November 6, 2024 • 43 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:18):
Come in.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome, I'm g marshall.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome this time to the grave, not what lies beyond it,
but what used to lie in it, safe in the
peace of death, unless the resurrectionists were abroad.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Do you know what a resurrectionist is or was? Well?
No matter.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
By the time this tale is told, you will not
by me, but by the man who did tell it
some hundred years ago. Let me introduce you to Cameron
Fergus a glass of rum. In Heaven's name, Landlord.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
It's called nothing hit us in a man to the grave,
and the grave's no place to be, no place to
be at all. Begin or end at all with the
fact that I am a drunkard and alcoholic. I have
been soilver since I can remember thirty years or more.
I do not like remembering. That's why I drink. There
(01:22):
is no excuse for my existence. I am worth nothing
to anybody except except I am afraid to die, afraid
to be laid fresh in the grave, because I fear
my body will not lie there in peace, no more
than my soul. So I try only to stay alive
and forget. There is no hope for me anywhere in
(01:45):
this world or in the next.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Our mystery drama The Body Snatchers was adapted from the
Robert Louis Stephenson classic especially for the mystery theater by
Ian Martin and stars Howard da Silva. The scene is
(02:21):
a little pub in Debenham, England. Where is Debenham, It
doesn't really matter, an isolated little town, not far from
London or the stream of life in general.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
There are a couple of public houses.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
There, and the George is as good or as bad
as the others. It just happens to be where Fergus
drinks his five glasses of rum every night, a strange,
bizarre figure that the town long ago accepted or if
you will, disregarded. But tonight is not an ordinary night
(02:56):
in Debenham. As Ansemary, another Habituay, is giving Fergus the
latest news. The Squire himself, on his way to the
new railway station, struck down as by the finger of God,
as his carriage past the old Georgia. They got him
upstairs to the best room. When the telegraphed after London
(03:17):
with a great men's doctor. Oh this is our night
to remember.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
As it must to all men. I didn't mean that, Harry,
god speed his doctor. On the way, and to keep
him out of the cold earth.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Freeze in a bad way.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
The landlord thought, maybe you never look at him me?
Why me, Will? Wouldn't be the first.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Time you've shown your skill.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I remember the time old maud Brinkle disligated a ralbow.
Now if he prizes boy Richard broke his leg, you
fixed him up with.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
You and I she did a simple fraction and even
simple reduction. Any farmer could have taken care of either Will.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Not like you did, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wasn't you said that to be a doctor once, or
maybe even to be one. Why don't you learn to
mind your own business? Harry?
Speaker 5 (04:03):
With no offense?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Soul cham most of them. Yes, we've been drinking together,
and did I ever rode back anything from you?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Some of us are by nature open, others keep ourselves
to ourselves. Not that anybody could ever say I had
anything to hide. I sat there looking down to the
bottom of my glass, squirreling that last memory, drowning drink
of rum. I'm thinking to myself the size of the
lie I had just said. Oh, had had a kind
(04:34):
of truth. Nobody in Devonham could say I had anything
to hide. But I knew what black sins I had
to hide from the world, and with enough liquor even
sometimes for myself.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, listen to that, Fergus, when you're eleven's is and
our innkeeper isn't there?
Speaker 5 (04:58):
That chases out of closing time?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Too busy upstairs poking his big nose into the great
doctor at work, trying to bring the old squire back
to life. Not much chance of that, I say, just
sneaks up and how to look, did you?
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Well?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I tried, but no luck.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Door shut fast.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
But I saw the squire on the way in before
you got here. His face was all brown up at
a balloon and red is one of them lobsters. How
was his breathing? Well? When they brought him? And he
wasn't breathing there at all? And then suddenly he was
with a sort of rattle in his chest. After that,
(05:37):
maybe a minute or so he stalked again. Change Stokes,
what's that you say?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Classic symptoms apoplexy, probably irreversible. The breathing pattern formalized as
a syndrome by doctor John Chane, a countryman of mine,
and doctor William Stokes, an Irishman by birth. A sure
fore honor of cardiac failure.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Hey, all them big words you lost me.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Did I?
Speaker 3 (06:01):
No matter, your prognosis is probably as accurate as his
physicians will be, if indeed the.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Squire is not a corpse.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Already he gloom me when you are? I wonder now
where they'd bury him, Oh, the squire, Oh, we go
right in the family crypt, in a crypt above ground,
that he should be safe enough. I wonder that I
didn't see the doctor arrive. Did he come by train?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Lord? No, you missed it all right? WHI right off
the train into all George's cab.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Hmmm, I wonder how I missed the arrival? What did
this great medical look like?
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Oh? He was soon tall, whitehead, but he moved as
brisk as a coat, dressed in the finest broadcloth and
white linen, great gold watch, and stands some spectacles of
the same bridge as metal.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And I was there before the grace of God goes?
And what was the name of this paragon?
Speaker 5 (06:58):
Is?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
What this man of undotted success? McFarlane say that again?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
What the name McFarlane?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
No other name? Doctor Wolf McFarlin. What's the matter with you, Fergus?
You've broken the glass, wasted the rum? Oh and you've
cut yourself. Never mind that Wolf McFarlane, you sure of that?
What it? How we introduced himself? Why do you know him?
(07:28):
Know him?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
There's nobody knows him better than me. More's the pity,
more's the pity and the shame. So the past I
had shut up with some success.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And a great deal more rung came flooding back.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Pictures flashed across my mind in a kaleidoscope stop action,
photographs of disembodied arms and heads. The grizzly joke speddied
about over the poor, defenseless corpses that passed beneath our
hands and were strip barren by our razor sharp knives.
But it all might have been a bright dedication and
a proud way of life, except for Wolf McFarlane and
(08:10):
his kind. For every one of us, the end was
the triumph, but the means Heaven helped the few of
us who has to face him. And then suddenly there
were footsteps on the stairs, coming down closer and closer
to me, And I was about to face the man
who attempted me to sell my future, the man who
(08:32):
could live with his vileness because he had no conscience
and had left me to eke out my life, dirty
and despairing, afraid to do the only thing I really
wanted to to die.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
You're as white as his shape. Fer this don't take on.
So there might be two, mainly the same name. Sh
my sincerecundolences. But this squire was virtually a dead man
from the moment the stroke hit in. I then could
have saved him. That's him, that's his voice. Forgive me
for my abrupt leave taking. But my coach is waiting,
(09:04):
and I cannot miss the train. Lady goes for the door.
If you want to make sure you do know, Amy,
better move fast. I must see him face to face. McFarland. Yes, Toddy, Hi,
Toddy McFarland. I'm afraid, sir, you have the better of me.
(09:25):
I don't believe we are acquainted. Oh we are acquainted,
all right, Look close. I want you to recognize I've
told you, good Lord Cameron, Cameron Fergus.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yes, did you think I was dead too? That we
are all so easy? Shot of old acquaintance.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Hush man, For the love of God, let the dead
past bury itself, not ours. Nothing stayed very decently then,
did it? Well? Oh, now come, Cameron, we are both
a little sh shaken at this chance, and cutter. I
hardly knew you, I confess it first, but I am overjoyed,
(10:08):
overjoyed to have this opportunity. Unfortunately, I must not fail
the change. So if you'll forgive me, forgive you, well,
I meant for running. But here we'll let me see well, yes,
of course, yes, yes, sir. You shall give me your address,
and you can count on early news from me for
(10:29):
away your gold pen and your false friendship. But I
I want to do something for you, Fergus. I can
see forgive me that you are somewhat out at elbows.
