thank you, Billy. Maybe it isn't much of a destiny,
but at least I got one.

Speaker 5 (06:23):
Let me know when you find yours.

Speaker 9 (06:29):
Well. I found my destiny after a while.

Speaker 8 (06:33):
It was to go to New York City and write
stories for magazines and newspapers.

Speaker 9 (06:39):
And it was a happy destiny.

Speaker 8 (06:42):
I wish I could tell Jimmy Valentine about it, but
I had no idea where to find it. And then
one day a letter arrived. It was from a mister
Ralph D. Spencer. Who could it be? I didn't know
anyone named Ralph D. Spencer. Eh, dear Billy, Jimmy Valentine

(07:04):
is out.

Speaker 9 (07:05):
Ralph D.

Speaker 8 (07:06):
Spencer is in. I have gone and done it. I
have gone straight. I have become a rube. I have
married the dearest, sweetest girl in the world. The only
safe I open now is the safe.

Speaker 9 (07:20):
In my very own shoe store.

Speaker 8 (07:23):
And although I feel like a food using the combination,
it's all.

Speaker 10 (07:29):
Part of my new life.

Speaker 8 (07:31):
I had to laugh the very idea of Jimmy Valentine,
happily married and the proprietor of a shoe store in
a small town. I returned to the letter After he
was released from jail, he went straight away to a
saloon owned by one Mike Dolan.

Speaker 9 (07:54):
Jimmy, Oh, Jimmy, my boy, what his psyche for store?
I have a drink? Put away the bourbon mic oh strange.
I forgot you never tested that hard stuff. Can't afford
it makes your finger shake and told last of celser milk,
right right, yeah, sorry, I had to stay in Jais alone.
Oh four months ain't too bad. And they Detective Ben Price,

(08:18):
Well you knocked out too. You shouldn't complain. You get
me a black eye, very beauty of a fight of beauty.
I meant to ask, why didn't you go along quietly?
Jimmy always did, and I couldn't let him find my tools.
Losing those tools would be like losing my arms. Well,

(08:39):
Jimmy boy, they're here ready for you. You couldn't buy
a set of those tools for one thousand dollars. Well,
I believe it. They're made of the finest imported Swedish steel.
Every drill, every punch, Jimmy clamp Auger, plus those little
novelties I invented myself the envy of the affictional boy.

Speaker 14 (09:01):
Sully himself said he'd give you a two thousand and one.

Speaker 5 (09:06):
I wouldn't sell him to Sully for two million?

Speaker 9 (09:08):
Why not because.

Speaker 5 (09:11):
I don't like him.

Speaker 9 (09:13):
What do you learn in mind? Well, first I have
to pick up the tools. Then well, the world's my oyster,
as they say, and watch me crack.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
It wide open.

Speaker 9 (09:26):
And that's what he did.

Speaker 8 (09:28):
In the early evening, say seven, eight o'clock, he would
crack open oysters at the finest restaurants in the country.
And in the early morning, say one in two am,
he'd crack open safes and some of the best guarded
banks in the country.

Speaker 9 (09:44):
Jimmy always needed that challenge. Now.

Speaker 8 (09:49):
He mentioned the name Ben Price just before and identified
him as a detective. Ben worked for one of the
largest insurance companies in the world.

Speaker 15 (09:59):
I tell you it's Valentine, mister Powell. Valentine has to
be dandy, Jimmy Valentine. It's as if he left his signature.

Speaker 12 (10:09):
Yeah, hey, he is just out of jail.

Speaker 9 (10:11):
Price.

Speaker 16 (10:12):
She may have learned his lesson.

Speaker 15 (10:14):
Yeah, I'll tell you the lesson he learned. Small jobs,
never more than a couple of thousands, small bills, no silver,
no securities, nothing you can trace.

Speaker 8 (10:25):
Eh, doesn't seem possible, Jimmy Valentine cracking safe for chickdeed,
it has.

Speaker 15 (10:31):
To be Valentine. Look at this combination knob jerked out
as easy as pulling up a radish in wet weather.
He's got the only clamps that can do it. And
how clean those tumblers were punched out. He never has
to drill more than one hole in spursy.

Speaker 9 (10:49):
It is Valentine.

Speaker 8 (10:50):
Oh, supposing he's my man, how you propose to get him?

Speaker 15 (10:56):
I'll get him and he'll do his full bit. I'll
chase him the length and breadth of these here, entire
United States?

Speaker 17 (11:05):
Can you get him Price?

Speaker 10 (11:07):
This time?

Speaker 18 (11:08):
Can you get him and they get stick?

Speaker 15 (11:12):
I've got to get him, after all, he owes me
a tooth.

Speaker 8 (11:20):
Of course, Jimmy wasn't privy to this particular conversation, but
he did know that the thief catchers had been roused
against him, especially Ben Price. But Jimmy depended on his luck,
long jumps, quick getaways, a taste for good society.

Speaker 9 (11:39):
Oh, he was a hard man to find.

Speaker 19 (11:41):
Well.

Speaker 8 (11:41):
On this particular afternoon, Jimmy got off the train and
a town called Elmore, somewhere in the Blackjack Country of Arkansas. Elmore,
of course had a bank, an interesting bank, and so Jimmy,
looking like a nice young traveling sales none, walked down
the side walk and turned into the hotel.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
Anyone here, Hello?

Speaker 20 (12:05):
All right, all.

Speaker 21 (12:06):
Right, I hear you. No peace, no quiet, no rest
here below?

Speaker 18 (12:11):
Well, sir, what.

Speaker 21 (12:12):
Can I do for you?

Speaker 5 (12:13):
I was thinking of engaging the room?

Speaker 21 (12:15):
Engage and all right?

Speaker 22 (12:18):
Private bath? Yeah we don't have one. Bath is down
the hall. I'll take it without even asking how much?

Speaker 9 (12:25):
Well you look like a fair and a reasonable woman.

Speaker 23 (12:27):
Stop pulling Agasa's hair.

Speaker 22 (12:31):
Them two should have been born boys more blame trouble.

Speaker 21 (12:35):
A room's a dollar a day.

Speaker 24 (12:36):
I'll get boy to carry up your bags.

Speaker 9 (12:39):
Jebber, No, no thanks, the bags are sort of heavy.

Speaker 21 (12:43):
Just as well.

Speaker 22 (12:44):
He's probably all sleeping somewhere's anyhow, mind signing the register?

Speaker 9 (12:48):
Oh certainly?

Speaker 22 (12:50):
H rail D Spencer. Hey we got some Spencer's over
Frog Hall? Or would you be killing No, not that
I know of them. Just as well, let you have
the room if you were the most shipless no account tribe. Well,
Mercy is my name, Magnolia.

Speaker 21 (13:08):
See Mercy, I ain't got si.

Speaker 24 (13:11):
You quit, try to fail.

Speaker 21 (13:14):
You planning to stay with us long.

Speaker 9 (13:16):
Well, that depends on what on these situations.

Speaker 22 (13:20):
Well, supper served at six o'clock fried chicken, yams, black
eyed peas, greens, apple pie, and ice cream and coffee
on the twenty five cents a day extra. Save your
place at the table.

Speaker 9 (13:31):
Well, I've always been a spendthrift.

Speaker 21 (13:34):
I'll have the drums text that's ten cents.

Speaker 15 (13:39):
Don't you dare hit mail on the ham of that hammer.

Speaker 8 (13:46):
Once Jimmy had settled in at missus Mercy's hotel, he
decided to have a leisurely strolled down to the bank
preparations painsteak in Van's preparation. That was the story of
Jimmy Valentine's success. No general ever planned a military campaign
more carefully and.

Speaker 12 (14:08):
So bowl as brass.

Speaker 8 (14:10):
Jimmy walked into the bank and asked to see the president.
The president was a tall, stout rather ball party who
greeted Jimmy like a long lost brother.

Speaker 9 (14:21):
Should hounser have a chair? Thank you, Sir Adams.

Speaker 11 (14:26):
His name Rudolph cause Davis Adams very much your service.

Speaker 5 (14:29):
Mister Spencer, Ralph D.

Speaker 11 (14:31):
Spencer, how man, sir, if you mister Spencer, First National
Farmers Merchants beakevellemore is it's your disposal.

Speaker 9 (14:39):
And mister Adams, I'm thinking of making a deposit in
your bank, rather substantial deposit. Oh well, mister Spencer, let
me assure you five thousand dollars five hours.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
I hope it's not too much.

Speaker 11 (14:55):
Miss Adams, I assure you First National Farmers Merchants, Bakeville Moore,
a host of substantial depositive.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
I'm glad to hear that.

Speaker 11 (15:04):
Yes, we're most conservative institution.

Speaker 9 (15:08):
I am concerned with your physical safety, physical safety. Yes,
do you have a strong, secure.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
And burglar proof vault?

Speaker 11 (15:18):
Oh we do, we do. Indeed, there isn't one to
be found. Like in old southern Arkansas.

Speaker 9 (15:23):
I have a fear, a deathly fear of burglars.

Speaker 11 (15:27):
Oh rich yourself for that fear.

Speaker 9 (15:30):
At once. I wish I could come let me show
you our vault. Oh no, I wouldn't want to put
you to all that trouble.

Speaker 11 (15:37):
Trouble. Since when is setting the customer's mind at rest trouble?

Speaker 9 (15:44):
You must inspect the vault.

Speaker 11 (15:48):
This handle hereah activates this solid steel boon.

Speaker 9 (15:53):
Only one vault protection is adequate. It's more than that.

Speaker 5 (15:58):
Well, I was just kind of Is there a time lock?

Speaker 11 (16:03):
Yes, a time lock?

Speaker 9 (16:05):
Well, like I say, I don't really know much about it,
but I've heard of bank vaults that had timelocks. Oh
as winter dressing than me.

Speaker 5 (16:13):
Thay, Oh, yes, I'm sure you're right.

Speaker 11 (16:15):
So of course I'm right. And I bet my life
on this vault. And you ever hear of a fellow
called Jimmy Valentine?

Speaker 9 (16:25):
Jimmy Valentine, No, I don't believe I ever. Did you
never heard of Jimmy Valentine? Know who's he supposed to be?

Speaker 11 (16:34):
He's only supposed to be the most famous safe cracker
in these United States of America.

Speaker 9 (16:40):
Oh, I'm willing to wager.

Speaker 11 (16:43):
That even the great Jimmy Valentine himself would find it
impossible to break into this here vault.

Speaker 8 (16:53):
Well, now, what a thing to say in front of
our Jimmy. It only goes to prove the old adage
pride goeth before a fall. This little backcountry tin can
this could stop the likes of that peerless Jimmy Valentine.
Well it is possible. Mister Adams knows something we don't.

(17:17):
Everybody will know everything as soon as Act two arrives.
Dandy dapper Jimmy Valentine, the most celebrated safe cracker of

(17:38):
the age, is, as we say, casing a bank in Elmore, Arkansas.
What Jimmy has no way of knowing at this point
is that this will be his last job. He's telling
the story in a letter to an old friend, a
man he met while both were in prison, a fellow
he knew as Billy Porter and who the rest of

(17:59):
the world came to know as O Henry.

Speaker 9 (18:06):
Well.

Speaker 8 (18:06):
Jimmy's Lena went on the Roobe couldn't show me enough.
Cracking this vault would be like taking candy from a
very small baby.

Speaker 9 (18:16):
Billy.

Speaker 8 (18:17):
I was almost ashamed to do it, but it would
be painless and fast. Anyhow, we go back to his
office and he's got a look on his face like
the cat that just ate the canary and his poor sucker.

Speaker 9 (18:31):
As me know, he's the canary.

Speaker 5 (18:35):
Mister Adams, I am impressed.

Speaker 25 (18:40):
I have such a feeling of safety.

Speaker 11 (18:44):
Well, and you will open an account with us.

Speaker 9 (18:47):
I won't rest easy till my money's deposited inside your vault. No, sir,
it's the only place for me.

Speaker 11 (18:54):
You will regret it.

Speaker 9 (18:55):
I'll telegraph my bank in little rock to transfer my
money here, first thing in the morning.

Speaker 21 (19:00):
Oh, Papa, I didn't.

Speaker 26 (19:02):
Know you were business.

Speaker 11 (19:04):
Come in, my dear mister Spencer, I'd like to present
my daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle this gentleman's but to become one
of our major depositors.

Speaker 9 (19:14):
Mister Ralph Deve Spencer.

Speaker 21 (19:16):
How do you do? Mister Spencer?

Speaker 9 (19:18):
How do you? How do you do?

Speaker 8 (19:23):
And here's how he describes her in the letter. She
was about five foot two, with wavy black hair and
sparkling black eyes and the cutest, trimmest figure you'd ever
want to see. But that's only what she looked like.
You know what she was, Billy, She was destiny. You

(19:45):
remember how we used to talk about destiny back there
in Columbus. Well, one look was enough and I knew.
I knew she was my destiny. Nothing else mattered, nothing
else existed.

Speaker 10 (20:00):
She was my destiny.

Speaker 23 (20:03):
How long you planning to stay in town, missus Spencer?

Speaker 9 (20:05):
How long? Oh? Indefinitely? Eternally?

Speaker 11 (20:10):
Why mister Spencer, you didn't see you'd plan to settle
down here?

Speaker 9 (20:14):
I don't see why not. It's a fine little place,
don't you think so, Miss Adam?

Speaker 27 (20:19):
Oh?

Speaker 20 (20:19):
I love it?

Speaker 9 (20:20):
Yes. As a matter of fact, I've come down here
to look for a location to go into business. Really, yes,
this looks like a progressive community, wouldn't you say, Miss Adams?
Oh yes, I just decided to scout some sort of
business opportunity.

Speaker 11 (20:35):
Well, business does well here, mister Spencer.

Speaker 21 (20:38):
Do you know what we don't have and could use?

Speaker 11 (20:40):
Oh no, no, no, my DearS, business discussion.

Speaker 9 (20:43):
What sort of business do you suggest, Miss Adams?

Speaker 23 (20:46):
Well, do you know what we need in this town?

Speaker 21 (20:49):
A shoe star?

Speaker 9 (20:50):
A shoe store.

Speaker 21 (20:51):
Yeah, there's a shoe star.

Speaker 23 (20:53):
There's not a single exclusive shoe store for miles around.

Speaker 9 (20:56):
I simply cannot believe my ears. You you did say
a shoe store? How did you know?

Speaker 21 (21:05):
How did I know?

Speaker 28 (21:05):
What?

Speaker 9 (21:06):
How did you know I was in the shoe business?
You're in the shoe business, Miss Spencer.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Born and raised in it.

Speaker 9 (21:14):
My dad owned and operated Spencer's Peerless Shoes in Chicago
for forty years. If I don't, Miss Adams, I wonder
if I might impose. Yes, I wonder if we give
you that is, you see, I will require some guidance.
I know enough to realize I don't know enough about

(21:37):
my prospective customers. I'm a stranger. Now, I'm sure you
know many of the ladies here.

Speaker 11 (21:42):
An knows everybody worth knowing within thirty miles or so.

Speaker 9 (21:46):
Do you suppose you could tell me something about what
they like?

Speaker 5 (21:51):
You know, the styles and so forth.

Speaker 21 (21:53):
From mister Spencer, I'd be delighted.

Speaker 9 (22:04):
Now let me see if I remember Miss Brown likes
a high heel. Missus Dawson's partial, mister Spencer.

Speaker 23 (22:13):
Yes, there's no need to carry this charade further charade.

Speaker 21 (22:17):
You, mister Spencer, are a fraud.

Speaker 9 (22:20):
Why do you say that?

Speaker 21 (22:21):
A cheerful fraud and a charming fraud, but a fraud.

Speaker 9 (22:24):
How can you say that.

Speaker 23 (22:26):
You don't know anything about the shoe business?

Speaker 21 (22:28):
Do you no? Then? Why did you say so?

Speaker 9 (22:33):
I wanted an excuse to get you along? For what purpose,
Miss Adams? I intend to marry you?

Speaker 21 (22:41):
We just met.

Speaker 9 (22:43):
Well that's a good answer.

Speaker 21 (22:44):
What do you mean?

Speaker 9 (22:45):
Much better than a lot of other answers like impossible,
or I happen to be engaged, or I wouldn't marry
you if you were the last man on earth.

Speaker 23 (22:52):
Nothing's impossible, and I happen not to be engaged, and
if you were the last man on earth, I'd be
a fool.

Speaker 21 (22:59):
To turn you down.

Speaker 9 (23:00):
Then there's hope.

Speaker 23 (23:02):
You are what is known I believe as a fast worker.

Speaker 9 (23:06):
And that's because life is so short.

Speaker 23 (23:08):
No life is long enough to do things properly, orderly.

Speaker 9 (23:12):
Oh, I'm all for that.

Speaker 21 (23:13):
What are you going to do about the shoe business?
Go into it even though you know nothing about it?

Speaker 29 (23:18):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (23:18):
I don't know anything about any legitimate business at all,
But I can learn.

Speaker 21 (23:22):
Do you know something? I believe you can.

Speaker 9 (23:25):
I have a little capital left to me by my grandfather.

Speaker 21 (23:29):
What business was he?

Speaker 9 (23:31):
He sold bibles?

Speaker 21 (23:32):
A most commendable calling.

Speaker 9 (23:34):
Yes, Now about the other thing?

Speaker 21 (23:37):
What other things?

Speaker 5 (23:37):
I are getting married?

Speaker 21 (23:39):
Oh? Will time will tell?

Speaker 9 (23:42):
What will time tell?

Speaker 21 (23:44):
How you really feel about that?

Speaker 5 (23:46):
I already know, do you?

Speaker 23 (23:49):
I'm not sure why you're something new in Elmore? Mister
Spencer Ralph? That's new for Elmore two. A lady does
not call a gentleman by his first name the first
day she's met him.

Speaker 21 (24:02):
Why did you come here?

Speaker 9 (24:03):
Well, I'm tired of the big cities. I'm tired at
the pace, the pressure of the competition. The real things
of life are missing.

Speaker 21 (24:10):
There, The real things of life? And what are they?
Mister spencer friendships. There are no friendships in the city, and.

Speaker 9 (24:18):
Maybe there are. You can find friendship and love and
everything else in the city, but there's no time to
enjoy him. Your life just seems to run away from you.
You have nothing to show for it.

Speaker 21 (24:29):
And that's why you came to Elmore.

Speaker 9 (24:31):
I didn't know about Elmore, but I was looking for
a place like it. And when the train stopped here,
I said to myself, why travel further?

Speaker 5 (24:41):
You found it? Are you sure positive?

Speaker 21 (24:44):
Why don't you try it for a while.

Speaker 9 (24:46):
I'm going to try it for the rest of my life.

Speaker 23 (24:49):
You enjoy an apple more when you take small bites.

Speaker 21 (24:52):
Just try us for a while.

Speaker 8 (25:01):
Well, Billy, his letter continued, I did have the five
thousand dollars, and the next day I put it in
the bank, her father's bank. It was a new experience,
putting in instead of taking out. But all of a sudden,
my life was full of new experiences. I'd opened a

(25:21):
shoe store, and I had become not just a shoe clerk,
but a merchant.

Speaker 12 (25:26):
Can't you tie that?

Speaker 8 (25:28):
After three months, I was even invited to join the
Almore Big Boosters Club.

Speaker 9 (25:33):
Gentlemen, I am honored to become a member of this
civic minded, progressive organization.

Speaker 19 (25:40):
What appeals to me.

Speaker 9 (25:41):
Most is the fact that the Big Boosters act like
big brothers to youngsters who need advice and guidance and
can therefore be saved from entering a life of crime. Yes, ma'am,
what may I sell you today?

Speaker 23 (26:02):
Oh, Jimmy, I heard your speech. Was wonderful, father told me.
And when you spoke about saving youngsters from a life
of crime while everyone was in.

Speaker 9 (26:11):
Tears, well, I may have laid it on a little thick.

Speaker 23 (26:14):
Oh no, Jimmy, everyone could tell you spoke from the heart.

Speaker 9 (26:19):
I uh, I'd like to remind you of something. Yes,
it's been six months of the day we met. I
asked you.

Speaker 5 (26:28):
To marry me.

Speaker 9 (26:28):
Remember I remember, and you said, mister city slicker.

Speaker 21 (26:32):
Oh, I said no, such.

Speaker 5 (26:34):
You meant it.

Speaker 9 (26:35):
You said, mister city slicker, try our ways here for
a while, and then ask me again. Well I've tried it,
and well I've built a business. I've become part of
the town.

Speaker 23 (26:45):
Part of this very small town. Yes, and I love it, Jimmy.

Speaker 9 (26:50):
I want to stay here for the rest of my
life with you.

Speaker 21 (26:53):
Jimmy.

Speaker 6 (26:55):
I love you.

Speaker 9 (27:00):
Well.

Speaker 8 (27:00):
Billy that stastiny, and you should take my advice and
try it for yourself. We decided to get married right away,
but first I had something to do. I had one
little loose hand to tie off, one link with the
past that had to be broken. So I made a
telephone call to an old friend.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Hell, Mike, it's Jimmy.

Speaker 13 (27:25):
Jilly boy.

Speaker 5 (27:28):
You're right, fine, fine, Mike fine.

Speaker 9 (27:30):
I was worried.

Speaker 19 (27:32):
I haven't heard a write a word by about you
in six months.

Speaker 9 (27:34):
Everything's fine, yeah, Mike, Mike, I want to give you
my tools.

Speaker 5 (27:42):
Why I quit the business.

Speaker 9 (27:45):
Quit the business? Oh no, tell me the sun, quick shine,
and a reading quick foreign. But okay, I got a
nice little store. You got a store, a little shoe store, oh,
jim And next week I'm gonna marry the finest girl
on earth.

Speaker 5 (28:03):
She's an angel, Mike. She loves me.

Speaker 19 (28:05):
Shoot me fair time married.

Speaker 9 (28:07):
The only life, Mike is a straight one. I wouldn't
touch a dollar of another man's money for a million, Timmy,
here's this show, Mike, You're.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
The only real friend in the whole world.

Speaker 9 (28:18):
Be here next Sunday where it's a little town called Elmore, Arkansas.
I want you to stand up for me. Will you
do it, Mike where Sure? Great, I'll make you're a
president of the tools. I should drop him in the river,
but I can't.

Speaker 19 (28:32):
Oh, Jimmy, consider what you're doing.

Speaker 5 (28:35):
I've considered it.

Speaker 19 (28:37):
Can you be shortening just a passing fancy?

Speaker 9 (28:41):
No, Mike, it's the real thing. Will you stand up
for me next Sunday?

Speaker 30 (28:46):
Yes, yes, but but promise me you'll think it over,
really thinking over. After all, the Good Book says the
kind of lepper chinge, he's uh spots.

Speaker 8 (28:58):
Oh, that's a question that's puzzled the pundits since time began.
Isn't it true that a man must cling to his
essential nature?

Speaker 29 (29:12):
Yes?

Speaker 15 (29:13):
But what is a man's essential nature?

Speaker 9 (29:17):
All his life?

Speaker 8 (29:17):
Jimmy Valentine has been a thief for the past six months,
he's been honest and reputable. Which is the real Jimmy Valentine,
You know you have to wait for the third act
to get the answer.

Speaker 9 (29:31):
What you won't have to wait long?

Speaker 8 (29:44):
Change of heart, change of plan, change of life. In
mid stream, in mid career, a man suddenly reverses course.

Speaker 10 (29:55):
He sees a light.

Speaker 5 (29:57):
Once there was a man named.

Speaker 8 (29:58):
Saul who lived in to Verses, who saw a light.
A staid Parisian businessman named Gogin saw another light. Now
a young man named Jimmy Valentine has also seen a light.

Speaker 9 (30:12):
We know what that light is.

Speaker 8 (30:14):
It shines from the eyes of miss annabel Adams. He's
telling it all in a letter to an old friend,
Bill Porter. Really, could any man be happier? Did any
man have the right to be so happy? My wedding
day was less than a week off. Sooner it'd be Sunday.

(30:37):
I'd marry the finest girl in the world, and my
best friend would be there to stand up for me,
a man who'd been.

Speaker 9 (30:44):
Almost like a father to me. I was walking on air.

Speaker 8 (30:48):
Let's see, it was Thursday morning, and I was about
to leave my boarding house for the store.

Speaker 9 (30:55):
Good morning, missus Mercy.

Speaker 22 (30:56):
Where you look happy enough for a man who's about
to take the deep into the unknown?

Speaker 5 (31:01):
I'm so happy even you can't spoil it for me.

Speaker 9 (31:03):
Morning Ralph L. Mister Radams.

Speaker 8 (31:06):
Good morning, morning, mister Adam, Missus Mercy.

Speaker 11 (31:10):
What a weekend is going to be for the Adams family. Sunday,
my beautiful Annabelle gets married to the finest gentleman in
the state of Arkansas. Mister Ralph Deeve Spencer here and Saturday.
Go ahead, somebody ask me what happens on Saturday.

Speaker 21 (31:27):
What happens on Saturday?

Speaker 11 (31:29):
Only the best kept secret in town, That's what happens
on Saturday.

Speaker 31 (31:35):
Huh.

Speaker 9 (31:36):
Well, what is the best kept secret in town?

Speaker 5 (31:39):
Mister Vandaer only.

Speaker 11 (31:40):
Fitting and proper that you should ask, Ralph, my boy,
since you're the man responsible for me. H. Think back, Ralph,
think back the very first day you walked into the bank,
you said you wanted to inspect the bolls.

Speaker 9 (31:55):
Yes, I remember, well, sir, then in there I could
have died of shame. Why looked like a good, strong
vault to you because.

Speaker 11 (32:06):
You knew nothing about him? But I sold you bill
of goods you did, Yeah, Ralph, my boy, that vault,
that little sardine.

Speaker 31 (32:14):
Cann of all.

Speaker 11 (32:15):
Now, mister I even bragged about her, and keep out
Jimmy Valentine himself.

Speaker 9 (32:22):
Well it could.

Speaker 11 (32:24):
You're saying it to make me feel good, eh, Well,
I realized that you all my customers deserve something better, really,
mister Adams. And it's being installed right now. A new vault,
A brand new vault, the latest, the strongest, the most
burglar proof vault in the whole world. We've been ready

(32:46):
on Saturday, and the whole town's invited to inspect it.
Will serve punch and cookies. Will you come, missus Mercy,
and perhaps it'll inspire you to open an account with us,
So you'll come.

Speaker 22 (33:01):
We are come for the punching cookies. I can't promise
anything else.

Speaker 8 (33:08):
I never read a letter that was so filled with sunshine,
and I was so happy for Jimmy.

Speaker 9 (33:14):
But that was Thursday.

Speaker 8 (33:17):
Something was going on that night that Jimmy was completely
unaware of, something that threatened to destroy the beautiful picture
he saw as the rest of his life. Jimmy didn't
know about it till much later, But at that moment,
some five hundred miles away, a friend of his best friend,

(33:40):
who owned a saloon, was behind his bar as usual.

Speaker 5 (33:46):
Hello, Mike, Do I know you?

Speaker 9 (33:50):
Yeh?

Speaker 15 (33:52):
But that's not the question.

Speaker 9 (33:53):
Well, what's the question?

Speaker 15 (33:55):
Do you want to get to know me better? Where's
all this going? The penitentiary? You're headed there?

Speaker 13 (34:04):
Now?

Speaker 9 (34:04):
Oh I am What have I done? What have you done?

Speaker 15 (34:08):
Well, let's see, you're a receiver of stolen goods? Who
says so a lot of people, mostly a friend of yours, fully, Sully,
we have evidence testimony enough to fill a whole encyclopedia
for all. If you do, I think it'll add up

(34:30):
to twenty years. You're forty six. Now you'll get out
at sixty six, old, broken, good for nothing.

Speaker 14 (34:44):
On the other hand, I may not be going anywhere.
All I have to do is make a telephone go.
Why don't you I think I will? You deserve to
be putting your price? I'll treat you to a drink.

Speaker 9 (35:00):
Pick you are of here? Would you like to bet?

Speaker 10 (35:04):
Or? What?

Speaker 15 (35:06):
Give me two six to seven? That it doesn't answer that?

Speaker 9 (35:12):
Your will?

Speaker 15 (35:14):
Is it ringing?

Speaker 9 (35:15):
Here? Share?

Speaker 10 (35:16):
It's ringing?

Speaker 15 (35:17):
I still haven't taken the bets. I don't blame you. Well, Mike,
why don't you hang up? He's not there?

Speaker 9 (35:29):
Who's not there?

Speaker 15 (35:31):
Big John? Your connection into the Governor's office.

Speaker 9 (35:36):
Who are you driving about?

Speaker 15 (35:37):
He's just been arrested, Big John. We've got him cold, you.

Speaker 9 (35:45):
Chandler as Big John?

Speaker 15 (35:47):
Why not the governor? The governor never stands for it, ordinarily,
but the governor's been told he'll be allowed to finish
his term if he keeps his hands off and retires
from public life after his term is over next month.

Speaker 9 (36:04):
The governor.

Speaker 15 (36:04):
It was decided to avoid a scandal. Well, Mike, what
do you want? I want Jimmy Valentine dot worries. If
you don't know, you don't know, So you'll just do
your full twenty years like a gentleman.

Speaker 9 (36:25):
I'm not a squealer.

Speaker 15 (36:26):
Ah, I understand that we've got to start someplace. Seven years, Harrison,
here's what you can expect, and it's the best deal
you can get, and only because everybody wants Jimmy some
bad five years, not a minute less five.

Speaker 10 (36:48):
Gentmeness, sure is.

Speaker 15 (36:50):
I'm my kid brother Abel was Caine's kid brother Rook.
You'll never know where that's life, I guess, So where
do I find him?

Speaker 9 (37:03):
Mike?

Speaker 8 (37:07):
Saturday was a beautiful day and the whole town was
in a festive mood.

Speaker 12 (37:12):
Everybody was crowded.

Speaker 8 (37:13):
Into the bank, laughing and talking and mildling at the
great new fantastic bank card.

Speaker 32 (37:20):
And so ladies and gentlemen, And there's nothing like this
suddle little rock of this massive stainless steel door is
fastened in a place.

Speaker 9 (37:31):
By free the column one two free saad.

Speaker 32 (37:37):
Steel boats which are thrown into place for this single
handle The crowning feature is this luck.

Speaker 11 (37:47):
The patterned timelock. Only time can unlock this door.

Speaker 19 (37:51):
Once it's shut.

Speaker 32 (37:53):
You set her, and I'm gonna now set her for
nine o'clock, nine o'clock Monday morning, a half hour from
now we.

Speaker 11 (38:02):
Close the bank for the day. We've closed the door,
and no one, I repeat and solutely no one. We'll
be able opener again till nine o'clock Monday morning.

Speaker 21 (38:17):
Oh, Ralph, Ralb, I'm so happy.

Speaker 19 (38:20):
And look it, Papa.

Speaker 21 (38:22):
It's such a wonderful day for him.

Speaker 9 (38:24):
Yes, there are going to be wonderful days for everybody. Hello,
mister Spencer, do I know you? Of course?

Speaker 15 (38:31):
Don't you remember me? I'm the fellow with the missing
front tooth?

Speaker 29 (38:37):
Uh?

Speaker 9 (38:38):
Could we talk in private? Would you excuse us? Smiss?

Speaker 33 (38:42):
Of course?

Speaker 15 (38:45):
Well, Jimmy, how.

Speaker 9 (38:47):
Do you want to do it? I don't know what
you're talking about.

Speaker 15 (38:50):
Big John's out of the picture. The governor's in a
straight jacket. This time you'll get a fair trials. The
burglar tools that will be the icing on the kick.
You'll have to find them. You'll find them, Jimmy, we'll
turn the town upside down.

Speaker 9 (39:08):
Never that's where I hit him. You're not grinning so strong?
Now are your Price? Okay?

Speaker 5 (39:14):
Go ahead, arrest me, but you don't have a thing
to take the trial, and you know it.

Speaker 15 (39:18):
I'll find those two.

Speaker 9 (39:19):
Come on, Price, I know the law as well as
you do. You just can't find them. You have to
prove their mind. You have to find them in my possession.

Speaker 15 (39:26):
I didn't wait this long and come this far to fail.

Speaker 9 (39:30):
Now, okay, Price, if you'll excuse me, what is it?

Speaker 10 (39:37):
What happened in the ball.

Speaker 34 (39:43):
Poison? The man into the boat, the handle inside the
poison in over?

Speaker 32 (39:54):
Don't wait, everybody, I'll tell you to open it.

Speaker 9 (39:58):
If you go nine o'clock, mon anymore.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
You'll die.

Speaker 11 (40:05):
Oh, there isn't anyone who can do anything.

Speaker 9 (40:10):
The clock. It won't open nine o'clock.

Speaker 19 (40:14):
You won't ope, there isn't there.

