Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quiet Please, Quiet Please.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The Mutual Broadcasting System presents Quiet Please, which is written
and directed by Willis Cooper and.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Which features Ernest Chappell. Quiet Please for Tonight is called
whence Came You? I came from Jerusalem. I've traveled me's
a good deal in the last twenty odd years, and
loud of myself that I know my way around. So
(01:03):
when I got off the plane at Cairo, I didn't
start for the camp right away, as a good story
book archaeologist would have done. I made a bline for
shepherds in the room I'd left a couple of days
before when I went to Jerusalem, the bath, gin and
tonic and a large batch of mail from the States.
What more can a man ask in Cairo on a
(01:24):
hot night? But of course it was too good to last.
I'm just gonna run a knock.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Hey, Austin, wake up?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Hey say Felman, Hey Feldman, Hey, Hi Austin.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
We gods from Staton man as well. I'll be Darne.
Come on here. What are you doing here? What do
you got there? Do you get around? This is ganic?
How are you well? I'm fine? But come in? What's
sit down? You're the last man in the world. I yeah,
take a gin and telly before I drop it. Well
the time and stay dhe bye. Golly, I'm glad to
(02:10):
see you. Boy, I'm glad to see you. I've been
looking here for three days waiting for you to come back. Hey,
it looks skinnier.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Will you go out and dig holes out there for
six months? Lad, you'll take all some of that fat
to me.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Fan, go away, you're kidding, Well, get your shirt out it.
Let's go see the town. See it down? Come on,
what you doing here? Business? What kind of business? Newspaper?
Business match? What's cooking in the Middle East? And stuff? Say,
how do you get more of these things?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
We'll get on the barnam and at the colder down there.
Go on, go on, tell me about it.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Well, you know, Eddie heffer Camp just called me in
and said, draw some dough and go east and send
up some stuff for the Sunday feature section.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
The trip's making a.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Monkey out of us again. So I remember the dear
old days on the Midway, you and me, and you're
around here, So let's go see the town.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I'll be dying.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
When's you lei?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Chicago? Day before yesterday? Oh boy? Yeah, the Loot's still there.
They still got the burlecue shows down South State Street.
The Michigan Avenue bridge is always up. That comes here
in seventh place.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Now now what now we go see the town, come out,
put on your pants.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You've never been in Cairo before, have you?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Me?
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Not me?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Why? Well, if you had, you wouldn't care much about
seeing them, my boy, yeah yeah, but uh women, you
had a good look at any of them? Have I?
Oh boy, what the one that's waiting for you downstairs?
Waiting for me? Wow? What are you talking about? I
don't know any women in Cairo. There's one who knows
(03:43):
you Why you're crazy? I'm telling you. How do you know?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
She's been waiting down there for three days. I've seen her.
What she looked like?
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Oh boy?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Not a native Cleo, patway, is this one of your
bump Joe said, I'd give you my word of honor.
I don't get it. Come on downstairs and you will.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
So we went downstairs.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
British colonel's, American traveling salesmen, Egyptian army officers, a thief
for two, or bevy of.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
The ugliest women in the world.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
And I don't see any woman waiting for me there
by the door.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Of the bar, and I looked, and there by the
door stood the one most beautiful woman I have ever
seen in all my life.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
She was no Egyptian native. She might have descended from
one of the marvelously lifelike paintings of a queen of
the half of a dynasty that I'd seen on the
walls of tunes two thousand years old. How can I describe?
Your eyes were black? Her hair was bl back and.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Cut in the manner of the days of the shepherd
kings that ruled the valley of the n Aisle of
a thousand years before the Pyramids were built, red lips.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
That smiled at me slowly. I felt my knees tremble
as she looked into my eyes.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Come on, let's go, ask if she's got a friend.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
And when I looked back at her, where'd she go?
It was midnight, and then one o'clock, and two and
then three. We still walked the streets of Cairo. The
waning moon was rising in the northeast behind our shoulders.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
As we turned our steps back to the hotel.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Twice I thought I'd seen her, and twice she if
she It was disappeared into a narrow, winding street where
we couldn't follow.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
No, I never followed women about.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
The streets of a foreign city before, not.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
In all my life.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Well, there's little enough of that in the life of
an archaeologist.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The women we followed died a thousand, ten thousand years
before we were born. We know them lonely by the
portraits painted on the walls of a musty tomb, by
what we find in great hermetically sealed stone caskets, wrapped
in rust colored linen and smelling at the ghost of
Cinnamon and Mrrh and Spike and eyed. I don't know
(06:26):
why I did this. I know she wanted you to
come after that's ridiculous. Ay, I heard her ask for.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You, But she wanted me.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
When is a pretty gag, usually one of a guy
drinks something.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
To eat a good time as she could have had
that from anybody, yeah, me for instance.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
But she wanted you waster Why.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Maybe she's a spy.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Or something, a spy. Maybe she wanted to sell you something,
you know, you grave robbers. Maybe she knows where some
old faraoh or somebody is planted.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
That could be I suppose.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I'm forbid. I gotta get out to the Diggins early.