We must take care of that money, well, money from you.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The money I had last from you is lying where
I cast it in the rain and mud.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What is the matter with you, Fergus? Now? What is
it you want? I wish I knew?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Revenge for Genie and the others, and accounting for the
wasted rum so derelict you made me. I thought long
ago the hand of God, like the squire upstairs.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Must have struck you down. Perhaps I was appointed for that.
F cameon. I beg of you. You've been drinking and
you are not in your right mind. Now, don't do
any it? What is that you have in your hand?
Don't you remember genies Genie hop pain, the one you
(11:31):
gave her?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Would it not be poetic in God's justice to drive
it into your throat, upslanting through the mouth till it
lodged in the brain, or between the fifth and sixth ribs,
driven straight into your black heart?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Help have you got on your mind?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Hel you?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Fergus? Take help me? Don't you if you value your life,
stay back. Don't don't don't don't don't you. You can't
kill me, Fercus, You're right. I can't. I should, but
I can't get out of my sight.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Catch your train goes.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
We want to take that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Don lo the fave, Fergus, What got into you?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Put that?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Long had been away? That's a dangerous instrument, more like
one of the Italian stilettos. It was genius, Yeah, yeah,
sure it was some pretty sparklers, all right, but of
course a pretty penny too. But let's put it away
and sit down and never a nice little snort for
(12:37):
the road.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Eh, Yes, drink, get me drunk, wipe it out the past,
the past, let me sleep, and oh if only I
could never wake again?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yes, hey, rights, ray, No tell me, yeah, just what
the doctor ordered. That's a funny one, all right, with
all the doctors around this. But like the gentleman who
just lived, don't call him gentlemen, oh.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Will I mean you?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
When a man's become a doctor.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
No matter what he thinks, he's become the devil is
what he began. A resurrectionist he began, and in his
heart that's the way he'll die.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
A resurrectionist.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's a profession that first in the early nineteenth century,
profession did I say it was rather a crime.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The more familiar names.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Are ghoul Grave, robber, body snatcher, the conscienceless Knight, people
who provided cadavers for the medical schools, the cold blooded
legion of the Damned, who, if a corpse was not
to be found, provided a fresh one from the living.
I'll returned shortly with that too. In one of the
(14:07):
greatest speeches in the English speaking theater, Hamlet, the tortured
Prince of Denmark wrestled with the problem to.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Be or not to be, and came to the conclusion.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That conscience doth make cowards.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Of us all.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Cameron Fergus, so far less innocent than the tragic Dane
as a young man, found himself caught in the same wedge.
But when he made his decision, he found not death
but a life of remorse and dishonor. I was the
only child of two elderly parents. By my early.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Twenties, they were both gone, leaving me a small but
comfortable income. Even in those days, I already considered myself
a man about town, but my vices were minor. I
had a craving for something more fulfilling in life. Both
those legs were satisfied when I fell under the.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Spell of Wolf McFarlane.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
We met first at the house of Jeanie McRoberts, a
young woman who epitomized everything pure and sweet to me
and whom I secretly hope to marry one day. Oh Jeanie,
this music's too slow.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
It's romant.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Well maybe that's what I meant. Let's sneak out for
a walk in the guid Oh no.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
It's not the music that's too.
Speaker 6 (15:28):
Slow for you, Cameron.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Oh I suppose it was.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
I wouldn't trust you out there all alone.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
You walked out with him? Who the tall one there
dancing with Maggie dyak Wolf.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
McFarlane, Well, it's the first time he's our guest, and
besides it was still twilight.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Then he's a dandel all right, and he has all
of you girls making eyes at him.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Where's he from?
Speaker 5 (15:50):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Well, Glasgow.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
I think he's here in his second or third year
as a medical student, working under doctor Knight.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
I suppose he's turned your.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Head too, he did when we danced.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
What could be more exciting than being a doctor anyway?
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Someone who can make you well if you're ill.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
No, maybe I'd better consider taking up the profession myself
so I won't lose you.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So, Cameron, you've a taste for being a doctor. Eh,
I can think of no higher calling. Well, that's flattering.
Have you the talent for it? I stood high in
my class the universe. Oh you've a pain, all right,
I've no doubt at least, so mister McRoberts informed me.
Did she now? But when I spoke of being a
doctor in talents, I meant other things such as have
(16:42):
you a strong stomach? Can you stand the sight of blood?
I wouldn't turn from it?
Speaker 5 (16:48):
Have you the.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Nerves of steel? I don't exactly know what you mean.
Could you take a scalpel and split a man? Or
a woman from breastbone to pubis with a steady hand.
Could you open the stomach? I can cut out a
diseased organ. Could you amputate a leg or an arm?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
I'm not exactly sure it was being a surgeon I
had in mind.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Oh, never mind, the live body's led. It's the dead
ones you have to cut through first. There's no other
way to learn anatomy firsthand, and not all of them
are fresh from the grave. What does that mean? You'll
find out for yourself? How are your scruples? I think
you're just having fun with me. I'm sorry, I asked.
(17:31):
I don't need you to further my ambition. There are
other ways. Oh nay, nay, nay, Oh lad, don't be
so hot tempered.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Ha ha ha.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I was pulling your leg a little, but less than
you might think. And you do need me more than
you think. Why my recommendation to the doctor in charge
of the medical school, as it happens, would open the
doors for you like that? Would you give it to me?
I just might in exchange for something. What the rest
(18:04):
of your waltz is? With missus Genie. She's the only
girl here with any grace or style like a feather
in the wind and I love to dance.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Isn't a bargain, it's the one I can't control.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
It's Genie who says who she'll dance with. But if
you ask her and tell her why, I'll tell.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Her on one condition. And what is that that she
saves the last one for me?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well, I can hardly blame you. And if we are
to be friend and colleagues, why should I be greedy? Eh,
shake hands on the bargain, Shake to a long and
close future together. Fergus, we can use a man like you.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
I take that as a compliment. Thank you, sir, Thank
you that I should ever have seen the day. I
thank the man I have spent my life cursing and
reviling what an innocent I was. I kept my part
of our bargain in my naive, clear and excitement, not
noticing that Genie's reluctance to change her dance card.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Was neither long nor strong. My head was spinning too
much with other future dreams that I was to become
a gunner for Wolf. MacFarlane kept his part of the
bargain too, So this.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Is the young man you've spoken so highly.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Of, only because he deserves the recommendation, not the Kirk.
He's a man we can use in more ways than
one sprended fended. We're always in need of recruits, mister Fergus.
Wolf here tells me you were a young man with
a fine taste for a night of rumping and wake
up bright eyed and clear headed of the morning with
(19:46):
no hangover, either physical or mental. Well, that makes us
three of a kind, and that's what it takes to
make a mark in our professional lad stamera staying power.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
We have predum many things.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
That would make an ordinary mortal's black and cold.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
If you'll try me, sir, I don't think you'll find
me wanting.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Well spoken Catherin Fergus, I like you what you say, Wolf,
Shall we make him one of us? My vote is
I then show his mind. I leave it up to
you to initiate him into the mysteries and secrets of his.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
New professional.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But softly, slowly, mind you, we can't scare him off
till he is well hooked.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Eh.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
We must show the best side before he sees the worst.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
You're very kind, doctor Kirk, but I know you're only
testing my resolve. How could so noble a profession have
a bad side.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well, doctor Kirk meant only I'm sure that it has
a difficult sign.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
We're to be sure.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
To be sure, no rise worth winning can easily come
by work hard and let Wolf here help you over
the rough box. For my money, you couldn't have a
finer guide.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
A finer guide, that much was true, a guide to
hell and damnation.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
But I never have realized it. Then Wolf was with
my friend, mentor and convivial partner.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I found that I was a natural doctor. Nay more
than that, perhaps a surgeon. But in that field of
medicine lay all the seeds of disaster. For to study anatomy,
one needs a body, and you cannot practice on a
live one. I was not so innocent that I didn't
know the answer to that. But it was not till
the end of my first year, when I moved in
(21:52):
with Wolf, that I had to face it. Ugh, well, Wolf, Wolf,
wake up?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
MM what.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Name the dog? What out is it? It wants ten
to three? And you wake me? Damn it? Fergus someone
at the door. Of course, the reason I bid you
move in tonight. I get dressed while I answer that.
