June 18, 2025 • 44 mins
A suspense series featuring mysterious tales with a twist, ranging from psychological thrillers to eerie supernatural encounters. Each episode is crafted for maximum tension.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents. Come in or welcome. I'm
(00:26):
a G. Marshall. We call ourselves modern, only these are
modern times. The years past are prehistoric, or ancient or medieval.
We say with some pride that we are modern, as
though we'd smartened up considerably and discarded old, worn out,
discredited theories and practices. Yet our medicine has its roots
(00:50):
in antique magic, and our science has its origins in
archaic superstition. Without magic and superstition, it is unlikely we
could have survived to become modern. She has everything, a
loveliness to take your breath away. She has sweetness and gaiety,
(01:12):
but she has something else. I don't know what it is.
She has a wild talent. She's always had it. But
what is it a wild talent.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
No one knows precisely, except those perhaps who take the
trouble to learn.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Our mystery drama The Red Frisbee was written especially for
the Mystery Theater by Elspeth Eric and stars Robert Dryden.
It is sponsored in part by True Value Hardware stores
and Ludin's medicated cough Drops. I'll be back shortly with
Act one, one of the Earth's loveliest seas is the Caribbean.
(02:11):
In a gentle curve. On the bosom of that sea
lie the islands known as the Antilles. A man has
come to one of these islands, not only for the
brilliant sky, the soft sands, the hot sun, and the
cooling winds, but for the quiet and the isolation that
only an island can give. What he finds there, we
(02:33):
will tell you in this tale. I'd come to the
island after three years spent with an Aboriginal tribe in
the interior of Australia. I needed to relax and reflect
and try to sort out the ideas I wanted to
incorporate into my article for the Anthropological Journal and later
(02:57):
expand into a book with me my voluminous notes, a
suitcase full of old clothes, and my dog that which
you had adopted. Okay, okay, one more time, Okay, fetch
a good dog.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
He's so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What he's beautiful? Oh? Whoa thank you? Have you always
had him since he was a puppy. He's been all
over the world with me. We just spent three years
in Australia together before we came here. Look here he comes.
Has he got in his mouth. Well, that's a frisbee. Frisbee,
(03:40):
you know, one of those round plastic things that just
throws you know, No, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I never had a frisbee.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Oh well, they're kind of fun. They go sailing through
the air. All right, drop it, boy, drop it. Oh
he doesn't want to. He knows.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
He looks handsome with a red frisbee in his mouth,
with black hair.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And me kind of God is laboratory freeing hid drop
it boy, good boy, that's enough.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Now I'll throw it again for him.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I like to see him swim with it in his mouth.
He looks so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Okay, that's such. Oh he's a good swimmer, isn't he. Oh? Yes,
we swim out very far as far as I can
throw the frisbee. I guess that's wonderful. You like to swim,
I can't. You can't swim. You live on this wonderful
(04:34):
island and you can't swim. I used to be able
to What happened?
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I forgot?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
How you forgot?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yes, here he comes with his red prissy and.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
How could you forget?
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I just forgot.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh, look he wants you to throw it for him again.
I do this all day if I throw it for him,
and would he swims as far I suppose he would.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
All dogs can swim, I guess no.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Not right away. They have to be taught like people,
not exactly, but they have to be made to realize
that they can. That's about what it amounts to. I
guess they don't always know that they can. They're surprised
as anybody when they find out. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Are you going to throw the friss again?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I think he's heading out for today we both have.
Will you be coming back tomorrow?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I imagine, so maybe I'll see you here.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That would be nice. Well bye then bye? Wait hey,
uh wait a minute. You a young lady? What how
did you know my name? Tomorrow? See you tomorrow. I
(05:59):
watched his swing off down the beach. I judged she
might be about seventeen, though she could as well have
been twelve or twenty. She wore a sort of shapeless smock.
Her legs were ruddy brown from the sun. Her hair
was streaked in shades of gold. I remembered her eyes,
which were the startling blue of deut China. I heard
(06:23):
again her clear young voice calling man, see you tomorrow,
and the next day. I was on the beach early
in the morning. Not now, boy, No, no, no, no,
we're waiting for someone. What is it? Boy? Hey? Hey, hey,
what are you doing? Where are you going? Come back here?
(06:43):
He'd seen her before I did, before she rounded the
curve in the shoreline. Why had he simply sensed her
coming or what? At any rate? Yes, she was swinging
down the beach toward me. Who hell are there?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah? Early?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
So you I didn't give you waiting.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Did I?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
No, I'd have waited all day. Oh, you wouldn't have
had to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I knew you were here. I had to do something
for my mother first.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
How'd you know I was here?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I knew?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But how the way a person knows those things? People
don't just know those things? Oh? You saw me from
your house? Where do you live? Do you have a
place on the beach?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
No, we live in the Great House. What's the Great House?
Just the house?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
They call it the Great House because it used to
be where the governor lived, the Spanish governor a long
time ago.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Ben, aren't you going to.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Throw the red frisbee for the dogs? See?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
He wants you to. How'd you know? My name is Ben?
I guess you told me. I never told you. You
never asked, I never told you. But when you left
yesterday you said, goodbye, Ben.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Why don't you throw the frisbee?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Ben is my name, but you had no way of
knowing that my name. You really don't care what your
name is.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Now, I swell the red frisbee a if you want,
I want there there?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's boy.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Why don't swim beautifully?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
What's your name?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Nikki? You told me yesterday that dogs had.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
To learn how to swim. Now what I said was
they have to find out that they can swim. I
guess that's true of people too. Probably we can all swim,
but we have to find out it some time or
other that we can. It's quite a discovery for a
person or a dog. How did your dog find out
he can swim? Well, it was when we were in Australia.
(08:35):
I made a weekend trip to the Great Barrier Reef,
and of course I took him along. I was sitting
on the beach with him the way we were sitting now,
and I have this red frisbee, the same one I
have now, and I threw it into the water and
he plunged in after it and brought it back. Next time,
I threw it further, and he brought it back. I'd
never thrown it so far that he couldn't stand up
(08:56):
in the water, but then I did. I threw it
way out out to where the water was over his head,
and he went after it. Oh yes, And he got
to about three feet away from it, and all of
a sudden, his feet didn't touch bottom anymore. But he
stretched his neck out and grabbed the frisbee anyway between
his teeth, and he tried to turn around to bring
(09:18):
it back to me. And that was when he found
out he couldn't touch.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Bottom, and he started to swim.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Not yet he sank under the water. Oh no, He
came up again right away. He looked so surprised, and
he went under again. What did you do? Did you
just stand there? He went down for the third time,
and I started in after him. But before I got
to him, he started to swim, having away like mad
(09:49):
the other way dogs do, oh I know. And there
was such a look in his eyes, such a look
of triumph, belief in himself. It was as though his
ancestors from way back, hundreds of thousands of years ago
had whispered to him somehow down the ages, as though
they'd said, you know how you can do it, and
(10:11):
he did it. I've never forgotten that.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
That's a beautiful story, Benedict, it's true.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What did you call me just now? I don't know? Yes,
you do. You called me Benedict. Yesterday you called me ben. Well,
that could be a lucky guest, but Ben is usually
short for Benjamin. And my name is Benedict, and that's
(10:41):
what you called me. Wow, that's your name. Yes, but
how did you know? How could you know that? And
you're kind of hurting my arm? Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Then would you like to meet my mother? I'd like
you to, all right, and it's on you come this
afternoon for tea. I'd love to ask anybody where the
Great House is.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Everybody knows the house, all right?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Oh, and Benedict, be sure to bring your.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Dog with you. It was easy to see why than
called the Great House. The woodwork was solid, mahogany and carved.