Speaker 33 (40:17):
She'll die.

Speaker 9 (40:18):
Please please, I.

Speaker 23 (40:21):
Don't know what to do, Ralph, Oh, Ralph, is there
anything that can be done? If anyone can think of something,
you can't. They don't know, Oh Ralph, think of something.
You're not like anyone else.

Speaker 21 (40:34):
You're smart.

Speaker 23 (40:34):
But my darling, if someone doesn't think of something, that
little girl will die.

Speaker 21 (40:40):
She will, won't she?

Speaker 29 (40:41):
Yes, she will?

Speaker 21 (40:42):
And no one can save us.

Speaker 5 (40:44):
See that now, no one, Miss Adams.

Speaker 9 (40:47):
Miss Adams, ask everyone to leave the bank. We're having
a celebration, Papa Ralph.

Speaker 21 (40:55):
It's affect of his mind.

Speaker 5 (40:56):
It'll be all right. The little girl will be all right.
Now I want to borrow your buckboard and I shall
be right back.

Speaker 9 (41:10):
What he did, he went to the secret hiding place.

Speaker 8 (41:14):
He returned with the hidden bag of burglar tools. There
was a crowd outside the bank.

Speaker 9 (41:20):
I will need a gentleman to assist me, you, sir,
I'll be happy to I'll come with me then. So
that's how it's done on a slight angle, which is
why it needs only the one hole. And now now

(41:44):
he turned the knob and feel for the clicking seep.
And now let me just swing the door open.

Speaker 15 (41:55):
I wouldn't have believed it possible. The little girl, she's
all right, she just fainted.

Speaker 9 (42:02):
Go tell your out to her mother. Do me a favor.
Take the tools and wait for me and the buckboard outside.
I want to say goodbye to someone, of course, he wait,
little girl. You are missus Mercy, But raise is it?

Speaker 19 (42:25):
Welp, you wouldn't done it.

Speaker 11 (42:27):
Welp, you're a great man.

Speaker 21 (42:29):
Oh, Ralph, darling, you wonderful.

Speaker 9 (42:31):
And I have to go away for just a little while.

Speaker 33 (42:35):
What do you say?

Speaker 9 (42:36):
I have to go with that, gentleman?

Speaker 21 (42:38):
Go where?

Speaker 10 (42:40):
For?

Speaker 33 (42:40):
How long?

Speaker 21 (42:41):
Tomorrow's Sunday?

Speaker 9 (42:42):
Please? Darling, you understand after a while?

Speaker 21 (42:45):
Understand? What will I understand?

Speaker 35 (42:49):
Sir?

Speaker 21 (42:50):
So would you come over here please? I'll get to
the bottom of this. Where are you taking?

Speaker 24 (42:57):
Manfiance?

Speaker 9 (42:58):
All right, Price, let's just get this over with.

Speaker 19 (43:00):
I'm sorry Cory about what.

Speaker 4 (43:03):
Well.

Speaker 15 (43:03):
I carry a pretty good line of shoes, but old
Ralph Spencer here, he's tough to sell, and I had
my trip for nothing.

Speaker 9 (43:15):
Looks like Price, what are you talking about?

Speaker 15 (43:19):
Looks like I was mistaken all along?

Speaker 21 (43:23):
Yeah, darn, who's that man?

Speaker 9 (43:29):
I never saw him before in my life, and I
don't think I ever will again.

Speaker 8 (43:40):
And he didn't because Detective Ben Price wasn't going to
travel all the way back to Elmore, Arkansas to buy
a pair of shoes. Now, don't you travel even so
much as an inch? Because I intend to return in
just a few short minutes. To some people, it comes

(44:07):
as a surprise.

Speaker 9 (44:08):
At William S.

Speaker 8 (44:09):
Porter O, Henry served a term in prison. Well, actually
he didn't really deserve it. He was working in a bank,
the bank that was run in a very relaxed manner,
and the missing sum was under a thousand dollars. It
was never definitely established that he was the one responsible,
but nevertheless he.

Speaker 10 (44:29):
Went to prison.

Speaker 8 (44:30):
Our cast included Robert Dryden, Paul Hect, Katherine Byers, Court
Benson and Ken Harvey. The entire production was under the
direction of Hymon Brown. And now a preview of our
next tale. It's a homunculous. Of what a homunculous? Don't

(44:51):
you know what a homunculous is?

Speaker 28 (44:53):
No?

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Should I A homunculous, my dear old friend, is a
small artificial man, man like a dwarf, a mannequin, but
made by man. The creation of a homunculus is as
old as alchemy. It's an ancient art.

Speaker 10 (45:12):
And this is what you're working on, creating a a
a homunculous.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Of course, only my homunculous will be possessed of magic powers.
This little little man, I think he will be no
more than two feet tall, perhaps less, but he will
have the power to rule the world, which is precisely
what I intend he should do.

Speaker 31 (45:38):
This is E. G.

Speaker 8 (45:38):
Marshall inviting you to return to our mystery theater for
another adventure in the macabre. Until next time, pleasant dream.

Speaker 9 (46:04):
The program you.

Speaker 20 (46:05):
Were about to hear is fiction science fiction. We make
no guarantees, however, how long it will remain fiction.

Speaker 9 (46:14):
Exploring tomorrow.

Speaker 10 (46:32):
And now.

Speaker 20 (46:32):
Here is your guide to these adventurers of the mind.

Speaker 36 (46:36):
The editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, John Campbell Junior.

Speaker 37 (46:44):
The scene is a missile testing base somewhere in the
United States. The time half past two on enthusia astnoon,
five maybe ten years from now. A rather unusual missile
was getting worked over last office minutes away, and the
count bountains in his last stages, and the man is

(47:05):
sitting inside dismissal waiting. The United States is about to
make its first attempt to send a manned rocket to
the Moon.

Speaker 38 (47:14):
Nine minutes.

Speaker 31 (47:15):
Captain, still feel loose like a bird, Colonel waiting to
be cut loose and soar out of your field.

Speaker 39 (47:23):
Kevin, you're an altimation star. You're the one of the
launching pans in the morning.

Speaker 37 (47:29):
And you're the one who has to face all the
reporters after blast off. Me I'm glad I'll be up
there alone.

Speaker 31 (47:36):
How much time left Colonel twenty seconds.

Speaker 10 (47:41):
Let's run the schedule one last time.

Speaker 31 (47:42):
Okay.

Speaker 37 (47:43):
I sit in this cradle and I wait for the
rockets to toss me up into space. I get five
hundred seconds of four G accelerations. Then I sit around
and look out the view port for the next.

Speaker 31 (47:53):
Four days while the ship coast in zero G three four.

Speaker 37 (47:57):
I'm roughly eight a quarter minutes past four on Sunday
after noon. The autopilot is going to turn the rocket
engines on again long enough to land me in. The
oceanis pros alarum, which better be as.

Speaker 31 (48:07):
Dry as power. My boy, say this. I climb into
my little.

Speaker 37 (48:10):
Jim Dandy spacesuit, wander around the moon for a while,
take some snapshots, pick up a couple of rocks, a souvenirs,
and fifteen hours after landing, I get back into my
ship and I come home.

Speaker 31 (48:21):
Did I leave anything out?

Speaker 10 (48:22):
I don't think happens.

Speaker 31 (48:26):
Well, all I do is sit here and wait.

Speaker 37 (48:27):
Anyway, computer down below and the bubbley of the ship
does all the work.

Speaker 31 (48:31):
Me Mike Wellman, first man on the moon. Maybe anyway,
maybe throwings no possibility a blow up?

Speaker 37 (48:41):
No go ahead, don't be afraid to say it. I
wasn't talking about that. The eyes are pretty good that
this bird is going to get me there. The only
thing I'm wondering about is whether someone else is going to.

Speaker 31 (48:52):
Get there ahead of me. I'd hate to find a
big Vodjet party going on. When I get there.

Speaker 39 (48:58):
We're gonna break contact on Wait, the next time my
hairphone was going.

Speaker 31 (49:04):
To be from space your title. I'll report as soon
as I'm in the free fall and radio messages every
four hours. You won't forget about those baseball scords, will you?

Speaker 10 (49:15):
Of course?

Speaker 31 (49:16):
Thirty seconds, Kevin, and all America is rooting for you,
and I'm rooting for the Dodgers. So long title. See
you next week when I get back.

Speaker 39 (49:27):
Nine eight, seven, six, five four three two one mark?

Speaker 31 (50:08):
Are you reading me? Launching based?

Speaker 19 (50:09):
How do I come in?

Speaker 31 (50:11):
I'm glad to hear it. Okay, ship's time fourteen hundred
and fifty two hours. BlastOff went fine from this end.
I got through acceleration good enough. Fur hees is much fun,
but I don't mind it. Napement of stretches. A ship's
in free fall out no gravity at all, and.

Speaker 37 (50:27):
It's weird all right, even after all those hours in
a training chamber. I still feel a little strange, pretty
quiet up here. Nice man really can think here. And
if he was really something, what do you see the
polos about.

Speaker 39 (50:41):
The psychological reactions? You don't feel at off me.

Speaker 37 (50:45):
A guy whose idea of heaven is being along with
some books journel I like it up here. The psyche
test said I was an introvert, didn't.

Speaker 19 (50:52):
Me, Well, not really, just sort of solitary line the
same thing.

Speaker 37 (50:58):
Well, it's just a solitary reminded people who are going
to be your spaceman, Colonel, We don't mind the loneliness. Listen, Colonel,
how are the cosmic ray readings coming through perfect? All
the equipment, including the pilot or rather the live cargo,
because that's all I really am.

Speaker 31 (51:15):
Okay, Colonel, I.

Speaker 37 (51:16):
Got a few odd jobs to do on board. I'll
be talking to you again in four hours forward.

Speaker 31 (51:26):
Here I am again, Colonel. Two days out, Still no sweat.
I'm getting used to this no gravity business, and I
want the wrest report.

Speaker 9 (51:34):
Captain.

Speaker 39 (51:35):
There's been a change in the operational plants.

Speaker 31 (51:37):
Uh what kind of change you want?

Speaker 39 (51:40):
Landing on the moon and the gun orders aren't for
you to adjust the computer to course, circle the Moon
and return the Earth with off landing.

Speaker 38 (51:47):
Hey wait a minute, sir, I'll come to switch.

Speaker 39 (51:50):
It's an awkward situation, Captain. You see, between the time
I last spoke to you and now the Russians, I
know this will come as kind of a shock to you.
The Russians made a successful landing on the Moon no
Radio Moscow and Undi two hours ago, and since then
we have picked up broadcast from the Russian ship. They've landed,
all right.

Speaker 31 (52:10):
They plead us to it by two thinking days. Two
days earlier, and I would have been there first.

Speaker 39 (52:16):
You haven't heard the worst part of a kid. The
Russians have claimed the Moon they want like Columbus claiming.

Speaker 19 (52:23):
The Western hemisphere.

Speaker 39 (52:25):
We're putting up a hill, of course, but there's just
an't any presidents for this kind of thing. The UN
is meeting to decide whether.

Speaker 31 (52:32):
They have any right to So this is why I
can't land, eh.

Speaker 39 (52:35):
The Russians say they don't regard any lunar landing is
trespressing on that property. We can't risk an incident, of course,
so for the time being, we're going to hold back and.

Speaker 37 (52:44):
Wait till the legal aspect of this business has worked out,
so I can't land. They send me up here and
I ride around for a week and don't even put
my foot down on the moon. Okitel Rushia doesn't own
the moon, no matter what they say.

Speaker 19 (52:56):
That's a woman.

Speaker 31 (52:57):
I'm sorry, Tydel, I'm more than halfway there.

Speaker 19 (53:00):
Yeh, I'm tie.

Speaker 37 (53:00):
I'm gonna miss my chance. I'm gonna land, sir, just
I can, sir, I'm landing.

Speaker 31 (53:09):
Over and out.

Speaker 38 (53:22):
It's not that the moon wasn't meant for man. It's
just the man was never designed for the Moon.

Speaker 37 (53:30):
It's a fantastically inhospitable place, harsh, blinding sunlight with no
atmosphere to limit, jagged shadows. The rocks are hard, sharp edged,
there's been no weathering to soften them, and the shadows
are just as hard and black.

Speaker 10 (53:49):
It's not a nice place to.

Speaker 31 (53:51):
Be alone, or even when there's only one other human.

Speaker 4 (53:55):
Being within two hundred thousand miles.

Speaker 37 (53:59):
I don't know if you want to hear from me again, Colonel,
but I'm beating this anyway because I just wanted to
let you know that I've landed on the moon has
originally scheduled. Yeah, right on the oad in the designated
landing area northern branch of the oceanis parce Alarum. And
you can tell the Palomar fellas that they were right
all along. Maybe this was an ocean once, but not
in the last million years or so. As for the

(54:22):
Russian ship, but isn't any hoax. I saw it when
I came down about fifty miles over here. Maybe later
I'll break out the rockets fled and wander over there
for some broadcasts.

Speaker 31 (54:32):
The Russians are trying to contact me. Now I better
shift channel see what they want over.

Speaker 37 (54:37):
Colonel come on in Ivans Yick, the baage meets you Ball.

Speaker 31 (54:51):
I'm afraid that jus is up my Russian vocabulary. Ivan,
how's your angry?

Speaker 39 (54:55):
I am content the falling spaceshers, you on the press
passing and our propertly Americans.

Speaker 19 (55:02):
I am.

Speaker 31 (55:02):
I say your English is pretty good, but your politics
isn't You say? The moon is yours? Eh, Luna, I
telling your socialis republic. I'm sorry, you just agreed. Just
getting here first doesn't give you the right to claim
the whole place, you know, I continued.

Speaker 39 (55:17):
By our legal experts, we have established try our crime.
I am under order to request you to leave Russian
territory immediately.

Speaker 31 (55:26):
But this is track guy claiming the whole moon. I
look here, you want address me off? It's okay, now,
look care at all the coughs.

Speaker 37 (55:35):
The Moon's a big play and there's room for a
lot of us up here. It really isn't fair they
want to hark the whole thing yourself, the piums.

Speaker 39 (55:41):
That Soviet policy, not the space pilot. I'm instructed to
warn you that you are prespassing. I do not wish
the Donaton other were you.

Speaker 31 (55:49):
So I'm trespassing, man, What are you going to do
about it?

Speaker 37 (55:53):
My heath is armed, and you can't figure out any
better way of celebrating the conflict of space and starting
a war about it.

Speaker 39 (55:59):
You're not stay ordered you not to make it handing
the rock Ignot dream. We've been a solar violation.

Speaker 37 (56:06):
Of all right, and you're gonna be nasty about it.
I see, huh, Well, I take my chances.

Speaker 19 (56:13):
Now.

Speaker 31 (56:13):
I've got some work to do before I go back.
I'll be leaving the Moon in fourteen hours and a bit.

Speaker 37 (56:18):
Hey, now, how long are you staying up here? You've
been here better than two days already. You're planning to
hold the fort forever.

Speaker 39 (56:25):
My plans for your posture should not concern you.

Speaker 37 (56:28):
Well, I'm just curious as on okay to be dream
Maybe I'll be talking to you again soon.

Speaker 31 (56:34):
And yeah, you sneaky son of a gun.

Speaker 37 (56:38):
And congratulations you did get here. Fred Sword, come in
launching base.

Speaker 19 (56:52):
Do you hear me?

Speaker 31 (56:53):
We're look. I just had a little champ with a rookie.
It seems to be only one of them. He gave
me some argue about firing you on me if I
don't clear off the moon right away.

Speaker 39 (57:03):
Well, when you win, supporting that you're able to touch
up a war over this moon.

Speaker 37 (57:07):
Well what was I supposed to do? Smile politely and
turn back just because they got here first. Do you
think they have any right to claim the moon?

Speaker 39 (57:13):
Of course not, that's not the point. You will ordered
nothing of this trouble by the landing.

Speaker 31 (57:17):
Yeah, and I landed anyway. We'll go ahead chop my
head off when I get back there. Meanwhile, i'm here.

Speaker 37 (57:23):
If that Russian doesn't blow.

Speaker 31 (57:24):
Me up, I expect to do a little exploring in
the next fourteen hours. I don't think the.

Speaker 39 (57:28):
Russian is going to blow you up. These guys, don't go.
What do you mean to go to Some of the
messages leading back to Moscow. You need to fall your
landing and has to make some repair and they shift.
You may take him a week or two, and he
doesn't have enough food. Russia may be crowing about cleaning
the moon, but it's going to.

Speaker 19 (57:45):
Look fast for them.

Speaker 39 (57:46):
The best space man can't get back start.

Speaker 37 (57:49):
Yeah, you know that would be rough. Maybe I better
call him back and see if I can help him out.

Speaker 39 (57:55):
Leave him alone.

Speaker 31 (57:56):
He's a human being. It's all my yea for a while.

Speaker 20 (58:01):
Let me call him, colonel.

Speaker 39 (58:02):
I order you that Russian.

Speaker 31 (58:05):
I'm not on earth now. That doesn't need to be
a cold law up here too, Colonel.

Speaker 37 (58:10):
And I have plenty of food, despair. Give the folks
back home, my love. I'm going to call Ivan again.
You know, it's one thing to make a claim, to
say this is mine. It's something else to hold on

(58:34):
to it and make the claim stick. Someone like the colonel.
It was a little difficult for him to enforce the
orders he was trying to give to the man on
the moon. Another coup you're getting mean, you don't have
twenty hours to leave Russian territory.

Speaker 19 (58:52):
Love.

Speaker 31 (58:52):
Don't give me that step. I know your ship's disabled
and you're.

Speaker 9 (58:55):
In trouble.

Speaker 31 (59:00):
Androtky with Rat Fuden's brother.

Speaker 37 (59:02):
You don't know because I sometimes feel I'm the only
saint man in the world of runatics. Those kidiots down
there in Washington didn't want me to land because it
might make Moscow sore. And you don't want any help
from me because I'm not a good Marxist. It's a
losing battle to me.

Speaker 10 (59:18):
For.

Speaker 37 (59:19):
Everyone seems to know what he really wants, and yet
everybody tries hired to get the opposite.

Speaker 39 (59:24):
I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 31 (59:26):
Okay, you just said tight. I'm going to launch the
rockets led and get.

Speaker 37 (59:30):
Over your way with a couple of curtains of provisions.
If you won't take food from a luckier Wall Street.

Speaker 10 (59:36):
That's your business.

Speaker 35 (59:38):
Anyway.

Speaker 31 (59:58):
It's good to get that homet up. Hollo on NOVI cuff.
My name's Mike Wellman. Why have you done this? What
trick are you playing?

Speaker 19 (01:00:07):
Listen?

Speaker 38 (01:00:07):
Friend, all I am doing is bring me some of
my spare food.

Speaker 31 (01:00:10):
Nothing up my sleeve at all. I do not understand
that of my seeth it said.

Speaker 37 (01:00:17):
De get in capitalist idiom means I'm not trying to
fool you. The surprise are out on the rocket sled,
get into your suits and a stag. And then I
said I would fire on you and you'll bring me food.
And silly, isn't it? But they told me they picked
up your message. It's a monster that you were going
to be stuck here a few weeks for repay.

Speaker 31 (01:00:37):
I was not studying the food.

Speaker 40 (01:00:40):
The ship will never take off again. The real rocket
proofs are hopelessly crumpled. If you will feel the lines
are severed. It was a very poor landing. I gave
incorrect doctors.

Speaker 31 (01:00:51):
To the computers, and you told them you could fix it.
They do not like to receive use of failure. Leave
me alone, American, Take your food and go away. What
are you going to eat?

Speaker 19 (01:01:01):
Rocks?

Speaker 31 (01:01:01):
There won't be a rescue ship up here for a
month at least. I will be not rescue ship for me.
I do not be so rescue. You'll just sit up
here and starve. Today I'm at the faulty landing. I
cannot return for my country off and I disobeyed orders.

Speaker 37 (01:01:16):
I wasn't supposed to land because the moon is red
properly now, but the only Russian here is stranded helpless.

Speaker 19 (01:01:23):
Do not mock me.

Speaker 20 (01:01:24):
I'm not.

Speaker 31 (01:01:26):
A fine bunch of spacemen.

Speaker 19 (01:01:27):
You and me.

Speaker 31 (01:01:29):
You smash up your ship and I disobey half my orders.

Speaker 37 (01:01:32):
But I'm glad I disobeyed anyway. At least there'll be
one practical result of my trip. I'll be saving a
man's lives. You sure you're coming back with me to Earth.
We can jettison some of the meters and stuff make
room for you. I bet you don't weigh more than
one hundred and fifty. We can manage, sure, but save

(01:01:53):
the butts. Relative As you try to argue me out
of it, I'll slug you. Hello, Ton, I'm on my
way home. Pretty fair, blastoph We're twenty thousand miles out

(01:02:13):
of the moon now, Oh, I left the middle of.

Speaker 31 (01:02:16):
The equipment behind. The next ship can figure it up.
And I've got a passenger.

Speaker 37 (01:02:22):
Yeah, jeems the ship was wrecked, so I talked him
into coming back with me. He's down back in the
gall Ay fifteen lunch now. I guess we'll both be
called traders for saying it, but we've sort of become friends,
and he doesn't think Russia ought to claim the moon either.

Speaker 39 (01:02:38):
Well, I only have one dictation that way. Maybe a
Russian ship was the first to get to the Moon,
but an American one that's made their first successful round trip.

Speaker 37 (01:02:47):
I like to think of it in a different way.
Not an American ship or a Russian ship. Stuff like
that shouldn't matter anymore. Call of a ship from Earth.

Speaker 9 (01:02:59):
Yeah, no.

Speaker 37 (01:03:00):
The Pope and I started out separately, but we're coming
back together. The first expedition from Earth the moon is
coming on. The answer is to who owns the Moon

(01:03:33):
is to me is very simple to belong to man,
of course, to mankind.

Speaker 38 (01:03:39):
You know, Earth is really a twin planet. No other
planet we know of has a moon that's practically as
big as the planet itself.

Speaker 20 (01:03:50):
The moon is Earth's smaller.

Speaker 31 (01:03:53):
Sisters, and it's like the Earth belongs to man.

Speaker 20 (01:03:59):
We earned it.

Speaker 9 (01:04:00):
We worked for it.

Speaker 38 (01:04:02):
For three billions of years. We have been evolving and
struggling and growing.

Speaker 10 (01:04:10):
The next growth is out the movement.

Speaker 31 (01:04:13):
We're out our way.

Speaker 7 (01:04:30):
October is birthday month for Weird Darkness. This year makes
ten years of doing the show. But while it's our birthday,
we want the gifts to go to those who help
people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or thoughts of suicide
or self harm. That's what our annual Overcoming the Darkness
campaign is all about. It's the only fundraiser I have
all year long. You can bring hope to those who

(01:04:51):
are lost in the darkness of depression. You can make
a donation right now at weird darkness dot com slash hope.
I'll close out the fundraiser at the end of ourtower
and announce how much we raised. The more we raise,
the more people we can help to donate, Get more
information about the fundraiser and the organizations we're supporting, or
find hope for yourself or someone you know who are

(01:05:11):
fighting depression. Visit Weirddarkness dot com slash hope. Please donate
now while you're thinking about it weird darkness dot com
slash hope.

Speaker 18 (01:05:20):
And now wait, wait, avoid.

Speaker 10 (01:05:33):
This is kim Rodine.

Speaker 4 (01:05:35):
I come to you from out of darkness into a
single point of light, from out of the darkness that

(01:05:59):
walks to this turn of midnight.

Speaker 18 (01:06:02):
And enters the long, lonely road to dawn.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
From this deep darkness, the mind accepts a single point
of concentration. The senses I've sharpened to it. All else
is blacked down, and from any floating form more shifting shape,

(01:06:37):
the midnight mind will see.

Speaker 18 (01:06:41):
Faces in the window.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
I have to think about which My ear After that,
down to the tribunal's voices seemed merged in one dreamy, indeterminate.

Speaker 10 (01:07:02):
Humb And after that nothing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
Yet for a while I saw, I saw the lips
of the black robe judges. They appeared quite and grotesquely thin, thin,
with the intensity of their expression of firmness, their stern
contempts of human torture. I saw those lips fashion the
syllable to my name, and I shuddered because they made

(01:07:30):
no sound. And then my vision fell upon the seven
tall candles on the table. First they glowed with charity.
It seemed like quite slender angels who would save me.
Then all at once my spirit was filled.

Speaker 10 (01:07:46):
With the deadly nausea.

Speaker 4 (01:07:48):
They felt every fiber in my body thrilled, as if
I had touched the wire of a battery.

Speaker 18 (01:07:53):
While the angel forms became meaning.

Speaker 4 (01:07:56):
Respectives with flames for heads, and I saw that from
them there would be no help. Then there stolen into
my mind, like a rich musical note, the thought of
what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The
blood came gently, stealthily, but just as my spirit came

(01:08:21):
to appreciate it, the figures of the judges vanished, as
if by magic. Before me, the tall candles sank into nothingness,
their flames.

Speaker 10 (01:08:32):
Went out, the blackness of darkness set in.

Speaker 4 (01:08:37):
All sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad, rushing descent,
as of a soul into hell.

Speaker 10 (01:08:44):
And then silence, stillness, and nights of my universe.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
They had fallen into a deep, deep faint for along
I don't know. But then suddenly it seemed that came
back to my soul, motion and sound, the heavy motion
of my heart, and in my ears.

Speaker 18 (01:09:11):
The sound of its beating, an applause.

Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
In which all is blank, and again sound and motion,
and the teen sensation of touch, in the mere consciousness
of existence without the condition which lasted for a long
while time final way, very suddenly, a shuddering terror and

(01:09:41):
a desperate desire to comprehend my actual state of being,
now full memory of the trial of the judges, their
black robes and the black drapery, and then of the
sentence to the sickness, and then the entire forgetfulness, all

(01:10:05):
that so far I had not opened my eyes. I
felt that I lay up on my back, unbound, and
I reached out my hand and I fell heavily on
something damned and hard.

Speaker 18 (01:10:20):
I let it remain there when I struggled to imagine
where and what I could be. I longed to see,
but I dared not.

Speaker 41 (01:10:26):
It wasn't that I faired to look upon horrible things,
but that I grew terrified. Best there should be nothing
to see. And finally, with a wild desperation of a heart,
I quickly opened my eyes. The blackness, the blackness is eternal.

Speaker 10 (01:10:42):
I accompassed me. The intensity of the darkness.

Speaker 4 (01:10:47):
Seem to stifle me, and I struggled for breath. I still,
I still think it appeared to me a very long
interval of time had passed the trial.

Speaker 18 (01:11:01):
Yet not for a moment did I suppose I.

Speaker 4 (01:11:05):
Was actually dead. But where and in what state was I?
Did I have been placed in a dungeon to await
the next sacrifice to the tribunal, which might not.

Speaker 18 (01:11:16):
Be plazed for many, many months?

Speaker 19 (01:11:20):
Verify?

Speaker 18 (01:11:20):
I suddenly drove the blood in torments upon my heart.
I almost lost consciously again.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
Somehow, somehow I got to my feet trembling convulsively, I
thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions,
and help nothing nothing Yet minute move a step first
I should be blocked by the walls of a tomb.
The agony suspense grew intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward,

(01:11:48):
with my arms extended and my eyes straining from their sockets,
in the hope of catching some faint ray of light.
I went on for many places, but still a whose
blackness and happiness.

Speaker 19 (01:12:00):
Somehow, somehow I.

Speaker 4 (01:12:03):
Breathed more freely, the evidence that mine was not at
least the most tedious fate. If I moved cautiously onward,
I thought of a thousand vague gloomers I had heard
of hers, of the tribunal, too ghastly to repeat accept

(01:12:25):
because I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean
world of darkness, or what fate perhaps.

Speaker 18 (01:12:32):
Even more fearful awaited me that the results would be dead.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
I had no doubt.

Speaker 18 (01:12:42):
The manner and the hour were all that occupied my thoughts.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
My outstretched hands finally encountered some solid obstruction.

Speaker 18 (01:12:53):
It was wall, seemingly of stonemasonry.

Speaker 4 (01:12:57):
I smooth, find me cold.

Speaker 18 (01:13:04):
I followed it for a while.

Speaker 4 (01:13:06):
There's no way of knowing the dimensions of the dungeon,
For the wall was so perfectly uniform that I could
have walked around to the place where I started without
knowing it. This then became my all important problem. I
dre a strip of cloths from the wrapper of course
search they had exchanged for my clothes, and placed the

(01:13:26):
fragments on the floor at full length, and the right
ankles to the wall. I couldn't fail to find this
rag when I had completed the circuit of the dungeon totally,
I thought, But I had not counted on the extent
of the dungeon, or upon my own weakness. Round, moist
and slippery, I staggered onward for some time.

Speaker 10 (01:13:46):
When I stumbled and fell.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
The weight of my fatigue forced me to way and
made prostrate sleep. Sleep overtook me like a heavy clouds.

Speaker 10 (01:14:00):
Gone.

Speaker 4 (01:14:00):
Awakening and out stretching my arm, I found beside me
a loaf of bread in the picture of water.

Speaker 18 (01:14:08):
It was much too exhausted to wonder if this Paisan
drank like an animal.

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
Shortly afterwards, I resumed my tour around the prison painfully,
and came at last upon the fragment of search.

Speaker 18 (01:14:20):
Now, up to the period when I fell, I had
counted fifty two paces.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
When I continued forty eight more to the strip of
the cloth, there were all then a hundred paces, and
counting two paces to the yard, I guessed the dungeon
to be fifty yards In circumference, I could form no
guess as to the shape of the prison.

Speaker 10 (01:14:41):
I hit little object, certainly no.

Speaker 18 (01:14:44):
Hope in this research. For a vague curiosity prompted me
to continue it. I decided to cross the area of
the enclosure.

Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
Lore those solid was treacherous with slime. I slept with
extreme caution, trying to cross in as directed line as possible.
I had advanced some ten or twelve paces when the
remnants of the torn hem of my robe became entangled
between my legs.

Speaker 18 (01:15:08):
I stepped on it and fell violently on my face.

Speaker 4 (01:15:14):
In the confusion of the fall, I wasn't at first
aware of a remarkable fact.

Speaker 18 (01:15:21):
Although my chin rested upon the floor of the prison,
my lips in the.

Speaker 4 (01:15:25):
Upper portion of my head, although they seemed to be
lower than the chin, touched nothing nothing. At the same time,
my forehead seen bathed in a clammy vapor. The clear
smell decayed, hung rows to my nostrils. I put out
my arm it shut it to find that I had

(01:15:48):
followed at the.

Speaker 19 (01:15:48):
Very brink.

Speaker 18 (01:15:51):
Circular guilding about the mason races below the rim.

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment and let it
fall into the appiest For many.

Speaker 29 (01:16:00):
Seconds I listened to it hitting.

Speaker 4 (01:16:02):
Against the sides of the Cantiisic family, And after what
seemed forever, there was a faint craping wish. It seemed
the land in something soft and vois, followed by a
scarcely audible kind of noise, scraping so short that I

(01:16:22):
couldn't recognize.

Speaker 9 (01:16:25):
At the same time.

Speaker 18 (01:16:28):
It came the sound, the quick sound of the door.

Speaker 4 (01:16:30):
Opening and closing from above, and the faint gleam of light,
and I suddenly through the gloom, just to suddenly take
it away. I saw clearly the doom which had been
prepared for me, and congratulated myself on the timely accidents

(01:16:53):
which I had excaped.

Speaker 18 (01:16:56):
The more step before my fall would have meant a death.

Speaker 10 (01:17:00):
Horribly now to.

Speaker 4 (01:17:02):
The victims of the tribunal the tribunal terror. There was
a choice of death in violent physical agony, or a
death with the most hideous mental horrors. Apparently I had
been return for the last shaking limb. I drove my

(01:17:23):
way back to the wall. My agitated spirit kept me
awake for many long hours, but at length I slept again.
Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, bread
and water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied
The picture at once must have been drugged.

Speaker 18 (01:17:44):
Scarcely had I drunk, and.

Speaker 10 (01:17:46):
I became irresistibly drowsy. Deep deep sleep.

Speaker 18 (01:17:51):
Fell upon me, sleep.

Speaker 4 (01:17:55):
Like that of death.

Speaker 18 (01:17:57):
How long it lasted, I, of course didn't know well.

Speaker 4 (01:18:01):
When I opened my eyes again, the object around me
were visible, the kind of wild, selfless light in the dungeon,
though I couldn't tell where it came from.

Speaker 10 (01:18:14):
I let get my prison. How good it was to
see even me.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
I had been mistaken about its size.

Speaker 18 (01:18:24):
The comference of the walls wasn't over twenty five yards.

