July 26, 2025 • 23 mins
A horror and fantasy anthology series that delves into the eerie and the unknown, offering stories that unsettle and provoke thought. Its minimalist production enhances the chilling narratives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quiet Please, Quiet Please. M The Mutual Broadcasting System presents
(00:32):
Quiet Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper
and features Ernest Chappell. Quiet Please for Tonight is called
Camera Obscura. I don't suppose you ever killed anybody? Did you?
(00:54):
I didn't think you have funny though you can't tell
you No. Murderer is very seldom look like murders, and
there's lots more of 'em around. You have any idea?
I know a fella, little screened up, wheezing gizmo. He's
a carpenter who lives on Brenda Street down in La
murdered his wife's brother in nineteen twenty eight, and nobody
ever had the faintest idea except the wife's brother. And the
(01:17):
guy's doing fine any things. He got away with it,
and he'll find out like that woman in Alameda that
killed her husband with that stuff you can buy in
any drug store and never have a clerk raised an
eyebrow at you. No, there's no such thing as getting
away with murder. Friend will leave me and from my money,
(01:37):
walking up the thirteen steps and standing on a trap
door with nine turns of a hangman's knock rubbing against
your left ear, or sitting in a chair smelling burnt
almonds with a lot of scared faces staring at you
through a little window, or even the hot squat itself
will leave me. Any of those legit ways of paying
off for murderers pie compared to what you're gonna get
(01:57):
if you'll have to ride. You're sure you never killed anybody, huh,
and you better be. I know they believe me. I
know I killed Philip the van a word on September
twenty ninth, nineteen twenty eight. I was never arrested, I
was never suspected. But no, I'm not gonna tell you
(02:21):
how I killed them. I'm not running a school for murderers.
And anyway, if you're planning on murdering somebody, you got
your own ideas on how you wanna do it. The
only thing is I mention a quarter. When you get
done listening to me, you'll change your mind. You see,
the man said he was gonna call my story camera obscura.
(02:42):
I suppose maybe that puzzles you a little bit. Not
everybody knows what a camera obscura is, but practically everybody
here in Santa Monica knows the biggest camera obscure in
the world's right here, don't have to put the Santa
Monica Boulevard. In a little park that runs along on
the top of the Palisades, it's a little green building,
probably twenty feet high, practically circular, maybe twenty feet in diameter,
(03:07):
up on the top in a little kind of cupola.
There's a lens like a camera lens, only bigger, some
kind of mirror arrangement in there with it, and there's
a big round table that almost fills the building white
top on it, and the image the lens takes up
is reflected now out of the table, so it's uh
(03:27):
like a technicolor movie of whatever's going on outside. There's
a wheel like a ship steering wheel that you turn
to turn the lens with it, turn it around so
you can point it out towards the bay or up
the street or anywhere. That's a cute little gizmo. Terroists
have been getting the kick out of it for I
don't know how many years. Ask anybody that's ever been
(03:49):
in Santa Monica. Everybody's seen it, and I'm awful lot
of people have been in it. That's the camera obscure,
A harmless little green building in a park in the
sunshine black as a murderer's hard inside, and a miniature
were lying flat on a table in there. Go see it.
(04:10):
Sometimes you get a bang out of the two, even
if you don't see what I saw. There was this
girl that worked in Lewllyens restaurant next door to Harry
Collins bargain store where I worked. Now I had forgotten
her name, Kater Mary or Joe Anne or something. Just
(04:32):
to show you, that morning I went nekstore for a
cup of what Llewellyn things was coffee? Nobody in there
with this girl, this waitress Marry or Cater, whate her
name was. She's been crying. I said, what't I with
your kid?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
We cut a coffee. What's not a kid?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh? Nothing? Sy you've seen still banded? What's the last
couple of days?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I looked up at her and my tears started out
of her eyes again, And I said, and I was
telling the truth, I said, not since night before last? Why?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I said, where'd you see him?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Why? Down the pe station, down the street? Doesn't matter
if you run out on you?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh say, did you know?