The doors were mahogany, too, nearly six inches thick. The
rooms were large and square and full of sunlight. The
(11:27):
girl Nikki met me at the door and took me
to her mother, a beautiful woman with the same delt
blue eyes.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
This is Benedict mother, and.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
This is is dog. I'm so glad missus.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh why don't you call me Monica? Since you and
NICKI are such good friends, we're very informal here.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Oh thank you. Then you want to take the dog
down to the beach, Nicky?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Please just want to throw.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
The red first before him?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Please, Nicky, Well, if you want to, I won't stay long.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I hope you don't think my daughter's rude. She has
strange ways, but she's a good girl.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
She's a wonderful girl. Oh you think so. She has everything.
She has a loveliness that takes your breath away. Yes,
she is lovely. She has sweetness and gaiety. Yes, but
she has something else. I don't know what that is.
You don't, do you? She has a wild talent. A
(12:35):
what a wild talent? Well? What is that? What is
a wild talent?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
No one knows precisely, except perhaps those who take the
trouble to learn.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
All talent is wild. Really, it comes from heaven, those
where it cannot be coaxed or bribed or bought. It
cannot be cultivated, it cannot be manufactured or in any
way acquired. But no matter where it comes from or
in whom it resides, talent is never a tame thing.
(13:13):
It is always wild, as the winds are wild, as
the seas are wild, as the world was in its beginnings,
and as it remains at its core wild. I'll be
back shortly with that. Two on sands the color of
(13:40):
a ripe beach on an island in the blue waters
of the Caribbean Sea, Benedict has met a girl called Nicki,
who lives with her mother in a stately home called
the Great House. Nicki has persuaded Benedict to come to
the Great House to meet her mother, but no sooner
had introductions been made than she asked to be excused
who used to take Benedict's dog to the beach, leaving
(14:02):
Benedict alone with her mother.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I hope you don't think my daughter rude.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
She has a wild talent. A wild talent? Is that
what you said?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
You've never heard of such a thing.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I can't say I have. What is a wild talent?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
No one knows precisely if you take the trouble to
find out.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well, what is it? Is it mystical? Is it magical?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Would it help if I said that it had something
to do with extrasensory perception thought transparence.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Did your daughter tell you that she knew my name
without my ever having mentioned it?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
No, she didn't tell me, but then she wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And not only that, she called me Ben, which is
my nickname, And the next day she called me Benedict,
my given name. Suppose she was lucky in guessing that
I'm generally called Ben. She could have assumed was the
diminutive of Benjamin, a pretty common name, But she didn't.
(15:05):
She called me Benedict, a fairly uncommon name. I'm surprised
she didn't mention it to you.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Nikki's very casual about such things.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
She takes them for granted. But does she think that
everyone is so intuitive? Doesn't she realize that she is
somehow different?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I don't think she gives it any thought at all.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Tell me, has she always had this wild talent?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
She never showed any sign of it, at least none
that I noticed until two years ago.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Until, yes, until her brother died. Oh oh, she didn't
tell me. Uh, I didn't know she'd had a brother.
He was drowned. I am sorry.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, my goodness, you were invited here for tea, and
I've never given you any you know, I'll put the
water on right away.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
It won't take but a minute. No hurry, Nicky.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Oh, oh, it's you.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Your mother's in the kitchen. Should be right back, NICKI
are your eyes you look a little. You're not feeling
ill or anything, are you? I'm all right. Well did
you do have a good time with a red frisbee?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yes, I saw it very far out.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, fine, he will be ready shortly.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Nicki's back, Nicki, NICKI go upstairs immediately and lie down.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
The tide her and go upstairs, take a hot bath
and lie down in your room.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yes, mother, you see the tide turned tonight. I had
to come back.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm sorry, Benedict. What's the matter with her? She said,
the tide turned.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
It was when the tide turned that her brother drowned. Benedict,
I don't think we can have our tea today, but
come back tomorrow, will you, And I'll explain what she
meant when she said the tide turned.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I wasn't sure that I'd seen Nikki on the beach.
The next morning, she looked so pale, so ill. When
she returned to the Great house the previous afternoon, as
though she'd seen a ghost be the way some people
would have described it. And from the little I had
learned of her brother's death, I thought this might indeed
(17:42):
be true. Nevertheless, I went to the beach at my
accustomed early hour and the company of my dog, carrying
in his mouth his beloved red frisbee. The dog looked
up suddenly, just as he had the day before. The
frisbee dropped on to the sand, and he started his
up down the sand. I knew then that Nicki would
(18:03):
soon come into sight, and so she did, her loose
smock blowing in the wind, her brown legs carrying her confidently,
almost arrogantly, toward me. Hi, how are you. I'm fine,
I'm glad. Where's the red frisbee? He wants you to
throw it? That's here? May I throw it from him? Certainly?
(18:24):
That this boy? How's your mother?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Oh she's fine.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I'm sorry you didn't get any tea yesterday.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Oh that's all right.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
She thought she should look after me.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Did you do what she said? Did you take a
hot bath and lie down in your room? Of course,
that's what I always do. Nicki does the turning of
the tide always upset you turns at different times.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
You know, sometimes it's rather gentle and sometimes it isn't
gentle at all.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Well, that depends on the sun and the moon, does it.
It's because of the attraction of the sun and the
moon that the tides ebb and flow. They act unequally
on the waters of the earth. They disturb their equilibrium.
Do you understand?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
All I know is that here they happen quickly suddenly.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
There's no warning. Well that's because well, never mind why
it is. I wouldn't understand it anyway. I'm not clever
like you. All I know is that when the tide.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Goes out so fast, so fast, one hardly has time.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Oh here he is it?
Speaker 4 (19:39):
He's red Frisbee.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
May I held it yet?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Of course much? Nikki. Did you like my mother very much?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Not a pity I had to spoil everything.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
He didn't spoil anything, Oh yes I did, no, no,
mater of fact. She invited me to come back today
for tea and I accepted. And you do like her?
I told you, because I know she likes you. Did
she say so? No, not in those words, but I
know she does. Now, Just how would you know a
(20:18):
thing like that.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Do you think I have to be told things in
order to know them or read them in a book.
People often tell things that are not true, and books
can be wrong.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
But when you know.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Well, and you know that afternoon at the Great House
things went almost exactly as they had the day before.
Nikki greeted me, then greeted my dog, and then said,
did you bring your ead fibe weeks? Of course, we
never go anywhere without it. Mother will be down in
a minute, she knows you're here. May I take the
(20:52):
dogs to the beach and throw the fisty for me?