But what is don't don't ask questions? Do as I.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Say, Avna.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I was after and I'm sorry for the delay. Just
give me a moment of two. Eh, we are real loud.
Tonight we'll need help or don't worry. We have it
meet that said the usual place. Eh huh, check me
my trousers there, Cameron, what is it? Do I have
to spell it out? The resurrectionists and tonight they have
(22:46):
a cart full. Tonight is your baptism. You're gonna let
me down well enough in hindsight.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
To know what I should have answered to that, But
I was young and I thought he was my friend,
and so half dressed, half sober, half anesthetized, we went
to the building that housed the dissecting lab and began
the nights, or I should say the early morning's word right.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Put it there, said the last not tonight. One more
fine before you bring it up, let me introduce you
to doctor Cameron Fergus. Well, how do you do? The
gentleman prefers to leave his name out of these transactions.
Just call him Digger.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It's me by nature and profession.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
When you bring the last one up, Dr Fergus will
pay you the usual tariff. Now, Fergus, I'm going to
have to leave you in charge. Why don't you call
me doctor when I'm not even You've got a lot
to learn. We need the title to keep these fellows
in hand. What do you mean. I'll explain it to
you soon. Now. First off, here is a key. It
unlocks the safe. There. Now there's money, cash, and then
(24:01):
I'll tell you just how much to disperse, but be
sure the safe is securely locked before these ruffians return.
Now I have to get to doctor Kirk right away
and tell him what luck we've had tonight. He'll want
to make arrangements for dissecting and anatomy classes tomorrow. It
seems strange Potter's field death rate was so high this
one night. In this part of our business, it is
(24:21):
well to question as little as possible.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I followed the easy path, to do as I was
told to suspend thinking, pay off the grave robbers, and
twine myself irrevocably in a practice which, no matter how
we as doctors might believe its morality in those days,
could involve death by hanging. But if I thought of
it much after the body snatches were coming, gone and paid,
(24:48):
it was all forgotten.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
When doctor Kirk joined us a magnificent day in our lives. Gentlemen,
I congratulate you both for your part in this, while
at the same time I need not enjoin you to
the secrecy. We must maintain my congratulations for tonight tunes.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Carry on the good work, gentlemen. I bid you good morning.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
High words, doctor Kirk, and we are left with all
the dirty work. What do you mean the time has
rarely come here to stop asking the very answerable question.
In the name of medicine and research. We gather bodies, right,
but that is no crime.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Using already dead flesh, which can render up to our
secrets of how to handle living flesh, is not a
valid crime.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
On that basis, you have an argument if the flesh
is already murribund. But body snatching is a rewarding crime.
And if there is no dead body to snatch with
the kind of a man who flies this trade, do
you think he would hesitate to wait for the flesh
to die if his source of supply ran low? Oh?
(26:00):
Good lord, what do you say? Oh, don't pretend innocence.
If your conscious brain will not admit the truth, your
subconscious one knows it. And you signed for the bodies
tonight Willy, Nilly, you are with us from here on in, with.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Us from here on in. For the first time I
realized I was trapped. For a moment, I even thought
my friends had made use of me. But then I
thrust that thought aside. They were pioneers, like myself, taking
the only means to great ends. And if indeed it
were true that an occasional body had not met a
(26:41):
natural death, why by all reason it could only be
some of who was a criminal.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Who had sought it himself. So I reason, And.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
When another drink of fiery scotch to soothe my adult
brains soothed my burning conscience, this would be the end
of all connection the resurrection, than I swore, not knowing how.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Devastatingly empty the oath I took was destined to be.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Poor Cameron Fergus, lulled into.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The crime of accessory after the fact, controlled by men
wiser in the ways of vice than he, who would
soon involve him as accessory before the fact, and even
worse our return shortly with Act three. Most doctors of
(27:45):
those days were not about to be troubled by the
material they dissected. Only the few who trafficked in procuring
the illegal material were involved in matters of conscience, and
most of them, sad to say, found rich enough rewards
to steal what small worm of morality might squirm within
their hearts. The resurrectionists were well paid, and the men
(28:10):
who bought the dreadful merchandise each made their own defenses.
But I lean on you and Wolf Cameron boy, nor
my right and left arms. A constant supply of cadvers
is the prime necessity of the school I know. But
where they come from, is my boy, That's no question
for us. They bring the body, we pay the price
(28:32):
squid procos, they say in the Latin take. But sir,
they us.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
Have no more.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Butts Fergus, there are no questions for Conscio's sake. But
that's exactly the problem, Sir.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
I watched these ruffians come in before the dawn, in
the dead of knights, and I cannot help but be
struck by the hang dog looks, their eyes averted.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I want to have no part of it. Ye, you
expect to stay here and achieve your degree.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
I take you you must be part of it.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
I'm sorry to be so blunt, Fergus, but that's the
way it is.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
I have no further time to talk to you, O Wolfe,
help me.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
We are condoning, nay even promulgating, murder. Fergus, you think
too much. Accept your duty and concentrate on learning to
be a doctor, not a policeman. And what is my duty?
Take what is brought, pay the price, and avirt your
eyes from the evidence of any crime. What decisions I
(29:40):
might have made in my first revulsion, I'll.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Never know, for at that time Genie came back, and
the renewal of our acquaintance put everything else out of
my head. She was fascinated about my future as the doctor,
the future of all of us.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I'd rather have you tell me about Paris than Rome.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
That's all for the future.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
What I want to know about is the present. How
soon will you be a doctor?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
I'm afraid that takes a little time.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
And doctor McFarland, how is he.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Well, though he's nearer it than me, doctor is still
a curiously titled.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
I wish you'd tell me all about your life, lives
and what they're like.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
It's not a subject for a girl.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
Well, wolf McFarland didn't mind talking about it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Well, that's his business. If you'd prefer him.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
He a silly boy, and don't be jealous. I'm only
interested because he's become your friend, the.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
More fool eye that I thought he was.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
He'd already been a beginning, but now he was to
be the cause of my complete downfall. It happened so casually,
one afternoon, after work in the lab, I dropped into
a neighborhood tavern to meet Wolf, sitting with a small
pale man, dark eyes very close together, seemingly refined at
the start, but to reveal himself later his coarse, vulgar
(31:01):
am vicious.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
The tales I could tell you about our old friend
Toddy here, Toddy, sure, Toddy mcfallen. What has he kept
his nickname secret from.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
All of you?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It seems so? Why Toddy? Because every time we pulled
off a rough one, we'd drink a Toddy to our trickiness.