Speaker 4 (01:18:28):
Apparently, when I counted fifty two paces and had fallen,
I had almost reached the strip of cloth. And when
I awoke, I must have walked around in the opposite direction.
So suppose the circuit nearly double what it actually was.

Speaker 20 (01:18:46):
What could be less important.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
Yet it was terribly important that I think of this,
that I think of something anything. General shape of the
prison was square, but I had taken from masonry seemed
now to be iron or some other metal in huge plates.
The entire surface of the enclosure was marked with the

(01:19:09):
figures of fiends and aspects of menace, with skeletal palms
and other more fearful.

Speaker 10 (01:19:15):
Images disfiguring the walls.

Speaker 18 (01:19:17):
I saw the outlines of these.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
Monstrosities distinctly, but the colors seemed faded and blurred, as
if by the effects of the damp atmosphere.

Speaker 12 (01:19:29):
In the center of the floor, yond that circular fits.

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
From whose jaws I escaped, No, and my sense is cleared.
I was aware that I was lying on my back
on a low framework of wood.

Speaker 18 (01:19:46):
I had been securely bound to this frame by.

Speaker 4 (01:19:49):
A long strap, which allowed only my head and left
arm to move with much exertion. I could supply myself
with food from an earthen dish.

Speaker 10 (01:19:59):
Which lay by my my side on the floor. I
saw to my heart that the picture had been.

Speaker 4 (01:20:06):
Removed, where again I felt that all consuming thirst, and
here was another point in the plan of my persecutors
the dish contained meat highly seasoned. Looking upward, I surveyed
the ceiling of the dungeon. I'm thirty or forty feet overhead.

Speaker 18 (01:20:26):
I noticed in one of its panels the painted figure
of Time that he is commonly represented, except that in
place of a size, he held.

Speaker 4 (01:20:39):
What seemed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum.
There's something, however, that now caused me to stare it
with compelling attention. I fancy that I saw it in
motion moment born, I was sure move the pension of

(01:20:59):
mood who. The general shape of the prison, as I said,
was square, and in the ceiling ingine sweep was brief
and almost motionless. I watched it for some minutes, hotly
in fear, but more in wonder.

Speaker 18 (01:21:19):
When my eyes grew tired and observing and dull movement,
I turned to look at the other.

Speaker 10 (01:21:24):
Objects in the cell. My estateed me.

Speaker 18 (01:21:29):
Looking at the floor, I saw two enormous racks crossing me.

Speaker 4 (01:21:36):
It had probably come from between some chink in the
large plates of the wall. Lured by the sense of
the meats, required all my efforts.

Speaker 10 (01:21:46):
And attention to scare them away.

Speaker 4 (01:21:50):
Might have been half an hour, half even an hour
for what measure had eye of time. When I again
looked up with.

Speaker 10 (01:21:59):
I saw confounded, amazed me.

Speaker 4 (01:22:03):
The sweep of the pendulum had increased by nearly a yard,
and the speed of the sweep was greater. But what
terrified me was the idea that it had perceptibly descend,
and I observed with nothing horror. At the base of
the pendulum was the form of a crescent of glittering steel,

(01:22:26):
about a foot in length from horn to horn, the
horns upward.

Speaker 18 (01:22:30):
And the under edge is keen as eraser.

Speaker 4 (01:22:34):
It hung from a heavy brass rod, and it hissed
because its one was real. I could no longer doubt
the doom prepare for me. I had escaped the pit,
that otherness of all held by the merriest accident. Now
a different, milder destruction awaited me. What does it matter

(01:22:58):
to tell of the long, long hours of horror more
than mortled, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of
the steel.

Speaker 18 (01:23:04):
Inch by inch line, my line, descending at.

Speaker 4 (01:23:09):
Intervals at semed ages down and still down it came.

Speaker 18 (01:23:16):
Days may very well have been days, I fat before
it swept.

Speaker 10 (01:23:22):
So closely over me that the odor the sharp.

Speaker 4 (01:23:26):
Steel cased the tilt into my nostros.

Speaker 19 (01:23:30):
I prayed, I wearied Heaven.

Speaker 10 (01:23:32):
With my prayers for a quick descent.

Speaker 18 (01:23:35):
I grew psychically back and struggled to force myself upward
against the sleep of his swinging, garting.

Speaker 42 (01:23:41):
And then my nerves collapsed, and I felt suddenly calm
and lay smiling that glittering death like a child in
a fright.

Speaker 4 (01:23:53):
Jul I fell again into other It's been brief, but
again lapsing into life. There had been no perceptible dissents
the pendulum. Perhaps the demons who were watching me had
stopped it so as not to deprive me of one

(01:24:13):
second of the mental touch.

Speaker 10 (01:24:17):
I recovered. I felt sick.

Speaker 4 (01:24:19):
We even in such agonies as this, the human nature
craved fool, Saint Lefford. I reached out my left arm
to the dish and took what small remained the rats
had left me.

Speaker 18 (01:24:36):
If I put it to my lips, there rushed to
my mind a half formed thought of joy, of hope.

Speaker 4 (01:24:43):
Yet what business that I told it? What I say
I half form thought, my struggle to perfect it told
onto it, long suffering. It nearly annihilated all my ordinary
powers of mind. Bendulum I swung at right angles to
my body. It was obviously designed to cross the region

(01:25:04):
of my heart. Though going it would pray the search
of my robe, it would return and repeat its operation again, and.

Speaker 10 (01:25:14):
Because of its.

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
Inching descent, dispraying action would take several minutes. I grabbed
this thought and held it close to me, but I
dared go no further. At the moment, I forced myself
to think of the sound of that hissing crescence as
it would pass across my garden, the peculiar thrilling sensation

(01:25:40):
which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves, till.

Speaker 10 (01:25:46):
My tears were honey down steadily down at gret.

Speaker 4 (01:25:53):
I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting it downward, in
sideward speed, to.

Speaker 10 (01:26:01):
The right, the way to the way that.

Speaker 4 (01:26:17):
Face a snake on toward my heart, like a stealthy dyke.
Down and relentlessly, down it came. It vibrated within three
inches of my chest. I struggled violently furiously to further free.

Speaker 43 (01:26:36):
I left on.

Speaker 18 (01:26:38):
I could have broken the findings above the elbow. I
would have seized an attempted to arrest of beendulum.

Speaker 4 (01:26:44):
I might as well have attempted to arrest Maverlech down,
still unceasingly down.

Speaker 18 (01:26:51):
Still inevitably down.

Speaker 4 (01:26:54):
If I gasped and struggled at each giant vibration, I
thought it too soon, the vibrations would bring that keen,
glistening axe in actual contact with my robe. With this observation,
there suddenly came over me the clear, collected calmness of despair.

(01:27:16):
Then the half warm thought of hope emerged again, for
the first time in many, many hours or perhaps days,
I I thought, I thought, clearly, the first brook of
the raider edge, any part of the strap, would so.

Speaker 18 (01:27:33):
Detach it that it might be unwound from my body
by my free left head. But how terrifyingly close the
steel would be the.

Speaker 4 (01:27:43):
Result of the slightest wrong movement would mean to I
elevated my head far enough to see my chest strap
enveloped my body close in all directions.

Speaker 10 (01:27:57):
In the past, and now my mind run into sharp focus.

Speaker 18 (01:28:09):
The plan for what it was worth was ready.

Speaker 4 (01:28:14):
With the nervous energy of despair, I would attempt to
execute it. The two enormous rats were still in the
immediate vicinity there, and in a low framework, and which
highlight were wild, old, ravenous, their red eyes glaring upon
me as if they waited but for my motionlessness make

(01:28:35):
me oo right of all my.

Speaker 10 (01:28:40):
Efforts to prevent them.

Speaker 18 (01:28:42):
They had devoured all but a small remnant the contents
of the dish.

Speaker 4 (01:28:47):
I had been waving my hand back and forth over
the dish whenever they got too near, But a few times,
in their boldness, rat fastened their sharp things into my thinking. Oh,
with the particles of the oily and spicy meat which
now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the strap wherever I could

(01:29:08):
reach it.

Speaker 18 (01:29:09):
Then, raising my hands from the floor, I.

Speaker 10 (01:29:11):
Lay breathlessly, still no change. The rat drank back at.

Speaker 4 (01:29:19):
The cessation of movements, but only for a moment. One
of them leaped on the framework and sniffed the strap.
It seemed to be the signal for a general rush.

Speaker 18 (01:29:28):
For the other follows. And then there are two more
that I had not seen before. They clung to the word.
They overran it and leaped heavily on my body. Measured
movements of the pendulum didn't disturb them at all, avoiding
its strokes.

Speaker 4 (01:29:44):
They skurried around the meat, smarde strap, nibbling and nying
they pressed on me, They rise upon my throat, and
they're dirty, beauty lips ont My own disgust, which the

(01:30:06):
world has no name, swelled in my chest and chilled
my heart with a heavy clamminess. And yet in one
minute I felt the struggle would be over. I knew
that in more than one place their teeth had already
severed the strap with.

Speaker 18 (01:30:22):
More than human resolution. I lay still, perfectly still.

Speaker 4 (01:30:28):
Or was I mistaken in the land, Nor had I
endured this margie in vain. The strap hung in ribbons
from my body.

Speaker 10 (01:30:36):
For the stroke of the pendulum, already breast upon my chest.

Speaker 4 (01:30:40):
It divided the surge of the robe and cut through
the linen beneath. Twice again it swung. The sharp sense
of pain shot through every nur.

Speaker 10 (01:30:49):
The moment of escaping arrived.

Speaker 18 (01:30:52):
I waved my hands, and my deliverers scurried away with a.

Speaker 4 (01:30:57):
Steady movement, cautious sidewards, shrinking and slow, I slid from
the streat, beyond the reach of the guilty.

Speaker 44 (01:31:09):
For a moment at least I was.

Speaker 9 (01:31:11):
Free, free.

Speaker 18 (01:31:16):
From that demon tribunal.

Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror
when the motion of the hellish machine stops and it
was drawn up rapidly, as if by an invisible force,
through the ceiling.

Speaker 10 (01:31:32):
This was my final list. My every breath was being watched.
There would be no.

Speaker 9 (01:31:38):
Waste of English mercy.

Speaker 10 (01:31:40):
Now my eyes flashed nervously around the barriers of iron.

Speaker 4 (01:31:44):
That hemmed me in something, something unusual, some change which
at first I could not appreciate, distinctly had taken place
in the dungeon. I became aware for the first time
that the sulpress light which illuminated the cell, was coming
from a fissure about a half inchine width extending around
the prison at the base of the walls. And how

(01:32:05):
I saw those fishes in the walls whose colors had
seemed blurred and indistinct, indefinite, Those colors were now assuming
more and more each moments. A startling and intent friency.
Demon eyes wild ghastly glared upon me in a bowl
on directions, and gleamed with the lurid luster of a
fire that I could not force my imagination to regard

(01:32:27):
as unreal.

Speaker 9 (01:32:29):
Unreal.

Speaker 4 (01:32:30):
Even while I breathed, there came to my nostrils the
breath of the vapor of heated iron, the summer beating
odor provad of the prism.

Speaker 18 (01:32:39):
A deeper glow settled each moment in.

Speaker 4 (01:32:41):
The eyes that glared at my agonies. A richer tint
of crimson spread over the pictured horrors of blood. I
gasped wildly for breath. I shrank from the blowing hot
metals of the.

Speaker 18 (01:32:53):
Center of a cell.

Speaker 4 (01:32:54):
In the fiery destruction.

Speaker 18 (01:32:55):
That was closing in the idea of coombs. The fullness
of the pit came over my soul like a bob.

Speaker 45 (01:33:04):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (01:33:05):
A voice of sweetly shrieked.

Speaker 18 (01:33:08):
I buried my face in my hands.

Speaker 4 (01:33:10):
I wept, wept bitterly.

Speaker 18 (01:33:13):
The heat rapidly increased.

Speaker 13 (01:33:15):
Once again.

Speaker 10 (01:33:15):
I looked up, shuddering at the delirium.

Speaker 4 (01:33:18):
A second change was taking place in the cell. In
its form the room I said had been square, I
saw the two of its iron angles were now acute.

Speaker 18 (01:33:30):
The square was shifting like a cardboard box being.

Speaker 17 (01:33:33):
Clapped in black.

Speaker 4 (01:33:35):
The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or
moaning sound. There would be no more dallying with these
kings of terror. I neither hoped nor desired in it.

Speaker 10 (01:33:46):
I could have clasped the red.

Speaker 4 (01:33:48):
Walls to my chest into a garment of eternal peace death,
I said, any death, But that is the pit. Ooh,
might ee not have lulled in the object of the
shifting burning iron with urge me into the pit. Now
the dungeons press flicker and flier. It's tender and it's

(01:34:08):
cringed with in jan noory on me. It's I shrank
back with the clothing walls breathing redistrictly onwards, and then
they're pres broom for any steered and writhing body.

Speaker 20 (01:34:19):
Yeah, I can struck them all.

Speaker 33 (01:34:25):
At the.

Speaker 18 (01:34:28):
The chess thanks trying trying to see people, to.

Speaker 10 (01:34:33):
See the graves that white me.

Speaker 18 (01:34:36):
The glare from the flaming roof is litted deeper recesses.

Speaker 17 (01:34:40):
Yeah, fabulo.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
Falling over the brink I can see at the foot
of the fis receiving sea of scraping racks.

Speaker 18 (01:34:53):
And then the danny of them, and then I along the.

Speaker 46 (01:34:56):
Size of a star.

Speaker 4 (01:34:59):
M The mind at midnight is lonely, and the senses

(01:35:20):
are shot, and so from out of darkness of shape
or form, where a single light is focused, the sharp.

Speaker 10 (01:35:33):
And lonely midnight mind.

Speaker 4 (01:35:36):
Will see faces in the window you've been listening to
Ken Nordene in a reading of the Pit and the
Pendulum by Edgar Allan Paul, adapted by Marvin David, directed

(01:36:00):
by John Hmsey, lighting by Lee Bowling, camera Bible and
Jeffrey Faces in The Window was created by Marvin David
and George Heinemann and featured Ken o'dean.

Speaker 9 (01:36:28):
Tart Santa Scape.

Speaker 10 (01:36:37):
I am the dweller in the House of Bread. I'm
Scott Bishop. I create fantasies for the radio. I write
weird stories for magazines. I write books on straight and up.

(01:37:01):
Authors who do these things sometimes attract odd happenings. I
don't ask listeners to believe my stories. I do not
expect you to believe what I am going to tell you.

Speaker 29 (01:37:13):
Now.

Speaker 10 (01:37:16):
As I was sitting alone at my typewriter one evening,
plotting in my mind and outline for a story, my
room was quiet. There was a soft, spicy odor of
incense being wafted in from some other portion of the house.

(01:37:37):
An organ was playing softly somewhere in the distance. That
was when I fell asleep, and in my dream I
found myself alone, high on a precipice, the highest in
all creation, where I could observe with a naked eye
all the fire flung wonders of the universe, where I

(01:37:59):
could look that common clay that mankind calls the earth.
And as I watched high on that bedage, boy, why

(01:38:20):
do you sigh? My son? M I thought I was alone?
Are any of us ever alone?

Speaker 29 (01:38:29):
No?

Speaker 10 (01:38:29):
I suppose we're not, but so desolate up here, so
far from anything else. And I seem to be searching
for something. Could it be, my son, that the reason
is you are searching for the truth? The truth? What

(01:38:52):
is the truth? You asked that, then asking you surely must.

Speaker 29 (01:38:57):
Not know.

Speaker 10 (01:38:59):
The truth? Is it some vague, inconsequential thing, some mythical nothingness,
some nonexistent wishfulness? Truth, my son, is neither inconsequential, nor
vague nor mythical. If I could only believe that? Who
can believe it? If you will? Can one believe something

(01:39:23):
he's never seen? Perhaps you think me a cynic, don't you, sir?
I haven't said I do, nor have you denied it.
My son? Look upon me, What do you see? Why
A man like myself, a little older perhaps, and perhaps wiser.

(01:39:45):
I make no boast of any wisdom I might have.
I in the Way, and the truth and the light.
What was that? Merely words spoken by a man was
about to die. I know the Bible, the Bible, a way,

(01:40:07):
the truth, and the light. If I could only find that,
you will find them if you look far enough. Who
are you? I?

Speaker 9 (01:40:16):
I am just a man.

Speaker 10 (01:40:18):
But your name, it is a very common name. You'll
find it in any city directory or telephone book. Then
why do you conceal it? I don't conceal it. My
name is word. I can't agree that it's such a
common name, nor could you agree that it is unusual.
No names are such temporary things. You can say to me,

(01:40:41):
my name is bishop, and there is no way for
me to know whether you are good or evil, religious
or atheistic, learned or ignorant, an emperor or a beggar.
But you've told me more about yourself than just your name,
have I?

Speaker 9 (01:40:53):
But haven't you?

Speaker 10 (01:40:54):
Just a moment ago you reminded me that your greater
age has made you wiser than I. If you are
so much wiser, perhaps you can tell me where to
find what I seek, Where to find the truth, the truth,
the light, peace, happiness, contentment, all those things man wants

(01:41:16):
so eagerly. Yet seldom finds in sufficiency. He only fails
to find them, my son, because he is blind to them.
Then they are real. They do exist. I have said
that they do. Then I beg of you to help
me find them.

Speaker 9 (01:41:31):
I beg of you, and my.

Speaker 10 (01:41:33):
Son, I cannot do, for it is given no one
to help another find those things which you seek. You
must search them out in your own way, and must
exert your own efforts in discovering England. But can't you
tell me anything? Anything at all? I would like nothing
better than to disclose everything to this much. I can

(01:41:53):
say yes, if you are sincere in wishing to find
the truth, if you really desire to know the way
of light and happiness and peace, if you would know
the road to all these majestic things, then seek you
the house of bread. Remember the house, the house of bread.

(01:42:16):
Seek you the house of bread.

Speaker 11 (01:42:19):
Wait, wait, I say, come back, don't leave me.

Speaker 31 (01:42:25):
Now.

Speaker 47 (01:42:26):
Where is that house? Where will I find it? Where
will I find the house? Tell me, o, wise one,
where will I find the house of bread?

Speaker 10 (01:42:45):
I've already told you I was dreaming. I make no
secret of that. First I didn't tell my dream to anyone. Instead,
I cherished him give it many hours of deep thought
and serious kind in place. I didn't even tell Sonya,
And at first I gave much thought to the things

(01:43:08):
the man on the mountaintop had said to me. Those
lines he quoted from a book almost as old as
Christianity itself and the House of Bread?

Speaker 9 (01:43:22):
Where was it?

Speaker 10 (01:43:24):
Could I find it? I resolved to try? So I
went to my boss. Are you trying to tell me
Bishop that you're leaving regretfully? Yes? But your work, your future?

(01:43:51):
I wonder, sir, if there is a future, my.

Speaker 25 (01:43:53):
Bishop, wut intonations come over you, You've got a great future.
Books is sounding like that's at a circus. Here's a
while from Fantastic periodicals. They want to contract for a
series of twelve short stories about the supernatural as three
thousand dollars two hundred and fifty a piece. That's not hay,

(01:44:16):
Oh good lord man, are you out of your mind?
I think of the years you've spent building up the
reputation you've got. Think of those years you've studied Greek
and Latin philosophy during the day, wrote cheap sensational nonsense
for the pops at night to earn your education.

Speaker 10 (01:44:34):
Think of the trunk full.

Speaker 25 (01:44:35):
Of rejection slips you got from the slicks before you
made the grade. Because the money you've spent on travel
and research.

Speaker 10 (01:44:42):
That's just it, Boss, I am thinking of all those things.
So what so I've worked hard? Maybe I'm a success.
Who can say, maybe you're a success. Maybe you're a success.
Well you do leave where you're going. I'd be glad
to answer that. I possibly could. You mean you won't

(01:45:04):
tell me? I mean, I don't know, Bishop. I'll tell
you what I'll do. You take a vacation, now, that's it.

Speaker 25 (01:45:13):
Arrest a week, ten days, two weeks, take as much
time as you like, and when you come back for it, it.

Speaker 9 (01:45:23):
Will feel better.

Speaker 10 (01:45:24):
I don't think it's going to be that easy, Bishop,
What did.

Speaker 25 (01:45:28):
The name of heavens come over you? Don't you think
you at least owe me an explanation?

Speaker 10 (01:45:34):
Yes, I guess I do. I oh, anyone an explanation?
Is you?

Speaker 13 (01:45:39):
Well?

Speaker 10 (01:45:40):
Some satisfaction of that at least?

Speaker 9 (01:45:43):
Well?

Speaker 10 (01:45:43):
It's like this. It all happened about three weeks ago.
Out of my study. I had a story to write
for the Radio Egyptian Mummy thing. While I was trying
to come up with a reasonable plot, I drifted off.

(01:46:06):
Telling Sonya was different. The difference between telling her and
the boss was like the difference between saying I love
you to an actress on the stage and the same
thing to the girl you adore. It was pleasant, soothing
because Sonya understood. Sonya understands everything. She wouldn't be Sonya

(01:46:28):
if she didn't. So that's the way it is, Sonya.

Speaker 28 (01:46:40):
Well, my darling, when are we leaving California?

Speaker 21 (01:46:45):
Scott? You look so strange? Didn't you think I'd want
to go along?

Speaker 10 (01:46:49):
But Sonya, you want to seek it too?

Speaker 21 (01:46:51):
What better thing could I do?

Speaker 10 (01:46:55):
Yes, I might have known you'd wish to go along.

Speaker 21 (01:46:58):
Do you mind so much?

Speaker 10 (01:47:01):
No, of course not. But the journey may be a
long one, and I love long journeys and the difficult one.

Speaker 28 (01:47:07):
I've always been used to difficulties.

Speaker 10 (01:47:09):
It may take us to far off places, but.

Speaker 21 (01:47:11):
I adore far off places.

Speaker 10 (01:47:14):
And it may end only in disappointment.

Speaker 21 (01:47:17):
Haven't we shared many a disappointment?

Speaker 10 (01:47:18):
Scott? Yes, indeed we have. I can think of no
one I'd rather make the journey with me?

Speaker 21 (01:47:26):
Thank you, darling.

Speaker 17 (01:47:28):
When do we leave?

Speaker 9 (01:47:29):
Well? Whenever?

Speaker 10 (01:47:30):
The house trailer has been remodeled and the car cylinders
have been ground.

Speaker 21 (01:47:33):
Where do we go first?

Speaker 10 (01:47:36):
I don't know for certain.

Speaker 21 (01:47:37):
Reminds me of Sir.

Speaker 28 (01:47:38):
Galahad looking for the Holy Grail? Did he know where
he was to begin his search?

Speaker 10 (01:47:43):
More or less?

Speaker 9 (01:47:44):
I suppose?

Speaker 28 (01:47:45):
Well, do you know where to start looking for the
house of bread?

Speaker 10 (01:47:49):
Darling? I haven't the slightest idea of where to begin.

Speaker 28 (01:47:53):
Dearest, What do you suppose the man named word meant
by the house of bread?

Speaker 10 (01:48:00):
Yeah, I've asked myself that time and time again.

Speaker 21 (01:48:02):
Surely not a real heart, no.

Speaker 10 (01:48:04):
I think not, Sonya. That phrase symbolizes something, but what where?

Speaker 28 (01:48:11):
Perhaps we should find out someday.

Speaker 10 (01:48:31):
That was when we decided to go seeking a house
of bread. As I look back on it now, I
don't blame the boss for thinking I was bombing here.
We were Sonya and I two supposedly saying sensible people,
throwing up everything kit and kaboodle and taking out to
look for something more vague and unknown than Shangri La

(01:48:53):
or Arcadia, Nirvana some other synonymous place. Oh, because of dream.

(01:49:15):
So we had the house trailery model and the automobile repaired,
and we drew our money from the banks and started
off it was the twenty first day of May, my birthday.
About six o'clock in the morning, I gathered up the
morning newspapers. On the way out of the house breathed
in some of the fragrant Californian atmosphere. Sonya wanted to
stop at the used bookshop on Pacific Avenue, so we

(01:49:36):
drove through the spacious Long Beach streets until we came
to the place opposite the post office. Sonya bought seven
travel books and a back issue of a magazine that
contained one of my better stories. She said she wanted
to drive around Rainbow Pier once, so we did. Then
we scooted over to La picked up Highway sixty six,
and drove to Las Vegas. We stayed in a tourist

(01:49:59):
cabinet Bowlder that right, and early the next day we
drove over the dam, so we began driving through the mountains.
Out of the place, I noticed Sonya laboriously riding in
a small bony.

Speaker 28 (01:50:23):
What's that, dear, a five year gary? I thought we
should log our trip. Perhaps we'll assemble enough material for
you to write another book.

Speaker 10 (01:50:31):
If we log our trip l this week, you will
have to do it me, I I couldn't write, and
I owe you.

Speaker 13 (01:50:40):
With a penny.

Speaker 21 (01:50:41):
How I've already started to keep it got here listen.

Speaker 28 (01:50:46):
We left Long Beach at seven am, and we're out
of Los Angeles by ten thirty.

Speaker 21 (01:50:52):
The trip across the desert was.

Speaker 28 (01:50:53):
Uneventful but quite pleasant, and we arrived at Las Vegas, Nevada,
May twenty second, Flag's Deaf Gallup, Albuquerque, May twenty third, Amarilla,
Oklahoma City, Talsa.

Speaker 10 (01:51:18):
Kansas City, Saint Louis.

Speaker 28 (01:51:20):
Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, New York.

Speaker 10 (01:51:24):
City May thirtieth. We sailed today from Peer seventeen for London,
aboard the SS America. As we stood at the ship's
rail together Sonya and I, we wondered just why we
decided to leave the good old United States behind. Something

(01:51:47):
tell us our goal was far beyond the sea.

Speaker 28 (01:52:10):
We have spent the past few days in London. It
is now June twenty seventh. We have seen the River Thames,
London Bridge, Cheapalgar Square, Downing Street, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace,
Piccadilly Circus, many other points of interest. We were especially
attracted by a place called the Light of the World.
But the people we asked there and everywhere else had

(01:52:32):
never heard of the House of Bread.

Speaker 10 (01:52:43):
July sixteenth. We're about to leave Paris for Madrid, Sonya,
and I sought diligently in this city of pleasure for
the place the man called word name to me. We
searched everywhere, the magnificent border belong boulevards. Everywhere we go
did Eiffel Tower and the Louver, and Cardinal Richlieu's Palais Royal,

(01:53:06):
the cathedral of Notre Dame, Grand Opera House, the Ark
of Triumph. Then we were attracted to the place de
la Concorde, which is called the place of peace. And
we thrilled for a moment because we thought our search
was ended. But when we asked about the House of Bread,
folks only laughed at us.

Speaker 28 (01:53:37):
July thirtieth, Madrid, where there are two classes of people,
those who go to bed after three am and those
who get up before four. No Spaniard had ever heard
of the House of Bread.

Speaker 10 (01:54:02):
Morocco August twentieth, Mingling with the Moors and Arabs, wandering
up narrow, crooked, dirty streets, through shabby buildings and unkempt markets,
all with a general aspect of dilapidation and extreme neglect.

Speaker 28 (01:54:25):
Tripoli September fifteenth, sponge fisheries, ostrich feathers, gold ivory rugs,
and the ruins of a triumphal arch erected to Marcus Aurelius.

Speaker 10 (01:54:50):
Cairo, Egyptians, Arabs, Nubians and Turks, and a city of mosques,
high stone houses, barred windows, state late turrets and downs
rising above the surrounding dirt and squalor, and the temple.
For a tradition has it that God talked with Moses.

(01:55:11):
No encouragement here either. The house the man words spoke
of is unknown. Is late October.

Speaker 26 (01:55:28):
November sixth, November sixteenth, November twenty sixth, December fifth, December fifteenth,
December twenty fifth.

Speaker 21 (01:55:45):
Jerusalem, the Hill of Calvary, not far from.

Speaker 28 (01:55:49):
The city gates, where once a humble man bearing a
cross of misunderstanding and hate, far heavier than mere beams
of wood, drank the last drop in the cup of
human bitterness.

Speaker 10 (01:56:03):
The city of God, City of David, Solomon, Cyrus, the Persian.

Speaker 28 (01:56:09):
King Nebknezzer, the Babylonian Alexander, the Great Constantine, the Great.

Speaker 21 (01:56:18):
Pontius Pilot.

Speaker 10 (01:56:26):
The storm swoops down, the rain begins to fall. The
new born stars are hidden all save one. There is
one star to the east, quite close by. Scintillates through
the gloom, through the downpour, sends out its rays and
engulses and falls us, becomes almost a part of us,

(01:56:50):
and Sonia writes that we must follow the beam. It sends,
pounding vigorously earthwind. Sonia, let's go back, at least find shelter.

Speaker 21 (01:57:06):
God, you're tired.

Speaker 28 (01:57:08):
We've tried to find shelters.

Speaker 21 (01:57:10):
Strange. The lodgings are completely filled, and.

Speaker 10 (01:57:12):
We'd best go back to Jerusalem instead of wondering about
here in the darkness.

Speaker 28 (01:57:16):
Here some sort of a shelter here, Scott, let's step
inside a moment, shall we?

Speaker 10 (01:57:21):
That's all right there.

Speaker 21 (01:57:25):
There There seems to be a light in here.

Speaker 10 (01:57:29):
Yes, and there's someone here beside us, Scott. Look, I
bid you welcome, good people. We beg your pardon. We
thought this place was unoccupied. No, no, not go, you
are welcome here, I say, haven't we met before? I

(01:57:50):
believe we had? Yes, we have no. I remember you're
the one in my dream. Your name is Word. In
the beginning was the word, and the word was with God,
and the word was God. The way and the Truth

(01:58:15):
and the light. I am come a light into the world,
that whosoever believeth in me shall not abide in darkness.
And the way and the truth and the light and
low the Angel of the Lord came upon them, and
the glory of the Lord showed round above them, and said,

(01:58:36):
unto them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good
tidings of great joy. For to you is born this
day a savior, which is Christ, the Lord.

Speaker 9 (01:58:51):
Be not afraid.

Speaker 10 (01:58:53):
Have you not been told? Seek ye the Lord, and
he will not be scornful unto thee. Here here, in
this humble manger you were born two thousand years ago. Raverily,
I say unto you, I am with you at all times,
in all places, even under the consummation of the world.
Then this is our answer. This is what we have

(01:59:15):
been seeking so earnestly. Because you have seen me, you believe.
Blessed is he who has not seen me. And still,

(01:59:36):
and that is my story. We awoke the next morning
feeling more refreshed than we'd felt in all time. The
sun was bright, the rain had gone. What was the
significance of the House of Bread. We didn't learn that
until later, when I consulted the Britannica. I quote as

(01:59:57):
it is written word for word. A small town in
Palestine situated on a limestone ridge, five miles south of Jerusalem,
a city called by the Hebrews the House of Brands.

(02:00:17):
This is the National Broadcasting Company.

Speaker 7 (02:00:20):
We all know someone who struggles with depression, whether we're
aware of it or not. It's something those who suffer
tend to deal with in silence, in the shadows. But
the organizations we are supporting with our annual Overcoming the
Darkness Fundraiser this month are working to make it easier
for those in the darkness to come into the light,
to find help, and to learn they're not alone, that
there are ways to overcome the darkness of depression and

(02:00:42):
live normal lives. I do this fundraiser only one month
out of the year, as October is the anniversary month
for Weird Darkness we launched in October twenty fifteen. It's
National Depression Awareness Month, and this month is spooky and dark,
kind of like depression. If you'd like to make a
donation or learn more about the fundraiser, or find hope
for yourself or someone you know who struggles with depression,

(02:01:04):
visit weird Darkness dot com slash hope. The fundraiser ends
Halloween night at midnight. Please give what you can Weirddarkness
dot com slash hope for.

Speaker 48 (02:01:14):
This story, I should like to invite you to the theater,
not to occupy a seat in the stalls, nor the
Royal Circle, nor even the upper Circle, nor the gallery,
but to visit backstage. This is an area of great
bustle and activity, of noise and excitement, of unlimited hard
work and a certain very limited amount of glamour during

(02:01:35):
the show, as I'm sure you realize. But our visit
is to be after the performance, when the curtain has fallen,
when the actors and the stage staff have left, when
the theater is dark and backstage is a very different place.

Speaker 49 (02:01:56):
Good evening, sir, and.

Speaker 13 (02:02:02):
Can I help you?

Speaker 50 (02:02:04):
My name's Paul Gillis. Missus Childer asked me to meet here.

Speaker 13 (02:02:09):
Oh yes, miss.

Speaker 49 (02:02:10):
Childer left worded.

Speaker 29 (02:02:11):
Be round.

Speaker 49 (02:02:13):
She's waiting in an addressing room. I'll take you down.
I'm Harry by the way the definement.