What if you want to? I do want to, Nicky?
Where you go? Activity?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I wish you'd say, I I am.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Sorry, Ben, Oh, that's all right. She enjoys the dog letters. Well,
she's forever doing this, doing what exactly, bringing men.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Home to meet me and leaving us alone, men of
all ages, all nationalities. I think she wants to marry
me off or something.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
That shouldn't be hard, provided you wanted to cooperate.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
After my son was drowned, I I was very melancholy
for a long time, very long time. I shut myself
in my room, wouldn't talk to anyone for almost a year. Finally,
my husband grew tired of a wife who was no
wife at all, and he left.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Oh I'm sorry. I wish I could have been.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Actually I didn't care.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, now let's have our tea, shall we?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
This time?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
I have it all ready for you and some little cake.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Oh splendid, I'm hungry. I spent a long time on
the beach today and it gave me quite an abatise.
Well help yourself, lemon or milk, God, little milk please.
Nikki informed me on the beach this morning that you
liked me.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well I do.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Here's your tea. Thank you. I asked her if you'd
said so, and she said no, that she just knew.
As usual of her instincts to write. She has a
great contempt for things that are learned, and a great
devotion to things which are simply known.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I've never been quite sure just what she means.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Why can't she swim?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Oh, well, she used to swim quite well.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
What happened? Did it have something to do with the tides,
with the turning of the time.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
It had everything to do with the turning of the tide.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I'm curious. Living on an island, one would think she
would but if you don't want to tell me.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I've never talked about it since it happened. But since
it happened, Nicki hasn't been able.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
To swim, not a stroke. She's tried, poor child, but
she just can't. She says, she's forgotten.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
How can one forget a thing like that? I thought
it was something once learned, never forgotten. NICKI forgot how
to swim the day her brother was drowned. They'd gone
in the ocean together on a beautiful day, just like
this one.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
What if you don't want to talk about it, well
I do? I do?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
They swam out to where some rocks jutted out into
the sea, and they played on the rocks for a while.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Some themselves went back into the water again. It was
then just then that the tide turned. It started to
go out.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Tide turned suddenly down here they can catch you unawares.
At first, they laughed, really they laughed, sir, NICKI told
me later. But as the receding tide grew stronger, they
stopped laughing and clung to the rocks. They started shouting
for hilp, no one, no.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
One, Please don't go.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
They grew weaker and it grew harder to hold onto
the slippery rocks. The tide grew stronger, and at last
my son let go, and the tide started to carry
him out to see. Nicky swam after him, but she
couldn't quite reach him. And then, and then, please, some
(24:53):
natives who had just beached their boat saw them, and
they knew immediately what had happened.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
They went out after them. They reached and.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
At least they reached Nikki. They hauled her into the boat,
and then they turned to save her brother, but it
was too late. He'd gone under.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
He never came to the surface again. There was so
little I could say. When Monica finished her tragic story.
I got up to go, sickened body inadequacy of my
own limp words.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
But at the door, she said, come back tomorrow, will
you benedit?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Come early if you want me to.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I do.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I do. Tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I need to talk to you. You think you've heard everything,
But there's more, Oh, there's more.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Have you ever been a guest in a house far grander,
far more beautiful than your own? Perhaps it overlooked the
bluest of seas, and flowers grew all around it, Palms
and pines and little yellow birds that perched on their branches.
And perhaps you thought to yourself, how could anyone ever
be unhappy in such a house? Well, as our story
(26:34):
has intimated and will later reveal, anyone can. I'll return
shortly with Act three. On a Caribbean island, in her
home called the Great House, the woman called Monica has
(26:56):
been telling Benedict the tragic story of the drowning of
her son two years before, the boy's sister, Nicki, had
been saved, but her brother drowned. Unable to go on
with the tragic tale, Benedict took his leave. Well. The
next morning, I took my dog to the beach, proudly
(27:18):
carrying his red frisbee in his mouth. I was prepared
to wait for Nicki to appear around the bend in
the shoreline, but I found her waiting for me, staring
intently out to sea.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Oh there you.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Are, Oh, here we are. I want to talk to you. Well,
how about him? He wants you to throw the frisbee
for him later on? Will I have to tell you something?
What's that? My mother loves you? Oh not, Nikki. You
couldn't possibly know a thing like that. I do know it.
It's impossible. We've only met twice, but you're going to
(27:52):
see her again. This morning she told me she wants
to talk to me about something. She loves you. It's impossible.
We hardly know each other at all. What difference does
that make?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
She hasn't loved anyone for two years, and now she
loves you and you.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
What about me? You do you love her? What do
you think? I don't know. What's happened to your wild talent? Oh?
That that's what your mother calls your way of knowing
what other people are thinking and feeling.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Everybody wants to give names to things they think.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Once they've given something a name, they've got to pin down.
Like your dog, he's not really a dog.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
He's what he is, and he wouldn't be any less
than what he is if we called him something else.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
We didn't call him anything at all.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
So why call having feelings about people a wild talent?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
I call it anything? Hi, I think, I ask you
what you mean? Look, it's time for me to go
see your mother. You want to come with me?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
I think I'd rather stay hear with your dog.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'll throw the frisbee for him. See, he wants me
to all right, and when you get tired of that,
come to the Great House. Maybe I will. I walked
slowly to the Great House, not really knowing that I
wanted to hear the end of Monica's story. She'd been
so distressed the day before. But I've given my word,
(29:29):
and when she admitted me, she seemed composed and cordial.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Thank you for coming, Vinitette, why, I said I would? Well,
where's your big black dog. I'm used to seeing you
two together.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I left him on the beach with Nikki.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Did she say anything to you this morning about about me?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Well?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Did she please tell me?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
She said, I don't know where the notion came from.
I'm sure not from you. She said that you you
were fond of me. She said more than that, didn't she? Yes,
she said that you loved me.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yes, she told me that too, that I loved you.
I'm sorry, Ben, I hope it didn't embarrass you.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
You see, ever since her brother's death and her father's desertion,
she's been trying to find someone for me to love,
someone to replace the loss. She brings men to the
house the way you'd bring gifts to someone.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Who was ill. That's very sweet. Sweet, yes, but feudile. Well, now.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I told you yesterday that I had more to tell
you about about the day my son was.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Drowned, Monica, it must be painful for you to talk about.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
It was not the drowning I want to talk about, No,
it's what came after. When the natives came to this house.
One of them came into the room in this room,
and he told me about the turning of the tide,
about the children clinging to the rocks, about the letting go,
(31:13):
about setting out in the boat to save them. And
I waited, of course, to hear that they'd been rescued.
There was a silence for a few seconds, and then
the man said, the girl is alive, ma'am.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
And I said, what about the boy?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
And there was another silence, and then he said, ma'am,
the boy was drowned. And I stared at him. I
was filled with horror and shock, terrible shock, of course.
And then I heard myself say I heard myself. The
words simply just burst from me.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I never meant.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
But I said it, not gently, not softly. It was
a cry from my heart. I said, oh, why did
it have.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
To be the boy? Oh? Why?