Speaker 5 (31:22):
Hey, Toddy, I wish.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
You wouldn't call me that. Drake up and enjoy the
good living it brings all of us.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
For God's sake.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Swatch a monk? Now? Will you listen to our preacher?
Pay no attention to him, Cameron that you give a name. Yes,
but I may be a pretty bad fellow myself. But
Toddy here, Toddy mcfallen could put us all the shame.
Look have a look at him. It looks could kill.
(31:52):
Toddy hates me because I know too much about him.
I told you, don't call me that confounded.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
I'll call you as I please? And what can you
do to keep my mouth shut?
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Toddy?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Just look at it, cabinet, Fergus, did you ever see
the lads play knife?
Speaker 4 (32:09):
He'd like to do that all over my body.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
We medicals have a better way than that.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we dissect him.
Why I made that stupid, ugly joke, I'll never know.
I longed to snatch the words back the moment they
were said. What to god I could have? I was
to regret them the rest of my life. I should
(32:37):
have admitted before this, but I was well paid for
my work of receiving nocturnal corpses.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
No questions asked.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
It was three nights after I had met Gray, and
I was unduty at the empty dissecting rooms, when.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Come on, ferguson, damn it, man, which have me caught
right handed?
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Wolf?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
What are you doing here at this hour? Ask me?
A ques questions I have some merchandise, and the gig
help me in with it.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It was a small enough figure wrapped in a winding sheet,
and it was no job for the two of us
to bring him in.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And stretch him on the table.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
But for some reason, Wolf McFadden was breathing as heavy
as if we had lifted a horse.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
All right, all right, sealed and delivered. Let's have it signed. Well,
get to the safe. I want you to pay me
and give me the receipt. Since when did you turn resurrectionists?
We're short of bodies, are we? Not? Nothing for the
class to start on tomorrow? Come on, come on, let's
get the transaction over with. Patience man, with the rest
(33:39):
of the night, and your friend is in no hurry anymore.
Sign the paper and give it to me. But don't
you want the money for a paper? All right? My
signature for posterity and for me. This is all I need,
and the money my present to you, old champ. The
finders see too, you've been working too hard, as it is,
a man ought to have some reward. Why don't you
(34:01):
take my rig and slip on home. I'll cover for
you for the rest of the night. It's late enough
for both of us to leave. Oh, I think I'll stay,
pray to sect the derelict there, ready to pass around
to our eager students when they arrive. And Neil's working
on the lower extremities, Sharples is screaming for a liver.
What's the matter with you? You seem unnerved? Who don't
(34:21):
take that? You know I don't very well? You had
to know, now, you know why I had to have
your signature of acceptance. It's great. The man, a man
who could have ruined all of us. We're in this boat,
sink a swim. Would you want your neck on the gallows?
(34:46):
Like Burke? This man is dead and it's valuable to
the advancement of medicine. Accept the fact of his death.
Never question the howl. You're one of us, still young
Fergus forever.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
So I was already trapped. I began a long lifetime
of drinking in earnest. I was neither surprised but that
much affected.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
When Genie turned from me.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Even the fact that I heard by the grapevine, certainly
not from his lips, that Wolfe was squiring her about
failed to rouse me.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I felt myself damned forever. I wasn't good enough for her.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
But youth is resilient, and once I had digested my involvement,
I learned to live with it, even thought to go
back to Genie again. As it happened, I chose accidentally
the day that Wolf.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Was to receive his sheepskin as a doctor.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
I never realized what real love was until I met Wolf.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Poppy love, real love. Would you like me to tell
you about this man you worship? So what he's really liked? Don't?
Speaker 4 (35:52):
He's so silly and jealous.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I'm not thinking of myself, Genie, it's you. I want
to protect you from.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Quite old enough to handle my own affair. Well, I
doubt that you couldn't understand a man like Wolf.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Your hands off me, damn it.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
If I had to shake some sense into that lovely head,
I'll do it with my hands.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
If I can't with words, your mind, I'm trying to
save her from you. Get your hands off, your little
fool me go you insist, Remember you asked for it.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
You didn't get him.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Wolf, I imagine I did. You'll have a sad jawn tomorrow.
Own His song is my head? But what else could
I do?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Nothing else? I don't ever want to see Fergus anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
I wasn't unconscious.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
I could hear all of this, and I thought at
that moment that life could scarcely deal with me more
harshly fool that I was, were the worst yet to come?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Special delivery tonight, Fergus, me buying five Dow's the light
and we trail.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Them in and come ahead, stack them where you will.
I wouldn't care if Queen Victoria was one of them.
I've had my fill of this job.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Nobody likes it much, but it's a living. As we
say in the trade, might as well get something from
the dead.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I went about my business mechanically, mind drugged by liquor,
body reacting out of sheer habit, and then a horror
of horrors looked up at me from the dissecting table.
Her blue eyes opened, staring with a startled horror as
(37:47):
she could come to us, Genie Jeanie mc roberts, a
candidate for the cold buttered dissection, candidate for jokes and
the discard by the Morrow's crew of medical students.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Geny, I'm just as horrified as you, Fergus. She died
no natural death.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
There were marks of violence on her possible strangling, but why,
I can't tell you why or guess. At least she
was pregnant, she was carrying a child. How do you
know doctor Kirk was with us first thing in the morning.
Everyone attends the sections. Genie was with child. Do you
suppose she killed herself?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
You know she didn't. Genie was murdered. I'm not going
to let her die unrevenged. You're not suggesting I had
anything to do with it, exactly. I'd reconsider that statement
if I were you, if anyone did kill her, and
mind you, I'm not saying they did, you would be
the logical suspect she did.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
Spare you.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yes, but let me remind you about the bodies that
you've received for the section and signed for, many of
which you must have known died not natural deaths. Hey,
for example, if you want to place any necks in
the noose, go ahead, but give first a care to
your own. Lad I warned you when you began this
(39:10):
business you should be without a conscience. He knew me
too well, Harry. Conscience I had, but no courage. You
mean that distinguished doctor will just lift murdered the girl?
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Why not an obscure Scottish girl. He can never have
married since his ambitions reached so high, Will oh.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Tell you something? Men to men, I'm surprised you didn't
kid him right out of end if your story be true. Oh,
the story is true, right enough. And the proof of
it all is.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
That I didn't he finish her drink coature, say, oh,
strong enough, false courage. Maybe I never had the real
thing else note of all of this would have happened.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
When at least you had some conscience, which finally has
caught up with me.
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Here, what have you done?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Genie's happen? The weapon of remote good? Almighty Fergus, you
drove the hatpin straight into your heart.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Here, let me help by all means. Pull without Harry, Oh,
don't hesitate, pull without good.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Hell, grit your teeth now.
Speaker 5 (40:41):
There, well, they'll be better.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Don't you believe it? Only thing might have saved me
was to leave it there now, I'm sure to die.
One thing at least I did right in my life.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Just that, do me once? What's that?
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I've enough money? See me buried above ground in a strong,
tight crypt. Don't let me be had at the last
by the body snatchers. Wherever I go let me go
home and accept my judgment.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Whatever it is. Oh, a curious and chilling story with
no moral that I or any man can quite offer.
The raw material for the study of medicine that today
(41:46):
has prolonged life by almost twice as much as could
be expected in the last century is no longer needed
so much, Thank Heaven, the ghoul, the body snatcher, and
the resurrectionist man have passed from our life or deaths,
since that was their concern. I'll be back shortly. This
(42:06):
is E. G. Marshall inviting you to return to our
mystery theater for another adventure in the macabre.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Until next time, pleasant dreams.