Fine night we had I forget it. You got a room,
huh yeah, right down the hall. Well, knock on my
door when you get up. All right, good night night.
Say they have this incense all the time around this place.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Huh, what do you mean, don't you smell it?
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Smells like a funeral?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
I do. Oh yeah, I suppose, Night night, Austin. I
could have told him what the incense was. I smell
(07:48):
cinnamon and mer and spike, and are too often not
to recognize it instantly. When I opened the door to
my room, the smell was almost overpowering. Used as I
am to the funeral, Spike says, of ancient Egyptian tones.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
No, no, I'm.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Not gonna tell you what, but a beautiful Egyptian princess
of the days of Hixos was waiting for me in
the darkness.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
This isn't a ghost story, It's a true story.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
There wasn't anyone in the room. I turned on the lights,
opened the window. There wasn't anyone in the room. So
I went to bed, dreamed about sailing on Lake Michigan.
The storm came up in the thundercraft.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And I was scared to death.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Then I woke up and the thunder was the servant
knocking on my door, ringing in my morning cup of tea. Abe,
and I got in my jeep and rode out of
the excavation. It's quite a distance from Cairo, but never mind.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Just swear is.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Because that's my business and the universities that right. We
retire one flat just as I've been expecting. I forgot
to put.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Air in a spare, so we took quite a while
getting it pumped up.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It was late afternoon when we got there.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Abe, they'd never seen anything of this sort. See, these
places are built one on top of another.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Almost every village in town in the east is different
periods of time. Huh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
There may be any number of cities built about the
ruins of another. All we do is dig out the
top when you see, recover everything we can that's a
historical importance. Then go on carefully down to the next.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
What do you do with the stuff that's on top
of it has to be destroyed naturally. See that's too bad,
ain't it. Well we make careful records, photographs, and then
you just peel off the stuff and go on to
the next. It's right, this is the fourth city from
the top we're working on.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Now.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
See those big pile of rubble over there, Yeah, that's
the remains of the other three cities.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
See that seems a shame, all those years of work
and living and everything. Well, we save artifacts, of course,
save what or things that.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
People made, pop yards, fragments of wall paintings, decorations, that
sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
What do you do with the people you find people? Yeah, oh, mummies,
various things.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
We read the inscriptions, decide whether the fellow is important
enough to investigate further. The Egyptian government has a great
deal to say about the contents of tombs.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
You know, find any gold not here so far, but
we probably will.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
This part where we're standing was the necropolis of this
particular city.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Huh, the cemetery.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
See, oh yeah, it's reasonable suppose that there are other
tombs under here.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
That's where you find the jewels and the golden stuff. Generally, yes,
say Austin, why don't you get a steam shovel in here?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
You'd move this stuff a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Quicker and probably smashed i priceless in scripts or.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Paintings into bits. Oh my boy, we do this gently,
and you can read this stuff hieroglyphics.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Heroglyphics comes from two Greek words, originally meaning carving by priests.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Okay, professor, can you read it?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, of course I can read a good deal of
the later writings by Sip. When we get down to
the real ancient stuff, that's a little more difficult.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
What does this say? What this lab here?
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Let's see? Uh?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Here was I Hotep.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Presented with all I guess you'd say, invested with the
working tools of those who build.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
In my hand?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I Hotep did take took the tools of the second
uh grade of workmen in stone, the uh from the
square and the level.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Huh. How'd you know?
Speaker 5 (12:10):
There were maisons and moose days?
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So sure, how do you think they build all this
stone stuff?
Speaker 5 (12:15):
Hey?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Look at that? What's that there?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
It's a name sholem Uh it's probably Solomon. Yeah, this
was in Solomon's time.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Right alongside the name.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The middle stone of the arch, which is the secret
the key stone. These fellas didn't know how to build
an arch, that's.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Right, they didn't. Why you're so excited about it, though?
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Hey, what look at that this? Yeah, that's a very.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Fine example of wall painting. What kind of the colors
are still bright?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Look how they.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Yeah, you see the same thing I see, don't you?