Speaker 3 (32:13):
No?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Wait, you haven't heard it all. You haven't heard the worst.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I heard myself saying those terrible words. And then then
I looked up, and standing in the doorway was Nicky,
Nicky my daughter. And the look on her face, the
stricken look on her young face. She couldn't have misunderstood
what I meant. But if one of them had to
(32:42):
be saved and one had to die, why couldn't it
have been the boy who was saved?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Why couldn't she have been the one to die? What
can I say?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
What can anyone say? I've tried to tone for my
awful words. There is no atoning. I said them, I
meant them when I said them, And.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
She knew.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
What had happened is that NICKI has been trying to
give me back my son in some way, anyway, any
man who was attracted to her, and many have been,
She's brought to me, laid them at my feet, so
to speak, offering them to me as though she were
a guilty one because she lived well, her brother died.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
That's Nikki at the dog with my dog, She said,
she might. Oh, shall I let her in? Or shall
I tell her to way go back to be? Let
her go back? I can't not right now? Of course,
where's Nickie? Boy? It's just the dog. Nikki's not with her.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Where would she be?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I left her with the dog at the beach, Oh, Monica,
the dog telling us something from Nicky.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Where is Nicky?
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Come on, let's go to the beach. She's not here.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
What are you looking for?
Speaker 1 (34:15):
The red frize?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
What for?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I don't know, except she said she's going to stay
here and throw it for the dog. Why would you
change your mind? Why did the dog come to the
house without her? Could she have gone someplace else where?
Why she'd have taken a dog? Whether dead?
Speaker 2 (34:30):
I see her thing out there in the water.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Could be Nicky, can't sweat. I'm going in it could
be her.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I'm going to catch your boat. What are the fishers?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
If that's Nicky, she's pretty fall out at buff The
fisherman with her boat got to her before I did,
and it was they who saved her. When the doctor
has been called treated for exhaustion, ordered her to bed
and left, Monica joined me down in the drawing room
(35:01):
of the great House. She's going to be all right, yes,
thank god, in a few days. An addict. Yes, Monica,
Nicky was right. I do love you because I saved
your daughter. I didn't do that the natives did.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I loved you before that. Nicky knew it right away.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
That wasn't love. It may have seemed like love, but
it wasn't. You felt gratitude, You felt relief because after
two years you told me the story of the drowning
and all that came after. You trusted me to understand,
and I think I did. There's a feeling that mothers
(35:52):
have for their sons that's unlike any other. It's the
closest thing to pure love that a woman can feel.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
No.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I don't know why this should be so, but it's so. No. No,
you don't love me, Monica. Now I'd like to go
up and say goodbye to Nikki. You're leaving, going back
to the mainland.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I hope you'll come back one day.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Oh wh I shall? I shall come in then?
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You knew who it was, didn't you.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I'm leaving tomorrow, Nikki. I came to say goodbye.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Oh when are you coming back?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Oh? Next year? After I've done some writing. You knew
i'd come back, didn't you? Of course? Nikki? When I
swam out to try and save you.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
I didn't really have to do that, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
I was afraid you're drowned. But I was swimming. You
can't swim, you toltally. I was swimming, not very well.
I was swimming.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
It came back to me.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Why did you swim so far out? When they picked
you up? The water was way over your head. I
had to NICKI, were you trying to drown yourself? I
told you I was swimming, yeah, but so far out.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
I was looking for my brother.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Niki. You must have known you couldn't find your brother.
I had to try.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
I've been trying for so long to give her something
someone I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
It's not up to you, Nicki. Your mother has to
find someone to love who loves her. She has to
do that by herself.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
If I could do it for her, she she'd forgive me.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Forgive you for what I don't know, for being alive?
Speaker 3 (38:11):
O guess so, yess?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Nobody has to be forgiven for that, Nikki. It's not
a sin to be alive, are you sure? I'm very sure, Nikki.
When I was swimming out to try and rescue you,
I found something floating on the water. I found this.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Why it's the red frisbee.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
The waves should have brought it back to shore. Why
didn't they Because because I kept it with me.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
It's how I learned to swim again.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Remember you told me how your dog found out he
could swim.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Now, you kept throwing.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
The frisbee further and further until he was over his head,
and how it came to him all of a sudden
that he could swim.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Well, that's what I did.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I kept throwing the frisbee out further and further, and
suddenly it came to me I could swim.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Ben.
Speaker 4 (39:16):
It was just like you said about the dog.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
I felt so so triumphant.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I believed in myself. Nikki, I have to go now, Ben,
you love me, don't you? Now? How did you know that?
I just knew I haven't lost your wild talent after all?
Have you? Oh that it's a beautiful thing to have
(39:47):
a wild talent?
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I suppose?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
So do you? Uh? Do you buy any chance love me?
I don't know, not yet. Maybe it'll come to you.
I hope when it does, you'll discover that you do
love me.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Next year, when you come back, then i'll know.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
While I was packing, the dog sat watching me. The
red frisbee in his mouth. There was always a chance
we might go back to the beach again. And I thought,
what will Makki say a year from now? Will she
say yes, she loves me? A warm feeling swept over me,
A certainty that she would, A bright glow of anticipation.
(40:47):
She loves me even now, I thought, she just needs
time to find it out. What do you think? I
said to my dog, And he dropped the red frisbee
on the floor, stood up on his hind legs and
lick my face. Was he trying to tell me that
I would still have his love even if I couldn't
have hers? Or was he telling me that I was
(41:10):
right that I too had a wild talent? Does a
wild talent live in each of us? Can we stop
trying to be so clever, so learned, so successful, and
(41:33):
return somehow to what we call primitive, to the style
of living where our feelings count for more than our brains,
where our feelings count for everything, if they are free
and tune to the world we inhabit and the creatures
that inhabit it with us. Once again, I can only
ask the question. I do not have the answer. I'll
(41:56):
be back shortly they say that when Gertrude Stein was dying,
I knew that she was dying. She turned to her
friend and companion of many years and said, Alice, what
(42:17):
is the answer, and Alice replied, no, one knows. Lent
Miss Steyne. After a long look at her friend, said
all right, then what is the question? Our cast included
Robert Dryden, Jodda Rowland and Terry Keane. The entire production
was under the direction of Hyman Brown and now a
(42:42):
preview of our next tale.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
How for heaven's sake, why didn't just stay out of
my life?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Why did you have to call me?
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I want to see you either, No, you can't. You
can't look at me. I don't want to see what
I'm look in your eyes?
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Because because I'm an old woman? Now? No, not you.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yes, yes, I'm old, older.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Than I ought to be thanks to you, and look
older than my mother does.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
That's what my last ten years were about, Harry.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Working like a dog.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
No money just is getting.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Poor and old. Let me come up to you just
for a while, we could talk. Just stay away from here,
do you understand me?