Come in.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome, I'm g marshall.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome this time to the grave, not what lies beyond it,
but what used to lie in it, safe in the
peace of death, unless the resurrectionists were abroad.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Do you know what a resurrectionist is or was? Well?
No matter.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
By the time this tale is told, you will not
by me, but by the man who did tell it
some hundred years ago. Let me introduce you to Cameron
Fergus a glass of rum. In Heaven's name, Landlord.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
It's called nothing hit us in a man to the grave,
and the grave's no place to be, no place to
be at all. Begin or end at all with the
fact that I am a drunkard and alcoholic. I have
been soilver since I can remember thirty years or more.
I do not like remembering. That's why I drink. There
(01:22):
is no excuse for my existence. I am worth nothing
to anybody except except I am afraid to die, afraid
to be laid fresh in the grave, because I fear
my body will not lie there in peace, no more
than my soul. So I try only to stay alive
and forget. There is no hope for me anywhere in
(01:45):
this world or in the next.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Our mystery drama The Body Snatchers was adapted from the
Robert Louis Stephenson classic especially for the mystery theater by
Ian Martin and stars Howard da Silva. The scene is
(02:21):
a little pub in Debenham, England. Where is Debenham, It
doesn't really matter, an isolated little town, not far from
London or the stream of life in general.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
There are a couple of public houses.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
There, and the George is as good or as bad
as the others. It just happens to be where Fergus
drinks his five glasses of rum every night, a strange,
bizarre figure that the town long ago accepted or if
you will, disregarded. But tonight is not an ordinary night
(02:56):
in Debenham. As Ansemary, another Habituay, is giving Fergus the
latest news. The Squire himself, on his way to the
new railway station, struck down as by the finger of God,
as his carriage past the old Georgia. They got him
upstairs to the best room. When the telegraphed after London
(03:17):
with a great men's doctor. Oh this is our night
to remember.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
As it must to all men. I didn't mean that, Harry,
god speed his doctor. On the way, and to keep
him out of the cold earth.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Freeze in a bad way.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
The landlord thought, maybe you never look at him me?
Why me, Will? Wouldn't be the first.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Time you've shown your skill.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I remember the time old maud Brinkle disligated a ralbow.
Now if he prizes boy Richard broke his leg, you
fixed him up with.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
You and I she did a simple fraction and even
simple reduction. Any farmer could have taken care of either Will.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Not like you did, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wasn't you said that to be a doctor once, or
maybe even to be one. Why don't you learn to
mind your own business? Harry?
Speaker 5 (04:03):
With no offense?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Soul cham most of them. Yes, we've been drinking together,
and did I ever rode back anything from you?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Some of us are by nature open, others keep ourselves
to ourselves. Not that anybody could ever say I had
anything to hide. I sat there looking down to the
bottom of my glass, squirreling that last memory, drowning drink
of rum. I'm thinking to myself the size of the
lie I had just said. Oh, had had a kind
(04:34):
of truth. Nobody in Devonham could say I had anything
to hide. But I knew what black sins I had
to hide from the world, and with enough liquor even
sometimes for myself.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, listen to that, Fergus, when you're eleven's is and
our innkeeper isn't there?
Speaker 5 (04:58):
That chases out of closing time?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Too busy upstairs poking his big nose into the great
doctor at work, trying to bring the old squire back
to life. Not much chance of that, I say, just
sneaks up and how to look, did you?
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Well?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I tried, but no luck.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Door shut fast.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
But I saw the squire on the way in before
you got here. His face was all brown up at
a balloon and red is one of them lobsters. How
was his breathing? Well? When they brought him? And he
wasn't breathing there at all? And then suddenly he was
with a sort of rattle in his chest. After that,
(05:37):
maybe a minute or so he stalked again. Change Stokes,
what's that you say?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Classic symptoms apoplexy, probably irreversible. The breathing pattern formalized as
a syndrome by doctor John Chane, a countryman of mine,
and doctor William Stokes, an Irishman by birth. A sure
fore honor of cardiac failure.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Hey, all them big words you lost me.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Did I?
Speaker 3 (06:01):
No matter, your prognosis is probably as accurate as his
physicians will be, if indeed the.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Squire is not a corpse.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Already he gloom me when you are? I wonder now
where they'd bury him, Oh, the squire, Oh, we go
right in the family crypt, in a crypt above ground,
that he should be safe enough. I wonder that I
didn't see the doctor arrive. Did he come by train?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Lord? No, you missed it all right? WHI right off
the train into all George's cab.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Hmmm, I wonder how I missed the arrival? What did
this great medical look like?
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Oh? He was soon tall, whitehead, but he moved as
brisk as a coat, dressed in the finest broadcloth and
white linen, great gold watch, and stands some spectacles of
the same bridge as metal.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And I was there before the grace of God goes?
And what was the name of this paragon?
Speaker 5 (06:58):
Is?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
What this man of undotted success? McFarlane say that again?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
What the name McFarlane?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
No other name? Doctor Wolf McFarlin. What's the matter with you, Fergus?
You've broken the glass, wasted the rum? Oh and you've
cut yourself. Never mind that Wolf McFarlane, you sure of that?
What it? How we introduced himself? Why do you know him?
(07:28):
Know him?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
There's nobody knows him better than me. More's the pity,
more's the pity and the shame. So the past I
had shut up with some success.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And a great deal more rung came flooding back.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Pictures flashed across my mind in a kaleidoscope stop action,
photographs of disembodied arms and heads. The grizzly joke speddied
about over the poor, defenseless corpses that passed beneath our
hands and were strip barren by our razor sharp knives.
But it all might have been a bright dedication and
a proud way of life, except for Wolf McFarlane and
(08:10):
his kind. For every one of us, the end was
the triumph, but the means Heaven helped the few of
us who has to face him. And then suddenly there
were footsteps on the stairs, coming down closer and closer
to me, And I was about to face the man
who attempted me to sell my future, the man who
(08:32):
could live with his vileness because he had no conscience
and had left me to eke out my life, dirty
and despairing, afraid to do the only thing I really
wanted to to die.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
You're as white as his shape. Fer this don't take on.
So there might be two, mainly the same name. Sh
my sincerecundolences. But this squire was virtually a dead man
from the moment the stroke hit in. I then could
have saved him. That's him, that's his voice. Forgive me
for my abrupt leave taking. But my coach is waiting,
(09:04):
and I cannot miss the train. Lady goes for the door.
If you want to make sure you do know, Amy,
better move fast. I must see him face to face. McFarland. Yes, Toddy, Hi,
Toddy McFarland. I'm afraid, sir, you have the better of me.
(09:25):
I don't believe we are acquainted. Oh we are acquainted,
all right, Look close. I want you to recognize I've
told you, good Lord Cameron, Cameron Fergus.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yes, did you think I was dead too? That we
are all so easy? Shot of old acquaintance.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Hush man, For the love of God, let the dead
past bury itself, not ours. Nothing stayed very decently then,
did it? Well? Oh, now come, Cameron, we are both
a little sh shaken at this chance, and cutter. I
hardly knew you, I confess it first, but I am overjoyed,
(10:08):
overjoyed to have this opportunity. Unfortunately, I must not fail
the change. So if you'll forgive me, forgive you, well,
I meant for running. But here we'll let me see well, yes,
of course, yes, yes, sir. You shall give me your address,
and you can count on early news from me for
(10:29):
away your gold pen and your false friendship. But I
I want to do something for you, Fergus. I can
see forgive me that you are somewhat out at elbows.