Speaker 1 (05:24):
What do you mean? Did he he's gone? You sure?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I knew it when I gave him the money. I
knew it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I knew it. What did you do? Did you give
him money?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So I don't tell anybody bring please go?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Well, I won't, but he.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Said he needed two hundred dollars to pay a man
for something, and the banks were closed.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And he couldn't get any money and he needed it
so bad.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Men. You gave him two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I bought it from theewell, and I told him I'd.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Give it back to him in the morning. I had
two hundred and forty dollars i'd saved up, and I
saw one of my gonna.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Do Wait a minute, Wait a minute, I said, So
this was where the money came from. Where Wait a minute,
I said, you mean you borrow two hundred bucks from
the wanted to give the filling. Now he's gone and
you gotta dig it yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Taste and saved and saved. SI.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I know I hate that fine, hate that fine? How
come you did it? Putn't me? You borrow it from
somebody else? For guy's sakes.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
He we was gonna get married. Sigh.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
When you sat two hundred bucks, you sap.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I know it, I know it. What am I gonna do.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I gets pay off? You said anything to the police. Oh, no,
you're going to.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't know. Should I.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
No?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
What you had?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Why not?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well, I don't know if they really ran out on me.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But you were gonna marry him?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Huh, he asked me too.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Well, oh so I don't say anything about it to anybody,
will you?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I wanna say anything. I wanna say anything.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
It's if he's really gone, he's gone. Alright, What should
I do? Well, you can go to the cops if
you want 'em. But if I was you, you can
get an awful lot of publicity. You know that worth
two hundred bucks to you.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I know what, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, I gonna beat it. Harry'll be screaming for me.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Here.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
You gotta change for a ten dollar bill?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, I guess so? Oh a ten day, two three
sor s five ten?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
See what I mean? M She didn't have the faintest
time that was one of the ten out of girls
she gave to Phil vanderbt a couple of nights ago.
Isn't it amazing? I shoulda thought she'd noticed how wrinkled
and damp the bill was from the salt water. You see,
I didn't think about going through his pocket till after
I took him out there under Santa Monica Pier and
(08:16):
fastening one of the pilings down deep. It was a
good place. I thought. Nobody ever goes out there, Nobody
but a barracuda and a flat, ugly sting rays with
those rows of teeth like white needles. H kind of
(08:40):
left the camera obscuritor sitting out there on the palisades
all by itself. Didn't we Yeah, we would get back there,
I'll say we will. It was funny about Phil Vanderburt.
He was one of those fellows you see around town.
You never get to know him, but to see him,
and he's like a bus stop signed or one of
the kids that sells the Outlook Express on the corner
(09:01):
across the street from the California Bank. You know he's
there and you never notice him, never noticed him when
he disappears either. It's like that in California quite a lot.
So Philip D. Van der Wurt sort of paid it up,
and practically the only people in Santa Monica that thought
(09:21):
about him was me and the baby, and thew Orleans
Restaurant and she didn't know how I thought about him
at all. Funny how a fella is. She never brought
up the subject to fill. I was the one that
talked about him, and she man, I guess she had
(09:44):
been in love with him. There's sounding about being in
a set up like this, uh, a game, kind of
playing it right up to the edge, saying things that
had give you away. If she did the slightest tinkling
had a great kick, Yeah, a great game. I remember
(10:06):
one afternoon I had Wednesday afternoons off, and that day
I stuck in the restaurant. She was putting on her
hat llewel and I told her her business was slacked
that day and she could have a half day. So
instead of eating a piece of pie, I said, come on,
let's take a walk. Thought maybe we'd get out of
the beach and take one of the trams over the
Wichard Park and play tango, eat a couple of hot dogs.
So always started down Broadway and I said, have you
(10:28):
ever been in that camera scure over there?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Now you?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Oh, let's go see what it is. It was one
of those afternoons when the sun was still shining bright.
There was a big bank of fog setting off shore
a few miles sort of sneaking in to take over
those afternoon fogs and Santa Monica thing. They slide in
and all of a sudden there's like a great, big, damp,
gray seagull sitting down on top of it. So I
(10:55):
figured the fog was being in another hour, and the
beach farther is pretty dreary when that happened, So maybe
we killed a little time in this gizmo and then
walk on over to the Criterion and see the Rough Riders.
That was what I was playing in the Rough Riders.