Speaker 4 (43:31):
You say you're a dead man.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Fine, stay dead, Harry Radio Mystery Theater was sponsored in
part by Buick Motor Division. This is E. G. Marshall
inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for another
adventure in the macabre. Until next time, pleasant dreams go
(44:18):
bye bye
CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents. Come in or welcome. I'm
(00:26):
a G. Marshall. We call ourselves modern, only these are
modern times. The years past are prehistoric, or ancient or medieval.
We say with some pride that we are modern, as
though we'd smartened up considerably and discarded old, worn out,
discredited theories and practices. Yet our medicine has its roots
(00:50):
in antique magic, and our science has its origins in
archaic superstition. Without magic and superstition, it is unlikely we
could have survived to become modern. She has everything, a
loveliness to take your breath away. She has sweetness and gaiety,
(01:12):
but she has something else. I don't know what it is.
She has a wild talent. She's always had it. But
what is it a wild talent.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
No one knows precisely, except those perhaps who take the
trouble to learn.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Our mystery drama The Red Frisbee was written especially for
the Mystery Theater by Elspeth Eric and stars Robert Dryden.
It is sponsored in part by True Value Hardware stores
and Ludin's medicated cough Drops. I'll be back shortly with
Act one, one of the Earth's loveliest seas is the Caribbean.
(02:11):
In a gentle curve. On the bosom of that sea
lie the islands known as the Antilles. A man has
come to one of these islands, not only for the
brilliant sky, the soft sands, the hot sun, and the
cooling winds, but for the quiet and the isolation that
only an island can give. What he finds there, we
(02:33):
will tell you in this tale. I'd come to the
island after three years spent with an Aboriginal tribe in
the interior of Australia. I needed to relax and reflect
and try to sort out the ideas I wanted to
incorporate into my article for the Anthropological Journal and later
(02:57):
expand into a book with me my voluminous notes, a
suitcase full of old clothes, and my dog that which
you had adopted. Okay, okay, one more time, Okay, fetch
a good dog.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
He's so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What he's beautiful? Oh? Whoa thank you? Have you always
had him since he was a puppy. He's been all
over the world with me. We just spent three years
in Australia together before we came here. Look here he comes.
Has he got in his mouth. Well, that's a frisbee. Frisbee,
(03:40):
you know, one of those round plastic things that just
throws you know, No, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I never had a frisbee.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Oh well, they're kind of fun. They go sailing through
the air. All right, drop it, boy, drop it. Oh
he doesn't want to. He knows.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
He looks handsome with a red frisbee in his mouth,
with black hair.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And me kind of God is laboratory freeing hid drop
it boy, good boy, that's enough.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Now I'll throw it again for him.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I like to see him swim with it in his mouth.
He looks so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Okay, that's such. Oh he's a good swimmer, isn't he. Oh? Yes,
we swim out very far as far as I can
throw the frisbee. I guess that's wonderful. You like to swim,
I can't. You can't swim. You live on this wonderful
(04:34):
island and you can't swim. I used to be able
to What happened?
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I forgot?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
How you forgot?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yes, here he comes with his red prissy and.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
How could you forget?
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I just forgot.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh, look he wants you to throw it for him again.
I do this all day if I throw it for him,
and would he swims as far I suppose he would.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
All dogs can swim, I guess no.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Not right away. They have to be taught like people,
not exactly, but they have to be made to realize
that they can. That's about what it amounts to. I
guess they don't always know that they can. They're surprised
as anybody when they find out. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Are you going to throw the friss again?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I think he's heading out for today we both have.
Will you be coming back tomorrow?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I imagine, so maybe I'll see you here.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That would be nice. Well bye then bye? Wait hey,
uh wait a minute. You a young lady? What how
did you know my name? Tomorrow? See you tomorrow. I
(05:59):
watched his swing off down the beach. I judged she
might be about seventeen, though she could as well have
been twelve or twenty. She wore a sort of shapeless smock.
Her legs were ruddy brown from the sun. Her hair
was streaked in shades of gold. I remembered her eyes,
which were the startling blue of deut China. I heard
(06:23):
again her clear young voice calling man, see you tomorrow,
and the next day. I was on the beach early
in the morning. Not now, boy, No, no, no, no,
we're waiting for someone. What is it? Boy? Hey? Hey, hey,
what are you doing? Where are you going? Come back here?
(06:43):
He'd seen her before I did, before she rounded the
curve in the shoreline. Why had he simply sensed her
coming or what? At any rate? Yes, she was swinging
down the beach toward me. Who hell are there?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah? Early?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
So you I didn't give you waiting.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Did I?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
No, I'd have waited all day. Oh, you wouldn't have
had to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I knew you were here. I had to do something
for my mother first.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
How'd you know I was here?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I knew?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But how the way a person knows those things? People
don't just know those things? Oh? You saw me from
your house? Where do you live? Do you have a
place on the beach?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
No, we live in the Great House. What's the Great House?
Just the house?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
They call it the Great House because it used to
be where the governor lived, the Spanish governor a long
time ago.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Ben, aren't you going to.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Throw the red frisbee for the dogs? See?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
He wants you to. How'd you know? My name is Ben?
I guess you told me. I never told you. You
never asked, I never told you. But when you left
yesterday you said, goodbye, Ben.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Why don't you throw the frisbee?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Ben is my name, but you had no way of
knowing that my name. You really don't care what your
name is.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Now, I swell the red frisbee a if you want,
I want there there?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's boy.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Why don't swim beautifully?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
What's your name?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Nikki? You told me yesterday that dogs had.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
To learn how to swim. Now what I said was
they have to find out that they can swim. I
guess that's true of people too. Probably we can all swim,
but we have to find out it some time or
other that we can. It's quite a discovery for a
person or a dog. How did your dog find out
he can swim? Well, it was when we were in Australia.
(08:35):
I made a weekend trip to the Great Barrier Reef,
and of course I took him along. I was sitting
on the beach with him the way we were sitting now,
and I have this red frisbee, the same one I
have now, and I threw it into the water and
he plunged in after it and brought it back. Next time,
I threw it further, and he brought it back. I'd
never thrown it so far that he couldn't stand up
(08:56):
in the water, but then I did. I threw it
way out out to where the water was over his head,
and he went after it. Oh yes, And he got
to about three feet away from it, and all of
a sudden, his feet didn't touch bottom anymore. But he
stretched his neck out and grabbed the frisbee anyway between
his teeth, and he tried to turn around to bring
(09:18):
it back to me. And that was when he found
out he couldn't touch.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Bottom, and he started to swim.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Not yet he sank under the water. Oh no, He
came up again right away. He looked so surprised, and
he went under again. What did you do? Did you
just stand there? He went down for the third time,
and I started in after him. But before I got
to him, he started to swim, having away like mad
(09:49):
the other way dogs do, oh I know. And there
was such a look in his eyes, such a look
of triumph, belief in himself. It was as though his
ancestors from way back, hundreds of thousands of years ago
had whispered to him somehow down the ages, as though
they'd said, you know how you can do it, and
(10:11):
he did it. I've never forgotten that.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
That's a beautiful story, Benedict, it's true.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What did you call me just now? I don't know? Yes,
you do. You called me Benedict. Yesterday you called me ben. Well,
that could be a lucky guest, but Ben is usually
short for Benjamin. And my name is Benedict, and that's
(10:41):
what you called me. Wow, that's your name. Yes, but
how did you know? How could you know that? And
you're kind of hurting my arm? Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Then would you like to meet my mother? I'd like
you to, all right, and it's on you come this
afternoon for tea. I'd love to ask anybody where the
Great House is.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Everybody knows the house, all right?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Oh, and Benedict, be sure to bring your.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Dog with you. It was easy to see why than
called the Great House. The woodwork was solid, mahogany and carved.