We must take care of that money, well, money from you.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The money I had last from you is lying where
I cast it in the rain and mud.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What is the matter with you, Fergus? Now? What is
it you want? I wish I knew?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Revenge for Genie and the others, and accounting for the
wasted rum so derelict you made me. I thought long
ago the hand of God, like the squire upstairs.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Must have struck you down. Perhaps I was appointed for that.
F cameon. I beg of you. You've been drinking and
you are not in your right mind. Now, don't do
any it? What is that you have in your hand?
Don't you remember genies Genie hop pain, the one you
(11:31):
gave her?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Would it not be poetic in God's justice to drive
it into your throat, upslanting through the mouth till it
lodged in the brain, or between the fifth and sixth ribs,
driven straight into your black heart?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Help have you got on your mind?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Hel you?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Fergus? Take help me? Don't you if you value your life,
stay back. Don't don't don't don't don't you. You can't
kill me, Fercus, You're right. I can't. I should, but
I can't get out of my sight.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Catch your train goes.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
We want to take that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Don lo the fave, Fergus, What got into you?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Put that?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Long had been away? That's a dangerous instrument, more like
one of the Italian stilettos. It was genius, Yeah, yeah,
sure it was some pretty sparklers, all right, but of
course a pretty penny too. But let's put it away
and sit down and never a nice little snort for
(12:37):
the road.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Eh, Yes, drink, get me drunk, wipe it out the past,
the past, let me sleep, and oh if only I
could never wake again?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yes, hey, rights, ray, No tell me, yeah, just what
the doctor ordered. That's a funny one, all right, with
all the doctors around this. But like the gentleman who
just lived, don't call him gentlemen, oh.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Will I mean you?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
When a man's become a doctor.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
No matter what he thinks, he's become the devil is
what he began. A resurrectionist he began, and in his
heart that's the way he'll die.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
A resurrectionist.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's a profession that first in the early nineteenth century,
profession did I say it was rather a crime.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The more familiar names.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Are ghoul Grave, robber, body snatcher, the conscienceless Knight, people
who provided cadavers for the medical schools, the cold blooded
legion of the Damned, who, if a corpse was not
to be found, provided a fresh one from the living.
I'll returned shortly with that too. In one of the
(14:07):
greatest speeches in the English speaking theater, Hamlet, the tortured
Prince of Denmark wrestled with the problem to.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Be or not to be, and came to the conclusion.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That conscience doth make cowards.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Of us all.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Cameron Fergus, so far less innocent than the tragic Dane
as a young man, found himself caught in the same wedge.
But when he made his decision, he found not death
but a life of remorse and dishonor. I was the
only child of two elderly parents. By my early.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Twenties, they were both gone, leaving me a small but
comfortable income. Even in those days, I already considered myself
a man about town, but my vices were minor. I
had a craving for something more fulfilling in life. Both
those legs were satisfied when I fell under the.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Spell of Wolf McFarlane.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
We met first at the house of Jeanie McRoberts, a
young woman who epitomized everything pure and sweet to me
and whom I secretly hope to marry one day. Oh Jeanie,
this music's too slow.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
It's romant.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Well maybe that's what I meant. Let's sneak out for
a walk in the guid Oh no.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
It's not the music that's too.
Speaker 6 (15:28):
Slow for you, Cameron.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Oh I suppose it was.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
I wouldn't trust you out there all alone.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
You walked out with him? Who the tall one there
dancing with Maggie dyak Wolf.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
McFarlane, Well, it's the first time he's our guest, and
besides it was still twilight.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Then he's a dandel all right, and he has all
of you girls making eyes at him.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Where's he from?
Speaker 5 (15:50):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Well, Glasgow.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
I think he's here in his second or third year
as a medical student, working under doctor Knight.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
I suppose he's turned your.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Head too, he did when we danced.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
What could be more exciting than being a doctor anyway?
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Someone who can make you well if you're ill.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
No, maybe I'd better consider taking up the profession myself
so I won't lose you.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So, Cameron, you've a taste for being a doctor. Eh,
I can think of no higher calling. Well, that's flattering.
Have you the talent for it? I stood high in
my class the universe. Oh you've a pain, all right,
I've no doubt at least, so mister McRoberts informed me.
Did she now? But when I spoke of being a
doctor in talents, I meant other things such as have
(16:42):
you a strong stomach? Can you stand the sight of blood?
I wouldn't turn from it?
Speaker 5 (16:48):
Have you the.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Nerves of steel? I don't exactly know what you mean.
Could you take a scalpel and split a man? Or
a woman from breastbone to pubis with a steady hand.
Could you open the stomach? I can cut out a
diseased organ. Could you amputate a leg or an arm?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
I'm not exactly sure it was being a surgeon I
had in mind.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Oh, never mind, the live body's led. It's the dead
ones you have to cut through first. There's no other
way to learn anatomy firsthand, and not all of them
are fresh from the grave. What does that mean? You'll
find out for yourself? How are your scruples? I think
you're just having fun with me. I'm sorry, I asked.
(17:31):
I don't need you to further my ambition. There are
other ways. Oh nay, nay, nay, Oh lad, don't be
so hot tempered.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Ha ha ha.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I was pulling your leg a little, but less than
you might think. And you do need me more than
you think. Why my recommendation to the doctor in charge
of the medical school, as it happens, would open the
doors for you like that? Would you give it to me?
I just might in exchange for something. What the rest
(18:04):
of your waltz is? With missus Genie. She's the only
girl here with any grace or style like a feather
in the wind and I love to dance.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Isn't a bargain, it's the one I can't control.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
It's Genie who says who she'll dance with. But if
you ask her and tell her why, I'll tell.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Her on one condition. And what is that that she
saves the last one for me?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well, I can hardly blame you. And if we are
to be friend and colleagues, why should I be greedy? Eh,
shake hands on the bargain, Shake to a long and
close future together. Fergus, we can use a man like you.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
I take that as a compliment. Thank you, sir, Thank
you that I should ever have seen the day. I
thank the man I have spent my life cursing and
reviling what an innocent I was. I kept my part
of our bargain in my naive, clear and excitement, not
noticing that Genie's reluctance to change her dance card.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Was neither long nor strong. My head was spinning too
much with other future dreams that I was to become
a gunner for Wolf. MacFarlane kept his part of the
bargain too, So this.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Is the young man you've spoken so highly.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Of, only because he deserves the recommendation, not the Kirk.
He's a man we can use in more ways than
one sprended fended. We're always in need of recruits, mister Fergus.
Wolf here tells me you were a young man with
a fine taste for a night of rumping and wake
up bright eyed and clear headed of the morning with
(19:46):
no hangover, either physical or mental. Well, that makes us
three of a kind, and that's what it takes to
make a mark in our professional lad stamera staying power.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
We have predum many things.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
That would make an ordinary mortal's black and cold.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
If you'll try me, sir, I don't think you'll find
me wanting.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Well spoken Catherin Fergus, I like you what you say, Wolf,
Shall we make him one of us? My vote is
I then show his mind. I leave it up to
you to initiate him into the mysteries and secrets of his.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
New professional.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But softly, slowly, mind you, we can't scare him off
till he is well hooked.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Eh.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
We must show the best side before he sees the worst.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
You're very kind, doctor Kirk, but I know you're only
testing my resolve. How could so noble a profession have
a bad side.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well, doctor Kirk meant only I'm sure that it has
a difficult sign.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
We're to be sure.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
To be sure, no rise worth winning can easily come
by work hard and let Wolf here help you over
the rough box. For my money, you couldn't have a
finer guide.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
A finer guide, that much was true, a guide to
hell and damnation.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
But I never have realized it. Then Wolf was with
my friend, mentor and convivial partner.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I found that I was a natural doctor. Nay more
than that, perhaps a surgeon. But in that field of
medicine lay all the seeds of disaster. For to study anatomy,
one needs a body, and you cannot practice on a
live one. I was not so innocent that I didn't
know the answer to that. But it was not till
the end of my first year, when I moved in
(21:52):
with Wolf, that I had to face it. Ugh, well, Wolf, Wolf,
wake up?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
MM what.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Name the dog? What out is it? It wants ten
to three? And you wake me? Damn it? Fergus someone
at the door. Of course, the reason I bid you
move in tonight. I get dressed while I answer that.