Speaker 5 (13:03):
You know what I saw?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You know whose portrait was painted on the edge of
the slab that came from a tomb that was old
in the time of Augustus Caesar. Coincidence or not? Here
was the face of the woman who waited for me
the night before in Shepherd's hotel. It's amazing how ratio
(13:31):
characteristics persist through centuries in Egypt. I have seen Egyptian
men who might have been Tutenkommon's own brother.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I've seen women.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
But you wouldn't blame me for feeling my hackles rise
a little bit this uncanny resemblance to the women who disappeared.
I kept smelling merr and spikan art cinnamon, but I
hadn't much time to think of it. Then Martin Weaver,
who was in charge of the actual excavation, came behind us.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, I'm glad you're back.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So Hollo Martin, how are we doing? Uh save Felton
Martin Weaver?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Oh, Hello, what day before yesterday?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
We broke through a place Austin that goes down to
the city underneath this one you did. Yeah. One of
the workmen found a big sandstone slab and we cleared
it away completely.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I've got the big shears rigged over it now.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
And I thought we'd wait till you got here to
lift the slab. And we want to do it tonight
or one.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Oh gosh, let's do it now, Austin, Well, what do
you think getting dark? Let's have a look at it. Okay,
I'm glad you're back.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Bring anything that's tract with you.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We walked half a mile.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
There was a little clearing at one corner of the necropolis,
and the beams of the shears stood.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Stark against the darkening sky.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
There was something elemental, something definitely about them.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
It's not an archaeologist's job.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
To be sentimentally superstitious.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
None of us would stay on the job very long
if we were.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
But the half in steel cable was attached to a
block of stone was the only thing that separated is
from something that happened perhaps forty centuries ago. And how
there are times when a man's entitle a shiver a
little in the wind that rises over the desert.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
At sunset, Abe was beside himself with excitement.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Let's pull it up, Austin, come on, let's pull it up.
Huh go ahead, Martin. Okay, glad, we got the engine.
That slab weighs about seventy times. Go ahead, a little higher. Gosh,
(15:45):
let the effort there.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
That area you're breathing, Abe was breathed by Pharaoh's long
before Moses let his people out of this country.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Gee, okay, hold it Martin.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Right, you're going down there, Austin, I'm not down No, No,
it's late. Oh gee, i'd like to go down there.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
We will in the morning. Let's take your flashlight. Yeah,
m hm, mummy case some wall paintings. Let me see
take the flashlight.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Oh boy, oh boy, it isn't fine down there.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I'm gonna jump down. No, wait, I'll be all right now.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Don't go running all over that place tracking it up.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Abe, I want boy start down here. Get a ladder, Martine. Okay,
you hear me, Abe, Oh hear ye O hear your flashlight.
O'm gone at that's the last time you here.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I stand still.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I'm standing still the Houston. What the picture on the wall?
What picture over here on the wall? Turn it undross
the light?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Well, stand still, Martin will be back in a minute
with his light.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Wasn't what.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
There's something here, will be careful. It might be a snake.
Oh aye, aye, Hey, what happened?
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Austen looked off the slab.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We worked all night long, Martin and I, splicing that
steel cable and raising.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The heavy slab that had imprisoned ate in that place
of it dead. We had no hope, But what could
we do? A miracle might have happened.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
There might have been a chink between the slab and
the opening it covered, and opening.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Through which a few breaths of air might have seeped
into the tomb. The snake might not have bitten them,
he might have killed it.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
So we told each other all sure the night.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
The stubborn cable cut our hands and defied our every effort.
The sun was just rising when we had last had
made it fast. Martin started the engine.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
We fastened the rope under the table and swung the great.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Stone slab beside. I was down on the timber almost.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Before it declared the opening.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It was too late any of his sickens. As I
called the Martin he jumped down too. Oh my good, Oh.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
What happened to him? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (18:27):
I thought it was a snake.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
No snake did that. No, I saw a pigeon once.
For the hawk had been at we cou'd have been
too late even if the slap happened for him. Well, assman,
what that money case was? The cover off it last
(18:50):
night when you looked at her? No, my aide couldn't
have that lid weighs ten tons. And we looked down
into the stone Corbin. I hope I shall never see
the like of that again.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
But what is it? The mummy of a man, A
tall man in a robe of gold cloth, not wrapped
in linen bindings, just a robe of gold cloth with
strange symbols woven into the cloth.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And his head.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Not a man's head, the head of a hawk. No,
not a mask. We look carefully, a man with the
head of a hawk.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
And the hawk's beak all dabbled with a n I
didn't believe it either. It couldn't be, but it was.
It was a father of all the Egyptian gods of Cyrus, Osiris,
the brother husband of Isis, the founder of the world's
(20:05):
first empire, Osiris, who was murdered sixteen thousand years ago,
and his body was hidden by Isis, his wife with
a blasting curse on any who might find his tomb.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
It was impossible, it couldn't be, But there it was, and.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Martin and I.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
And a dead man were there in.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
His tomb with him, and the curse hung heavy in
the musty air around us. And then the first rays
of the sun, reflected from something above us, stole down
into the tomb, and I saw the pictures on the wall.