Speaker 50 (02:02:18):
Well, hello, Harry, pleased to meet you, you too, sir,
Just a.

Speaker 51 (02:02:23):
Tick securately, you wouldn't believe the people who'd been through
this stage door.

Speaker 49 (02:02:35):
If I didn't look up, I cann't trust anyone these days.

Speaker 2 (02:02:40):
Oh come along then, sir, have you been there before?

Speaker 52 (02:02:45):
Yes, I've connected miss Childer a few times.

Speaker 53 (02:02:51):
Okay, my n The stairs are a bit state known
as the John Beckens thirty nine at the thirty nine steps.
One of the actors he came across my rear a
few days ago. He broke a shoe lace and his
quick changer dresser said, hang on, I'll.

Speaker 9 (02:03:09):
Get a new one.

Speaker 49 (02:03:10):
He said, no time, right, dash down stairs new shoe court.

Speaker 54 (02:03:14):
Is he or crash man?

Speaker 10 (02:03:16):
What?

Speaker 50 (02:03:16):
And off for the rest of the week.

Speaker 55 (02:03:18):
Lord Miss Chandler's rooms over on the prompt side. You
know that across the stages quickness afternoon.

Speaker 54 (02:03:30):
Now, I'll put a working light on the rest of
the castle.

Speaker 55 (02:03:34):
All god well, and nobody hangs around match not on
a Saturday off like the perhaps.

Speaker 43 (02:03:40):
Yes, of course, right, yeah, let there be light. Have
you seen have you the show?

Speaker 29 (02:03:51):
Oh?

Speaker 50 (02:03:51):
Yes, a couple of times?

Speaker 29 (02:03:53):
Is that?

Speaker 49 (02:03:54):
Is that how you met Miss Chandler if you don't mind.

Speaker 10 (02:03:56):
Me asking, Oh not at all, Yes, I could with
a friend he knew one of the fellows in the
cast and we met him back towards at the stage door.

Speaker 56 (02:04:04):
Well, Laura was on the way out and he introduced us.

Speaker 29 (02:04:06):
All.

Speaker 13 (02:04:07):
We went over the road for a drink.

Speaker 43 (02:04:08):
And he's a lovely artist, Laura, miss child.

Speaker 12 (02:04:13):
Yes, yes, well this way.

Speaker 54 (02:04:24):
Here we are. You are now on the stake.

Speaker 13 (02:04:30):
Well, well so I am.

Speaker 56 (02:04:34):
It's much smaller than I thought it would be, and
seeing it from there.

Speaker 44 (02:04:38):
The magic of the footlights, mister Gower Gillis I was quoting, Sorry,
you hang on yourself.

Speaker 49 (02:04:47):
She won't be a tick. I'll just make sure that
she's ready. Miss childers alive.

Speaker 44 (02:04:58):
So just testing one two one two one two one
two one two testing testing.

Speaker 9 (02:05:06):
Go music.

Speaker 44 (02:05:14):
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our theater.
We would like to point out that, for reasons of copyright,
the use of recording equipment in the.

Speaker 11 (02:05:21):
Auditorium historically, Hello, Harry, are you there?

Speaker 44 (02:05:27):
Also forbidden is any sexual activity whatsoever anywhere in the theater.
Anyone offending will be dealt with in the appropriate manner.

Speaker 20 (02:05:40):
Thank you, Hurry, What the hell story on?

Speaker 33 (02:05:46):
I don't know who's down there?

Speaker 20 (02:05:50):
I said, who's out there?

Speaker 4 (02:05:53):
Lauren Darling less.

Speaker 57 (02:05:58):
That it was about two weeks ago in Laura's dressing room.
But perhaps surely remember, don't you, Paul, who's that Mark
in Lindsey.

Speaker 49 (02:06:11):
Hey, he's a sound engineer.

Speaker 58 (02:06:13):
I want you, want you all in good time, lover.

Speaker 59 (02:06:18):
Oh wait wait, I'll tell you when what promises?

Speaker 18 (02:06:22):
Promise?

Speaker 60 (02:06:23):
But first turn the key in the lock.

Speaker 29 (02:06:25):
Darling.

Speaker 13 (02:06:30):
That's better?

Speaker 29 (02:06:31):
Why?

Speaker 10 (02:06:31):
Hey?

Speaker 13 (02:06:32):
Is this for real?

Speaker 49 (02:06:33):
You really recall this?

Speaker 50 (02:06:34):
You must have done it.

Speaker 59 (02:06:35):
But how we don't need all these lights?

Speaker 10 (02:06:39):
Do we?

Speaker 9 (02:06:40):
Oh?

Speaker 21 (02:06:41):
Yes, much better?

Speaker 8 (02:06:44):
Now come here.

Speaker 59 (02:06:49):
That's what I like about this dressing room.

Speaker 61 (02:06:51):
No windows, I can't see us.

Speaker 6 (02:06:54):
You can still hear.

Speaker 39 (02:06:55):
Come to you.

Speaker 59 (02:06:56):
I'll whistle and you come to me.

Speaker 13 (02:07:03):
Where is he?

Speaker 3 (02:07:04):
The sound control deck of the stalls must be?

Speaker 59 (02:07:09):
That's better, simple when you know how? Yes, yeah, I
can't hurry. Just give me your hand.

Speaker 29 (02:07:24):
That's it.

Speaker 17 (02:07:25):
Oh god, gently, now.

Speaker 29 (02:07:29):
Where are you? Oh?

Speaker 21 (02:07:33):
Yes, darling?

Speaker 44 (02:07:35):
No good evening, Paul. May I introduce myself?

Speaker 13 (02:07:42):
But how does he know me?

Speaker 10 (02:07:44):
Well?

Speaker 49 (02:07:45):
You've been around there, haven't you?

Speaker 20 (02:07:46):
And maybe Laura told him about you.

Speaker 50 (02:07:49):
I don't see what you should have done.

Speaker 44 (02:07:51):
Not introduced myself in person, of course, but vocally, which
is rather wrapped. I I'm the sound engineer at this theater,
and my Christian name is Martin. I hope you don't
mind me calling you by your Christian name, Paul, but
I don't feel I know you quite well since you're

(02:08:12):
liaison with our lovely Laura, that is, I say ours,
although I must confess I had always looked upon her
as mine before you arrived on the scene.

Speaker 10 (02:08:26):
And listen to this.

Speaker 44 (02:08:28):
It was in her dressing room last January. I was
there with her.

Speaker 49 (02:08:34):
After the show.

Speaker 56 (02:08:37):
Martin Darling, I want to you, want to.

Speaker 5 (02:08:42):
You all in good time.

Speaker 49 (02:08:44):
We're not going anywhere.

Speaker 50 (02:08:46):
Promise there you are, Promise.

Speaker 3 (02:08:56):
What is all this marting over?

Speaker 59 (02:09:02):
Do we really need all these lights if we're not
going anywhere.

Speaker 49 (02:09:07):
It's your dressing room, sweet, that's better.

Speaker 59 (02:09:13):
Come here, Please give me your hand.

Speaker 13 (02:09:19):
M h that's it.

Speaker 59 (02:09:23):
Gently, Oh I've missed you.

Speaker 49 (02:09:27):
He's in the field somewhere.

Speaker 20 (02:09:29):
He must be Marty.

Speaker 50 (02:09:31):
Well, where's Laura.

Speaker 20 (02:09:34):
She must have hurt all that, surely she must have got.

Speaker 50 (02:09:38):
Oh god, this is insane.

Speaker 44 (02:09:40):
So you see, Paul, I was there first before you,
that is. And I certainly don't intend to lose Laura
to you, not not to anyone. And if it comes
to a choice between the two of us.

Speaker 9 (02:09:57):
Then someone will have to go.

Speaker 44 (02:10:00):
And it is not going to be me, So get
out before I take you out.

Speaker 50 (02:10:12):
He's he's out of his mind.

Speaker 49 (02:10:14):
Come on, we've got to find miss Charler before he does.

Speaker 50 (02:10:16):
Where is she dressing room?

Speaker 49 (02:10:18):
It's is he's number seventh's Chara nobody.

Speaker 50 (02:10:35):
I thought you said she was waiting for me.

Speaker 10 (02:10:37):
So she was.

Speaker 12 (02:10:38):
And she hasn't left the theater as far as I know,
not by the stage door anywhere.

Speaker 49 (02:10:41):
I've been on duty there since the end of the show.

Speaker 13 (02:10:43):
What are we going to do now?

Speaker 54 (02:10:45):
We'll go back to the stage and call the police.

Speaker 55 (02:10:47):
He's that Martin's no telling what he might get up to,
and I don't want to be alone around here when
he does.

Speaker 49 (02:10:53):
I think we deserve the strong arm of the law
around us, Thank.

Speaker 12 (02:10:55):
You very much.

Speaker 55 (02:10:57):
What about Laura, We'll put all over the town or
if she's anywhere that is shelear it.

Speaker 54 (02:11:03):
Well, if that doesn't work, we'll call her flat.

Speaker 55 (02:11:05):
Let's see if she's gone back there, and then do
a proper search around when the police arrive.

Speaker 19 (02:11:11):
So that's it.

Speaker 62 (02:11:12):
Then no sign of your miss Chandler, Oh, sergeant, I'd
say she must have left straight after the show, and
I missed her with everyone else going out at the
same time.

Speaker 50 (02:11:20):
But why did she leave the message for me to
meet her here?

Speaker 33 (02:11:23):
Mate?

Speaker 50 (02:11:24):
Why don't you try her telephone number again?

Speaker 49 (02:11:29):
So no sign of your mister Lindsey either, then, Oh
what Martin?

Speaker 13 (02:11:34):
No, I reckon.

Speaker 55 (02:11:36):
He must have been in the theater all the time,
at the sound desco back in the stalls.

Speaker 49 (02:11:40):
He's got all the controls back there. Yes, I know,
I've seen the show. It's ringing, miss Chard.

Speaker 27 (02:11:47):
Thank god, let me speak to that.

Speaker 49 (02:11:48):
No, no, sorry, it's not it's the answer for thanks.

Speaker 63 (02:11:55):
Hello, miss Chandler. Bow Street Police here. Not to alarm you,
but there's been some concern about your whereabouts. Would you
call the station as soon as you get this message?
It's seven one three seven nine one two one two.
Thank you, my thanks, that's all right.

Speaker 50 (02:12:13):
What else can we do?

Speaker 63 (02:12:14):
As soon as I get back to the station, I'll
put out a hospital course, I just in case there's
been a road accident, and of course if she hasn't
run us, well we'll send an office around to a home.

Speaker 9 (02:12:23):
Now.

Speaker 49 (02:12:23):
I think we better go and take a look at
that sound equipment.

Speaker 63 (02:12:28):
Well, sergeant, here it is talk about the marvels of
modern technology.

Speaker 10 (02:12:33):
Is it switched on?

Speaker 13 (02:12:34):
No lights up?

Speaker 2 (02:12:35):
Like the Blackpool illuminations?

Speaker 13 (02:12:37):
When it is?

Speaker 63 (02:12:37):
Do you know how this mission on them?

Speaker 13 (02:12:39):
Afraid not.

Speaker 12 (02:12:40):
There's a switch it says start.

Speaker 2 (02:12:41):
But I'd rather not fiddle about with it. If you
don't mind a computerized much about with that?

Speaker 49 (02:12:46):
Everything goes by.

Speaker 50 (02:12:46):
Nana has been No, I just have to take a
chance sing, excuse me, certainly?

Speaker 13 (02:12:50):
Sorry, Then see what happens?

Speaker 59 (02:12:53):
I love you, I love you?

Speaker 9 (02:12:55):
What's that?

Speaker 10 (02:12:56):
Then?

Speaker 21 (02:12:57):
I love you?

Speaker 20 (02:12:57):
What is that?

Speaker 9 (02:13:01):
You're early?

Speaker 17 (02:13:01):
Then?

Speaker 50 (02:13:02):
No, nothing like it?

Speaker 63 (02:13:03):
When both of you heard these other recordings or whatever they.

Speaker 50 (02:13:06):
Yes, we certainly did.

Speaker 56 (02:13:07):
Batman Market to be sick.

Speaker 63 (02:13:09):
Well, I'll get back and put a report in. Then
they'll probably send someone around to his place to pick
up your mister Martin Lindsey.

Speaker 55 (02:13:15):
Right, might as well get back to the stage door.

Speaker 49 (02:13:17):
Then, if you've finished here, I'll just turn this off.

Speaker 63 (02:13:21):
Well, the police will be in touch with you at home.
Mister Gillis probably arranged for you to give us a
statement sometime tomorrow.

Speaker 13 (02:13:26):
Right, all switched off?

Speaker 63 (02:13:28):
Yeah, I'm just saying to mister Gillis, we'll want statements tomorrow.

Speaker 13 (02:13:30):
You'll be here, will you?

Speaker 10 (02:13:32):
No?

Speaker 19 (02:13:32):
Not what I want?

Speaker 55 (02:13:32):
Duty until tomorrow morning. Then the stage door keeper takes over.
He's on right through Sunday.

Speaker 9 (02:13:37):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:13:37):
Well, I'll be off then if you could show me
back to the stage door.

Speaker 62 (02:13:42):
Good night then, mister Gillis, good night, Good night, Sargan,
good night. Say hello to Harry for me when you
see him. Sure, yeah, fine, nice chack?

Speaker 13 (02:13:59):
Do you grew up for you?

Speaker 29 (02:14:00):
Go? No?

Speaker 52 (02:14:01):
No thanks, but I would like to try miss Chanda's
whole phone number again.

Speaker 49 (02:14:05):
O's my problem?

Speaker 31 (02:14:08):
M hm?

Speaker 49 (02:14:11):
Are you sure you won't have a couple? I thought
you'd need one after this?

Speaker 50 (02:14:19):
Excuse me, didn't that sergeant ask you to say hello? Look,
I'm sorry, but I thought you said your name.

Speaker 49 (02:14:26):
She's not there and answer phone still on that? Do
you want to leave a message?

Speaker 50 (02:14:30):
Didn't you hear me? I thought you said your name.

Speaker 44 (02:14:37):
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our theater. Oh
except you, mister Gui.

Speaker 50 (02:14:48):
But it's still here. He's still in the theater.

Speaker 54 (02:14:55):
Are you on here?

Speaker 49 (02:14:56):
I'll be back in a tick just a minute.

Speaker 10 (02:14:59):
What is it?

Speaker 52 (02:15:00):
I thought you said your name was Harry? Oh no, Paul,
uh huh, I'm I'm not Harry, as.

Speaker 18 (02:15:12):
Harry is dead.

Speaker 49 (02:15:15):
My name's.

Speaker 29 (02:15:18):
Martin.

Speaker 64 (02:15:20):
H mm hmm h.

Speaker 10 (02:15:26):
Gee, where are the kee?

Speaker 33 (02:15:32):
M hm, Yes, there's somebody out there?

Speaker 10 (02:15:44):
Is there?

Speaker 33 (02:15:44):
Somebody there? And in my dressing room, dressing room number seven.
Martin's around the theater somewhere, and I'm afraid I've locked
the door. But I'm afraid. Come and help me.

Speaker 29 (02:15:57):
Of course.

Speaker 33 (02:16:01):
He's there at the door.

Speaker 34 (02:16:03):
Help me, please, It's.

Speaker 65 (02:16:09):
All right, Laura, it's all right, it's all right, Laura.

Speaker 50 (02:16:16):
Now stairs stairs, down the stage.

Speaker 29 (02:16:20):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 28 (02:16:21):
Light.

Speaker 60 (02:16:23):
There must be a light somewhere.

Speaker 50 (02:16:26):
Yes, yes, dam never life, never life.

Speaker 36 (02:16:32):
Hi.

Speaker 50 (02:16:34):
Two twenty.

Speaker 66 (02:16:40):
Ex's for five six seventy eight, John Buck, Now where's
the forty forty one?

Speaker 50 (02:16:52):
Forty two forty three?

Speaker 13 (02:16:55):
We're all right.

Speaker 44 (02:16:58):
While in the blue stage area. For your own safety,
keep clear of the revolt.

Speaker 27 (02:17:03):
Meccan sut up, sutt up.

Speaker 29 (02:17:05):
Don't run rule one.

Speaker 49 (02:17:06):
Never run in a theater.

Speaker 61 (02:17:07):
It could be dangerous.

Speaker 19 (02:17:10):
Don't you ever.

Speaker 27 (02:17:10):
Listen of emergency break glass for glasses falling out.

Speaker 44 (02:17:24):
By hour the glass will.

Speaker 65 (02:17:25):
Fall forever right right, oh, by time you'll come home.
Why don't you want one?

Speaker 44 (02:17:37):
But if you break the bloody glass, you won't hold
up the weather.

Speaker 6 (02:17:48):
La Laura, Laura, it's.

Speaker 13 (02:18:02):
Green room.

Speaker 50 (02:18:05):
Number seven, Laura, Laura.

Speaker 27 (02:18:15):
Is the nice.

Speaker 29 (02:18:18):
Oh my, yes, hello, Paul.

Speaker 44 (02:18:36):
I'm sure you thought, just for a moment, that was
Laura's body.

Speaker 20 (02:18:43):
M hmm.

Speaker 33 (02:18:44):
Don't you.

Speaker 44 (02:18:48):
Surely you know it better than that you do?

Speaker 31 (02:18:51):
Don't you.

Speaker 19 (02:18:54):
Look again?

Speaker 18 (02:18:55):
M h look again.

Speaker 13 (02:18:59):
It's not even old woman.

Speaker 29 (02:19:03):
It's just Harry.

Speaker 9 (02:19:06):
Sorry about that, but.

Speaker 43 (02:19:09):
I had to go.

Speaker 67 (02:19:11):
It's quite painless. I think, lots of blood. It's a pity,
I know, but I had no choice. They'd been lovers,
you see. Laura must have told you that. Are you

(02:19:31):
being so close? But it wasn't revenge, Paul, only justice.

Speaker 21 (02:19:44):
Listen to this, Hello, Laura, come in, Harry boy, turn
the key.

Speaker 33 (02:19:52):
Well have you got to go off on those dreary
rounds of yours?

Speaker 31 (02:19:55):
Not yet.

Speaker 49 (02:19:59):
I've got time if you.

Speaker 68 (02:20:03):
Oh, I've always got time, Harry, always got time for you.

Speaker 33 (02:20:08):
Remember, Now come here.

Speaker 64 (02:20:15):
Hm hmm, let me up, let.

Speaker 69 (02:20:28):
Me out, easy, Paul, Paul, Paul easy. You must remember
that all this is taking place in a theater. Never
trust theaters. Temples of deceit.

Speaker 64 (02:20:48):
I love you, Paul, deceit.

Speaker 18 (02:20:50):
I love you.

Speaker 27 (02:20:51):
Harry, deceit.

Speaker 70 (02:20:53):
I sorry, sorry nasty emotion, jealousy, but I did love her,
I really loved her, but she seemed to prefer other people.

(02:21:18):
Oh a lot of other people, anyone.

Speaker 9 (02:21:23):
Anyone but me.

Speaker 44 (02:21:27):
I remember it so well.

Speaker 59 (02:21:31):
Oh Martin, will you let me out of this room?

Speaker 71 (02:21:49):
I love you, Laura.

Speaker 59 (02:21:52):
Can't you understand what I'm saying?

Speaker 10 (02:21:56):
Me out?

Speaker 72 (02:21:58):
But I love you, Martin.

Speaker 33 (02:22:01):
I don't love you.

Speaker 44 (02:22:05):
I don't expect you to.

Speaker 73 (02:22:07):
Man, I just want you to let me go on
loving you.

Speaker 9 (02:22:14):
I had one day.

Speaker 44 (02:22:15):
You let everyone else Harry on the stage, door, electrician,
the security.

Speaker 29 (02:22:23):
Guard, and they used to be me.

Speaker 13 (02:22:31):
Anymore?

Speaker 10 (02:22:34):
Why not, is it? Paul?

Speaker 29 (02:22:41):
Laura?

Speaker 50 (02:22:43):
Mhm, paula.

Speaker 10 (02:22:47):
Yon mad?

Speaker 44 (02:22:50):
I hate you.

Speaker 21 (02:22:52):
I never you me and me again.

Speaker 59 (02:22:54):
Now let me out.

Speaker 74 (02:22:56):
I am not going to let you go, Laura. I
love you far too much to let Paul have of
you or anyone else, anyone else ever again.

Speaker 59 (02:23:11):
Mary.

Speaker 44 (02:23:14):
You won't feel anything, only the night.

Speaker 9 (02:23:20):
By carry.

Speaker 44 (02:23:22):
And you won't be anyone else's much ever again. Just mine, Laura, Just.

Speaker 29 (02:23:36):
Mine?

Speaker 4 (02:23:45):
Oh?

Speaker 44 (02:23:45):
Oh, Paul, Paul, don't don't whatever you do, look behind
that curtain, will you. I I had to put Laura
somewhere I didn't want her lying anywhere near Harry. There's

(02:24:06):
not not revenge, only justice. You don't want to look
at Harry any longer. Non Up the lights out?

Speaker 29 (02:24:22):
Oh there, blackness.

Speaker 13 (02:24:28):
Much more peaceful.

Speaker 10 (02:24:34):
Up.

Speaker 71 (02:24:40):
When a door closes in a darkened room, can you
be sure, really sure whether it was someone going out
or someone coming in?

Speaker 44 (02:25:01):
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Due to the indisposition of
Miss Laura Chandler at this evening's performance, the part of Melanie.

Speaker 49 (02:25:08):
Will be played by.

Speaker 44 (02:25:13):
Aspat Sir, there'll never be any one else quite like Laura.
You do still love her Blackpool. I should hate to
have done all this for now, Laura.

Speaker 29 (02:25:38):
M hm.

Speaker 49 (02:25:39):
Oh lorda, he's waiting there.

Speaker 10 (02:25:47):
There.

Speaker 13 (02:25:48):
Hold arch your house.

Speaker 50 (02:25:52):
As yours.

Speaker 13 (02:26:00):
Yeah, rest of your justice, h.

Speaker 75 (02:26:30):
Sergeant, Yeah yeah, I thought i'd better give you a
bill and let you know. Miss Chandler turned up. Yeah, yeah,
well about half an hour ago, soon after you left.
Oh well, there's been some sort of misunderstanding. I don't
know exactly what, but she and mister Gillis said I'd
let you know.

Speaker 76 (02:26:48):
Yeah, yeah, well I had over there in the morning.
There were nothing going on in the theater the morning
you'll have a know, squiet day of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and then we're all back again on Monday, flogging ourselves.

Speaker 48 (02:26:59):
To But when Martin and the rest of the staff
arrived on that Monday morning, the stage door was locked
and bolted, and everywhere was as quiet as the grave.
The front of house manager was summoned through the empty theater.
He came, took the keys from the stage doorman's deserted

(02:27:22):
little office and let them in. Then the police were called.
Let's take a look at this chander's room. You say
the keys hadn't been returned to the stage door Saturday.

Speaker 44 (02:27:35):
Night, that's right, But with all the chaos, she probably
went off with them in her pocket. And I've got
Harry's pass keys that were his goodness alone, so it's
not like him.

Speaker 10 (02:27:44):
Listen, someone in there, So there is.

Speaker 54 (02:27:51):
Hello, Hello, held on, there's a key in the lock
on the inside.

Speaker 13 (02:28:05):
Open this door, will you.

Speaker 77 (02:28:09):
Well, oh darling, hold me gently, God, hold me gently.

Speaker 9 (02:28:24):
I love you, I love you.

Speaker 48 (02:28:31):
The poor man was quite mad. The story of Laura
Chandler's numerous relationships and Paul's jealousy came to light following
these events and his having been found alone in a
room locked on the inside with the two bodies in question,
laid him open to a double charge of murder, although

(02:28:54):
it should be noted that the key Martin recovered from
the inside of the dressing room door was found by him,
whilst the sergeant's attention was understandably distracted by what he
had discovered. But in the event, the judge pronounced Paul
unfit to plead, and he was detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.

(02:29:16):
From time to time he still repeats those affectionate phrases
which he seemed to have learnt by rote, but only
when anything to do with the theater is mentioned. Strange
places theaters, nothing within their walls is ever quite.

Speaker 73 (02:29:34):
What it seems, Temples of deceit.

Speaker 48 (02:29:37):
Indeed, the cast was as follows, Harry Travers, Mick Ford, Paul,
Keith Drinkle, Laura Cyril Jenkins, Sergeant Jonathan Adams. Hearing His
Believing was written by Aubrey Woods, directed by Jerry Jones.

(02:30:03):
My name is Edward de Sousa, the man in Black.
In my final story next week, a story that defies logic,
you will find that Hearing is very far from believing.

Speaker 78 (02:30:23):
Another five minute mystery who is that at the electric

(02:30:58):
organ that's Brown, Mike. I find it cheaper to hire
him to play fill of music in the full band.

Speaker 79 (02:31:04):
What do you do for entertainment? When he's off the platform?
There's a affordable record player underneath the punnel. I said,
it's one of those battery jobs. Yeah, we played dance
music on it. When Keen knocks offer and division duriads. Okay,
I'm so this cabaret if you always looks like a
sound proposition, I'll buy it.

Speaker 78 (02:31:20):
Well, Mike, I'll be back in just a few minutes.
The contracts in my office. Okay, Hey, hey, hey, the
lights of going out.

Speaker 10 (02:31:26):
There's an emergency switch in my office.

Speaker 78 (02:31:28):
I'll turn it on back in a second.

Speaker 19 (02:31:38):
I'm Keen Brown.

Speaker 10 (02:31:39):
You wanted to see me.

Speaker 79 (02:31:40):
Yes, mister Brown, my name's Mike Evans. I'm just checking
up on a few facts until the police get here.

Speaker 16 (02:31:45):
Sure, what can I do to help?

Speaker 29 (02:31:47):
Uh?

Speaker 16 (02:31:47):
This was payroll night for the employees here, wasn't then?

Speaker 21 (02:31:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (02:31:51):
I usually paid us off after closing.

Speaker 79 (02:31:53):
Hey, won't get paid to night, mister Brown. Look at
the same I'm not a detective, but it doesn't take
an experienced diet. I spot this whole thing is an
inside job.

Speaker 10 (02:32:01):
How do you figure that out?

Speaker 79 (02:32:02):
Someone working here knew that Al had the weekly payroll
and his office safe tonight, and only someone who was
completely familiar with this cabaret would know the location of
the light box.

Speaker 80 (02:32:12):
And all you have to do, mister Evans, is to
establish the possession of every employee at the.

Speaker 16 (02:32:17):
Time I was shot. That's right. Suppose I start with
you me no objections.

Speaker 79 (02:32:22):
I hope, After all, you've been here long enough to
know how to turn off the electrical system for the
entire building, or to tell someone how.

Speaker 29 (02:32:28):
To do it.

Speaker 19 (02:32:29):
Are you accusing me?

Speaker 16 (02:32:31):
I'm simply asking you where you were at the time
the shot was fired.

Speaker 12 (02:32:34):
You know where I was.

Speaker 80 (02:32:36):
I was on the stand playing my electric organs, so
there wouldn't be any panic.

Speaker 16 (02:32:40):
That's right. I did hear you plan correct the first time.

Speaker 80 (02:32:43):
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I've had enough
of your amateur detective work.

Speaker 16 (02:32:47):
And there's nothing further you can do to help me.

Speaker 80 (02:32:50):
Nothing except to call a policeman and get this murders
of That won't be necessary, mister Brown, I know who
the murderer is really you, mister Brown, you made your
own confession. How does Mike Evans know that Keen Brown
is the murderer? And just the moment we'll know.

Speaker 4 (02:33:08):
But first.

Speaker 16 (02:33:54):
And now back to our story.

Speaker 79 (02:33:56):
Brown, you admitted that the important clue in this case
was the final where every employee of this cabaret was
at the time the shot was fired. You claimed to
have been on the stand playing your electric organ. I
heard the music, But whether I heard you, I don't know.
I believe I heard your music coming from a record,
a record on the player beneath the electric organ.

Speaker 16 (02:34:18):
You couldn't have been playing at the time.

Speaker 79 (02:34:19):
The lights were out because the whole electrical system had
been sabotaged. And to play an electric organ, you need electricity.
Your speaker has to be plugged into an outlet, right
I suppose Brown, Let's take up your suggestion.

Speaker 16 (02:34:35):
I'll call the police. There's been a murder.

Speaker 81 (02:35:33):
The year was eighteen twenty nine. The sleepy town of Newcastle, Massachusetts,
was bearing the grunt of a particularly harsh winter snowstorm.

Speaker 5 (02:35:44):
Mary Brown had.

Speaker 81 (02:35:45):
Just turned sweet sixteen and was sitting down for a
humble supper with her family, thanking the Good Lord for
sparing their house and this harsh weather and providing them
with enough food. All were in a festive food Then
the unexplainable happened. Before Mary even took her first bite,

(02:36:05):
Her entire body went into violent convulsions. She started choking.
Her parents tried to save her, but to no avail.
Mary was dead within minutes. Six weeks to the day
after Mary's mysterious death, the Browns awoke early in the
morning to loud knocks on their door. It was Mary's

(02:36:28):
best friend, Sarah. In a panic, she told the couple
that she had just seen Mary floating down Main Street,
her toes inches from the ground. Mary's ghost was smiling
and laughing, said Sarah, as it aimlessly roamed about town.
In the following days, many similar stories were heard around

(02:36:49):
new Castle. The Browns, who had rapidly aged from their
grief and misery, soon became very ill and both died
just a single day apart. The Brown extended family, twenty
one of them, were a mainstay in Newcastle, simple farmers
who've lived there since the inception of the town. Over

(02:37:13):
the following year, they had all mysteriously started getting very ill. Then,
one after the other, all of them, with the exception
of Peter, a distant cousin had died without exception. All
the bodies had horrible teethmarks on their necks. Though no

(02:37:34):
blood was apparent, the townspeople knew that the spirit of Mary,
still roaming about, was involved. Rumor had it that some
members of the Brown family awoke in the middle of
the night to see Mary standing over their beds, grinning
down at them, before throttling their necks in a death

(02:37:55):
grip and sucking for blood. The people Newcastle were at
a loss. Jeremiah Buckner, the notorious witch hunter and vampire
expert from Salem, the next town over, was summoned in
a last ditch effort to end the horror. After meeting
with the town elders, he set up a rendezvous for

(02:38:17):
the following week, on the very day Mary had died
one year earlier. The day had arrived the clock struck midnight. Jeremiah,
the elders, and Peter, now harmly ill, all gathered at
the town's cemetery gate. Peter could barely hold up his

(02:38:40):
frail body. Everyone was expecting him to die within days,
as the violent and horrifying pattern of the Browns indicated
the ritual they were about to perform That night, was
not for the faint of heart. As they arrived at
Mary's grave, they started slowly digging until the coffin was unraveled.

(02:39:06):
The elders were not prepared for what they would see next.
Opening the coffin, they found Mary looking much like before
she died. Her flesh was pink and full of life,
her hair and finger nails grown, and her lips were
full and red. Jeremiah then poked her chest with.

Speaker 73 (02:39:27):
His pocket knife.

Speaker 50 (02:39:29):
Marry bled.

Speaker 81 (02:39:31):
This was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an
ordinary dead body. Jeremiah then proceeded to cut open her skin,
reached in and pulled out her bloody heart. Just at
that moment, Peter gasped in relief. His body felt rejuvenated.

(02:39:52):
It seemed his mysterious illness had all but disappeared. In
a matter of seconds. From that moment, on the sightings
of Mary completely vanished. Peter, his health regained, would soon
marry and have three children. The Brown family bloodline was

(02:40:14):
once again revived. Though the town of Newcastle was now
back to normal. To this day, its residence plain to
see the ghosts of the dead Browns floating about with
blank stairs in their eyes.

Speaker 36 (02:40:37):
Stay tuned now for adventure and excitement in the world
of the future, Entertainment for the entire family, produced right
here in Kalamazoo.

Speaker 56 (02:40:55):
Join for a voyage into another to.

Speaker 58 (02:41:02):
Our journey into our realm is infinite and Limper says
I in itself.

Speaker 10 (02:41:11):
Our destination.

Speaker 58 (02:41:14):
The farthest reaches of the imagination. W m UK Special
Projects presents Future Takes.

Speaker 20 (02:41:40):
Protection by Robert Scheckred.

Speaker 82 (02:41:54):
There will be an airplane crash in Burman next week,
but it shouldn't affect me here in Kalamazoo. Peeks certainly
can't harm me, not with all my closet doors closed. No,
the big problem is lessrizing. I must not lesnarize, absolutely not,
as you can imagine. That hampers me. And to top

(02:42:16):
it all, I think I'm catching a very nasty cold.
The whole thing, including the cold, started on the evening
of November seventh. I was walking down West Michigan on
my way to get a sub when I met Charlie Lester.
He's in one of my physics classes. We were both
feeling pretty lightheaded.