But what is don't don't ask questions? Do as I.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Say, Avna.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I was after and I'm sorry for the delay. Just
give me a moment of two. Eh, we are real loud.
Tonight we'll need help or don't worry. We have it
meet that said the usual place. Eh huh, check me
my trousers there, Cameron, what is it? Do I have
to spell it out? The resurrectionists and tonight they have
(22:46):
a cart full. Tonight is your baptism. You're gonna let
me down well enough in hindsight.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
To know what I should have answered to that, But
I was young and I thought he was my friend,
and so half dressed, half sober, half anesthetized, we went
to the building that housed the dissecting lab and began
the nights, or I should say the early morning's word right.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Put it there, said the last not tonight. One more
fine before you bring it up, let me introduce you
to doctor Cameron Fergus. Well, how do you do? The
gentleman prefers to leave his name out of these transactions.
Just call him Digger.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It's me by nature and profession.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
When you bring the last one up, Dr Fergus will
pay you the usual tariff. Now, Fergus, I'm going to
have to leave you in charge. Why don't you call
me doctor when I'm not even You've got a lot
to learn. We need the title to keep these fellows
in hand. What do you mean. I'll explain it to
you soon. Now. First off, here is a key. It
unlocks the safe. There. Now there's money, cash, and then
(24:01):
I'll tell you just how much to disperse, but be
sure the safe is securely locked before these ruffians return.
Now I have to get to doctor Kirk right away
and tell him what luck we've had tonight. He'll want
to make arrangements for dissecting and anatomy classes tomorrow. It
seems strange Potter's field death rate was so high this
one night. In this part of our business, it is
(24:21):
well to question as little as possible.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I followed the easy path, to do as I was
told to suspend thinking, pay off the grave robbers, and
twine myself irrevocably in a practice which, no matter how
we as doctors might believe its morality in those days,
could involve death by hanging. But if I thought of
it much after the body snatches were coming, gone and paid,
(24:48):
it was all forgotten.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
When doctor Kirk joined us a magnificent day in our lives. Gentlemen,
I congratulate you both for your part in this, while
at the same time I need not enjoin you to
the secrecy. We must maintain my congratulations for tonight tunes.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Carry on the good work, gentlemen. I bid you good morning.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
High words, doctor Kirk, and we are left with all
the dirty work. What do you mean the time has
rarely come here to stop asking the very answerable question.
In the name of medicine and research. We gather bodies, right,
but that is no crime.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Using already dead flesh, which can render up to our
secrets of how to handle living flesh, is not a
valid crime.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
On that basis, you have an argument if the flesh
is already murribund. But body snatching is a rewarding crime.
And if there is no dead body to snatch with
the kind of a man who flies this trade, do
you think he would hesitate to wait for the flesh
to die if his source of supply ran low? Oh?
(26:00):
Good lord, what do you say? Oh, don't pretend innocence.
If your conscious brain will not admit the truth, your
subconscious one knows it. And you signed for the bodies
tonight Willy, Nilly, you are with us from here on in, with.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Us from here on in. For the first time I
realized I was trapped. For a moment, I even thought
my friends had made use of me. But then I
thrust that thought aside. They were pioneers, like myself, taking
the only means to great ends. And if indeed it
were true that an occasional body had not met a
(26:41):
natural death, why by all reason it could only be
some of who was a criminal.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Who had sought it himself. So I reason, And.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
When another drink of fiery scotch to soothe my adult
brains soothed my burning conscience, this would be the end
of all connection the resurrection, than I swore, not knowing how.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Devastatingly empty the oath I took was destined to be.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Poor Cameron Fergus, lulled into.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The crime of accessory after the fact, controlled by men
wiser in the ways of vice than he, who would
soon involve him as accessory before the fact, and even
worse our return shortly with Act three. Most doctors of
(27:45):
those days were not about to be troubled by the
material they dissected. Only the few who trafficked in procuring
the illegal material were involved in matters of conscience, and
most of them, sad to say, found rich enough rewards
to steal what small worm of morality might squirm within
their hearts. The resurrectionists were well paid, and the men
(28:10):
who bought the dreadful merchandise each made their own defenses.
But I lean on you and Wolf Cameron boy, nor
my right and left arms. A constant supply of cadvers
is the prime necessity of the school I know. But
where they come from, is my boy, That's no question
for us. They bring the body, we pay the price
(28:32):
squid procos, they say in the Latin take. But sir,
they us.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
Have no more.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Butts Fergus, there are no questions for Conscio's sake. But
that's exactly the problem, Sir.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
I watched these ruffians come in before the dawn, in
the dead of knights, and I cannot help but be
struck by the hang dog looks, their eyes averted.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I want to have no part of it. Ye, you
expect to stay here and achieve your degree.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
I take you you must be part of it.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
I'm sorry to be so blunt, Fergus, but that's the
way it is.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
I have no further time to talk to you, O Wolfe,
help me.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
We are condoning, nay even promulgating, murder. Fergus, you think
too much. Accept your duty and concentrate on learning to
be a doctor, not a policeman. And what is my duty?
Take what is brought, pay the price, and avirt your
eyes from the evidence of any crime. What decisions I
(29:40):
might have made in my first revulsion, I'll.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Never know, for at that time Genie came back, and
the renewal of our acquaintance put everything else out of
my head. She was fascinated about my future as the doctor,
the future of all of us.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I'd rather have you tell me about Paris than Rome.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
That's all for the future.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
What I want to know about is the present. How
soon will you be a doctor?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
I'm afraid that takes a little time.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
And doctor McFarland, how is he.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Well, though he's nearer it than me, doctor is still
a curiously titled.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
I wish you'd tell me all about your life, lives
and what they're like.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
It's not a subject for a girl.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
Well, wolf McFarland didn't mind talking about it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Well, that's his business. If you'd prefer him.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
He a silly boy, and don't be jealous. I'm only
interested because he's become your friend, the.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
More fool eye that I thought he was.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
He'd already been a beginning, but now he was to
be the cause of my complete downfall. It happened so casually,
one afternoon, after work in the lab, I dropped into
a neighborhood tavern to meet Wolf, sitting with a small
pale man, dark eyes very close together, seemingly refined at
the start, but to reveal himself later his coarse, vulgar
(31:01):
am vicious.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
The tales I could tell you about our old friend
Toddy here, Toddy, sure, Toddy mcfallen. What has he kept
his nickname secret from.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
All of you?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It seems so? Why Toddy? Because every time we pulled
off a rough one, we'd drink a Toddy to our trickiness.