I saw Cyrus with his hawk's.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
Head and the roby war and the might on his
hawkshead was the same that the mummy warn they asked it.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I saw Isis, his wife, weeping over the body of
her murdered husband, and.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
The beauty of the work of the long dead artist
was unbelievable. And I saw another picture. There was the daughter.
Speaker 6 (21:19):
Of Isis and Osius. Yes, yes, of course I could
read the inscriptions. Yes, of course I could recognize her face.
I had seen it before in the lobby of Shepherd's Hotel.
(21:42):
A many inscriptions on the wall were terrifying.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
There were secrets there that men would give their lives
to possess today. There were secrets there that we've only
begun to imagine to day. I'm a scientist, I know.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
What do I.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
We forgot the thing in the coffin, We forgot the
thing on the floor, and it grew darker and darker in.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The tomb, and I read on and on.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I stood before the.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Painting of the one who was Osiri's daughter, long black hair,
red lips that.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Smiled at me, and my heart stopped.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
At the inscription under the portrait. I read it over again.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Be not.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
Afraid, ah goose tin.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Carved into the living rock in.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
The ancient Heradic characters, uncounted centuries ago.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
Not but the hand of the artist.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I knew who had carved my name.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
Here. Not afraid, Austin.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
And I wasn't afraid at all when I discovered that
the thing that was making a dock down there, it
was a great slab of sandstone, slowly swimming around and
down to imprison us all in the tomb that the
wife of.
Speaker 5 (23:20):
Osiris had cursed. Martin Weaver was a very brave man.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Martin Weaver didn't.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Scream and cry in a heavy dock. Martin Weaver talked
to me quietly, It'll be all right, Austin. A workman
will be here before long, and they'll see the slab.
And he brah him knows how to run the engine.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
I hope, so Martin.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I hope there'll be in time. That'll be in time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
He'll start the engine and pull the thing off, all right,
I hope, so Martin.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
What they don't know that something's wrong?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Where are you right here? We stand still?
Speaker 5 (24:08):
I am standing still. I thought I heard you move.
No you afraid, Austin, Are you not particularly? But I yes.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
On the thing in the the.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Where are you going?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I haven't moved, I thought.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
I felt your hand on my arm.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
No, sit still, don't use up the air well.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
It's just still.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I tell you. I didn't move.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Something's moving. It couldn't be Bosma.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
What my Martin? Martin, answer me, Martin.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
And there was nothing but silence, and in another footstep,
and I felt a hand on my arm, and I
screamed with terror. But it was a gentle hand, and
it led me gently away from where I stood in
the dark, and I followed.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
I hit my head on the solid stone wall. My
feet dragged as I followed whoever it was.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Through a door that I knew couldn't be there, And
the voice breathed in my ear lost and I smelted
tenement and murdered, and spike An heard, and I followed on,
and soon there was a glimmering of light ahead of me,
and I thought the hand, release my arm, and I walked.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
On toward the light. Then in a little while another
little room hewn out of a solid rock, and a
light burning.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
A little bronze lamp at the head of a moneycase
of black haired painted wood, and the portrait.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
Image on the lid of the sarcophagus, the same face.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
A smile, and I came closer to read the inscription
I knew would be there, an inscription put there so
many many years ago.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
I have freed you, Austin, Now free me. My hand
went to the fastening of the lid.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
When I looked up at the wall above the portrait again,
but with a difference. The same costume, the same jewelry, the.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Same headdress, but the head was the head of a hawk,
the head of Osiri's daughter. So I sit here, and
a little ron's lamp is flickering. No, I haven't opened
(27:08):
the coffin.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
I'm afraid to.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Mm hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
You have listened to Quiet Please, which is written and
directed by Willis Cooper The man who spoke to you
was Ernest Chapel, and.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Murray Ford's played a Feldman. Martin Weaver was Don Brakes
as Usulia. No music for Quiet Please is composed and played.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
By Albert Berman. Now I'm for a worry about next
week's Quiet Please. Here is my good friends. I write
a director Willis Cooper.
Speaker 8 (28:16):
I'm gonna start fighting next week called put on the
dead Man's Coat. It's about a man who had an
idea that wasn't good for him.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Put on the dead Man's Coats the title of next
week's Quiet Please.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And so until next week.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
At this time, I am quietly yours, Ernest Chappel.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Wire Please comes to you from New York. This is
the Multiple Broadcasting System.