There wasn't anybody around the camera up skirl and we
climb up the steps, No tourists, nobody, just the girl
and me, and whenever her name was, the wooden door
(11:16):
bangs behind us. I didn't know a place could be
so dark. Well, we stood there and looked at the
white top table and the moving picture of Santa Monica
on it, and I have to admit it's quite kicked
the first time to see it, but I hadn't seen
anything yet. I twisted the wheel around and the pictures
(11:39):
slid across the table top and never the breakers rolling in.
There was a Monica ballroom in the merry ground and
the pier and people fishing and people walking around, and
I thought about what was under that pier, if it
was still there. And then a man walked by, real close,
so he almost stilled a whole picture. He turned and
(12:01):
he seemed to look right at us stop out that
table top and what he was staring right at me
and kind of smiling, and right behind him and the
picture of the pier. I left him on him and
he stood there, and she fumbled at the door and
threw it open, and the light and lettered over the
picture and he was gone, Yes, And when I went outside,
(12:24):
he was gone from there too.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But we saw him inside. We both saw him.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I don't know. I couldn't tell her it was impossible
for Phil Vanderberg to stand outside the camera Secura that afternoon,
could I M. I had to go along with her.
I had to say, Chure, you'll see him again? Sure
are you to get you two hundred dollars back? He said, sure,
are you show up again? Every time I said it,
I got that chilly, cold seaweed feeling between my shoulder blades.
(12:54):
I should have had sense then, And going up to
Clarence Web's office and turned myself in and said, Clarence,
I murder Phil Vanderbert, and you'll find him tied to
were piling under the pier out there, just the other
side of that's hall. I should have done that. All
they had just done to me was send me up
the boats and put the black hat on me. But no,
I had to do it the hard way. I had
to get away with murder. Had the hunch, and I
(13:18):
didn't play it. I wish I had that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Song, let's go over to the camera up the jewel
against side.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I didn't wanna go to the camera stewa age. I
didn't wanna go in there in the dark. I didn't
wanna see that picture. I didn't wanna see Phill vander Port.
This afternoon, the pod was already coming in. We couldn't
see the end of the pier. And as you looked
out toward the bay, that white wall kept easing end
closer and closer, And I had the feeling that when
(13:49):
it got to me, I disappeared too right, and broad
daylight should get that field. It was warm in there
in the camera sciritae shine that had been beating down
on it all that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
One morning look at the fog, SI.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Look hy you a fog in the picture swirl as
side a little. There was somebody coming toward us, and
I had the illusion that he was actually coming toward us,
right out of the picture. And then the fog blew
away a little more from his station.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Still see him again, and she ran out of the place,
and the door slam shut, and I was all alone
in there.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
She ran on the steps, and I could see her
in the picture, and Phil came walking steadily towards me,
and then I could see her in the pictures. She
ran toward him outside there, and I could hear her
calling outside, and then she ran toward him in the picture,
and I could see them boat just as plain as
I see you. She ran straight through him, as if
he was part of the fog himself, and he kept
on coming closer towards me, closer closer. I don't know
(14:56):
how I got out of there. I had his lead
on a I remember I couldn't find the door in
the dark. And when I finally did get off, my
pants were all full of splinders from pounding on the walls,
and there was the cash over my eye where I
fell down the stairs and I'd never been so scared
in my life. I mean to say, I had never
been so scared in my life. Cause he something tripped
(15:20):
me as I opened the door. Something caught my ankle
and threw me. No, it wasn't so bad at wards hand,
as you were probably thinking. There was a long strand
of wet seaweed. It kind of gets all tangled around
the pilings under the pier.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Over it the camra scure.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
I said, I'll never go to that place again. I
will never go to that place again.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I'm going anyway. You don't wanna go, I'm.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Going, I said, I'm going. It's foolish you go to
that place.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Some reason why I self hanging around that place and
I wanna go there.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I thought, I know why. I don't know why he's
hanging around there.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
No, I won't go to the movies with you going
over to the camera sture, whether you wanna go or not.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And I knew I had to go. I said to myself,
if you let that girl go over there by herself,
you'll see him again. And what don't you find out?