Speaker 20 (02:42:37):
Well, it had some tough exebs by day, but it
was you got a cold.

Speaker 35 (02:42:44):
Oh though I haven't got a cold. My eyes just
water by those rods and ice.

Speaker 1 (02:42:49):
Because I'm essentially a bad gist, actually psychosabatic.

Speaker 35 (02:42:53):
I hate my mother and my father. Of course, I've
got a cold, sick.

Speaker 20 (02:43:00):
Look, don't give it to me. Okay, I've got a
chance at a Nazareth Junior this weekend.

Speaker 35 (02:43:04):
Bye boy, there's no such stake as a Jazz of
the Daza junior.

Speaker 20 (02:43:08):
Yeah, never mind, just don't blow any germs my way.
Oh well, as a matter of fact, I'll leave you completely.
I have to go back to Walda to.

Speaker 35 (02:43:16):
Pick up some books.

Speaker 82 (02:43:17):
So at the moment Charlie left me, I had in
my pocket five coins, three keys, and a book of matches. Now,
just to complete the picture, brought me add that the
wind was coming from the northwest at five miles per hour,

(02:43:39):
Venus was in the ascendency, and the moon was decidedly gibbus.
You can draw your own conclusions and wolves. I reached
the corner of Steers.

Speaker 20 (02:43:47):
Avenue and I began to cross the truck watch for
the truck. Walch o, huh what what truck?

Speaker 17 (02:43:55):
Boo what?

Speaker 20 (02:43:56):
And there's no truck on the street.

Speaker 41 (02:43:58):
What are you.

Speaker 43 (02:44:01):
Who?

Speaker 10 (02:44:02):
Oh?

Speaker 20 (02:44:04):
Well, thanks friend. If you hadn't warned me, Hey, hey,
what are you? Who said that? Where are you?

Speaker 6 (02:44:11):
Can you steal?

Speaker 60 (02:44:11):
Hear?

Speaker 19 (02:44:11):
I mean sure I can?

Speaker 20 (02:44:13):
Where are you than anybody here? Where are you? Crawl ish?
Is that the reference?

Speaker 82 (02:44:19):
Creature of insubstantiality? The shadow nose? Fantastic flour?

Speaker 20 (02:44:24):
Did I pick the right one? You're invisible?

Speaker 19 (02:44:27):
That's it.

Speaker 82 (02:44:28):
I knew the concept was somewhere in you. Well, what
are you a Valedusian der.

Speaker 33 (02:44:36):
A?

Speaker 20 (02:44:36):
What would you mind opening your larrence a little wider? Please?
You see I'm using yourself vocalizations to communicate. Now, breathe deeply.
That's it. Yeah, that's it. That's better. Well let's see.

Speaker 82 (02:44:57):
Now I'm the spirit of Christmas Past, the creature from
the Black Lagoon, the bright Franklinstone, the silver Shirt.

Speaker 20 (02:45:04):
Now now wait a minute, hold on, what are you
trying to tell me that your a goat, a superhero
or a creature from another planet? Same thing? Obviously?

Speaker 82 (02:45:12):
Oh well, that makes it all perfectly clear. Any pool
can see that it disembodied.

Speaker 20 (02:45:17):
Voice must belong to someone from another planet.

Speaker 82 (02:45:20):
Exactly, I'm invisible on Earth, but my superior sensus spotted approaching.

Speaker 20 (02:45:25):
Danger and warned you of it.

Speaker 82 (02:45:27):
Well thanks, well what are you one of those strange
voices that warned Aunt Matilda to stay out of the elevator,
which then crashes into the basement something like that.

Speaker 20 (02:45:37):
Yeah, well, goodbye. What's the matter?

Speaker 82 (02:45:40):
Well, not a thing, except that I seem to be
standing in the middle of Steers Avenue talking to an
invisible from the farthest reaches about her space. I suppose
only I can hear you. Well that sure, no, great, Well,
you know where that sort of thing will land me.

Speaker 20 (02:45:55):
The concept you are so vocalizing is not entirely now. Look,
please go back to one of my childhood.

Speaker 82 (02:46:03):
Nightmares where you came from and let me alone. Huh
oh yeah, thanks for the warning about the truck.

Speaker 20 (02:46:08):
Good night.

Speaker 82 (02:46:08):
Where are you going? I'm going to that tavern back there,
enjoying some of my fellow students and.

Speaker 20 (02:46:13):
Something wet and effective. Won't you talk with me?

Speaker 9 (02:46:16):
Look?

Speaker 20 (02:46:16):
Look, please, plea, you cut out. There are two girls
watching me, but you must talk with me.

Speaker 82 (02:46:21):
The real sub vocal contact is very rare and astonishingly difficult.
Sometimes I can get across the warning just before a
dangerous moment, but then the connection phase.

Speaker 20 (02:46:31):
You mean, that's the explanation of premonitions of danger. That's right.
Conditions might not be right for this kind of contact
for another one hundred years.

Speaker 47 (02:46:39):
Now.

Speaker 82 (02:46:40):
This is very interesting stuff for Professor Ryan at Duke,
not for the physics department at Western. I've looked firsthand
at the overtrouting and our plenty farm on the hill,
and I'm not interested in contributing to that condition besides
of a cop looking at me. I appreciate your social situation,
but this contact with me is in your own vestin.

(02:47:00):
I want to protect you from the myriad dangers of
human existence.

Speaker 20 (02:47:04):
Get lost.

Speaker 83 (02:47:06):
Well, I can't force you. I'll just have to offer
my services elsewhere. Goodbye, friend, goodbye, Oh just my last face.
Stay off buses tomorrow between you and and one fifteen pm.

Speaker 20 (02:47:19):
Eh, why someone will be.

Speaker 82 (02:47:21):
Killed at Mabel will now pushed in front of the
bus by shopping crowds. You if you're there, bye, hey, hey, hey,
now wait a minute, someone will be killed there tomorrow.

Speaker 20 (02:47:32):
Are you sure?

Speaker 19 (02:47:33):
Of course?

Speaker 20 (02:47:33):
It'll be in the herald, I.

Speaker 82 (02:47:35):
Should imagine, so wait, not the Herald, the gazette, and
you know, all sorts of stuff like that. I can
perceive all the dangers that radiate toward you and extend
into time.

Speaker 20 (02:47:47):
My one desire was to protect you from them. Yeah, well,
well look, will you wait till tomorrow evening? Those two
girls are giggling. Now you will let me be your protector.
I'll tell you tomorrow. I read the gazette. The story

(02:48:09):
was there, all right. I read it in my room.

Speaker 82 (02:48:12):
A man pushed by the crowd, lost his balance, fell
in front of an oncoming bus.

Speaker 20 (02:48:18):
Well, this gave me a lot to think.

Speaker 82 (02:48:20):
About while I waited for my invisible protector to show up.
By the time he contacted me, I wasn't sure that
I liked the whole idea.

Speaker 20 (02:48:28):
Don't you trust me? I just want to lead a
normal light, if you.

Speaker 82 (02:48:32):
Lead any light A tall that truck last night when
I was a freak, a once in a lifetime accident.
It only takes once in a lifetime to die. There
was the bus too, Well, that doesn't count. I hadn't
planned on taking one today, But you had no reason
not to take one. That's the important thing. Just as
you have no reason not to take a shower in

(02:48:52):
the next hour, Why shouldn't I. A Brad Flynn, who
lives down the hall is now taking his shower, and
to leave a melting bar of soap on the tile
of the bathroom floor, you'd have slipped on it and
suffered a sprained drift. H not fatal, huh No, hardly
in the same class with a let's say, a heavy
flower pot pushed from a roof by a certain unstable

(02:49:15):
professor of English.

Speaker 20 (02:49:16):
Well, well, when is that going to happen? I thought
you weren't interested. I'm very interested. When where will you
let me continue to protect you? Well, now, just tell
me one thing. What's in this for you? Satisfaction from
Valdusian Dirk.

Speaker 82 (02:49:31):
The greatest thrill possible is to help another creature evade dangers. Yeah,
but even there's something else you want out of this,
some trifle like my soul or rulership of the earth.
Nothing to accept payment for protection would ruin the emotional experience.
All I want out of life, all any Dirk wants
is to protect someone from the dangers you cannot see,

(02:49:53):
but which we could see all too well. We don't
even expect gratitude. Yeah, what about that flower pot? It
will be dropped at the corner of Hyde Park and
fifty third at ten thirty tomorrow mornings.

Speaker 20 (02:50:07):
Hyde Park in fifty third. Where's that in Chicago? Well,
I've never been to Chicago in my life. Why warn
me about that.

Speaker 82 (02:50:14):
I don't know where you will or won't go. I
really perceived dangers to you wherever they may occur. Well,
what should I do now? Anything you wish? Just lead
your normal life. It started out well enough. I attended classes,

(02:50:37):
did some assignments, saw the free Wednesday movies, went out,
played ping pong, and got off just like before.

Speaker 20 (02:50:45):
Yet no time did I let on that I was
under the protection of a Valadusian dird. Even Charlie didn't
notice it, though he had a pretty good excuse. Oh yeah,
you lucky.

Speaker 35 (02:50:56):
I got stuck in that elevator for four hours.

Speaker 20 (02:51:00):
How come you walk? And then we saw you volunteer
to work four flights before. Well, a little bird told me, Well, Lusha, Lush,
I had a little bird like that. Why don't you
do something for that cold? Why should I?

Speaker 8 (02:51:15):
What did ever?

Speaker 20 (02:51:15):
Dode Fubini?

Speaker 82 (02:51:23):
Not even the dirt had warned me about Charlie's bad
jokes in time, But he did his best, and once
or twice a day he'd come around and report loose
port on the ramp up Toualdo, don't walk on it.
Once I got used to it, it gave me quite
a feeling of security.

Speaker 20 (02:51:40):
But the DIRG soon became over zealous on my behalf,
began finding more and more dangers.

Speaker 82 (02:51:51):
Look out for an overhanging sign on the hotel where
Mexico City.

Speaker 20 (02:51:57):
Don't go to the basketball game tonight? Where in Toronto?

Speaker 82 (02:52:03):
Look out for the Elm Street. Bob, It's right, Omaha,
don't go surfing today? Surfing where Tahiti. Now, wait a minute,
you plan on reporting every potential danger on earth?

Speaker 20 (02:52:16):
Oh, these are only a.

Speaker 82 (02:52:17):
Few, only a very few, that you may be affected
by Mexico City in Tahiti.

Speaker 20 (02:52:23):
And why not confine yourself to the local picture.

Speaker 31 (02:52:25):
Huh?

Speaker 82 (02:52:26):
Southwest Michigan. Let's say local means nothing to me. I
must protect you from everything. Well, it was rather touching
in a way. There was nothing I could do about it.
Simply had to discard from his reports the various dangers

(02:52:47):
in places like Saginaw, Thailand, Kansas City, Angriva, Sarasota, and Paris.
I concentrated pretty much on Kalamazoo. He did save me
from a pretty nasty hold up in Bronson's hard and
a whol arm fire, but he kept stepping up the pace.
Tainted food at the union. Don't eat there tonight. Tampus

(02:53:08):
plus three to twelve has bad breaks. Don't ride in
it canoff Hall has a folly heating system. Explugged him
to skip the free Wednesday night movie this week Rabbit
Mongrel on the prowl in the valley, Forget the Girl
for tonight soon. I was spending most of my time
not doing things and avoiding places. Dangers seemed to be
lurking behind every lamp post waiting for me. I rather

(02:53:31):
suspected the dirt of patting his reports.

Speaker 20 (02:53:35):
All my reports are perfectly genuine.

Speaker 82 (02:53:38):
If you don't believe me, try turning on your lights
in your sight quass tomorrow why effective wiring. Look, I
don't doubt your warnings. I just don't think life was
as dangerous before you came along. Well, of course it wasn't.
Surely you know that if you accept protection, you must
accept the drawbacks of protection as well. Drawback like what

(02:54:01):
protection begets the need of further protection, That is a
universal constant. Before you met me, you were like everyone else,
and you ran into such risks as the situation offered.
But with my coming, your immediate environment has changed, and
your position in it has changed too.

Speaker 20 (02:54:18):
Why because it has me in it?

Speaker 82 (02:54:21):
It's well known that the avoidance of one danger opens
the path to others.

Speaker 20 (02:54:24):
Are you trying to tell me that my risks have
increased because of your health? It was unavoidable?

Speaker 82 (02:54:29):
Why you miserable extraterrestrial con Now? Look all right, all right,
thanks for everything. I'll see you on Mars or wherever
you hang out.

Speaker 20 (02:54:38):
You don't want any further protection? You guessed it. Don't
plan the door on your way out? What's wrong?

Speaker 82 (02:54:45):
Your risks have increased, but my capacity for detection is
more than ample to cope with it. I'm happy to
cope with it, so it still represents a net gaining
protection for you.

Speaker 20 (02:54:55):
Yeah, I know what happens next. My risk just keep
on increasing. Not at all, as far as the accidents
are concerned. You've reached the quantitative limit.

Speaker 10 (02:55:06):
What does that mean?

Speaker 82 (02:55:07):
It means that there will be no further increase in
the number of accidents you must avoid.

Speaker 20 (02:55:13):
Look, if you leave me alone, my original environment will return,
won't it, and with it my original risk? Eventually? If
you survive, fine, I'll take that chance. You can't afford
to send me away tomorrow. No, no, no, no, don't
tell me. I'll avoid the accidents on my own. I
wasn't thinking of accident. What then? I hardly know how

(02:55:33):
to tell you. A gamber is after you am?

Speaker 10 (02:55:37):
What?

Speaker 20 (02:55:37):
A gamber is a creature from my environment?

Speaker 82 (02:55:40):
I suppose he was attracted by increased potentiality for avoiding
risks due to my protection.

Speaker 20 (02:55:44):
Now, look, you can take your gamber.

Speaker 82 (02:55:46):
If he comes, try driving him off with missiletoe irons
off and effective if combined with copper.

Speaker 20 (02:55:52):
Don't get out of here?

Speaker 19 (02:55:53):
Are you sure?

Speaker 61 (02:55:54):
Eat it?

Speaker 20 (02:55:55):
Leave? Move, get out?

Speaker 10 (02:55:56):
Go on?

Speaker 20 (02:55:57):
All right, all right, goodbye, goodbye? Are you gone? Are
you really gone? Good riddance? Wait? Hey, what's that?

Speaker 9 (02:56:17):
Duke? Is that you?

Speaker 19 (02:56:19):
Hey?

Speaker 20 (02:56:19):
Your motor is running?

Speaker 4 (02:56:22):
What is that?

Speaker 19 (02:56:23):
What is that?

Speaker 20 (02:56:24):
The camper?

Speaker 9 (02:56:25):
Good?

Speaker 20 (02:56:26):
Get me out, dud, come back? Did you call all
the camper? Mistletoe? Mistletoe waving at the camper?

Speaker 4 (02:56:33):
The hell?

Speaker 20 (02:56:33):
Am I going to get michel to iron?

Speaker 84 (02:56:35):
Copper?

Speaker 20 (02:56:35):
Then copper cock on a belt buckle with my drawl.

Speaker 31 (02:56:37):
What's helling?

Speaker 20 (02:56:38):
Is iron? Touch it with the copper quick? You see
you needed my protection. The gamper almost got you. Yeah,
it sure did.

Speaker 82 (02:56:51):
You'll need something wof thing amaranth, garlic, graveyard mold.

Speaker 20 (02:56:58):
Yeah, but but the gamper is gone, but the grailers remain,
and you'll.

Speaker 82 (02:57:02):
Need safeguards against the leaps, the figs and the melgarizer.

Speaker 20 (02:57:07):
I'll give you a list. He gave me a list,
and I went shopping. I ran into Charlie the campus margins. Hey, Bob,
were you Bishkarly? He must have garnic. It's sure they
got done over over here. Well, I guess you know what.

(02:57:31):
I gave any more tissues?

Speaker 19 (02:57:33):
What else?

Speaker 13 (02:57:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 20 (02:57:34):
Well, we'll not let me see a graveyard? Mold, green
yard mold? Do you think they'd have it here.

Speaker 19 (02:57:41):
With you?

Speaker 35 (02:57:42):
You'll look this?

Speaker 20 (02:57:43):
Why is it gone? Why does a gambler or a
grailer or a leap or a peak like that?

Speaker 9 (02:57:48):
Now?

Speaker 20 (02:57:48):
Please, please, Charlie, don't bother me. I'm busy.

Speaker 6 (02:57:52):
Uh huh.

Speaker 82 (02:57:57):
Who has the nearest graveyard that would moldy his timing year?
It was a game between these extraterrestrials, and I was
in it. Some of them wanted to kill me, some
to protect me. None of them cared for me, And
not even the dirds, and it was all my fault.

(02:58:18):
At the beginning, I had had the accumulated wisdom of
the human race at my disposal, that tremendous instinctive hatred
of witches and ghosts, the irrational fear of alien life.
From my adventure has been played out a thousand times,
and the story is told again and again how a
man dabbles in strange arts and summons up a spirit.

(02:58:40):
By doing so, he attracts attention to himself, the worst
thing of all. So I was welded inseparably to the
dird and the derd to me until yesterday, that is,
Charlie came to my room to visit.

Speaker 20 (02:58:54):
Hey boy, how it is? I had a femial class.

Speaker 85 (02:58:57):
Fum, Why if I hang up like no, no, no,
don't don't open the closet door, nothing nothing, that can
only way to hold off the feet by eating closet doors.

Speaker 82 (02:59:10):
Closed leaps are more menacing. The eye of a toad
seems to stop them, And the mulgarizer is dangerous.

Speaker 20 (02:59:18):
Only in the full of the moon.

Speaker 9 (02:59:20):
The full.

Speaker 35 (02:59:21):
That's it, Well, Bob, it hits big grad Bye, You're
in danger?

Speaker 20 (02:59:39):
What again? What is it this time?

Speaker 19 (02:59:42):
Trang?

Speaker 20 (02:59:42):
Who pursue, says us.

Speaker 82 (02:59:44):
Yes, yes, myself as well as you, For even the
dirt must run from risk and danger.

Speaker 20 (02:59:49):
Well is this thrang particularly dangerous?

Speaker 29 (02:59:52):
Oh?

Speaker 20 (02:59:52):
Very well?

Speaker 10 (02:59:53):
What do I do?

Speaker 20 (02:59:54):
Snake ging over the door of pentagon? Burn in fineosees?
The thrang must be dealt with by the avoidance of
certain actions? All right, all right? What shouldn't I do?
You must not lesnarize lesnarize?

Speaker 64 (03:00:10):
What's that?

Speaker 20 (03:00:11):
Surely you know it's a simple, everyday human action. Well,
I probably know it under a different name. Explain it
to lessarizees, to it is? To what it's tears?

Speaker 12 (03:00:21):
The thrang?

Speaker 84 (03:00:22):
The thrang is here?

Speaker 20 (03:00:23):
Don't why what should I do?

Speaker 21 (03:00:25):
It?

Speaker 31 (03:00:26):
Has?

Speaker 71 (03:00:27):
It has me?

Speaker 5 (03:00:28):
I'm going don't.

Speaker 20 (03:00:30):
Lessonize, don't lessonize. Know so I'm sitting tight now.

Speaker 82 (03:00:43):
There'll be an airplane crash in Burma next week, but
it should affect me here in Kalamazoo, and the feed
certainly can't harm me. No, not with all my closet
doors closed. Now the problem is lessarizing. I must not lessnarize,
Absolutely not. If I can keep from lessonarizing, everything.

Speaker 20 (03:01:04):
Will pass and the chase will move elsewhere. It must.
All I have to do is wait them out.

Speaker 82 (03:01:12):
Trouble is, I don't have any idea what lessonerizing might
be a common human action. The derg said, Well, at
the moment, I'm avoiding as many actions as possible. I've
caught up on some back sleep and nothing happened, So
that's not lessonarizing. I went out and bought food, cooked

(03:01:34):
it and ate it. Well, that wasn't lessonarizing. I'm telling
you the story, and that isn't lessonarizing.

Speaker 20 (03:01:41):
I'll get out of this yet, I will get out
of it. I think I'll catch a nap now. I
think I've caught Charlie's cold. I think I'm gonna have to.

Speaker 36 (03:01:59):
WUK. Special Projects has presented Protection by Robert Sheckley, adapted
for radio by Ernest Kennoy, additional material by Bill Rout.
Our cast included Greg Boody as Bob of the final
and fatal Sneeze, Bill Rout at his breezy pal Charlie,

(03:02:19):
and John Stoff as the foreseeing dr. Future Tests is
produced and directed by Ellie Siegel and next on Future Tents.

Speaker 86 (03:02:39):
Even if the Earth was not attacked, Just think what
an advantage you would give this country over its enemies.

Speaker 20 (03:02:45):
Young woman, I.

Speaker 86 (03:02:47):
Ask you, what did that buying saucer say to you?
You know that what you're doing is tantamount to working
for the enemies of your country. I will give you
one more chance.

Speaker 35 (03:03:05):
What was the message?

Speaker 20 (03:03:08):
It was personal?

Speaker 86 (03:03:12):
Gentlemen, I know that miscant voice be cited for contempt.

Speaker 36 (03:03:21):
If you are enjoying these future tense programs and would
like to hear more drama on WMUK, please let us
know address your comments as well as suggestions for future
programs to future tents WMUK, Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The ZIP code is four nine one. This is Gerard

(03:03:41):
MacLeod inviting you and your entire family to join us
every Monday through Thursday at this same time or future tents,
be sure to listen.

Speaker 7 (03:03:51):
Weird Darkness is celebrating our birthday this month. We use
this annual celebration to help those who struggle with depression.
Every October, we raise money for organizations that help people
overcome depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide and self harm.
It's called Overcoming the Darkness, and you can make a
donation right now at Weirddarkness dot com. Slash hope. That's

(03:04:12):
weird Darkness dot com slash hope. A gift of any
amount helps, with every dollar bringing hope to someone affected
my depression. To donate, to get more information about overcoming
the darkness, or to find hope to battle back the
darkness of depression in yourself or someone you love, visit
weird Darkness dot com slash hope. The fundraiser ends on
Halloween Night at midnight, so please give right now while

(03:04:35):
you're thinking about it. That's weird Darkness dot com slash hope.

Speaker 87 (03:04:39):
Ladies and gentlemen. The Grantite Furniture Company with the stores
in Sugar House, Murray and Provo present.

Speaker 19 (03:04:47):
All of Metasy. Welcome to the heart of Patasy.

Speaker 88 (03:04:53):
Welcome to the series of radio dramas dedicated to the supernatural,
the unusual, and the unknown.

Speaker 10 (03:04:59):
Come with me, friends, we.

Speaker 88 (03:05:01):
Will have sended the world of the unknown and forbidden
down to the test with a bed of time. Is
that in the supernatural range as king. Come with me
and listen to the Tale of the Judge's House.

Speaker 87 (03:05:15):
The Granite Furniture Company brings you the Hall of Fantasy.
Listen now to original tales of the imagination and some
of the classics of the supernatural, as we take you
down the corridors of the Hall of Fantasy to the
mysterious realms of the unknown. These are stories of eerie
and fantastic thrills, brought to you by your friends at
the Granite Furniture Store. And now for tonight's story, a

(03:05:41):
radio adaptation by Bob Olsen, a bram Stoker's story entitled The.

Speaker 10 (03:05:46):
Judge's House Justice, Peace? How can we be certain of either?
When hatred burns unchecked even beyond the grave. Hi, am
Malcolm Lane, this.

Speaker 9 (03:06:03):
Is my story.

Speaker 87 (03:06:04):
I want to tell it to you, fa there is
still time. I watched them carry the parcels into the
Judge's house. Missus Widham, whom I had engaged as my
housekeeper the next three months, was directing the activity.

Speaker 10 (03:06:17):
She was an amusing little character. I had to promise
that she wouldn't have to stay in the house.

Speaker 87 (03:06:21):
After it began to get dark, the upholsterer's man was
coming up the pathway with a cart in a new bed.
Missus Whidham had insisted on this one new piece of
furniture because, as she put it, a.

Speaker 68 (03:06:31):
Bed that just hasn't been aired for fifty years is
not fit for young bodies.

Speaker 87 (03:06:35):
To lie on there, And she was right, of course,
But my head was too full of plans for study
to worry about such details as my living quarters. As
for the tales about the harsh old judge whose houses
had once been I had only a mild enthusiasm.

Speaker 10 (03:06:50):
He must have been quite a character, though to make
an entire that in fear him and his house, even
fifty years after his death, Missus Whitiam was positive there
was something about the old place, though she or anyone
else quite knew what it was. The consensus of opinion, however,
was that they would not take all the money in
Brinwater's bank to spend an hour here alone. But Missus

(03:07:15):
Whitdham startled me with a very rational statement.

Speaker 68 (03:07:17):
The place is full of rats, and rats is bogies,
just the same as bogies is rats.

Speaker 87 (03:07:24):
That explanation suited me very well, for, as I said
once before, my head was full of plans to study.
Examinations were coming up soon, and I had paid three
months rent on this old house so that I would
be as short of peace and quiet while I have
prepared for them. The only mysteries I'm interested in Missus Widham,
are those of harmonical progression and elliptical you have functions.

Speaker 10 (03:07:43):
They're mystery enough for me.

Speaker 68 (03:07:45):
Not that you won't find company here, Miss Delane, I've
already cleaned all of fifty years of dust from everything.
Oh but that waistcut in this room must be hundreds
of years old. And you'll find creaky doors of plenty
and loose flat. It's all over, ready to flap in
the wind, and bureau draws that stick and then fall
down in the middle.

Speaker 18 (03:08:05):
Of the night.

Speaker 10 (03:08:06):
And don't forget the rats.

Speaker 89 (03:08:08):
No, mister Lane, don't forget the rat.

Speaker 87 (03:08:12):
The workmen were all gone, and but for the busy
little figure the housekeeper, I was alone. It was for
this that I'd taken the tiresome ride adventures a remote
little town that had all the attractions of her desert.
It was drawing close to evening as Missus Whittam was
unpacking the last hamper, and I could see that she
was beginning to cast worried glances about as the shadows
began to creep into the corners of this huge dining

(03:08:34):
room I'd chosen for.

Speaker 9 (03:08:35):
My living quarters.

Speaker 87 (03:08:36):
Oh you may go now, Missus Whiham it's getting dark
in here, and I'm sure you're anxious to get home.

Speaker 10 (03:08:41):
You've done well with this soul room.

Speaker 87 (03:08:43):
I shall reward you with complete possession of this house
for the last two months.

Speaker 10 (03:08:46):
Of my tendancy. Three or four weeks will be all
I'll need, and i'd hate to see that rent money
got awayte.

Speaker 89 (03:08:52):
Thank you kindly, sir. But I wouldn't stay for all.

Speaker 10 (03:08:56):
The money in drink Water's bank. I'm really grateful for.
I do want to be alone, and if you were
not so opposed to it, I might be tempted to
accept your company.

Speaker 68 (03:09:06):
Are you young gentlemen? You fear nothing, and I'm certain
you'll get all the solitude you need here.

Speaker 21 (03:09:13):
Good Night.

Speaker 89 (03:09:14):
There you'll find your supper beneath the clock.

Speaker 10 (03:09:16):
Good night, missus Widham. Oh, yes, this was comfort.

Speaker 87 (03:09:23):
After I'd finished my supper, I cleared the great oak
table and got my books out. Then, when i'd put
fresh wood in the fire and frim the lamp, I
sat down to a spell of hard work. I hardly
looked up from my books until nearly eleven o'clock, at
which time I threw some more wood in the fire
and indulged in one of my most deeply ingrained habits,
that of tea drinking.

Speaker 10 (03:09:42):
I thoroughly enjoyed tea and drank it this night with
a sense of real enjoyment. Soon the new wood I
had thrown on the fire began to crackle, and a
new flame through quaint shadows about the great old room.
As I sat there sipping my tea, I reveled in
the complete sense of isolation. Then, for the first time

(03:10:03):
I noticed the noise of the rats.

Speaker 87 (03:10:06):
Strange. I hadn't heard them before. Hum, maybe they're just
getting used to me. But they're bold enough now. How
busy they were, What strange noises they made? Up and
down the old wainsticker, went and over the ceiling and
o the floor, racing and gnawing and scratching. There so
many of them that that have sworn it.

Speaker 10 (03:10:26):
If they set their strength to it, they could have
carried the house away. I had a smile when I
recalled the words of missus Whittam. Rats is bogies, and
bogies as rats. The stimulation of the tea gave me
a sense of security, and I grabbed the lamp to
take a good look around the wound. Strange. Why such
a beautiful old place should have been so neglected for
all this time. The carving and the oak planels of

(03:10:48):
the wainscot was fine. Indeed, the latter on the doors
and windows was a rare minute. I saw some old
pictures in the wall next to the fireplace, but they
were coated so thick with dust that I couldn't just
distinguished any of their details, even though I did hold
the lamp high above my head. Now and then I
would get a quick start as the light fell upon
the old walls and disclosed the glittering eyes of a

(03:11:11):
rat as he would stick his face out of a
hole or a crack. In an instant, it would disappear
with a squeak in the scamper. Another object that struck
me as d was the rope of a great alarm
bell that hung in the corner of the room, on
the right hind side of the fireplace. After my inspection tour,
I sat in a high backed chair that was near

(03:11:31):
the fireplace and sept from another cup of tea. For
a while, I thought the noise of the rats would
dlim me a distraction, but that eased off, and I
became accustomed to it the same as a person gets
used to the roar of water when he cant us
out of stream.

Speaker 9 (03:11:45):
Soon.

Speaker 10 (03:11:46):
I was so engross in.

Speaker 87 (03:11:47):
A mathematical problem that I have forgotten everything else in
the world. But since the solution to the problem came stubbornly,
I looked up and was surprised to see that the
fire had fallen to a dull, red glow. There was
a sudden, quiet, strange hush that comes.

Speaker 10 (03:12:01):
In the hour before dawn. I became aware for the
first time the noise of the rats had ceased. Whenever
it happened, I couldn't remember. Something instinctive told me that
it had been in the last few moments, and that
it had been sudden. I looked up and what I saw.

(03:12:22):
What I saw was a most amazing thing.

Speaker 87 (03:12:25):
For there on the high backed chair sat an enormous
rat staring at me through deadly, madlignant eyes.

Speaker 10 (03:12:32):
I tried to frighten it away, but it didn't stir them.

Speaker 87 (03:12:34):
It emotion as if to throw something at it, It
only bared its teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes shone
all the more bright. HAD grabbed the poker from the
heart and was going to kill the creature. But before
I could reach it.

Speaker 10 (03:12:46):
That enormous rat jumped to the floor with a streak
that sounded like a consummate hit of the whole world,
scampered up the rope of the alarm bell disappeared in
the darkness. Then, as if by a signal, the noise
of the other rats started all over it again. By
this time I gave up whipping my part and bartered
it for some much needed sleep. It was missus Whittam

(03:13:12):
who woke me as she came in to make up
the room.

Speaker 89 (03:13:14):
You're much paler this morning, mister Dane.

Speaker 44 (03:13:17):
I am.

Speaker 89 (03:13:17):
You shouldn't stay upso late with your work.

Speaker 68 (03:13:20):
It isn't good for you. But tell me how did
you spend the night. I was certainly glad to see
you alive.

Speaker 87 (03:13:27):
Oh, yes, that was quite all right, Missus Whiham. The
something didn't worry me too much. But the rats certainly
held themselves a cat meeting. There was one that sat
up on that chair with a fireplace and wouldn't go
away until I chased him with a poker. What's the
biggest old devil I've ever seen?

Speaker 21 (03:13:42):
Old devil?

Speaker 68 (03:13:43):
Maybe it was the old devil. Never you mind, sir,
many A true word is spoken in jest.

Speaker 87 (03:13:50):
Well, pardon me, this is good, and I eye didn't
mean to be rude. But the thought of the old
devil himselves sitting in that chair last night struck me
as being rather funny.

Speaker 89 (03:13:57):
And it's a good thing you can laugh.

Speaker 21 (03:14:00):
It's all the same.

Speaker 68 (03:14:00):
If I were to spend the night here tonight, oh
heaven forbid, I'd make sure I was ready for him.

Speaker 87 (03:14:11):
That night, the rats put on an earlier shore where
their scamperings began. Almost as soon as I'd finished with
my supper.

Speaker 10 (03:14:18):
The cursed creatures seemed to get on my nerves, and
I sat there and popped my pipe while they stealed
and scratched and gnawed.

Speaker 87 (03:14:29):
They seemed to grow bold about the minute. But now
they were coming to the chinks and cracks in the wall,
and so their eyes shone like miniature lamps.