Speaker 5 (31:22):
Hey, Toddy, I wish.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
You wouldn't call me that. Drake up and enjoy the
good living it brings all of us.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
For God's sake.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Swatch a monk? Now? Will you listen to our preacher?
Pay no attention to him, Cameron that you give a name. Yes,
but I may be a pretty bad fellow myself. But
Toddy here, Toddy mcfallen could put us all the shame.
Look have a look at him. It looks could kill.
(31:52):
Toddy hates me because I know too much about him.
I told you, don't call me that confounded.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
I'll call you as I please? And what can you
do to keep my mouth shut?
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Toddy?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Just look at it, cabinet, Fergus, did you ever see
the lads play knife?
Speaker 4 (32:09):
He'd like to do that all over my body.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
We medicals have a better way than that.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we dissect him.
Why I made that stupid, ugly joke, I'll never know.
I longed to snatch the words back the moment they
were said. What to god I could have? I was
to regret them the rest of my life. I should
(32:37):
have admitted before this, but I was well paid for
my work of receiving nocturnal corpses.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
No questions asked.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
It was three nights after I had met Gray, and
I was unduty at the empty dissecting rooms, when.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Come on, ferguson, damn it, man, which have me caught
right handed?
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Wolf?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
What are you doing here at this hour? Ask me?
A ques questions I have some merchandise, and the gig
help me in with it.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It was a small enough figure wrapped in a winding sheet,
and it was no job for the two of us
to bring him in.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And stretch him on the table.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
But for some reason, Wolf McFadden was breathing as heavy
as if we had lifted a horse.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
All right, all right, sealed and delivered. Let's have it signed. Well,
get to the safe. I want you to pay me
and give me the receipt. Since when did you turn resurrectionists?
We're short of bodies, are we? Not? Nothing for the
class to start on tomorrow? Come on, come on, let's
get the transaction over with. Patience man, with the rest
(33:39):
of the night, and your friend is in no hurry anymore.
Sign the paper and give it to me. But don't
you want the money for a paper? All right? My
signature for posterity and for me. This is all I need,
and the money my present to you, old champ. The
finders see too, you've been working too hard, as it is,
a man ought to have some reward. Why don't you
(34:01):
take my rig and slip on home. I'll cover for
you for the rest of the night. It's late enough
for both of us to leave. Oh, I think I'll stay,
pray to sect the derelict there, ready to pass around
to our eager students when they arrive. And Neil's working
on the lower extremities, Sharples is screaming for a liver.
What's the matter with you? You seem unnerved? Who don't
(34:21):
take that? You know I don't very well? You had
to know, now, you know why I had to have
your signature of acceptance. It's great. The man, a man
who could have ruined all of us. We're in this boat,
sink a swim. Would you want your neck on the gallows?
(34:46):
Like Burke? This man is dead and it's valuable to
the advancement of medicine. Accept the fact of his death.
Never question the howl. You're one of us, still young
Fergus forever.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
So I was already trapped. I began a long lifetime
of drinking in earnest. I was neither surprised but that
much affected.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
When Genie turned from me.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Even the fact that I heard by the grapevine, certainly
not from his lips, that Wolfe was squiring her about
failed to rouse me.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I felt myself damned forever. I wasn't good enough for her.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
But youth is resilient, and once I had digested my involvement,
I learned to live with it, even thought to go
back to Genie again. As it happened, I chose accidentally
the day that Wolf.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Was to receive his sheepskin as a doctor.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
I never realized what real love was until I met Wolf.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Poppy love, real love. Would you like me to tell
you about this man you worship? So what he's really liked? Don't?
Speaker 4 (35:52):
He's so silly and jealous.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I'm not thinking of myself, Genie, it's you. I want
to protect you from.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Quite old enough to handle my own affair. Well, I
doubt that you couldn't understand a man like Wolf.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Your hands off me, damn it.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
If I had to shake some sense into that lovely head,
I'll do it with my hands.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
If I can't with words, your mind, I'm trying to
save her from you. Get your hands off, your little
fool me go you insist, Remember you asked for it.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
You didn't get him.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Wolf, I imagine I did. You'll have a sad jawn tomorrow.
Own His song is my head? But what else could
I do?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Nothing else? I don't ever want to see Fergus anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
I wasn't unconscious.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
I could hear all of this, and I thought at
that moment that life could scarcely deal with me more
harshly fool that I was, were the worst yet to come?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Special delivery tonight, Fergus, me buying five Dow's the light
and we trail.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Them in and come ahead, stack them where you will.
I wouldn't care if Queen Victoria was one of them.
I've had my fill of this job.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Nobody likes it much, but it's a living. As we
say in the trade, might as well get something from
the dead.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I went about my business mechanically, mind drugged by liquor,
body reacting out of sheer habit, and then a horror
of horrors looked up at me from the dissecting table.
Her blue eyes opened, staring with a startled horror as
(37:47):
she could come to us, Genie Jeanie mc roberts, a
candidate for the cold buttered dissection, candidate for jokes and
the discard by the Morrow's crew of medical students.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Geny, I'm just as horrified as you, Fergus. She died
no natural death.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
There were marks of violence on her possible strangling, but why,
I can't tell you why or guess. At least she
was pregnant, she was carrying a child. How do you
know doctor Kirk was with us first thing in the morning.
Everyone attends the sections. Genie was with child. Do you
suppose she killed herself?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
You know she didn't. Genie was murdered. I'm not going
to let her die unrevenged. You're not suggesting I had
anything to do with it, exactly. I'd reconsider that statement
if I were you, if anyone did kill her, and
mind you, I'm not saying they did, you would be
the logical suspect she did.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
Spare you.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yes, but let me remind you about the bodies that
you've received for the section and signed for, many of
which you must have known died not natural deaths. Hey,
for example, if you want to place any necks in
the noose, go ahead, but give first a care to
your own. Lad I warned you when you began this
(39:10):
business you should be without a conscience. He knew me
too well, Harry. Conscience I had, but no courage. You
mean that distinguished doctor will just lift murdered the girl?
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Why not an obscure Scottish girl. He can never have
married since his ambitions reached so high, Will oh.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Tell you something? Men to men, I'm surprised you didn't
kid him right out of end if your story be true. Oh,
the story is true, right enough. And the proof of
it all is.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
That I didn't he finish her drink coature, say, oh,
strong enough, false courage. Maybe I never had the real
thing else note of all of this would have happened.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
When at least you had some conscience, which finally has
caught up with me.
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Here, what have you done?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Genie's happen? The weapon of remote good? Almighty Fergus, you
drove the hatpin straight into your heart.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Here, let me help by all means. Pull without Harry, Oh,
don't hesitate, pull without good.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Hell, grit your teeth now.
Speaker 5 (40:41):
There, well, they'll be better.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Don't you believe it? Only thing might have saved me
was to leave it there now, I'm sure to die.
One thing at least I did right in my life.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Just that, do me once? What's that?
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I've enough money? See me buried above ground in a strong,
tight crypt. Don't let me be had at the last
by the body snatchers. Wherever I go let me go
home and accept my judgment.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Whatever it is. Oh, a curious and chilling story with
no moral that I or any man can quite offer.
The raw material for the study of medicine that today
(41:46):
has prolonged life by almost twice as much as could
be expected in the last century is no longer needed
so much, Thank Heaven, the ghoul, the body snatcher, and
the resurrectionist man have passed from our life or deaths,
since that was their concern. I'll be back shortly. This
(42:06):
is E. G. Marshall inviting you to return to our
mystery theater for another adventure in the macabre.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Until next time, pleasant dreams.
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