I said to myself, you gotta go with her, so
if you you can keep her from fanning out whatever
she might find out, and I said, well, all right,
I'll go just this one time. There wasn't any fought
(16:32):
this time. It was a beautiful right day. It was
just the two of us, or I should say that
three of us. Yeah, we saw him again. This time
was the payoff. As far as she was concerned, wrong
to everything, there wasn't anything wrong with the picture, as
long as we had the lensay into her town. She
(16:53):
turned to wheels slowly and the picture flow pasted on
the table up northward towards the Mirra Morro Hotel, down
motion bova out of the palm trees in front of
the little real estate offices. And then we were looking
at the Broadway, and I could see Harry Cowan walk
out of the store and in the Llewellings, and then
the gas station came into view, and we looked down
Ocean Boulevard the other way, and then the rustic fence
(17:13):
at the edge of the palisades, and the spires of
the dance hall on the pier swam across the board,
and there was still leaning against a palm tree not
twenty feet away. It seemed very and justice if he
had heard her He looked up at this and grinned,
and he lifted his hand and beckoned me again. I
had a curious feeling that he was real. He was
three dimensional lair in the pictures. And she opened the
(17:36):
door and went out, but she came right back in.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
No, I didn't know what he's there.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I could have told her. I knew her.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
There's nobody else there there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
He was on the table, grinning at us, and he
said to him, I could see his lips more.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
What did he say?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I didn't hear anything.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I'm gonna look again.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
She opened the door, and Phil's lips and I could
read his lists. Anybody could read that word. Try it sometime.
He's dead, murderer.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I'm sure there wasn't anybody there, And a little.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Figure and the picture smiled again, and he raised his
hand and quite a straight of me, and I could
see his lips move again, and I knew she had
read his lips too. He said it again, murderer.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I saw what he did. I saw it now. I
know now I know where we can't see him out there.
He's tuning you. You killed him? You?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Oh? What else could I do? She knew she'd tell
and I'd hang so and I can't even remember her name.
(19:04):
There's quite a bit of space on the table in there,
and it's dark, Like I said, After a little while,
I opened the door and looked out Harry casually, Harry.
They was seen to be normal. I saw a Bobby
Clock the motorcop go by on his bike. Harry Collin
was walking back into the store. Nobody was looking at me.
(19:25):
I was about to start down the stairs when a
sudden thought struck. I had n't looked at the table
top of the picture. And they closed the door and
turned around, and Bill was still there in the picture,
still looking at me from there beside him under the
palm tree. Where's the girl? Not much left of the story. Now,
(19:56):
I should have gone there and confessed. Think good bit easier,
But well, I knew nobody'd ever find still, and I
didn't want anybody to find her. They locked the place
up at night, but the door came open easy. I
didn't bring any light. It was three o'clock in the
(20:19):
morning and night fog was hanging from the sky like
a wet velvet curtain. You couldn't see a street light
of block away. I went in and I crumbled around
out of the table where I left her. She wasn't there.
I found a paper matches. Finally, she wasn't there. You
(20:45):
thinks you know what terror is?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Don't let me tell you?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I stood up at last time, and the night was
so still, like I hear the fog gorn from the
way up toward point June. The fog, as I told you,
was thick as well. I glanced at the table. There
they were, the two of them, and there wasn't any
fog in a picture. I couldn't mistake him fell in
the girl, and together they raised their hands and they
(21:11):
back into me. I knew I couldn't move, but I
opened the door. I went down the steps into the fog.
There was just one tiny spark up hope in the
back of my mind, just one tiny spark. I knew
they wouldn't be there, but they were. And they turned
(21:34):
and stided away, and I followed them through the fog,
down past the suburban station, down the hill to the pier,
down across the boardwalk, down across the clinging, sticky, wet
sand in the fox running its fingers through my hair,
and under the pier with a wet, spongy pilot making
(21:58):
hells one high forest around me, This smell of tad
things cast up in the sea of them, the waves
reaching for me, and they went out had I followed,
and the waves beat at my knee, and the other
toe crushed at my waist, and I followed, and then
(22:23):
I tell my dressing snack from me.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
There was a long squarter of sea to cross my face.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Then the taste the song Mmm, you have listened to
(22:56):
Quiet Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper.
The man who spoke to you was Ernest Chapel, and
the girl was played by Jerita Bauer. As usual, the
music for Quiet Please is composed and played by Jean Brazo.