Speaker 10 (03:14:36):
When the firelight struck them. They'd even make bold salies
under the floor, and I'd have to fight them away
by pawning on the table with my fist. That was
how I passed the early part of that night. Despite it,
I became more and more enclose to my studies, and
then the strange sensation coursed through me. For there it

(03:14:58):
was again.

Speaker 87 (03:14:59):
Instinctively, I grabbed the handiest object I could find, a book,
and flung it at the baleful little beast.

Speaker 10 (03:15:04):
But the book was too hastily.

Speaker 87 (03:15:05):
Aimed, and a huge rated and stir So once again
I went into the poker routine, and once again it
put up the rope of the alarm bell. I tried
to follow its flight more closely this time, but before
I could see where it went, it had been swallowed
up from the shadows, and just as it had happened
last night, as soon as the big rut had gone,
the others resumed their activity.

Speaker 10 (03:15:27):
I looked at my watch and found that it was
very close to midnight. I built up the fire and
ruled myself a part of tea. I tried to get
back to my work when I suddenly became curious to
know whether it had disappeared to for I was certain
that tomorrow I would.

Speaker 87 (03:15:42):
Most likely get myself a rat trap. I gathered all
my books about me and put them in a handy
position for throwing. Then I took the rope of the
alarm bell and placed the end of it upon the
table underneath the lamp, where there would be plenty of
light on it.

Speaker 10 (03:15:58):
As I picked up the rope, I was amazed how
pliable and strong it was. Ideal, I thought for hanging
a man soon. My preparations were complete by this time,
my friend, I intend to learn more about you.

Speaker 29 (03:16:13):
Ah.

Speaker 10 (03:16:15):
Once again, I was hard at my work, and the
noise of the rats was forgotten. But just as suddenly
as before, I was aroused by that same sense of
startling silence. I was conscious of a slight movement in
the rope. At my elbow. Without stirring, I checked to
see if my part of books was an easy reach.

Speaker 29 (03:16:31):
It was.

Speaker 10 (03:16:32):
I cast my glance at the rope just in time
to see the huge rat drop from it to the
back of the high old chair. I grabbed a book and.

Speaker 87 (03:16:39):
Hurled it with amazing agility. The rats sprang aside and
dodged it. I threw a second and a third, but
each time it managed to dodge my battery. It was
almost funny.

Speaker 10 (03:16:48):
Almost Finally, when I was down with the last book,
I took careful aim, and as I did this, the
rat squeaked and seemed afraid.

Speaker 29 (03:16:57):
Ah.

Speaker 9 (03:17:00):
I let the book fly.

Speaker 87 (03:17:01):
It struck the rat with a resounding Suddenly it gave
out a shrill, terrified shriek, and running up the back
of a chair in a desperate leap, and with the
speed of a bolt of lightning, run up the bell rope.

Speaker 10 (03:17:12):
The lamp rocked with a strain, but it didn't topple.
Then I saw the rat leap to a molding and
disappear through the hole, and one of the big pictures
that hung on the wall. I made a mental note
of the exact spot. Third picture from the fireplace, eh,
I remember that, and had missus Whitham's crabbit clean the
first thing to morrow morning.

Speaker 87 (03:17:32):
I began to pick up the books I had thrown
at the rat. As I did so, I took a
good look at their titles conic sections. Mister rat doesn't
seem to mind that. In indeed, this one on psychloical
oscillations and this one on thermodynamics he dubs very neatly. Huh,

(03:17:53):
here's the book that got him. As I looked at
the title of the book that it finally hit the
huge ratic. It see the powers spread across my face.
For the title of that book was the Holy Bible.

Speaker 10 (03:18:14):
You are listening to the Judge's House by bram Stoker,
and to Night's journey down the corridors of the Hall
of Fantasy, brought to you by your friends at the
Granite Furniture Company with stores in sugar House, Murray and Provo.
And now back to the story by bram Stalker entitled
The Judge's House.

Speaker 89 (03:18:38):
Mister Lane, this is doctor thorne Hill.

Speaker 10 (03:18:41):
Doctor Thornhill, are you ill, Missus Widham? Your pardon, mister Lane.
But Missus Widham wanted me to come up here and
have a talk with.

Speaker 9 (03:18:47):
You over talk.

Speaker 10 (03:18:47):
Well, in that case, let me prepare some tea for you.
Oh please don't. That's one of the things I came
to talk to you about. Missus Widham thinks you'd brink
more strong tea than it's.

Speaker 19 (03:18:56):
Good for you.

Speaker 10 (03:18:57):
He tells me also that you put in quite long
out r is at your study. This is William. I
engaged you as a housekeeper, not as a guardian.

Speaker 89 (03:19:03):
I oh please, mister Lane.

Speaker 45 (03:19:06):
I didn't say.

Speaker 20 (03:19:06):
As a matter of.

Speaker 10 (03:19:07):
Fact, Lane, she didn't mean to have me talk to
you at all.

Speaker 9 (03:19:10):
That was my idea.

Speaker 10 (03:19:11):
I see, Well, now that you're here, what do you
want me to do? Leave this house?

Speaker 87 (03:19:16):
Well, even if I could see the reason for it,
I tell if I would, but as with the tea
in late hours, I might be able to give them up.
Would it make you feel any better, Missus Widham, if
I promised not to study after one o'clock tonight.

Speaker 10 (03:19:27):
Yes, if you promise, then I promise I advise you
not as a total stranger. If your problem, miss Lane,
I was a student once myself. You know, of course?
Shall we shake on a doctor?

Speaker 9 (03:19:38):
Have fine?

Speaker 10 (03:19:39):
Now? If you will, I wish you'd tell me what
you've noticed in this house. Well, it's just as I
have told Missus Widham. I'd be working late and.

Speaker 9 (03:19:46):
I'd suddenly.

Speaker 10 (03:19:50):
And when I look to see which book it.

Speaker 87 (03:19:52):
Was, if it struck the rat and the devil, as
Missus Widiam calls it, I was amazed to find that
it was the Holy Bible. There, Please, Missus Widham, you're
not hurt. And now, mister Lane, you say the rap
always went up the rope of that alarm bell always.

Speaker 10 (03:20:06):
I suppose you know.

Speaker 19 (03:20:08):
What that rope is.

Speaker 10 (03:20:09):
No, why it's the very rope the hangman used to
execute the victims of the judges hatred. No, now, Missus Widham,
there's no reason to get upset about this really.

Speaker 68 (03:20:19):
Doctor, you shouldn't put such horrible thoughts in poor mister
Lane's mind.

Speaker 89 (03:20:24):
He has enough to unseat him already.

Speaker 10 (03:20:26):
I did it for a definite purpose, mister Elaine. I
want you to fix your attention on that rope.

Speaker 9 (03:20:32):
Now.

Speaker 10 (03:20:32):
I know your sound of mind and body, but hard
work in long hours and this suggestion of the devil,
especially in this lonely old house, can do things to
the mind. And now I don't mean this as any offense,
but if you should find yourself having well, hallucinations or
some unexplainable fright, I want you to pull that rope.

(03:20:52):
It'll give us some kind of a warning in the
village we might be able to be of some help. Well,
thank you, doctor, I'll do that.

Speaker 87 (03:20:59):
I may get stuck with a problem, fine, goodbye, miss Lane,
and well, I wouldn't be surprised if Bencher chears the
alarm bell from the judge's house tonight. I didn't quite
share the doctor's views, but just the same I could
lock myself staring at the bell rope. The more I stared,
the more restless I became, And every now and then
my mind would conjure up the vision of some wretched

(03:21:20):
victim dangling from the the end of it.

Speaker 10 (03:21:22):
But that line of thinking would have been out of
my mind.

Speaker 87 (03:21:25):
In a hurry, Missus Woodham had made the place neatn homie.
I wandered over to one of the big windows and
flung it open.

Speaker 10 (03:21:34):
I was surprised to find that a shark wind had
come up, a very cold wind for April. It was
more than a shark wind, really, but it was carrying
a stone. Little drops of rain began to help me
in the face, until soon it became a thing of fury.
I bolted the shutters and built up the fire with
some fresh wood. I was uncomfortable, and was only vaguely

(03:21:55):
conscious of the reason. Suddenly I knew the rats were
quiet tonight. He gave me a slight case of the jetfis,
and I instinctively took a hasty glance at the bell rope.
The rope was quite still.

Speaker 87 (03:22:10):
I wanted a hot cup of tea, but remembering my
promise to Missus Widham, I desisted. Instead, EYES set up
a grit oak table and opened my books. Soon I
had started a problem, and the noise of the rats
began for the first time since I had taken up
residence in the Judge's house. I was glad to hear
those rats.

Speaker 10 (03:22:29):
I had worked for an hour or so and suddenly
became conscious of the furious storm outside. I was thankful
that I didn't have to be out of it. So
did a nate movement at the bell rope and telled
me to walk over to with me dear my head.
I saw nothing. It had only been the wind, and
the rope was rising and falling gently with each new
gust of air, which caused the bell to sway back

(03:22:50):
and forth. Them That rope had a deadly fascination to it.
I wondered what the Judge wanted such a grisly memento
in his house. The thought of it son chill through me?

Speaker 9 (03:23:01):
Or was it a thought?

Speaker 10 (03:23:03):
Didn't I sense a tremor along that rope? I couldn't
be sure, but at that moment I remembered the picture.
I walked over the table, picked up the lamp, and
approached the spot where I had seen the picture the
night before. I counted out the pictures until I came
to the third one from the fireplace.

Speaker 87 (03:23:16):
Even before I raised the lamp, I could see that
Missus Whittam had washed it clean as I had told
her to do.

Speaker 10 (03:23:22):
Then what I saw. What I saw gave me such
as start that I knew. They dropped the lamp.

Speaker 87 (03:23:28):
My knees almost gave way beneath me, and I was
conscious of huge beads of perspiration that were.

Speaker 10 (03:23:32):
Forming on my forehead.

Speaker 87 (03:23:33):
Just looking at it, maybe tremble like an aspen leaf.
The picture seemed to leap out at me. But they
are dressed in his scarlet and ermann robe to the judge,
with his merciless evil face, his sensual mouth, and a
note that was shaped by the beak of a bird
of prey.

Speaker 10 (03:23:48):
His face had a cadaverous culling. It was a ghastly picture.
It was the eyes that really made go cold, for
those eyes were, and Heaven helped me if I'm going mad.

Speaker 87 (03:24:00):
Those eyes were the exact duplicate of the evil eyes
of the great.

Speaker 10 (03:24:04):
Rat picture had been painted in this very room. I
began to compare the two, and as my eyes fept
the room, they were suddenly riveted to the judge's chair,
for there, with a rope hanging behind it, sat the
huge rat of a judge's eyes, and the hatefulness was
now intensified. With a fiendish leer. Never did the wind howl,

(03:24:25):
so this had a stop. I wanted some tea, but
I didn't take any. Doctor been quite rightly with miss
Ingerney drawn pretty taut, strange too, because I never was
in better health.

Speaker 9 (03:24:38):
Fell no tea.

Speaker 10 (03:24:38):
We'll substitute some brand. They that seemed ah at a
stiff glass of the brand.

Speaker 9 (03:24:48):
They went back to work.

Speaker 10 (03:24:50):
The rats were at it again, and I was glad
to hear them, for they had become a sort of
symbol of normalcy. The storm raised such a fury that
I was unaware of anything else. But once, during a sharp,
silent lull, I heard another sound, a faint squeaking noise.
I listened for it again and soon detected it. It
was coming from the corner of the room with a
bell rope hung. At first I thought it was just

(03:25:12):
the motion of the rope in the storm, but I
looked up and saw something in the dim light that
made me all the more positive that I was going mad.
For there was a great rat clinging to the rope
and gnawing at it. I could see the lighter coloring
of the fare strands are exposed. Just then, the flat
finished a job and a rope fell.

Speaker 5 (03:25:31):
On the floor with a thood.

Speaker 87 (03:25:33):
For a moment, the huge rat just hung there like
a tassel. It was then that I realized what had happened.
My only contact with the village was now gone. I
don't know why, but I rushed the lamp on the table,
snatched off the shade, and ran over the picture of
the judge.

Speaker 10 (03:25:50):
A chill of horror went through me, but I think
I must have expected what I saw. It seemed more
like a confirmation in a shock, For there in the
center of the picture was a great patch of brown canvas,
as clean and as pressure as the day had been
drawn over the frame, and where the portrait of the
judge himself had been, there was nothing. I heard a

(03:26:13):
sound behind me. I turned around.

Speaker 9 (03:26:15):
I really got the palsy.

Speaker 87 (03:26:17):
I suddenly became incapable of movement. I could hardly think
I had been prepared to see most anything, But what
was there? For There in the judge's high back chair,
with his black cap in his hand, as ermine robes
fixed about him, with a smart priump twisting his cool mouth,
was a judge himself.

Speaker 10 (03:26:37):
As the clock struck the hour, it seemed to beat
the blood right out of my heart.

Speaker 87 (03:26:42):
At the twelfth stroke, the judge placed the black cap
in his head and walked deliberately over the place where
the piece of bell will play. In a heap on
the floor, he picked it up andrew it through his hands,
as one.

Speaker 10 (03:26:53):
Would have valuable folkild. Then he began to knot went
in fashioning it into a noose. He tightened it and
tested it with his foot. All this time he never
took his horribly cool eyes from my face.

Speaker 87 (03:27:09):
I began to feel trapped for some reason. I could
barely move. I could only watch as he started to
move along the table toward me, and then, with a
quick move, and he threw the news at me, as
if to ensnare me in it.

Speaker 9 (03:27:20):
It missed.

Speaker 87 (03:27:22):
He raised it again, never once taking those hateful eyes
from my face. Once more, the news came flying towards me.

Speaker 12 (03:27:29):
Once more.

Speaker 10 (03:27:29):
With some last ounce of strength.

Speaker 87 (03:27:31):
I dodged it. The room seemed flooded with light. The
lamp had suddenly flared up high. I looked about the
room and was astonished to see the shiny little eyes
of the rats as they peered up the tracks and
chinks in the wall. I looked up the bell rope
My lost last hope of warring the village, and it
was covered with the little filmer's funny thing that those

(03:27:54):
rats were the only thing that gave me even the
slightest sense of comfort.

Speaker 10 (03:27:58):
Where As the rats clambered along the the belt itself
began to sway, and I heard a tiny sound, yes
very tiny, as the clamp bird touched the bell itself.
It was only a whisper of the sound, but it
would grow louder in time.

Speaker 9 (03:28:13):
Or would it?

Speaker 87 (03:28:18):
At this sound, the judge looked up and a scar
of terrible anger came to his face. His eyes were
like red hot coals, and he stamped his foot so
that the house seemed to shake. The rats kept running
up and down the rope, as if they were conscious
that it was a race against time.

Speaker 10 (03:28:31):
Now the judge was approaching me with a noose in
his hand.

Speaker 87 (03:28:34):
As he came closer, there seemed to be something paralyzing
in his presence, and I stood as rigid as a corpse.
Suddenly I felt the Judge's icy fingers against the skin
in my throat. He was adjusting the rope about my neck.
Then he picked me up and stood me in a
high old chair and put his hand on the swaying
end of the bell rope.

Speaker 10 (03:28:49):
As he raised his hand, I was conscious of my
little rat friends fleeing through the hole in the ceiling.

Speaker 87 (03:28:54):
They were my last hope. I stood there on the
chair and couldn't move a muscle up. Now that my
last hope seemed gone, I wanted the judge to hurry
and get it over with. Soon he'd tied the end
of the rope just about my neck the dangling end
of the bell rope. Then he jumped down on the
floor and looked at me with those.

Speaker 10 (03:29:12):
Eyes that hated me, so the smile of diabolical prium
seemed to wathe them in horror. I began to wonder
about hangings. I wondered how long it would take whether
the doctor in the village could possibly reach me in time,
for I knew that I would soon be sounding the

(03:29:33):
alarm bell. I even wondered what kind of a shadow
had cast on the wall as I dangled from the
end of the rope in this grotesque candle light. But
I didn't wonder for long, because suddenly the judge grabbed
the chair in which I was standing. When the sudden
movement jerked it out from under me.

Speaker 19 (03:29:54):
Oh Oh.

Speaker 10 (03:30:06):
Soul runs the Tale of the Judge's House.

Speaker 87 (03:30:15):
Remember join us next week at the same time for
another journey down the cord as the whole of Fantasy.
Tonight's program was adapted from the story by Bram Stoker
entitled The Judge's House. Heard in Tonight's Program, with Dick
Thorne as Malcolm Lane, Beth Calder is Missus Woodham, and

(03:30:38):
Mel Wyman as a doctor. Musical background was provided by
Earl Donaldson. The technical supervisor was Nephi Thorrenson. This program
was written by Bob Wilson and produced and directed by
Richard Thorne. Remember being with us again next Sunday at

(03:31:00):
an called at eight thirty pm.

Speaker 10 (03:31:02):
When the Granite.

Speaker 87 (03:31:03):
Furniture stares in sugar House, Murray and Provo will take
you on another journey down the corridors of the whull
of Fantasy.

Speaker 90 (03:31:18):
BBC World Service thirty Minute Theater, we present haunted stories

(03:31:46):
of the supernatural.

Speaker 13 (03:32:00):
This week.

Speaker 90 (03:32:01):
The Decoy by Algernon Blackwood, adapted for radio by Derek Hoddinaut,
starring George Baker as John Susan Jameson as Nancy, Peter
Woodward as Harry and Peter Baldwin as mister Gower.

Speaker 3 (03:32:21):
Haunted Morning Nancy, Good morning, darling.

Speaker 60 (03:32:37):
Breakfast getting cold?

Speaker 91 (03:32:39):
Sorry, John, I think you'd better have a look at
the local paper front page, bottom left.

Speaker 61 (03:32:49):
Coffee. I think you're going to need it.

Speaker 2 (03:32:53):
You mean this item headed local businessman buys mystery house?

Speaker 84 (03:32:57):
Yes?

Speaker 73 (03:32:58):
What did they means?

Speaker 56 (03:33:01):
Sugar?

Speaker 13 (03:33:02):
Darling?

Speaker 10 (03:33:03):
Good God?

Speaker 91 (03:33:04):
I shouldn't let it upset you upset me?

Speaker 2 (03:33:08):
What the hell are they trying to do?

Speaker 91 (03:33:09):
You give yourself a heart attack if you're not careful.

Speaker 2 (03:33:12):
Please, Nancy, you don't understand just.

Speaker 91 (03:33:14):
Because I'm fifteen years younger than you, my darling, you
don't have to treat me.

Speaker 61 (03:33:18):
Like a child.

Speaker 2 (03:33:19):
I'm sorry, but how do you think I feel here?
I am providing a local amenity for the sick and
the aged, and instead of getting praise from the local paper,
I get this. You know what this means, don't you?
It means I could lose considerable financial backing, patience and staff.

Speaker 91 (03:33:36):
Did you know Medlow House had such a mysterious past?

Speaker 2 (03:33:39):
Of course not. Here was a sound property which could
be easily converted into a nursing home of which the
local community could be proud. I didn't think it was
necessary to ask why some of its previous owners had
killed themselves. I was more interested with the state of
the foundation's brickwork and plumbing.

Speaker 91 (03:33:55):
Please don't shout, I'm sorry so a reporter digs up
a feuse to is legends.

Speaker 61 (03:34:01):
It's not the end of the world. I mean, no
one believes in that kind of thing.

Speaker 91 (03:34:05):
Now we're living in the nineteen twenties. Please get things
into perspective.

Speaker 2 (03:34:11):
Nancy, you're young, beautiful, You're like a child, innocent, believing
the best in people.

Speaker 73 (03:34:18):
I love you for it. Please don't change.

Speaker 91 (03:34:21):
And you're strong, dependable, but just a shade too impulsive.

Speaker 2 (03:34:26):
You have to be if you're to succeed in business today,
throw that.

Speaker 61 (03:34:29):
Silly paper away and forget about it.

Speaker 2 (03:34:31):
Forget about it, hold on your life. I'm going to
call on the editor of that rag on my way to.

Speaker 92 (03:34:35):
The office, mister Burley, if you would only please give
me a chance to explain.

Speaker 2 (03:34:42):
What is there to explain. Your newspaper has done my
business venture in calculable harm through.

Speaker 13 (03:34:47):
This piece of scam.

Speaker 92 (03:34:48):
Look, mister Burley, your purchase of Meadlow House is obviously
of local interest.

Speaker 2 (03:34:52):
And a local advantage.

Speaker 92 (03:34:54):
But its reputation is far from being untarnished.

Speaker 2 (03:34:56):
So a few of its former owners happened just hap
to commit suicide. Five to be exact, tell me something, Gal,
what's your interest in the place? Hen M, you don't answer.

Speaker 92 (03:35:12):
One of the previous owners was my brother.

Speaker 10 (03:35:17):
I see.

Speaker 2 (03:35:20):
Well, I'm sorry, of course, but it doesn't alter my player.
I wish you'd take the whole thing seriously. Look here, Gha,
please don't tell me how to run my business. I
deal in facts, not fiction. That's your province, it.

Speaker 49 (03:35:32):
Seems it's the bell.

Speaker 2 (03:35:33):
Also, I am spending upwards of twenty thousand pounds on
Medlow House, and because of that, this project is going
to be a success. Despite what your paper says, I
am not interested in superstition, unbalanced people throwing themselves out
of windows, or hearsay talk about phantoms or spooks or
whatever else may go bump in the night. Medlow House
will be one of the finest nursing homes in this country.

(03:35:55):
That's what you should be writing about. Yes, in the
short gar, what I'm asking for some positive reporting about
my scheme, not all that negative mumbo jumper you're so
key on seeing in your columns. So I want a
chance to reply to the rubbish that appeared this morning. Therefore,
I should be expecting a phone call from your reporter
in the morning to get a few facts and figures
from me. And there's my card.

Speaker 56 (03:36:21):
Harry Morton is speaking.

Speaker 61 (03:36:23):
Hello Harry, Nancy, I see your back.

Speaker 56 (03:36:26):
I got in from Portsmouth last night.

Speaker 61 (03:36:28):
Good trip.

Speaker 27 (03:36:29):
Yes.

Speaker 61 (03:36:30):
When are we going to see each other?

Speaker 56 (03:36:32):
Well, darling, you tell me you're the married woman, I'm
the free man.

Speaker 61 (03:36:39):
What are you doing next weekend?

Speaker 9 (03:36:43):
I don't know.

Speaker 61 (03:36:44):
Are you being evasive?

Speaker 56 (03:36:45):
Don't be silly, Nancy.

Speaker 50 (03:36:46):
Of course not.

Speaker 56 (03:36:47):
But there's a ship's party which I ordern't to miss.

Speaker 61 (03:36:49):
Are you inviting me?

Speaker 56 (03:36:52):
Well, I don't know, but it's not certain.

Speaker 61 (03:36:54):
Whether you are trying to avoid me.

Speaker 50 (03:36:57):
Of course not.

Speaker 56 (03:36:58):
If I'm free, i'd be delighted.

Speaker 13 (03:37:00):
Did to be with you?

Speaker 56 (03:37:02):
Is your old man going away on business?

Speaker 61 (03:37:04):
Then please don't refer to him like that.

Speaker 56 (03:37:05):
Well, Darling, he is an old man.

Speaker 61 (03:37:09):
He may be going away.

Speaker 91 (03:37:10):
If an idea I've had today works out, you can
come and spend the night with me.

Speaker 61 (03:37:15):
Here at the house. I can't wait, I thought, not
after being all that time at sea.

Speaker 56 (03:37:23):
If you really enjoy it, don't you what a life
you lead between your men rich impotence on the one
hand and virile poverty on the other.

Speaker 61 (03:37:32):
I'll let you know what time to come over as
soon as I've spoken to John.

Speaker 56 (03:37:36):
Goodbye, Harry, goodbye Nancy.

Speaker 61 (03:37:42):
If you ask me, John, I think you went about
it the wrong way.

Speaker 31 (03:37:46):
Darling.

Speaker 2 (03:37:46):
I know you're trying to help, but I wish you'd
leave business matters to me.

Speaker 91 (03:37:50):
I imagine your attack on the editor today won't have
helped the situation. You can't go about giving the press
orders like you do your employees.

Speaker 2 (03:37:58):
I am not without influence in this part of the country,
you know, but you do.

Speaker 91 (03:38:02):
Lack subtlety at times.

Speaker 2 (03:38:03):
You really do su as if you want me to
commit suicide, financial suicide.

Speaker 34 (03:38:08):
Don't be silly.

Speaker 91 (03:38:09):
You said yourself that you're too.

Speaker 61 (03:38:11):
Strong for that, so I am.

Speaker 2 (03:38:12):
Suicide is either cardis or mania, and I have no
use for either. That's why I can't attach any importance
to all this talk about the mysterious past of medlow House,
evial forms of work and all that. All right, So
what is the answer I thought you were about to
tell me?

Speaker 91 (03:38:28):
I am listen, Darling. I've had a marvelous idea. What
why don't you tell the editor that to relay any
fears from perspective patients and.

Speaker 59 (03:38:41):
Backers, et cetera.

Speaker 91 (03:38:42):
You, John Burley, hard headed business man, intend to spend
a night alone in the house with all those ghosts.
That way, you don't just talk about it, you actually
do something. For if it's safe for you to spend
time in Medlow House, it's certainly going to be safe
for others to do so. Wow, don't you think that's brilliant.

Speaker 13 (03:39:01):
Of me dying?

Speaker 2 (03:39:02):
I think you're marvelous. Action speaks louder than words.

Speaker 91 (03:39:06):
Precisely that way, you nip any damaging talk in the
bad before the superstition begins to take root.

Speaker 2 (03:39:12):
I had an even better idea, you come with me?

Speaker 10 (03:39:16):
What O?

Speaker 2 (03:39:18):
No other plans have you? H?

Speaker 10 (03:39:20):
No?

Speaker 33 (03:39:22):
No?

Speaker 12 (03:39:23):
Don't you see?

Speaker 2 (03:39:24):
Having a woman also in the house, and my wife
at that lends even greater strength to my argument that
the place is perfectly safe. Oh darling, you're wonderful.

Speaker 10 (03:39:33):
Mmm.

Speaker 91 (03:39:35):
Er, Perhaps perhaps we ought to have yet another observer present,
someone not connected with the project. I mean, let's face it,
we could come out the following morning and tell the
papers anything because it.

Speaker 61 (03:39:47):
Would be in our interests to do so.

Speaker 91 (03:39:50):
But if we included a third party who hasn't anything
to gain financially.

Speaker 2 (03:39:55):
Yes, yes, I see what you mean.

Speaker 59 (03:39:59):
But who I was thinking of?

Speaker 61 (03:40:01):
Harry Mortimer?

Speaker 2 (03:40:02):
Harry? Why Harry?

Speaker 33 (03:40:04):
Why not?

Speaker 61 (03:40:04):
Harry?

Speaker 2 (03:40:07):
Where's an officer and a gentleman. That's a good start,
not connected with the firm, member of the armed forces.
Proves his level headed? Yes, as I think you're right, darling.
I think he'd be admirable. Is he back from to her?

Speaker 34 (03:40:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 60 (03:40:21):
I'll give him a ring and see where.

Speaker 2 (03:40:23):
Do you want to go next weekend. The sooner we
scotch this story.

Speaker 93 (03:40:28):
The better, well, sir, I must say, I'm really looking

(03:41:09):
forward tonight. There must be a masochistic streak.

Speaker 27 (03:41:11):
In me somewhere.

Speaker 2 (03:41:12):
You're not saying you believe in all those stories, are
you Mortimer?

Speaker 93 (03:41:15):
Of course not, sir, But on such a lovely summer's day,
I can think of much better things to do.

Speaker 61 (03:41:20):
It's the night we're concerned with Harry.

Speaker 2 (03:41:22):
It's on over one night. Then hopefully tomorrow morning we'll
come out of camera, bulbs flashing away, reporters asking us
in name questions, and a considerable investment safe and sound.

Speaker 56 (03:41:34):
I suppose it was Nancy's idea to ask me as.

Speaker 2 (03:41:36):
An objective observer. Yes, I thought it a good idea too,
and very grateful to Mortimer not a daughter. Well, I've
been rather cunning. I've chosen a date when in reality
there are only four hours of actual darkness. It's the
longest day to day.

Speaker 34 (03:41:51):
Oh joh, you are kill Ever, I wouldn't have thought of.

Speaker 2 (03:41:55):
That, but I must confess that it had more to
do with good luck. But then luck quite often contributes
to one's success.

Speaker 9 (03:42:01):
Doesn't it.

Speaker 61 (03:42:02):
Let's hope the pressed in cotton on to the fact it.

Speaker 2 (03:42:04):
Doesn't alter anything. We will have carried out our side
of the bargain. We would have stayed in Meddlow House
one night, even though only half of it is in
actual darkness. Next, turning on the right, Bredian, are we there?

Speaker 46 (03:42:18):
We are?

Speaker 56 (03:42:23):
I hope you'll change the name of the place when
it becomes a nursing home, John.

Speaker 91 (03:42:27):
I most secondly, will something optimistic unlike the building.

Speaker 59 (03:42:32):
I'm right, John, it is ugly.

Speaker 21 (03:42:34):
Don't you think it's ugly?

Speaker 61 (03:42:35):
Harry?

Speaker 60 (03:42:37):
The windows are too small.

Speaker 56 (03:42:39):
As for that creeper nonsense. Ugly, but imposing, very imposing.

Speaker 2 (03:42:49):
You two stay here for a moment, Brillian and I
will just take a look around and decide what room
to use. Ready, we will bring the hamper and blankets.
I expect there's.

Speaker 20 (03:43:01):
Reeks of pain.

Speaker 94 (03:43:04):
Well, darling, you know I always like to go to
bed with you at the first opportunity, but never have
we done it with John sleeping in the same room.

Speaker 56 (03:43:13):
Rather off putting, I imagine.

Speaker 91 (03:43:15):
You mustn't talk like that, Harry.

Speaker 44 (03:43:17):
Why did you.

Speaker 56 (03:43:17):
Suggest I come with you on this fast? Was it
to be spiteful?

Speaker 61 (03:43:21):
I didn't plan it like this, believe me.

Speaker 56 (03:43:23):
Spending a night in the same room with you and
not being able to touch you torture, my darling, share torture.

Speaker 10 (03:43:29):
You just have to.

Speaker 91 (03:43:29):
Control yourself anyway. I wanted your company, that's all. We
don't have to make love every time we're alone. You're
not sorry you came.

Speaker 56 (03:43:42):
Really, are you?

Speaker 50 (03:43:45):
I love you so much?

Speaker 10 (03:43:47):
You know.

Speaker 56 (03:43:49):
I can't refuse you anything, Nancy.

Speaker 91 (03:43:59):
Please, John can see us from the window.

Speaker 56 (03:44:02):
I bet he doesn't make love to you like I do.

Speaker 10 (03:44:05):
Well.

Speaker 56 (03:44:06):
He treats you like a child instead of a woman.

Speaker 59 (03:44:08):
He respects me though, that's the difference between.

Speaker 13 (03:44:12):
You and him.

Speaker 56 (03:44:13):
The difference. My love lies in our ages fifteen years difference.

Speaker 91 (03:44:19):
You couldn't resist mentioning it again?

Speaker 29 (03:44:21):
Could you?

Speaker 10 (03:44:21):
Money? What a power it is?

Speaker 91 (03:44:25):
As you pointed out on the phone to me, I've
got the best of both worlds, haven't IRE's money your body?

Speaker 56 (03:44:34):
You really are a ruthless bitch.

Speaker 18 (03:44:39):
Her.

Speaker 20 (03:44:40):
We're going to use a room on the first floor.

Speaker 56 (03:44:42):
Here he comes, the poor old fool.

Speaker 29 (03:44:44):
Shut up?

Speaker 6 (03:44:46):
Oh what's that?

Speaker 2 (03:44:46):
Daring reds take the handle and things to a room
on the first floor at the back overlooks the lawn.
He's then going with the car to the inn. I
expect that's where the reporters will be staying. He can
give them.

Speaker 4 (03:44:59):
Come.

Speaker 2 (03:45:00):
Oh, come on, you're in for a really fascinating night.

Speaker 56 (03:45:05):
I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (03:45:11):
That's like a museum.

Speaker 50 (03:45:12):
I can smell the specimens.

Speaker 60 (03:45:15):
And I've been looking further into the legend of Battle's House, John,
And what.

Speaker 50 (03:45:22):
Other horrors have you discovered?

Speaker 60 (03:45:24):
Well, apart from the people who've committed suicide.

Speaker 91 (03:45:26):
Here a figure is seen, so the story goes, figure
of a man well good.