The doors were mahogany, too, nearly six inches thick. The
rooms were large and square and full of sunlight. The
(11:27):
girl Nikki met me at the door and took me
to her mother, a beautiful woman with the same delt
blue eyes.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
This is Benedict mother, and.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
This is is dog. I'm so glad missus.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh why don't you call me Monica? Since you and
NICKI are such good friends, we're very informal here.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Oh thank you. Then you want to take the dog
down to the beach, Nicky?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Please just want to throw.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
The red first before him?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Please, Nicky, Well, if you want to, I won't stay long.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I hope you don't think my daughter's rude. She has
strange ways, but she's a good girl.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
She's a wonderful girl. Oh you think so. She has everything.
She has a loveliness that takes your breath away. Yes,
she is lovely. She has sweetness and gaiety. Yes, but
she has something else. I don't know what that is.
You don't, do you? She has a wild talent. A
(12:35):
what a wild talent? Well? What is that? What is
a wild talent?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
No one knows precisely, except perhaps those who take the
trouble to learn.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
All talent is wild. Really, it comes from heaven, those
where it cannot be coaxed or bribed or bought. It
cannot be cultivated, it cannot be manufactured or in any
way acquired. But no matter where it comes from or
in whom it resides, talent is never a tame thing.
(13:13):
It is always wild, as the winds are wild, as
the seas are wild, as the world was in its beginnings,
and as it remains at its core wild. I'll be
back shortly with that. Two on sands the color of
(13:40):
a ripe beach on an island in the blue waters
of the Caribbean Sea, Benedict has met a girl called Nicki,
who lives with her mother in a stately home called
the Great House. Nicki has persuaded Benedict to come to
the Great House to meet her mother, but no sooner
had introductions been made than she asked to be excused
who used to take Benedict's dog to the beach, leaving
(14:02):
Benedict alone with her mother.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I hope you don't think my daughter rude.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
She has a wild talent. A wild talent? Is that
what you said?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
You've never heard of such a thing.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I can't say I have. What is a wild talent?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
No one knows precisely if you take the trouble to
find out.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well, what is it? Is it mystical? Is it magical?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Would it help if I said that it had something
to do with extrasensory perception thought transparence.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Did your daughter tell you that she knew my name
without my ever having mentioned it?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
No, she didn't tell me, but then she wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And not only that, she called me Ben, which is
my nickname, And the next day she called me Benedict,
my given name. Suppose she was lucky in guessing that
I'm generally called Ben. She could have assumed was the
diminutive of Benjamin, a pretty common name, But she didn't.
(15:05):
She called me Benedict, a fairly uncommon name. I'm surprised
she didn't mention it to you.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Nikki's very casual about such things.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
She takes them for granted. But does she think that
everyone is so intuitive? Doesn't she realize that she is
somehow different?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I don't think she gives it any thought at all.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Tell me, has she always had this wild talent?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
She never showed any sign of it, at least none
that I noticed until two years ago.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Until, yes, until her brother died. Oh oh, she didn't
tell me. Uh, I didn't know she'd had a brother.
He was drowned. I am sorry.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, my goodness, you were invited here for tea, and
I've never given you any you know, I'll put the
water on right away.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
It won't take but a minute. No hurry, Nicky.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Oh, oh, it's you.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Your mother's in the kitchen. Should be right back, NICKI
are your eyes you look a little. You're not feeling
ill or anything, are you? I'm all right. Well did
you do have a good time with a red frisbee?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yes, I saw it very far out.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, fine, he will be ready shortly.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Nicki's back, Nicki, NICKI go upstairs immediately and lie down.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
The tide her and go upstairs, take a hot bath
and lie down in your room.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yes, mother, you see the tide turned tonight. I had
to come back.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm sorry, Benedict. What's the matter with her? She said,
the tide turned.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
It was when the tide turned that her brother drowned. Benedict,
I don't think we can have our tea today, but
come back tomorrow, will you, And I'll explain what she
meant when she said the tide turned.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I wasn't sure that I'd seen Nikki on the beach.
The next morning, she looked so pale, so ill. When
she returned to the Great house the previous afternoon, as
though she'd seen a ghost be the way some people
would have described it. And from the little I had
learned of her brother's death, I thought this might indeed
(17:42):
be true. Nevertheless, I went to the beach at my
accustomed early hour and the company of my dog, carrying
in his mouth his beloved red frisbee. The dog looked
up suddenly, just as he had the day before. The
frisbee dropped on to the sand, and he started his
up down the sand. I knew then that Nicki would
(18:03):
soon come into sight, and so she did, her loose
smock blowing in the wind, her brown legs carrying her confidently,
almost arrogantly, toward me. Hi, how are you. I'm fine,
I'm glad. Where's the red frisbee? He wants you to
throw it? That's here? May I throw it from him? Certainly?
(18:24):
That this boy? How's your mother?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Oh she's fine.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I'm sorry you didn't get any tea yesterday.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Oh that's all right.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
She thought she should look after me.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Did you do what she said? Did you take a
hot bath and lie down in your room? Of course,
that's what I always do. Nicki does the turning of
the tide always upset you turns at different times.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
You know, sometimes it's rather gentle and sometimes it isn't
gentle at all.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Well, that depends on the sun and the moon, does it.
It's because of the attraction of the sun and the
moon that the tides ebb and flow. They act unequally
on the waters of the earth. They disturb their equilibrium.
Do you understand?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
All I know is that here they happen quickly suddenly.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
There's no warning. Well that's because well, never mind why
it is. I wouldn't understand it anyway. I'm not clever
like you. All I know is that when the tide.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Goes out so fast, so fast, one hardly has time.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Oh here he is it?
Speaker 4 (19:39):
He's red Frisbee.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
May I held it yet?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Of course much? Nikki. Did you like my mother very much?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Not a pity I had to spoil everything.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
He didn't spoil anything, Oh yes I did, no, no,
mater of fact. She invited me to come back today
for tea and I accepted. And you do like her?
I told you, because I know she likes you. Did
she say so? No, not in those words, but I
know she does. Now, Just how would you know a
(20:18):
thing like that.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Do you think I have to be told things in
order to know them or read them in a book.
People often tell things that are not true, and books
can be wrong.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
But when you know.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Well, and you know that afternoon at the Great House
things went almost exactly as they had the day before.
Nikki greeted me, then greeted my dog, and then said,
did you bring your ead fibe weeks? Of course, we
never go anywhere without it. Mother will be down in
a minute, she knows you're here. May I take the
(20:52):
dogs to the beach and throw the fisty for me?