And now for a wordy about next week's Quiet Please,
here is our writer, director Willis Cooper. The music of
(23:17):
Claude Debisi was the inspiration for next week's story, which,
borrowing the composer's title, I have calonde la fillo hu
had Lain, the girl with the flaxen hair. If you
like charming ghosts, you'll probably like her. And so until
next week at the same time, I am quiet to yours,
(23:38):
Ernest Chamber. Quiet Please comes to you from New York.
This is a Mutual Broadcasting System
Quiet Please, Quiet Please. M The Mutual Broadcasting System presents
(00:32):
Quiet Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper
and features Ernest Chappell. Quiet Please for Tonight is called
Camera Obscura. I don't suppose you ever killed anybody? Did you?
(00:54):
I didn't think you have funny though you can't tell
you No. Murderer is very seldom look like murders, and
there's lots more of 'em around. You have any idea?
I know a fella, little screened up, wheezing gizmo. He's
a carpenter who lives on Brenda Street down in La
murdered his wife's brother in nineteen twenty eight, and nobody
ever had the faintest idea except the wife's brother. And the
(01:17):
guy's doing fine any things. He got away with it,
and he'll find out like that woman in Alameda that
killed her husband with that stuff you can buy in
any drug store and never have a clerk raised an
eyebrow at you. No, there's no such thing as getting
away with murder. Friend will leave me and from my money,
(01:37):
walking up the thirteen steps and standing on a trap
door with nine turns of a hangman's knock rubbing against
your left ear, or sitting in a chair smelling burnt
almonds with a lot of scared faces staring at you
through a little window, or even the hot squat itself
will leave me. Any of those legit ways of paying
off for murderers pie compared to what you're gonna get
(01:57):
if you'll have to ride. You're sure you never killed anybody, huh,
and you better be. I know they believe me. I
know I killed Philip the van a word on September
twenty ninth, nineteen twenty eight. I was never arrested, I
was never suspected. But no, I'm not gonna tell you
(02:21):
how I killed them. I'm not running a school for murderers.
And anyway, if you're planning on murdering somebody, you got
your own ideas on how you wanna do it. The
only thing is I mention a quarter. When you get
done listening to me, you'll change your mind. You see,
the man said he was gonna call my story camera obscura.
(02:42):
I suppose maybe that puzzles you a little bit. Not
everybody knows what a camera obscura is, but practically everybody
here in Santa Monica knows the biggest camera obscure in
the world's right here, don't have to put the Santa
Monica Boulevard. In a little park that runs along on
the top of the Palisades, it's a little green building,
probably twenty feet high, practically circular, maybe twenty feet in diameter,
(03:07):
up on the top in a little kind of cupola.
There's a lens like a camera lens, only bigger, some
kind of mirror arrangement in there with it, and there's
a big round table that almost fills the building white
top on it, and the image the lens takes up
is reflected now out of the table, so it's uh
(03:27):
like a technicolor movie of whatever's going on outside. There's
a wheel like a ship steering wheel that you turn
to turn the lens with it, turn it around so
you can point it out towards the bay or up
the street or anywhere. That's a cute little gizmo. Terroists
have been getting the kick out of it for I
don't know how many years. Ask anybody that's ever been
(03:49):
in Santa Monica. Everybody's seen it, and I'm awful lot
of people have been in it. That's the camera obscure,
A harmless little green building in a park in the
sunshine black as a murderer's hard inside, and a miniature
were lying flat on a table in there. Go see it.
(04:10):
Sometimes you get a bang out of the two, even
if you don't see what I saw. There was this
girl that worked in Lewllyens restaurant next door to Harry
Collins bargain store where I worked. Now I had forgotten
her name, Kater Mary or Joe Anne or something. Just
(04:32):
to show you, that morning I went nekstore for a
cup of what Llewellyn things was coffee? Nobody in there
with this girl, this waitress Marry or Cater, whate her
name was. She's been crying. I said, what't I with
your kid?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
We cut a coffee. What's not a kid?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh? Nothing? Sy you've seen still banded? What's the last
couple of days?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I looked up at her and my tears started out
of her eyes again, And I said, and I was
telling the truth, I said, not since night before last? Why?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I said, where'd you see him?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Why? Down the pe station, down the street? Doesn't matter
if you run out on you?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh say, did you know?