Speaker 56 (03:45:32):
Perhaps he'll put it in an appearance tonight as part
of the cabaret.

Speaker 61 (03:45:35):
I hope he doesn't.

Speaker 91 (03:45:37):
Why well, apparently he's only seen before something happens.

Speaker 56 (03:45:41):
Something happens, Yes, well, whatever that's something is it can't
happen to all three of us?

Speaker 23 (03:45:46):
Why not?

Speaker 50 (03:45:47):
Well, not at once, can it.

Speaker 73 (03:45:49):
You didn't say anything about this before.

Speaker 34 (03:45:51):
I only discovered it yesterday.

Speaker 60 (03:45:53):
Came across a book in the library, Local Stories and Legends.

Speaker 27 (03:45:57):
In here, Ah, the ballroom.

Speaker 50 (03:46:01):
How delightful is this the best room?

Speaker 19 (03:46:04):
John?

Speaker 10 (03:46:05):
So?

Speaker 2 (03:46:05):
All the others are weft with paint or filled with
workmen's ladders, ropes, pasting boats, everything imaginable.

Speaker 60 (03:46:10):
I'll unpacked the hamper. Did you bring some wine?

Speaker 2 (03:46:12):
Yes, three bottles?

Speaker 50 (03:46:14):
Thank God for that.

Speaker 91 (03:46:15):
You gather around then it's all packed separately in little boxes.

Speaker 60 (03:46:20):
John opened the wine.

Speaker 2 (03:46:21):
Will you right tell us about the figure, Nancy?

Speaker 93 (03:46:26):
Yes, I'd be interested to know what this ghost is like.
There's going to be a fourth then maybe there's a
chance of a game of bridge.

Speaker 60 (03:46:33):
Shut up, Harry and eat.

Speaker 6 (03:46:36):
Well.

Speaker 34 (03:46:36):
I know very little other than what the booklet said.
It's a man and he.

Speaker 2 (03:46:41):
Changes changes what do you mean, changes clothes, shape?

Speaker 10 (03:46:46):
What?

Speaker 4 (03:46:46):
No.

Speaker 91 (03:46:47):
According to the story, he appears to the man who what.

Speaker 56 (03:46:51):
He appears to the man who what he appears to
the man.

Speaker 91 (03:46:55):
Or woman, I suppose who's going to die as himself
or herself?

Speaker 56 (03:47:05):
If I think I do, I think what she means
and correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 93 (03:47:08):
Is that each time the chap saw his own double
before he did it, before he killed himself.

Speaker 56 (03:47:16):
Right, Yes, that's right.

Speaker 10 (03:47:25):
Well, as I.

Speaker 56 (03:47:26):
Said, spare rooms were a premium in this little holiday resort.

Speaker 29 (03:47:29):
You see.

Speaker 50 (03:47:31):
So this one man who had two rooms.

Speaker 94 (03:47:33):
Available to rent. He was a retired naval captain, by
the way, refused to let the rooms to any of
the holidaymakers desperate for accommodation. The rooms faced south, and
he kept them full of flowers. Well as we fished together.
I asked him why he continued to keep them empty
when he could make himself a bit of money. It

(03:47:57):
was on the south wind that my love came to me,
he said, And it was on the south wind that
she left. I keep those two rooms free for her.

Speaker 60 (03:48:13):
That's lovely, Harry.

Speaker 91 (03:48:15):
It was on the south wind that my love came
to me, and it was on the south wind that
she left.

Speaker 61 (03:48:22):
That's really beautiful.

Speaker 60 (03:48:25):
By left, I suppose he meant that she died or
ran away.

Speaker 2 (03:48:30):
You ask for the story and you'll give us a pain, Harry.

Speaker 73 (03:48:33):
That's odd for someone like you. You're in love. I
can see it on your face as you told that story.
You're in love with my wife. Probably, of course, I am, sir.

Speaker 56 (03:48:50):
I thought you knew that.

Speaker 91 (03:48:51):
Don't be silly, Harry.

Speaker 50 (03:48:53):
It's possible, there Isn't it quite possible, Harry.

Speaker 60 (03:48:57):
He's only joking, aren't you, Harry?

Speaker 3 (03:48:59):
Only king?

Speaker 34 (03:49:01):
Harry?

Speaker 2 (03:49:02):
He doesn't confirm or deny you notice, Nancy. Well, in
such a situation, I suppose I can see the possibility
of a man doing one of two things.

Speaker 60 (03:49:15):
Have you any other stories, Harry?

Speaker 34 (03:49:16):
What about you?

Speaker 54 (03:49:17):
Charn?

Speaker 12 (03:49:18):
What are they so?

Speaker 49 (03:49:19):
Two things?

Speaker 73 (03:49:21):
Murder or suicide?

Speaker 19 (03:49:24):
John?

Speaker 60 (03:49:25):
I hate and loathe you when you talk like that. Anyway,
you said you couldn't.

Speaker 91 (03:49:29):
Conceive of any reason why a man who at least
called himself a man should commit suicide.

Speaker 72 (03:49:35):
You're right.

Speaker 2 (03:49:37):
It's gone two o'clock to start getting light soon. I
think I'll take a turn around the house, stretch my legs.

Speaker 9 (03:49:45):
I won't belong.

Speaker 49 (03:49:48):
You'll be all right on your own.

Speaker 50 (03:49:50):
No doubt.

Speaker 56 (03:49:56):
Did he mean anything by that.

Speaker 50 (03:49:59):
He doesn't love you in the least bit anyway? He
never did.

Speaker 33 (03:50:04):
I do.

Speaker 50 (03:50:08):
You're wasted on him, Nancy, you belong to me.

Speaker 13 (03:50:13):
I love you.

Speaker 50 (03:50:19):
Do you think he saw us in the car?

Speaker 10 (03:50:22):
I don't know.

Speaker 60 (03:50:24):
He may have done.

Speaker 61 (03:50:27):
What's that?

Speaker 56 (03:50:29):
The morning breeze caught something in the room next door
I expect, but not knocked it against the wall. Remember
the windows are open.

Speaker 60 (03:50:36):
Maybe John's in there.

Speaker 50 (03:50:39):
He's different, restless.

Speaker 60 (03:50:43):
Didn't you notice what he said just now?

Speaker 91 (03:50:45):
But under certain circumstances, he could understand a man committing
either murder or suicide. That's not like him, Harry. He
didn't say that for nothing.

Speaker 50 (03:50:54):
He's bored to tears, that's all.

Speaker 56 (03:50:56):
And the house is getting on your nerves too, Dull,
stop it.

Speaker 50 (03:51:03):
I hate you, Harry.

Speaker 60 (03:51:04):
Why do I allow you to treat me like them?

Speaker 29 (03:51:07):
Oh?

Speaker 10 (03:51:08):
God, Oh.

Speaker 29 (03:51:14):
It's a lovely night.

Speaker 56 (03:51:16):
What are you trying to say.

Speaker 10 (03:51:19):
That?

Speaker 91 (03:51:20):
At times you treat me like a whore, like the
ones you no doubt visit each time you sail into.

Speaker 60 (03:51:26):
A different port.

Speaker 56 (03:51:28):
You know something? I believe you're only playing with me.
After all, it's him you're really love, isn't it.

Speaker 91 (03:51:35):
He's always been fair to me, kind and generous. He
never blames me for anything. Oh, I don't know my
nerves are on edge. Give me a cigarette please?

Speaker 49 (03:51:48):
Oh sorry if I startled.

Speaker 60 (03:51:51):
Joe Harry was just giving me a cigarette.

Speaker 29 (03:51:53):
That's all.

Speaker 2 (03:51:54):
So I see. You know this place is perfect. I've
been through every room on this floor. Or make a
splendid nursing home. It's a good investment.

Speaker 60 (03:52:05):
Listen that noise again, What is it?

Speaker 2 (03:52:09):
I can't hear anything. The wind, probably the south wind,
our little friend, something blown over.

Speaker 73 (03:52:19):
I expect that's all.

Speaker 2 (03:52:22):
I'll go and see if you like. The doors and
windows are open to let the paint dry. Causes a draft.

Speaker 50 (03:52:27):
I'll go this time if you like, sir, no I will.

Speaker 60 (03:52:31):
I'd like to. I haven't been out of this room
since we came. I'm not afraid.

Speaker 2 (03:52:35):
Honestly, Macy, she'll be all right. Moatim'am.

Speaker 49 (03:52:42):
She'll be safe.

Speaker 73 (03:52:44):
Nothing's going to happen to her.

Speaker 9 (03:52:47):
As you say.

Speaker 56 (03:52:48):
It was only the wind, a dawn wind. Probably it's
gone a quarter past two. When the sun rises at
a quarter to four. The shortest night is never quite dark,
is it. I mean it's even a little bit light.

Speaker 29 (03:53:01):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:53:02):
What's that Nancy in the next room, glad to be
alone for a moment. I expect Mortima if I thought
the two two were serious, do you know what I
should do? I should like one of us, you or myself,

(03:53:23):
to remain in this house.

Speaker 19 (03:53:26):
Dead.

Speaker 73 (03:53:29):
I trust, absolutely understand me that my.

Speaker 2 (03:53:36):
Belief in women, in human beings would go, and with
it the desire to live old fashioned. You think, maybe,
but that's what I believe, Nancy, is my life.

Speaker 60 (03:53:51):
You see what are you two talking about?

Speaker 91 (03:53:56):
It was a bell rope swinging in the wind and
hitting a sheet of metal in front of the fire place.

Speaker 34 (03:54:00):
That's all.

Speaker 56 (03:54:03):
I hate this house.

Speaker 21 (03:54:05):
I wish we'd never come.

Speaker 2 (03:54:06):
The moment there's a light in the sky will go.
I think I'll take another look around. I may go
out into the lawn a bit and see what the
sky is doing.

Speaker 91 (03:54:22):
Harry, Yes, I'm afraid, Oh darling, No, don't touch me.

Speaker 56 (03:54:31):
You'll get cold. Sitting by that window.

Speaker 60 (03:54:34):
The way he looked just now, strange alone, The way
he looked at me as he went out, I saw nothing.

Speaker 44 (03:54:45):
No, you wouldn't.

Speaker 60 (03:54:48):
It was as if he knew I had betrayed him.

Speaker 50 (03:54:50):
Look, Nancy, I didn't want to come.

Speaker 60 (03:54:52):
I'm not blaming you.

Speaker 10 (03:54:55):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 60 (03:54:56):
Something's going to happen, what to us, one of us
something's going to happen.

Speaker 50 (03:55:05):
Nancy, listen, let's go, let's get out of here.

Speaker 60 (03:55:06):
Do you think do you really think John?

Speaker 8 (03:55:09):
No?

Speaker 50 (03:55:09):
No, no, not John Liddy. He's not the type he
can take care of himself.

Speaker 61 (03:55:12):
Yes, he's strong.

Speaker 50 (03:55:14):
We don't believe that story due.

Speaker 60 (03:55:16):
About all the suicides. Yes, it's a fact. You can't
dispute facts.

Speaker 50 (03:55:20):
And the figure the ghost.

Speaker 34 (03:55:22):
Listen, it's John. He's coming back.

Speaker 10 (03:55:25):
You do love him.

Speaker 50 (03:55:26):
Then they've gone again, gone into another room probably. Why
why was he going to be outside? Then he said
he was going outside on the lawn.

Speaker 91 (03:55:40):
Yes, we should see him in a minute, on the lawn.

Speaker 50 (03:55:45):
I am sorry, Nancy, I'm sorry.

Speaker 60 (03:55:53):
There's that sound again.

Speaker 50 (03:55:55):
It's nothing, I tell you.

Speaker 56 (03:55:57):
It's only that loose rope swinging in the next room,
hitting the wall like you said.

Speaker 3 (03:56:01):
No, that wasn't true.

Speaker 91 (03:56:04):
What There was no rope swinging against the wall. I
invented it because I thought we'd heard something and it
sounded logical.

Speaker 61 (03:56:14):
There was nothing.

Speaker 60 (03:56:17):
Oh my god, it's John.

Speaker 33 (03:56:21):
I must go.

Speaker 50 (03:56:22):
No, Nancy, wait, listen listen, John.

Speaker 61 (03:56:31):
Oh John, it's you.

Speaker 64 (03:56:33):
I thought, Oh darling, Oh so god.

Speaker 72 (03:56:41):
I'm going out on the lawn now. I won't be
a minute, Harry.

Speaker 60 (03:57:02):
You saw you noticed what he was?

Speaker 34 (03:57:06):
Different, the eyes, the head, twist in his face.

Speaker 50 (03:57:11):
What on earth you're saying?

Speaker 56 (03:57:12):
Pull yourself together, altered, Harry, altered, fancy, Please come away
from the window. For God's sake, This is sheer nonsense.
Don't let yourself go to pieces like this. I'll put
it straight with him. I'll tell him it was all
my fault. I'll try and explain.

Speaker 34 (03:57:27):
It's too late.

Speaker 50 (03:57:30):
That wasn't John at all in here?

Speaker 34 (03:57:32):
Just now, I know, I know, wouldn't.

Speaker 56 (03:57:36):
I will look down there on the lawn, See there
is He'll be back up here in a minute.

Speaker 34 (03:57:50):
No, oh my god, no, Harry, next door, it's John.

Speaker 60 (03:58:02):
Hanging swinging.

Speaker 27 (03:58:07):
But he's down there walking in the garden.

Speaker 60 (03:58:10):
For God's sake, it took on his likeness to deceive us.

Speaker 34 (03:58:16):
To give him time. He's done it.

Speaker 19 (03:58:22):
Stay here.

Speaker 29 (03:58:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 90 (03:59:05):
That was the decoy by Algernon Blackwood, starring George Baker
as John, Susan Jameson as Nancy, Peter Woodward as Harry,
and Peter Baldwin as mister Gower. The sound balance was

(03:59:25):
by Graham Harper. Haunted was adapted and directed by Derek Hoddinott.

Speaker 10 (04:00:00):
M hm.

Speaker 6 (04:00:04):
Hm no, No, stay where you are.

Speaker 95 (04:00:18):
Do not break the stillness of this moment, For this
is a time of mystery, a time when imagination is
free and moves forward swiftly, silently.

Speaker 21 (04:00:34):
This is.

Speaker 12 (04:00:37):
The haunting hour.

Speaker 19 (04:01:48):
Bird of Death.

Speaker 95 (04:01:55):
This is the story of a man named Spear, of
a bird, a kind of carrion crow, and of a
student of birds named Victor. This is also a story
of Victor's uncle Arn, but that comes later. At this moment,
we are concerned only with the trio Spear, Victor and

(04:02:16):
the bird of death, the crow.

Speaker 12 (04:02:22):
Watch this, Victor. I'm going to get him. I wouldn't
if I were used beer.

Speaker 10 (04:02:26):
Not him.

Speaker 96 (04:02:28):
Oh no, you just wounded him. He's getting away. Why
did you object to my shooting that bird? It's a
member of the Corvus Coroni family, a kind of carrion crow.
So what, Well, there's an old Indian tradition about those
particular birds traditionally. Well what is it not that I'm
interested in those old superstitions. I would be if I

(04:02:49):
were used beer.

Speaker 33 (04:02:50):
Why?

Speaker 12 (04:02:50):
Because according to legend, it is the bird of death.

Speaker 95 (04:02:59):
This is also the story of Victor's uncle, Aaren, a
man with a different kind of interest in birds, an
interest that often took him and spear to a certain marsh.

Speaker 97 (04:03:13):
Are those all the decoys we brought with a spear, yes, sir,
And then roll over to the blind Now you can
tell when a fight of ducks will come along, Yes, sir,
there's that old fishing where it's pity it didn't use
anymore hate to see anything wasted, Yes, sir, Just a
lot of steaks driven into the marsh. Fish trap they baited,

(04:03:35):
the fish get in in their caught looks like an
arrow from a boat.

Speaker 12 (04:03:39):
Yes, sir.

Speaker 97 (04:03:40):
I'm glad we put the decoys around it so that
your plays for him makes the setting perfect.

Speaker 12 (04:03:46):
No, doncle be suspicious events.

Speaker 9 (04:03:47):
Yes sir?

Speaker 97 (04:03:49):
Will you stop that infernal Yes sir. Can't you say
anything besides yes, sir?

Speaker 12 (04:03:54):
Yeah, of course, mister Aren anything you wish?

Speaker 10 (04:03:57):
You know?

Speaker 12 (04:03:57):
You're too agreeable today, spear, too agreeable. There's a streak
of cousiness in you.

Speaker 97 (04:04:02):
It's usually right beneath the surface, but you're covering it
up today, coming it up really well, what's up?

Speaker 9 (04:04:08):
Why?

Speaker 12 (04:04:09):
Nothing?

Speaker 96 (04:04:09):
Nothing at all, mister arn I don't know what you're
talking about, You don't they? Well, most people don't know
what the other fella's talking about. That's what's wrong with
the world. All people would, oh, hurry up, spear. You're
rowing as if we had all day.

Speaker 97 (04:04:23):
Yes, sir, can't get what a perfect setting that old
fishing weir makes for our decoys. Why the ducks have
come right into the nozzles of our shotguns without suspecting
there are any hunters around.

Speaker 12 (04:04:34):
It's a good setup, all right, good, it's perfect, you know.
That's what comes with the world.

Speaker 9 (04:04:39):
Spear, the setting.

Speaker 97 (04:04:41):
Give a man the right setting and he can get
away with murder. Why there's been many hey's spear.

Speaker 12 (04:04:47):
You're not throwing toward the blind No, I'm not, mister rin.
You're rowing toward the fishing where that's the big idea.

Speaker 96 (04:04:53):
It's the right setting, mister iron. Give a man the
right setting and he can get away with murder. You
said so yourself, But what are you talking about? Who's yours?
Mister arn You stopped rowing our spear.

Speaker 12 (04:05:06):
I don't like this. That's understandable. Most of us are cowards.

Speaker 96 (04:05:09):
We flinch from death, even wealthy man like you, mister Ron, Oh,
stop joking. Does this shotgun look as if I'm joking.
You'll notice it's pointed right at your chest, and the
shotgun at close range is a pretty messy weapon. I've
read why you You needn't bother looking for your shotgun.
It's behind me. You haven't a chance of the world
of getting it. In fact, you han't a chance period.

Speaker 12 (04:05:28):
Spear You're crazy. You can't get away with this.

Speaker 9 (04:05:31):
I'll call for help.

Speaker 96 (04:05:32):
In the first place, you won't call the instance you
even try to yell, I'll pull the trigger in the
second place.

Speaker 12 (04:05:37):
Who'd hear you out here in the marsh? Why I
don't Victor? Yes, that's it. Victor might hear me.

Speaker 97 (04:05:41):
He often comes out here to study bird life, or
maybe one of the servants may be around here.

Speaker 12 (04:05:45):
None of the servants will be around here today, you know.

Speaker 96 (04:05:47):
Jed's too lazy to do anything he doesn't have to,
and Kathy's rheumatismal keep her indoors on a day like this.
But Victory, he won't be here today either. No, mister Arran,
you'd better not count on help from your dear nephew.
I've taken care of him. You you kill Victor, now,
why would I do that? I only want to kill
one man and that's you missed iron No.

Speaker 12 (04:06:05):
I saw to it that.

Speaker 96 (04:06:06):
Victor received a new book on ornithology this morning. He's
in his study reading about the habits of birds.

Speaker 95 (04:06:16):
The habits of birds, birds that, according to scientists, were
once reptiles, But according to science, man was also once
a reptile.

Speaker 5 (04:06:26):
So the lives of the two birds.

Speaker 95 (04:06:28):
And men may at times be interwoven. In his study,
Victor music.

Speaker 96 (04:06:37):
Birds are strange creatures. Did do you know that the
idea Herodias? Who are the idea Herodias? The great blue heron?

Speaker 17 (04:06:45):
You mean, like then that live round the marsh?

Speaker 12 (04:06:47):
Precisely?

Speaker 96 (04:06:49):
Well, the idea Herodias has one claw that's toothed. You
don't say, I don't, but this book does. It says
the middle toe is toothed.

Speaker 17 (04:06:57):
Whats the bird want teeth in his middle toe for?

Speaker 6 (04:07:00):
Hmm hmm.

Speaker 96 (04:07:01):
I supposed to make it easier to hold onto the
fish at catches. You've seen them catch fish, haven't you.

Speaker 17 (04:07:05):
Yeah, especially around the old fish trap in the marsh.

Speaker 9 (04:07:09):
I don't reckon.

Speaker 17 (04:07:10):
I ever saw one of them lose a fish once
he grabbed a hold of it. Precisely, Oh, shay, I reckon,
There ain't much them book writers don't know. Wonder how
they learn it by observation.

Speaker 96 (04:07:20):
Jed Oh, I tell you this is a fine book.
I just got it this morning. I don't know who
sent it, but whoever did certainly knew what he was doing.
It's a remarkable book.

Speaker 19 (04:07:30):
You ought to read it.

Speaker 17 (04:07:31):
I ain't no handed book reading.

Speaker 96 (04:07:33):
I think that a man, a man like you or me,
could learn so much about ornithology. But what mister Victor
Ornithology that's the scientific name for the study of bird life.
Oh and he learned it the right way by watching
birds in their native habitats.

Speaker 12 (04:07:47):
Yah there, what where they live?

Speaker 17 (04:07:50):
What do you want to do that for?

Speaker 96 (04:07:51):
Because it's so interesting, it's fascinating. I think I'll go
down to the marsh to watch the idea Rodeus myself. Yes,
that's why do this, very ist, I'm going to the marsh.

Speaker 95 (04:08:06):
Arren went to the marsh to kill birds, Spear went
to kill arn. Victor is going to the marsh to
observe birds, birds and men. They're all into woven, as
into woven as the threads of life and of death.

Speaker 97 (04:08:25):
But why do you want to kill me, Spear? You've
been my secretary almost ten years.

Speaker 12 (04:08:30):
I've paid you well, haven't I. I've been good to you,
haven't I? But not as good as I'm going to
be to myself.

Speaker 96 (04:08:35):
But well, I even made a provision in my will
for you, but not as big as the provision I've
made in it as you've made.

Speaker 12 (04:08:41):
What are you talking about it?

Speaker 96 (04:08:42):
I've destroyed your will and substitute in one to fit
my own ambitions. I'm going to inherit quite a piece
of your estate, so you won't get away with it.
You'll be found out here, you think.

Speaker 23 (04:08:49):
So?

Speaker 12 (04:08:50):
How many years have I been signing your name to letters?

Speaker 10 (04:08:53):
About eight?

Speaker 96 (04:08:53):
Has anyone ever detected that it isn't your signature? I
know that is exactly No one will ever suspect the
wills of Audrey simple, isn't it?

Speaker 9 (04:09:02):
Murdered?

Speaker 12 (04:09:02):
Is never simple?

Speaker 96 (04:09:03):
Spear, You're quite philosophic form a man who was about
to die. But you overlook the fact that I've planned
this carefully for five years. I know every detail of
what I'm going to do. There isn't a chance of.

Speaker 9 (04:09:12):
A slip up. Perfect crimey, Yes, I suppose.

Speaker 10 (04:09:14):
You can call it.

Speaker 96 (04:09:15):
Everything will go just as I planned it, mister arn
with your money I'll be on Easy Street.

Speaker 12 (04:09:19):
The rest of my life. I'm not dead yet. I'll
take care of that in a moment, sir. There are
easier ways of making money, Spear, I like this way better.

Speaker 96 (04:09:26):
Incidentally, that's where you're going to be buried, mister Arn.
Over there at the fishing whear, take a good look
at it. Not every man gets a chance to see
his future grave.

Speaker 95 (04:09:37):
No, not every man gets a chance to see his
future grave. But every man has his own hopes of
averting or at least delaying death. Other people may inadvertently
help him. For instance, right now, at Arn's house, Kathy
the housekeeper is saying, Jed.

Speaker 24 (04:09:54):
Where's mister Victor in?

Speaker 17 (04:09:55):
You sturdier agon?

Speaker 24 (04:09:56):
You reckon? You reckon? Never seen such a man for
not know and nothing?

Speaker 17 (04:10:00):
Well, ain't he in his study?

Speaker 45 (04:10:01):
No he ain't.

Speaker 24 (04:10:02):
I'd be asking if he was there.

Speaker 98 (04:10:04):
No, I don't reckon you would there you go reckoning again?
Can't you give a body a straight answer?

Speaker 17 (04:10:09):
What do you always want to be picking on me?

Speaker 28 (04:10:11):
For?

Speaker 17 (04:10:11):
Kathy? I reckon? I mean, I ain't no nurse maid
to know where everybody's at all the time.

Speaker 98 (04:10:17):
Now, Jed, you keep a civil tongue in your head, man, Gooshen,
you think about he said, stopping not landish to you.

Speaker 4 (04:10:23):
All I ad.

Speaker 17 (04:10:23):
All you asked was if I knowed where mister Victor is,
And I said, say, I just remembered. He said he
was going out to the marsh.

Speaker 16 (04:10:31):
She just what I thought, Just what I thought.

Speaker 98 (04:10:34):
He's gone out to see if he can get a
look at some of them wild birds he's so crazy about.

Speaker 24 (04:10:38):
Oh, i'd have known it. That man'll be the death
of me.

Speaker 17 (04:10:41):
Yet, Well, what's you carrying on like that for? Can
a man go for a walk to the marsh without
you raising a ruckers?

Speaker 24 (04:10:47):
Not without his macanon? Or are day like this? He
can't that poor boy catch his deathiculd Gooshan. I don't
know what folks to do if I didn't look after him.
Now you get mister Victor's macnon and take it to
him right this minute.

Speaker 17 (04:11:00):
Oh Cathy, if he didn't take it hisself, maybe it's
because you don't want it.

Speaker 98 (04:11:04):
Jed, You do like I say, You take mister Victor's
macinnought to him right this minute. He had my rheumatism,
he'd know better than leaving it behind.

Speaker 17 (04:11:12):
But how am I gonna know where he is at You.

Speaker 24 (04:11:14):
Just said yourself he was going to the marsh. Well
you go there too, keep looking till you find him.

Speaker 58 (04:11:19):
Oh all right, all.

Speaker 17 (04:11:20):
Right, don't get hit up about it. I reckon. All
I do around here is go traption around for it.

Speaker 96 (04:11:31):
Have you had a good look at your future grave,
miss Darren, You're going to be in it soon. I'm
going to kill you with your own shotgun. It'll be
the culmination of five years of careful planning.

Speaker 12 (04:11:40):
Oh, you am grateful wretch.

Speaker 96 (04:11:42):
You want to keep quiet and listen to me, and
don't make any suspicious moves. I've got an itchy trigger finger,
and I don't want anything to happen to you until
I'm absolutely ready.

Speaker 13 (04:11:50):
Spear.

Speaker 12 (04:11:50):
I'm telling you again.

Speaker 96 (04:11:51):
You're telling me again that I can't get away with it.
Well you're wrong, miss Darren. You're not dealing with stocks
and bonds now, you're dealing with human life, your life,
all right, Spear, I'll make a deal with you.

Speaker 12 (04:12:01):
What kind of a deal.

Speaker 97 (04:12:02):
I'll pay you as much money as you want, if
only you won't kill me. Do you understand what I'm saying.
I'll make you rich.

Speaker 96 (04:12:07):
You'll double across me. That's what you'll do no, honestly. Honestly,
that's a laugh. What an awful sap you must think.
I am why you turn me over to the police.
How fast it would make my head swim. But it's
your head that's going to swim underwater. No, no, spear,
please going to shoot you. Then I'm going to tie
you to the bottom of one of the steaks of
the fishing where you'll be fastened so securely you'll be
there forever no one will ever find you.

Speaker 9 (04:12:28):
Spear.

Speaker 10 (04:12:29):
Listen to me.

Speaker 12 (04:12:30):
I'll do anything you say, anything, only don't kill. You're
storming for time, miss Aaron, but it won't do you
any good. Listen to me.

Speaker 96 (04:12:35):
You know nothing you say will keep me from carrying
out my plans outside my property.

Speaker 12 (04:12:38):
O between you, I'll make it legal.

Speaker 10 (04:12:40):
You'll be rich. I'll think it over.

Speaker 96 (04:12:41):
I have thought it over for five years. That's a
long time, Miss Darran. Everything is just as I planted it,
including your begging for mercy. I promise, I promise I'll
never tell anybody about this. If on loss, you'll never
tell anybody about this. You know the old saying dead
men tell no tales.

Speaker 9 (04:12:56):
Spear.

Speaker 12 (04:12:56):
I don't want to die.

Speaker 96 (04:12:57):
No one wants to die, and no one wants to
lie the bottom of a marsh tied to a fish trap.
It is much of a monument, especially for a rich
man like you, miss Iron, But it's going to be
yours for eternity.

Speaker 12 (04:13:09):
Priece, please your proposition. If I let you live, I'll
do anything about, Spear, anything about I'll give you everything
I've got.

Speaker 44 (04:13:15):
You'll never regret it.

Speaker 9 (04:13:16):
Believe me, you won't.

Speaker 12 (04:13:17):
You're right, I'll never regret it. And by it I
mean this.

Speaker 95 (04:13:53):
This is the story of Spear and a gun which
he fired twice, the first time at a crawl which
she did not kill but merely crippled, the second time
at his employer, mister Aran, whom he murdered on the spot.
This is the story of Victor, mister Arran's nephew, a
student of BirdLife, who worries about the crippled crow, and

(04:14:15):
who questions Spear about the disappearance of his uncle. He
does not know that Spear has fastened mister Arran's dead
body to the bottom of an old fishing wheir in
the mars.

Speaker 96 (04:14:29):
You were right, Victor, that crow was the bird of death.
Of course, I don't believe in Indian superstitions. But if
I hadn't shot that bird, maybe mister Aran wouldn't be dead. Now,
don't blame yourself, Spear, but what I can't understand is
why we haven't been able to recover the body. That
crew of men has been searching around the center of
the marsh with grappling hooks all day now.

Speaker 12 (04:14:49):
And maybe the body is caught on a shrub or
something at the bottom.

Speaker 9 (04:14:51):
This could be.

Speaker 96 (04:14:52):
If that's the case, I'll ask them to use dynamite. Adynamite,
I hadn't thought of that. Are you sure you pointed
out the exact spot where the exact accident happened.

Speaker 12 (04:15:01):
I'm positive.

Speaker 96 (04:15:02):
Then there's nothing to do but use dynamite. I don't
dislodge anything in the immediate vicinity. Been using dynamite and
still no sign of Uncle's body. I'm just as sorry
about that as you are. But as I said before,
it's probably wedges between some shrubs or rocks down at

(04:15:23):
the bottom.

Speaker 12 (04:15:24):
These old marshes are full of them.

Speaker 96 (04:15:25):
You know, yes, I know how you must feel, Victor,
but please bear in mind it it isn't easy for
me either.

Speaker 12 (04:15:31):
I can understand that you're having been with him and
it happened. I'll never forget it.

Speaker 10 (04:15:34):
It was terrible.

Speaker 12 (04:15:36):
Last night I dreamed about it.

Speaker 96 (04:15:37):
I felt the water closing over me as I surface
dived the last time trying to find him. My hands
searched in vain. I could feel the water suffocating me.
And then I awoke, drenched in cold swept. Oh, if
only I could have saved him. Don't blame yourself, Spear.
You did everything you could. It's too bad Jed and
I didn't get here about five minutes sooner than we
could have helped.

Speaker 12 (04:15:57):
Yes, it's too bad.

Speaker 96 (04:15:59):
I can't get a were inexperience and her like uncle
capticizing the boat. Well, as I told you before, he
was so anxious to get the duck he'd shot, he
leaned way over the gunnal As he reached for it,
he leaned too far.

Speaker 12 (04:16:09):
The boat turned over, plunging us both into the water. Yes,
she told us about that.

Speaker 96 (04:16:12):
I tried to get him to stay in the blind
while I rode out and retrieved the bird. But no,
nothing would do but for him to get into the
boat with me. I asked him not to Why why?

Speaker 21 (04:16:20):
What?

Speaker 96 (04:16:21):
Why did you ask him not to get into the
boat with you. Oh well, I I don't really know.
Only only you had a premonition?

Speaker 33 (04:16:27):
Is that it?

Speaker 44 (04:16:28):
Spirit?

Speaker 10 (04:16:28):
Oh?

Speaker 96 (04:16:28):
No, that is not exactly only there was no necessity
for both of us going after the duck. I could
have gotten it myself. I always have in the past
when we went hunting together. But this time things worked
out differently a spirit, Yes, this time things worked out differently.

Speaker 12 (04:16:44):
Maybe things like that are planned. What do you mean, ooh,
fate destiny?

Speaker 73 (04:16:49):
You know that sort of thing.