What if you want to? I do want to, Nicky?
Where you go? Activity?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I wish you'd say, I I am.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Sorry, Ben, Oh, that's all right. She enjoys the dog letters. Well,
she's forever doing this, doing what exactly, bringing men.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Home to meet me and leaving us alone, men of
all ages, all nationalities. I think she wants to marry
me off or something.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
That shouldn't be hard, provided you wanted to cooperate.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
After my son was drowned, I I was very melancholy
for a long time, very long time. I shut myself
in my room, wouldn't talk to anyone for almost a year. Finally,
my husband grew tired of a wife who was no
wife at all, and he left.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Oh I'm sorry. I wish I could have been.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Actually I didn't care.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, now let's have our tea, shall we?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
This time?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
I have it all ready for you and some little cake.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Oh splendid, I'm hungry. I spent a long time on
the beach today and it gave me quite an abatise.
Well help yourself, lemon or milk, God, little milk please.
Nikki informed me on the beach this morning that you
liked me.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well I do.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Here's your tea. Thank you. I asked her if you'd
said so, and she said no, that she just knew.
As usual of her instincts to write. She has a
great contempt for things that are learned, and a great
devotion to things which are simply known.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I've never been quite sure just what she means.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Why can't she swim?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Oh, well, she used to swim quite well.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
What happened? Did it have something to do with the tides,
with the turning of the time.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
It had everything to do with the turning of the tide.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I'm curious. Living on an island, one would think she
would but if you don't want to tell me.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I've never talked about it since it happened. But since
it happened, Nicki hasn't been able.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
To swim, not a stroke. She's tried, poor child, but
she just can't. She says, she's forgotten.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
How can one forget a thing like that? I thought
it was something once learned, never forgotten. NICKI forgot how
to swim the day her brother was drowned. They'd gone
in the ocean together on a beautiful day, just like
this one.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
What if you don't want to talk about it, well
I do? I do?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
They swam out to where some rocks jutted out into
the sea, and they played on the rocks for a while.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Some themselves went back into the water again. It was
then just then that the tide turned. It started to
go out.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Tide turned suddenly down here they can catch you unawares.
At first, they laughed, really they laughed, sir, NICKI told
me later. But as the receding tide grew stronger, they
stopped laughing and clung to the rocks. They started shouting
for hilp, no one, no.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
One, Please don't go.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
They grew weaker and it grew harder to hold onto
the slippery rocks. The tide grew stronger, and at last
my son let go, and the tide started to carry
him out to see. Nicky swam after him, but she
couldn't quite reach him. And then, and then, please, some
(24:53):
natives who had just beached their boat saw them, and
they knew immediately what had happened.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
They went out after them. They reached and.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
At least they reached Nikki. They hauled her into the boat,
and then they turned to save her brother, but it
was too late. He'd gone under.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
He never came to the surface again. There was so
little I could say. When Monica finished her tragic story.
I got up to go, sickened body inadequacy of my
own limp words.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
But at the door, she said, come back tomorrow, will
you benedit?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Come early if you want me to.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I do.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I do. Tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I need to talk to you. You think you've heard everything,
But there's more, Oh, there's more.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Have you ever been a guest in a house far grander,
far more beautiful than your own? Perhaps it overlooked the
bluest of seas, and flowers grew all around it, Palms
and pines and little yellow birds that perched on their branches.
And perhaps you thought to yourself, how could anyone ever
be unhappy in such a house? Well, as our story
(26:34):
has intimated and will later reveal, anyone can. I'll return
shortly with Act three. On a Caribbean island, in her
home called the Great House, the woman called Monica has
(26:56):
been telling Benedict the tragic story of the drowning of
her son two years before, the boy's sister, Nicki, had
been saved, but her brother drowned. Unable to go on
with the tragic tale, Benedict took his leave. Well. The
next morning, I took my dog to the beach, proudly
(27:18):
carrying his red frisbee in his mouth. I was prepared
to wait for Nicki to appear around the bend in
the shoreline, but I found her waiting for me, staring
intently out to sea.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Oh there you.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Are, Oh, here we are. I want to talk to you. Well,
how about him? He wants you to throw the frisbee
for him later on? Will I have to tell you something?
What's that? My mother loves you? Oh not, Nikki. You
couldn't possibly know a thing like that. I do know it.
It's impossible. We've only met twice, but you're going to
(27:52):
see her again. This morning she told me she wants
to talk to me about something. She loves you. It's impossible.
We hardly know each other at all. What difference does
that make?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
She hasn't loved anyone for two years, and now she
loves you and you.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
What about me? You do you love her? What do
you think? I don't know. What's happened to your wild talent? Oh?
That that's what your mother calls your way of knowing
what other people are thinking and feeling.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Everybody wants to give names to things they think.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Once they've given something a name, they've got to pin down.
Like your dog, he's not really a dog.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
He's what he is, and he wouldn't be any less
than what he is if we called him something else.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
We didn't call him anything at all.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
So why call having feelings about people a wild talent?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
I call it anything? Hi, I think, I ask you
what you mean? Look, it's time for me to go
see your mother. You want to come with me?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
I think I'd rather stay hear with your dog.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'll throw the frisbee for him. See, he wants me
to all right, and when you get tired of that,
come to the Great House. Maybe I will. I walked
slowly to the Great House, not really knowing that I
wanted to hear the end of Monica's story. She'd been
so distressed the day before. But I've given my word,
(29:29):
and when she admitted me, she seemed composed and cordial.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Thank you for coming, Vinitette, why, I said I would? Well,
where's your big black dog. I'm used to seeing you
two together.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I left him on the beach with Nikki.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Did she say anything to you this morning about about me?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Well?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Did she please tell me?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
She said, I don't know where the notion came from.
I'm sure not from you. She said that you you
were fond of me. She said more than that, didn't she? Yes,
she said that you loved me.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yes, she told me that too, that I loved you.
I'm sorry, Ben, I hope it didn't embarrass you.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
You see, ever since her brother's death and her father's desertion,
she's been trying to find someone for me to love,
someone to replace the loss. She brings men to the
house the way you'd bring gifts to someone.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Who was ill. That's very sweet. Sweet, yes, but feudile. Well, now.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I told you yesterday that I had more to tell
you about about the day my son was.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Drowned, Monica, it must be painful for you to talk about.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
It was not the drowning I want to talk about, No,
it's what came after. When the natives came to this house.
One of them came into the room in this room,
and he told me about the turning of the tide,
about the children clinging to the rocks, about the letting go,
(31:13):
about setting out in the boat to save them. And
I waited, of course, to hear that they'd been rescued.
There was a silence for a few seconds, and then
the man said, the girl is alive, ma'am.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
And I said, what about the boy?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
And there was another silence, and then he said, ma'am,
the boy was drowned. And I stared at him. I
was filled with horror and shock, terrible shock, of course.
And then I heard myself say I heard myself. The
words simply just burst from me.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I never meant.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
But I said it, not gently, not softly. It was
a cry from my heart. I said, oh, why did
it have.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
To be the boy? Oh? Why?
Speaker 3 (32:13):
No?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Wait, you haven't heard it all. You haven't heard the worst.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I heard myself saying those terrible words. And then then
I looked up, and standing in the doorway was Nicky,
Nicky my daughter. And the look on her face, the
stricken look on her young face. She couldn't have misunderstood
what I meant. But if one of them had to
(32:42):
be saved and one had to die, why couldn't it
have been the boy who was saved?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Why couldn't she have been the one to die? What
can I say?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
What can anyone say? I've tried to tone for my
awful words. There is no atoning. I said them, I
meant them when I said them, And.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
She knew.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
What had happened is that NICKI has been trying to
give me back my son in some way, anyway, any
man who was attracted to her, and many have been,
She's brought to me, laid them at my feet, so
to speak, offering them to me as though she were
a guilty one because she lived well, her brother died.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
That's Nikki at the dog with my dog, She said,
she might. Oh, shall I let her in? Or shall
I tell her to way go back to be? Let
her go back? I can't not right now? Of course,
where's Nickie? Boy? It's just the dog. Nikki's not with her.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Where would she be?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I left her with the dog at the beach, Oh, Monica,
the dog telling us something from Nicky.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Where is Nicky?
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Come on, let's go to the beach. She's not here.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
What are you looking for?
Speaker 1 (34:15):
The red frize?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
What for?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I don't know, except she said she's going to stay
here and throw it for the dog. Why would you
change your mind? Why did the dog come to the
house without her? Could she have gone someplace else where?
Why she'd have taken a dog? Whether dead?
Speaker 2 (34:30):
I see her thing out there in the water.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Could be Nicky, can't sweat. I'm going in it could
be her.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I'm going to catch your boat. What are the fishers?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
If that's Nicky, she's pretty fall out at buff The
fisherman with her boat got to her before I did,
and it was they who saved her. When the doctor
has been called treated for exhaustion, ordered her to bed
and left, Monica joined me down in the drawing room
(35:01):
of the great House. She's going to be all right, yes,
thank god, in a few days. An addict. Yes, Monica,
Nicky was right. I do love you because I saved
your daughter. I didn't do that the natives did.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I loved you before that. Nicky knew it right away.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
That wasn't love. It may have seemed like love, but
it wasn't. You felt gratitude, You felt relief because after
two years you told me the story of the drowning
and all that came after. You trusted me to understand,
and I think I did. There's a feeling that mothers
(35:52):
have for their sons that's unlike any other. It's the
closest thing to pure love that a woman can feel.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
No.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I don't know why this should be so, but it's so. No. No,
you don't love me, Monica. Now I'd like to go
up and say goodbye to Nikki. You're leaving, going back
to the mainland.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I hope you'll come back one day.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Oh wh I shall? I shall come in then?
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You knew who it was, didn't you.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I'm leaving tomorrow, Nikki. I came to say goodbye.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Oh when are you coming back?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Oh? Next year? After I've done some writing. You knew
i'd come back, didn't you? Of course? Nikki? When I
swam out to try and save you.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
I didn't really have to do that, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
I was afraid you're drowned. But I was swimming. You
can't swim, you toltally. I was swimming, not very well.
I was swimming.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
It came back to me.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Why did you swim so far out? When they picked
you up? The water was way over your head. I
had to NICKI, were you trying to drown yourself? I
told you I was swimming, yeah, but so far out.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
I was looking for my brother.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Niki. You must have known you couldn't find your brother.
I had to try.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
I've been trying for so long to give her something
someone I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
It's not up to you, Nicki. Your mother has to
find someone to love who loves her. She has to
do that by herself.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
If I could do it for her, she she'd forgive me.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Forgive you for what I don't know, for being alive?
Speaker 3 (38:11):
O guess so, yess?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Nobody has to be forgiven for that, Nikki. It's not
a sin to be alive, are you sure? I'm very sure, Nikki.
When I was swimming out to try and rescue you,
I found something floating on the water. I found this.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Why it's the red frisbee.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
The waves should have brought it back to shore. Why
didn't they Because because I kept it with me.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
It's how I learned to swim again.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Remember you told me how your dog found out he
could swim.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Now, you kept throwing.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
The frisbee further and further until he was over his head,
and how it came to him all of a sudden
that he could swim.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Well, that's what I did.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I kept throwing the frisbee out further and further, and
suddenly it came to me I could swim.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Ben.
Speaker 4 (39:16):
It was just like you said about the dog.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
I felt so so triumphant.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I believed in myself. Nikki, I have to go now, Ben,
you love me, don't you? Now? How did you know that?
I just knew I haven't lost your wild talent after all?
Have you? Oh that it's a beautiful thing to have
(39:47):
a wild talent?
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I suppose?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
So do you? Uh? Do you buy any chance love me?
I don't know, not yet. Maybe it'll come to you.
I hope when it does, you'll discover that you do
love me.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Next year, when you come back, then i'll know.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
While I was packing, the dog sat watching me. The
red frisbee in his mouth. There was always a chance
we might go back to the beach again. And I thought,
what will Makki say a year from now? Will she
say yes, she loves me? A warm feeling swept over me,
A certainty that she would, A bright glow of anticipation.
(40:47):
She loves me even now, I thought, she just needs
time to find it out. What do you think? I
said to my dog, And he dropped the red frisbee
on the floor, stood up on his hind legs and
lick my face. Was he trying to tell me that
I would still have his love even if I couldn't
have hers? Or was he telling me that I was
(41:10):
right that I too had a wild talent? Does a
wild talent live in each of us? Can we stop
trying to be so clever, so learned, so successful, and
(41:33):
return somehow to what we call primitive, to the style
of living where our feelings count for more than our brains,
where our feelings count for everything, if they are free
and tune to the world we inhabit and the creatures
that inhabit it with us. Once again, I can only
ask the question. I do not have the answer. I'll
(41:56):
be back shortly they say that when Gertrude Stein was dying,
I knew that she was dying. She turned to her
friend and companion of many years and said, Alice, what
(42:17):
is the answer, and Alice replied, no, one knows. Lent
Miss Steyne. After a long look at her friend, said
all right, then what is the question? Our cast included
Robert Dryden, Jodda Rowland and Terry Keane. The entire production
was under the direction of Hyman Brown and now a
(42:42):
preview of our next tale.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
How for heaven's sake, why didn't just stay out of
my life?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Why did you have to call me?
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I want to see you either, No, you can't. You
can't look at me. I don't want to see what
I'm look in your eyes?
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Because because I'm an old woman? Now? No, not you.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yes, yes, I'm old, older.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Than I ought to be thanks to you, and look
older than my mother does.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
That's what my last ten years were about, Harry.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Working like a dog.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
No money just is getting.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Poor and old. Let me come up to you just
for a while, we could talk. Just stay away from here,
do you understand me?
Speaker 4 (43:31):
You say you're a dead man.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Fine, stay dead, Harry Radio Mystery Theater was sponsored in
part by Buick Motor Division. This is E. G. Marshall
inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for another
adventure in the macabre. Until next time, pleasant dreams go
(44:18):
bye bye
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