Speaker 95 (04:16:51):
I believe everything happens according to plan everything. Who will
gain say that everything does happen according to plan? But
whose plan? And what is the plan? Is there no
such thing as circumstance? And what part does it play
in the plans a man may make?

Speaker 24 (04:17:16):
And they haven't found the body yet?

Speaker 17 (04:17:18):
Ner he a shiin of it? Kathy Narius.

Speaker 98 (04:17:20):
Hell, poor mister Arran not getting a decent burial. It
ain't right him being down at the bottom of the
marsh like that. But I tell you, Jed, it ain't right.

Speaker 17 (04:17:28):
No, I reckon, Ain't nobody gonna argue with you about that.
But days dynamiting ain't done no good in much more
that can be done? You mean they'll leave him down there,
I reckon, Joe, what else can they do?

Speaker 98 (04:17:39):
Well, I don't rightly know, but seems like they oughtn't
to give up till they find poor mister Arran's body.

Speaker 17 (04:17:45):
Maybe they never gonna find it. Why, maybe it just
wasn't meant.

Speaker 21 (04:17:49):
To be found, Jedge, you don't make no sense.

Speaker 17 (04:17:52):
Lots of things don't make no sense if you ask
me things like that. Well, I don't rightly know how
to put it, but some things just don't add up.

Speaker 98 (04:18:00):
The land and Goshen Ginger gonna drive me plumb crazy
with that kind of talk. What things don't add up?

Speaker 17 (04:18:06):
Well, it's like this, Kathy. You recollect. You sent me
out to the marsh to find mister Victor and give
him Miss Mackina.

Speaker 21 (04:18:12):
Of course I recollect.

Speaker 17 (04:18:13):
Well, I'd done like you told me to. I found
him mosing long toward the marsh, reading one of them
books that he got the very day of mister Urran's extent.

Speaker 18 (04:18:20):
Know all about that?

Speaker 17 (04:18:21):
Yeah, Well here's what you don't know. He asked me
to go to the marsh with him. He wanted to
show me something about a a dear her word about
blue Heron, And so I went with him. I know
all about that too, But hold your horses, will you.
I'm coming to that. We heard a shot from the marsh,
a long about the fishing ware, I'd say, And a
few minutes later when we got there, there was mister

(04:18:44):
Spear dripping water and climbing out of the marsh with
his story about how mister Arran was drounded.

Speaker 98 (04:18:50):
Well, what don't add up with that? It's exactly what
mister Spear has been telling about the accident. Yeah, according
to his story, miss Darring, he shot a duck from
where they was hiding in the blind. The duck fell
in the middle of the marsh, and he and mister
Spear they got in the boat and rowed out to
get the dead bird. That's right, mister arn leans out
to pick the duck out of the water, and the
boat turns over drownded him, even though mister Spear, according

(04:19:12):
to his story, done everything he could to save mister Arran.
Now appears to me that was a mighty short time
for all that to happen. Seems like all them doings
are to take more than, well more than the four
or five minutes took me and mister Victor to get
to the marsh and see mister Spear climbing out of
it land the ghost and Jed, that kind of talk
a driver body lean out of their mind. Maybe it

(04:19:32):
took you and mister Victor more than four or five
minutes to get to the edge of the marsh.

Speaker 17 (04:19:36):
No it didn't.

Speaker 21 (04:19:37):
And even if it didn't, that don't mean nothing. Things
just naturally happened fast sometimes yeah.

Speaker 17 (04:19:42):
Maybe, but still it just don't sit right with me.
I reckon, it ought to take more time than that
for all them things to happen, so they stopped down,
mightn't now, Yeah, Cathy, mister Victor finally give it up.
There was no use keeping it up forever.

Speaker 98 (04:20:02):
That means poor mister Oran will be down there at
the bottom of the marsh till doomsday.

Speaker 17 (04:20:06):
So I still say the whole thing don't add up
just right. Oh now, don't start that again, Jed.

Speaker 31 (04:20:12):
I see.

Speaker 98 (04:20:12):
But they just can't stand being around you when you
carry on with such crazy talk.

Speaker 17 (04:20:16):
I just can't help feel.

Speaker 98 (04:20:17):
Only the ghosh make even my rheumatism worse for that
kind of talk.

Speaker 17 (04:20:22):
All right, then I'll keep quiet about it, would I
still say?

Speaker 38 (04:20:25):
You go and do right?

Speaker 20 (04:20:26):
All right?

Speaker 98 (04:20:27):
Don't get yourself head up, you crazy talk. You haven't
told mister Victor any of it, have you?

Speaker 21 (04:20:32):
No, don't.

Speaker 24 (04:20:33):
It's gotten up on his mind right now as is.

Speaker 17 (04:20:35):
I won't say nary word but him promise, yes, I promise.

Speaker 21 (04:20:39):
That's better? And the way, where is mister Victor now?

Speaker 17 (04:20:42):
Reckon? He mister Spears over the lawyers for the reading
of the wheel.

Speaker 21 (04:20:46):
Looks like they could have waited a spell before they
went into that.

Speaker 17 (04:20:49):
Mister Spears said they might as well get over with.

Speaker 98 (04:20:51):
Yess he's right and get all fussed up inside. Thinking
of poor mister Orran, resting.

Speaker 24 (04:20:56):
Down the butt, jed, where are you're going?

Speaker 17 (04:20:59):
I think I'll just mows you arn over to the
marsh for spell. I just can't get it through my head.
Why the whole thing?

Speaker 96 (04:21:04):
Don't believe me, Victor. The contents of the will are
as much of a surprise to me as they must
be to you. I thought mister Arran would remember me that.
I didn't dream he would leave me the bulk of
his estate.

Speaker 33 (04:21:24):
Neither did I.

Speaker 96 (04:21:25):
I'm sorry if it upsets your plans in any way.
My plans looks as though uncle didn't think much of him. Then,
he knew about them, he knew how I wanted to
devote my life to ornithology, gave me the impression he.

Speaker 9 (04:21:36):
Approved of it.

Speaker 96 (04:21:36):
He must have changed his mind, evidently, but it doesn't
change mine. I'm going to be an ornithologist. I've played
around with it before as a hobby. But I'm in
dead earnest now I'm going to start right away, in fact,
right now, now, yes, spear, I'm going to begin with
the birds I've observed closely the last few days. But Victor,
you were at the marsh the last few days precisely,

(04:21:58):
and there were birds there.

Speaker 12 (04:21:59):
Birds. I want to see it again.

Speaker 96 (04:22:01):
Spirit, Drive as close to the marsh as you can,
and we'll walk the rest of the way, if you
don't mind my saying so, it sounds rather silly to me.

Speaker 12 (04:22:07):
Do you mind doing what I ask?

Speaker 10 (04:22:09):
No?

Speaker 12 (04:22:09):
I don't mind. Why should I? I don't know? Then
there are other things I don't know, things I intend
to find out about. You have a gun?

Speaker 4 (04:22:16):
Oh?

Speaker 65 (04:22:16):
What a gun?

Speaker 9 (04:22:17):
No matter?

Speaker 12 (04:22:17):
Don't you understand English?

Speaker 96 (04:22:18):
Look, Victor, I can understand your being upset about the
will Well, have you got a gun or haven't you
there's a double bowel shotgun in the back of a car.
That's perfect for what I want. Now row out to
the middle of the marsh where the accident happened. Very well,

(04:22:40):
if that's what you want, But it seems rather that's
not what I want. Okay, Well here we are. Now
what's this got to do with birds?

Speaker 9 (04:22:57):
Plenty?

Speaker 96 (04:22:58):
See that buzzard of a crow sitting there on the field,
the bird you crippled? Or watch me take a shot
at him.

Speaker 12 (04:23:04):
You messed him. I intended to killing? Isn't in my line?
What does that crack mean? You'll know soon enough. I
don't understand you, Victor.

Speaker 96 (04:23:10):
First you try to keep me from shooting that bird,
then you take a crack at him and miss him
on purpose.

Speaker 12 (04:23:14):
You must be losing your mind.

Speaker 96 (04:23:15):
On the contrary, my mind is just beginning to function now, spear,
I want you to roll over to the fish trap.
Huh you heard me, I said, roll over to the
fishing where. Now look back, d I've had all of
this I want. You can't order me around. I'll remind
you that this is a double barrel shotgun. Only one
shell has been fired, so the other barrel is still
loaded and it's pointed right at you. Though I make
myself understood. Yes, all right, then row edge the boat

(04:23:49):
over a little spear right against the stake that crow
is sitting on its back. Yes, it's back back on
the same stake it's been sitting on for three days now.
It just sits there and stares hungrily straight down into
the water or whatever. That bird is a scavenger spear.
It isn't here to catch fish like the other birds.
It's only interested in carrying, all right, So it's interested
in carrying.

Speaker 12 (04:24:07):
What's that to me? You're interested in carrying, too, spear,
but in a different way. You're crazy. I don't know
what you're saying.

Speaker 9 (04:24:12):
Prove it.

Speaker 96 (04:24:12):
Let's investigate that stake, the one the bird was perched on. No, no,
let's go back to the house. You're afraid because my
uncle's corps is at the other end of its spear.

Speaker 18 (04:24:19):
No, of course not.

Speaker 12 (04:24:20):
It's big because now I've got the gun.

Speaker 96 (04:24:24):
All right, Your uncle's down there at the bottom of
the fest trap.

Speaker 12 (04:24:26):
I killed him just as I'm gonna kill you, right.

Speaker 17 (04:24:29):
Oh, I got him just in time, mister Victor. I
heard what he said. I was there in the duck line.
I'm sure glad. I hit my rifle with me.

Speaker 12 (04:24:40):
I've told him that Corvus Coroni was the bird of death.

Speaker 95 (04:24:48):
This is the story of a man named Spear, of
a bird, a kind of carrying crow, of a student
of bird life named Victor, and.

Speaker 9 (04:24:57):
Of his uncle Arn.

Speaker 95 (04:25:00):
Story of birds and men interwoven as the threads of
life and death. From shadows and stillness, Mystery weaves a

(04:26:22):
spell of strangest fascination, charging the mind with doubts and fears.
For mystery is a strange companion, a living memory in
the Haunting Owl.

Speaker 7 (04:26:55):
October is birthday month for Weird Darkness. This year makes
ten years of doing the show. But while it's our birthday,
we want the gifts to go to those who help
people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or thoughts of suicide
or self harm. That's what our annual Overcoming the Darkness
campaign is all about. It's the only fundraiser I have
all year long. You can bring hope to those who

(04:27:16):
are lost in the darkness of depression. You can make
a donation right now at Weird Darkness dot com slash hope.
I'll close out the fundraiser at the end of October
and announce how much we raised. The more we raise,
the more people we can help to donate. Get more
information about the fundraiser and the organizations we're supporting, or
find hope for yourself or someone you know who are

(04:27:36):
fighting depression. Visit Weirddarkness dot com slash hope. Please donate
now while you're thinking about it. Weird Darkness dot com
slash hope.

Speaker 19 (04:27:45):
The mummers in the little Theater of the Air.

Speaker 99 (04:28:05):
Oh stories, weird stories and murders too. The hermit knows
of them all. Stay out your life, turn them out. Ah,
have you heard the story Buried Alive?

Speaker 100 (04:28:31):
Then listen while the hermit tells you the story.

Speaker 19 (04:28:48):
Let me out of this room?

Speaker 31 (04:28:50):
Hell?

Speaker 19 (04:28:51):
Can't you hear me calling?

Speaker 46 (04:28:54):
Where are you?

Speaker 19 (04:28:56):
Let me out this room?

Speaker 31 (04:28:57):
I say?

Speaker 19 (04:28:58):
If you want to drive me mad? Why have you
locked me in here? Bruce?

Speaker 84 (04:29:04):
Why are you come here?

Speaker 19 (04:29:05):
Let me out of this room? Lenora, Lenor I've got
to find her, and you won't let me out of
this room?

Speaker 31 (04:29:15):
Hell?

Speaker 19 (04:29:18):
It's no used?

Speaker 10 (04:29:20):
No, he used?

Speaker 19 (04:29:22):
I can't get out, no use, locked in. Windows are locked.
I can't get them open.

Speaker 31 (04:29:33):
No used.

Speaker 19 (04:29:34):
If I could get them open, it's too far to jump.
Why am I locked in?

Speaker 31 (04:29:40):
Lenore.

Speaker 19 (04:29:42):
Lenore. I hear you calling, Leanora.

Speaker 84 (04:29:55):
I hear you calling.

Speaker 19 (04:29:57):
I hear you. But they won't let me out of
this home. I'm locked in.

Speaker 4 (04:30:06):
Hell.

Speaker 19 (04:30:10):
Someone that'd be out of his room. Let me out.
Lenora is calling me. She needs me, Bruce, where are you?
Let me out of here? I've got to help Lenore.
Let me out of here. Break the door down, let
me out. Someone come and let me out.

Speaker 46 (04:30:30):
I'll close this door so that his calling won't disturbance.

Speaker 45 (04:30:45):
That's better is that your brother were here calling.

Speaker 19 (04:30:48):
Yes, Miss Dawson. Oh, you don't need to be frightened.
If he sounds insane, it's because of the great calamity,
the great.

Speaker 10 (04:30:58):
Shock that he's just had.

Speaker 45 (04:31:00):
Understand mister Judson.

Speaker 19 (04:31:01):
I hope that you do, Miss Dawson, for upon your
understanding of the case, will his recovery largely rest? Yes, sir,
you've brought your credentials with you, Yes, sir, May I
see them?

Speaker 45 (04:31:13):
They're right here in my purse. Just a minute, I'll
find them. Yes here, mister Judson.

Speaker 19 (04:31:20):
HM, Yes, this is right, Miss Marian Dawson, registered nurse
and a letter of recommendation from doctor Simmons. Yes, sir, Yes,
I think you do very nicely. You look very capable
and professional. Thank you, sir. Did doctor Simmons explain anything
about the case to.

Speaker 45 (04:31:39):
You, well, not very much, mister Judson. He only said
that your brother was suffering from.

Speaker 19 (04:31:44):
Shock, and that that's all right. I'll explain the case
to you, sir before I take you up to his room. Oh,
I'm sorry, I haven't been very thoughtful. Won't you remove
your hat and coat?

Speaker 45 (04:31:57):
Thank you?

Speaker 31 (04:31:58):
Hear it may help you.

Speaker 19 (04:32:01):
Ah, well, you look even more professional. There's something about
a white uniform that does give a person prestige.

Speaker 45 (04:32:09):
I came dressed to go on duty immediately. Doctor Symons
said that you'd want me to.

Speaker 19 (04:32:13):
You did quite right. Now sit down, won't you?

Speaker 10 (04:32:16):
Thank you?

Speaker 19 (04:32:17):
Now?

Speaker 10 (04:32:19):
Miss Dawson.

Speaker 19 (04:32:20):
It's my only blood relation living that you heard calling
for help from upstairs, my brother, whose life I value
more than mine. Yes, last night we buried his wife.

Speaker 29 (04:32:33):
Oh.

Speaker 19 (04:32:34):
He'd only been married to her a month. How tragic
death is not always tragedy, But this death happened to me,
for Lenor was not only young but beautiful. My brother
and I were traveling when we met her six weeks ago. Oh,
a young girl without family but a charming girl. Nevertheless,

(04:32:56):
Arlow fell desperately in love with her. In two weeks
they were married. We returned to our country estate here.
A week later, she was taken ill.

Speaker 73 (04:33:06):
Last night we buried her.

Speaker 45 (04:33:08):
It's awful, isn't it. No wonder your poor brother's mind
is deranged.

Speaker 19 (04:33:12):
You have not heard all the tragedy yet. She suffered
from a strange malady. Because of it, my brother was
not allowed to see her from the hour she was
taken ill. I see, I could not have my brother's
life endangered, naturally not. We allowed no one to see her.
Doctor Symons attended her. Once she died. We buried her

(04:33:33):
without ceremony, and immediately. I didn't allow even the servants
to come in contact with some strange disease which might
sweep us all to death. But you, yes, yes, I
cared for her. The hours of my life may be
counted right now, oh, as well as those.

Speaker 10 (04:33:51):
Of doctor Simmonds.

Speaker 19 (04:33:53):
But that doesn't matter. It's my brother Arnold with whom
I'm concerned. That's why I've called you in to care
for him. Yes, sir, And this is the point that
you must understand. My brother Arnold doesn't realize that Leonora
is dead and buried. That's not unusual, sir.

Speaker 45 (04:34:11):
Many people are like that about death. They won't accept
it or believe it.

Speaker 19 (04:34:15):
I've had to lock him in his room, both down
the windows to keep him from rushing out to find her.

Speaker 45 (04:34:21):
Perhaps if he'd seen her dead.

Speaker 19 (04:34:23):
Do forget she died of some strange malady that was impossible?

Speaker 45 (04:34:29):
Yes, yes, of course.

Speaker 19 (04:34:30):
The worst part of it is that he keeps thinking
he hears her calling to him, claims that he hears
her voice. Oh, that's why he wants to get out
of his room and.

Speaker 29 (04:34:39):
Go to her.

Speaker 19 (04:34:41):
That's why you'll have to watch over him carefully. Don't
allow him out of your sight. Humor him, but guard
him carefully. Remember, my brother's life and sanity may depend
upon the good care you give him.

Speaker 45 (04:34:55):
I'll do my best, mister Judge.

Speaker 19 (04:34:56):
I'm sure you will.

Speaker 10 (04:34:58):
You realize that I love my brother.

Speaker 19 (04:35:00):
You'll be well paid for your services on this assignm
this dozen. All I ask is that you carry out
my orders explicitly. Don't let him out of his room
or out of your sight. Now, I'll take you up
to him, if you'll just come along this way, Open

(04:35:26):
the door. Open the door, Bruce, open this door, and
it will be your duty to get him to quiet down,
keep him from pounding on this door. Yes, sir, I
presume that doctor Simmons suggested that you give him sedatives.

Speaker 45 (04:35:40):
I'll get him quiet, Sir.

Speaker 31 (04:35:42):
Open the door.

Speaker 19 (04:35:44):
If you'll open it this minute, I'll smash the windows.
I'll jump to the ground. Let me out.

Speaker 46 (04:35:49):
I'll unlock the door.

Speaker 19 (04:35:52):
I'm going to unlock the door now, Arnold, get away
from the door. Let me out. I've gotter go to
the doom. Now I'll step back on eh, Bruce, where
is she? She's been calling to me. Why did you
lock that door? Let me go to her. Go lie

(04:36:12):
down on your bed, on you no, never, don't you understand?
Leonora has been calling for me. She needs me.

Speaker 45 (04:36:18):
Come now, lie down, won't you lie down and rest?

Speaker 19 (04:36:21):
Sir? Who is she? This is miss Dawson on She's
come to care for you till you're well.

Speaker 84 (04:36:28):
I'm not ill.

Speaker 19 (04:36:29):
It isn't I. It's Leonora and you won't let me
go to her. Bruce, why are you doing this? Unlock
the door and let me go to her. Now it's
all right, everything's all right. Miss Dawson will care for you.
You'll get a good rest and when you wake up
you'll feel a lot better.

Speaker 45 (04:36:49):
Your brother's right.

Speaker 84 (04:36:50):
I'll leave you now.

Speaker 31 (04:36:52):
It's eight o'clock.

Speaker 19 (04:36:54):
I'll have your dinner served in here immediately. If you'll
need me or anything, I'll be down library until near
eleven o'clock.

Speaker 10 (04:37:02):
Then i'll retire.

Speaker 19 (04:37:03):
Yes, my room is the fourth one down on the right.
Call for me if you need me during the night,
I will. Mister j wait a minute, don't go, Bruce.
Tell me, well, Lois what is it that's wrong? Why
can't I see her? Why have you locked me in here?
I've tried to tell you, Nold, you won't believe me.
Perhaps Miss Dawson can explain after I leave, ring this buzzer,

(04:37:27):
if you need to get out of the room, understand,
Miss Dawson, I get away away from the door. Rold
what he's locking the door again? He's locking us in.

Speaker 45 (04:37:43):
He knows what's this? Come lie on your bed. No,
I'm going to give you something so that you can rest.

Speaker 19 (04:37:49):
What's wrong with Lenora?

Speaker 45 (04:37:51):
Lie down on your bed and I'll.

Speaker 19 (04:37:52):
Tell you Jesus and they won't let me see her here.

Speaker 45 (04:37:56):
I want you to take some of these tablets.

Speaker 19 (04:37:58):
I won't take any medicine. Get glass of I tell you,
I won't take anything that will make me sleep. But
Noora is calling to me. She needs me.

Speaker 45 (04:38:06):
Now take these please, they won't make you sleep, They'll
just calm your nerves. Take them, and I'll tell you
about minor.

Speaker 10 (04:38:15):
Have you seen her?

Speaker 9 (04:38:16):
What is it that's wrong?

Speaker 45 (04:38:17):
Take these tablets first?

Speaker 10 (04:38:19):
All right?

Speaker 19 (04:38:23):
That did Are you here in the house to take
care of her?

Speaker 9 (04:38:27):
What's wrong?

Speaker 45 (04:38:28):
Lie down now, that's fatter.

Speaker 19 (04:38:31):
You promise to tell me.

Speaker 45 (04:38:33):
Close your eyes. I'm going to turn off the light
so that you.

Speaker 19 (04:38:36):
Can rest answer me.

Speaker 45 (04:38:39):
Don't you understand?

Speaker 19 (04:38:41):
Your wife was very ill.

Speaker 45 (04:38:43):
She suffered from a disease that was contagious. Your brother
couldn't let you see her. But now she's out of
her pain. Do you see.

Speaker 19 (04:38:52):
No, she's not dead. I know she's not dead.

Speaker 45 (04:38:55):
It's hard to believe.

Speaker 19 (04:38:56):
I know she's not dead.

Speaker 29 (04:38:58):
I know that.

Speaker 19 (04:39:01):
Listen, you hear that. You hear that?

Speaker 45 (04:39:12):
No, Sarah, I hear nothing.

Speaker 31 (04:39:19):
You must hear it.

Speaker 19 (04:39:21):
It's Lenora. She's calling to me all days. She's called
to me, all last night, all the hours of the night,
she's called to me. She's calling now can't you hear her?
She's still in this house. She's not dead. She's in
this house, and she's calling to me, calling to me. Oh, oh,

(04:40:08):
you're all right.

Speaker 45 (04:40:10):
I'm right here beside your babe.

Speaker 9 (04:40:13):
What's happened?

Speaker 45 (04:40:14):
You've been asleep?

Speaker 9 (04:40:16):
Asleep?

Speaker 19 (04:40:17):
How long?

Speaker 45 (04:40:18):
It's nearly midnight. You've been sleeping since I first came
into the room.

Speaker 19 (04:40:22):
You gave me medicine, You forced me to sleep, you
needed the rest. Where's my brother?

Speaker 45 (04:40:27):
He's retired, sir. The whole house is quiet. If you'd
like me to get your something to.

Speaker 19 (04:40:32):
Eat, but I've got to get out of here.

Speaker 10 (04:40:36):
What's that?

Speaker 72 (04:40:38):
Listen?

Speaker 17 (04:40:41):
What was that?

Speaker 45 (04:40:42):
It sounded like someone at the door.

Speaker 19 (04:40:47):
It is open the door. It may be Lenora. I
don't hear her calling, but it may be her.

Speaker 45 (04:40:53):
It can't be her, but I'll see who it is.

Speaker 15 (04:40:56):
Who's there?

Speaker 19 (04:40:59):
Unlocked the door?

Speaker 45 (04:41:00):
I have to ring for your brother if I want
the door, I'm locked.

Speaker 56 (04:41:02):
I have no key.

Speaker 45 (04:41:08):
Who's there?

Speaker 19 (04:41:09):
Who's outside the door?

Speaker 10 (04:41:11):
Is it you?

Speaker 84 (04:41:11):
Leonora?

Speaker 19 (04:41:13):
Why don't you answer?

Speaker 45 (04:41:14):
I guess we must have been mistaken. There's no one.

Speaker 19 (04:41:16):
Outside the door or someone knocked at the door.

Speaker 45 (04:41:19):
I think we must have been mistaken.

Speaker 19 (04:41:23):
Listen, there is someone outside. What they're tapping on the
door again?

Speaker 45 (04:41:30):
It does sound like it. When I called, there was
no one there. Look look, yes, yes, I am.

Speaker 19 (04:41:42):
Doesn't it seem to you as if the door was
slowly opening, Yes, it is. It's like it was opening
all by itself.

Speaker 101 (04:41:49):
But the door is locked.

Speaker 4 (04:41:51):
That may be.

Speaker 19 (04:41:51):
But that door is opening all by itself, how can
it be?

Speaker 10 (04:41:56):
Knock?

Speaker 19 (04:41:58):
Knock, standing in the doorway. It's Lenora, Lenora, you're not dead.
You're here. They told me you were dead, Lina. She's
leaving again. Where you're going? Wait? Wait, she vanished, She
just vanished. But now look she's standing ahead of the stairs.

(04:42:21):
She's waiting for me to follow her. Lenora, I'm coming.
I see you.

Speaker 64 (04:42:27):
Mister help come here, come here quickly.

Speaker 84 (04:42:33):
Please.

Speaker 19 (04:42:41):
What is it, miss Darton? Well, what is it, mister Juson?

Speaker 45 (04:42:45):
He's gone down the stairs. What are you sure, sir,
that Lenora did?

Speaker 19 (04:42:51):
Of course, I'm sure. What are you talking about?

Speaker 45 (04:42:55):
I don't know, sir, But a woman dressed all in
white just stood in the doorway of your, not his room.
She moved down the hall and now he's.

Speaker 37 (04:43:03):
Going to fall.

Speaker 10 (04:43:05):
He said.

Speaker 6 (04:43:06):
It was Leonor.

Speaker 19 (04:43:07):
Hurry, hurry, stop him doing him get away. It can't
be Lena. She's dead, dead. Hurry, We've got to get
Arnold back to his room.

Speaker 99 (04:43:41):
If Leonor is dead, how can she appear in the
doorway of the room? And the hermit will tell you
before the ninety is dumb?

Speaker 45 (04:44:05):
Now the hermit again.

Speaker 100 (04:44:20):
Oh, I will follow the figure dressed tall and white
that beckons him out of the house.

Speaker 99 (04:44:27):
Based Dawson and mister Jensen will follow as to him.

Speaker 19 (04:44:44):
M wait for me, Leonora, where are you going?

Speaker 20 (04:44:51):
Wait for me, Wait for me, with or Withoor.

Speaker 19 (04:44:56):
I'm coming, I'm coming along. Hurry here he is up
ahead of us.

Speaker 102 (04:45:09):
I see him, Yes, yes, I see him too, Harold stop,
wait a minute, wait.

Speaker 101 (04:45:15):
Forest, he's running past.

Speaker 19 (04:45:17):
Why did you ever let him get out of the room.

Speaker 27 (04:45:19):
I couldn't help you.

Speaker 101 (04:45:20):
The door open. I don't know how she was standing there.

Speaker 19 (04:45:24):
And you're going out of your mind. How could a
door open by itself? And who could be standing in
the doorway?

Speaker 102 (04:45:30):
Nonsense, Rold Wait Forest, Wait, wait, I don't see him now,
where's he gone? He turned down that just now he's
liable to get out on the highway and be killed.

Speaker 19 (04:45:43):
We've got to stop it.

Speaker 11 (04:45:45):
He went with me.

Speaker 19 (04:45:48):
I see him now, Arnold, stop where you are. We're coming.
You must come back to the house. Arnold, she disappeared.
You didn't see anyone. Oh, yes, I did. I saw Leonor,
asked the nurse. She knows. Leonora stood in the doorway
of my room. She beckoned me to follow her all
the way down the road. Now she's vanished here in

(04:46:09):
the park somewhere. Don't you realize, Arnold, that Leonora is dead.
She couldn't have stood in your doorway. She couldn't have
beckoned you out of the house. She's dead. She wouldn't
speak to me. She just wait for me to follow her.
And now she's gone. We must get my brother back
to the house. Mustas Yes, I'll come, Arnold. We're going
home now.

Speaker 45 (04:46:29):
We'll take you home. Now, Arnold, you and I must
have been mistaken. We didn't see anyone.

Speaker 19 (04:46:34):
No, we were not mistaken. Look look up ahead of us, Leonora.
There she is again, great Heaven, I see you.

Speaker 13 (04:46:50):
Wait for me.

Speaker 19 (04:46:52):
I'm coming, stopping, stopping. We've got to stop him.

Speaker 24 (04:46:55):
We can never catch him this time.

Speaker 45 (04:46:57):
He's running, so fash he mustn't go that way.

Speaker 101 (04:47:00):
No, no, honest, Honord, wait for him.

Speaker 37 (04:47:05):
Wait.

Speaker 45 (04:47:07):
Look look what he's going.

Speaker 19 (04:47:10):
I see him. He can't go that way. No, Harold stopped.
You can't go there. No, we've got to stop him.

Speaker 84 (04:47:18):
He can't go there.

Speaker 19 (04:47:19):
We must stop him.

Speaker 31 (04:47:20):
Great like o me.

Speaker 19 (04:47:22):
But go on me. You can't stop me now, and
I'll not let you go in that vault. Let old
my arm Bruce. You can't stop me.

Speaker 31 (04:47:29):
Lenora went in there.

Speaker 19 (04:47:30):
I'm trying to save you for your own good, for
the sake of the sanity of your mind. Your wife
lies in her coughin in that vault. You couldn't have
seen her. She didn't beton you to come here. It's
just a trick of your mind. I'm going into this vault.
You can't go inside. She died of a contagious disease.
You may get it too, Arm me. Nothing can stop me. Now.

(04:47:54):
I'm going inside, kah.

Speaker 84 (04:48:02):
Lenore, Where are you?

Speaker 19 (04:48:05):
Leonor come back out there? You only find her lying
in there dead.

Speaker 31 (04:48:11):
Follow him.

Speaker 45 (04:48:12):
He's likely to faint when he sees her.

Speaker 84 (04:48:19):
Arnold, come out here, nor lord Lenora.

Speaker 39 (04:48:27):
Oh see she is dead. What did I tell you?

Speaker 19 (04:48:33):
Now? Come away?

Speaker 45 (04:48:34):
Look she's on the floor of the boat.

Speaker 19 (04:48:38):
Oh, come away from here. I've found her here on
the floor of the vaat. She's dead. She's dead now,
but she wasn't dead when you brought her here. No,
my brother knows that. You know that, Bruce Judson. What
do you mean? You know what I mean? You buried
her alive?

Speaker 33 (04:48:57):
Oh?

Speaker 19 (04:48:58):
You're insane? Insane? Am I? You know I found you
out because you find her body and the floor. You
think I buried her alive? Why the coffin tipped over
and that's all. You buried her alive. She got out
of the coffin, but she couldn't get out.

Speaker 31 (04:49:14):
Of the vault.

Speaker 84 (04:49:15):
Only her spirit could do that. I heard her voice
before she really died, down in here calling me. She
called to me, would you locked me in my room?

Speaker 19 (04:49:35):
And then her spirit came to me tonight, tell me
when it happened.

Speaker 101 (04:49:42):
Oh, oh, oh, I do think you did that to
your brother?

Speaker 20 (04:49:52):
That woman?

Speaker 31 (04:49:54):
What if I did? What if I did do it?

Speaker 19 (04:50:00):
He's dead now, isn't she?

Speaker 9 (04:50:02):
Forever?

Speaker 84 (04:50:03):
She fell in love with Arnold, not me.

Speaker 19 (04:50:07):
Now she's dead forever. Sure, I planned it, parted it.
It worked out. The medicine I gave her made her sleep,
the sleep of.

Speaker 84 (04:50:17):
Death, and we buried her lives. We buried her.

Speaker 100 (04:50:24):
Live, buried her life, and the brotherhood planned such a

(04:51:05):
heinous crime will live in a world of mad darkness
from now on.

Speaker 103 (04:51:12):
The compensation for his crime death on your n turn
them on. I'll be back, Pleasant Dream.

Speaker 78 (04:51:45):
All characters, places, and occurrences mentioned in the Hermit's Cave
are fictitious and similarity to a person's places or occurrences
that's purely accidental.

Speaker 7 (04:52:06):
Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, be
sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If
you like the show, please share it with someone you
know who loves old time radio or the paranormal or
strained stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do.
You can email me and follow me on social media
through the Weird Darkness website. Weirddarkness dot Com is also

(04:52:27):
where you can listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, get
the email newsletter, visit the store for creepy and cool
Weird Darkness merchandise. Plus, it's where you can find the
Hope in the Darkness page. If you or someone you
know is struggling with depression, addiction, or thoughts of harming
yourself or others. You can find all of that and
more at weird Darkness dot com. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks

(04:52:49):
for joining me for tonight's retro Radio, Old Time Radio
in the Dark.

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