Speaker 1 (05:24):
What do you mean? Did he he's gone? You sure?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I knew it when I gave him the money. I
knew it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I knew it. What did you do? Did you give
him money?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So I don't tell anybody bring please go?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Well, I won't, but he.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Said he needed two hundred dollars to pay a man
for something, and the banks were closed.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And he couldn't get any money and he needed it
so bad.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Men. You gave him two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I bought it from theewell, and I told him I'd.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Give it back to him in the morning. I had
two hundred and forty dollars i'd saved up, and I
saw one of my gonna.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Do Wait a minute, Wait a minute, I said, So
this was where the money came from. Where Wait a minute,
I said, you mean you borrow two hundred bucks from
the wanted to give the filling. Now he's gone and
you gotta dig it yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Taste and saved and saved. SI.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I know I hate that fine, hate that fine? How
come you did it? Putn't me? You borrow it from
somebody else? For guy's sakes.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
He we was gonna get married. Sigh.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
When you sat two hundred bucks, you sap.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I know it, I know it. What am I gonna do.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I gets pay off? You said anything to the police. Oh, no,
you're going to.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't know. Should I.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
No?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
What you had?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Why not?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well, I don't know if they really ran out on me.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But you were gonna marry him?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Huh, he asked me too.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Well, oh so I don't say anything about it to anybody,
will you?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I wanna say anything. I wanna say anything.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
It's if he's really gone, he's gone. Alright, What should
I do? Well, you can go to the cops if
you want 'em. But if I was you, you can
get an awful lot of publicity. You know that worth
two hundred bucks to you.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I know what, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, I gonna beat it. Harry'll be screaming for me.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Here.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
You gotta change for a ten dollar bill?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, I guess so? Oh a ten day, two three
sor s five ten?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
See what I mean? M She didn't have the faintest
time that was one of the ten out of girls
she gave to Phil vanderbt a couple of nights ago.
Isn't it amazing? I shoulda thought she'd noticed how wrinkled
and damp the bill was from the salt water. You see,
I didn't think about going through his pocket till after
I took him out there under Santa Monica Pier and
(08:16):
fastening one of the pilings down deep. It was a
good place. I thought. Nobody ever goes out there, Nobody
but a barracuda and a flat, ugly sting rays with
those rows of teeth like white needles. H kind of
(08:40):
left the camera obscuritor sitting out there on the palisades
all by itself. Didn't we Yeah, we would get back there,
I'll say we will. It was funny about Phil Vanderburt.
He was one of those fellows you see around town.
You never get to know him, but to see him,
and he's like a bus stop signed or one of
the kids that sells the Outlook Express on the corner
(09:01):
across the street from the California Bank. You know he's
there and you never notice him, never noticed him when
he disappears either. It's like that in California quite a lot.
So Philip D. Van der Wurt sort of paid it up,
and practically the only people in Santa Monica that thought
(09:21):
about him was me and the baby, and thew Orleans
Restaurant and she didn't know how I thought about him
at all. Funny how a fella is. She never brought
up the subject to fill. I was the one that
talked about him, and she man, I guess she had
(09:44):
been in love with him. There's sounding about being in
a set up like this, uh, a game, kind of
playing it right up to the edge, saying things that
had give you away. If she did the slightest tinkling
had a great kick, Yeah, a great game. I remember
(10:06):
one afternoon I had Wednesday afternoons off, and that day
I stuck in the restaurant. She was putting on her
hat llewel and I told her her business was slacked
that day and she could have a half day. So
instead of eating a piece of pie, I said, come on,
let's take a walk. Thought maybe we'd get out of
the beach and take one of the trams over the
Wichard Park and play tango, eat a couple of hot dogs.
So always started down Broadway and I said, have you
(10:28):
ever been in that camera scure over there?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Now you?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Oh, let's go see what it is. It was one
of those afternoons when the sun was still shining bright.
There was a big bank of fog setting off shore
a few miles sort of sneaking in to take over
those afternoon fogs and Santa Monica thing. They slide in
and all of a sudden there's like a great, big, damp,
gray seagull sitting down on top of it. So I
(10:55):
figured the fog was being in another hour, and the
beach farther is pretty dreary when that happened, So maybe
we killed a little time in this gizmo and then
walk on over to the Criterion and see the Rough Riders.
That was what I was playing in the Rough Riders.
There wasn't anybody around the camera up skirl and we
climb up the steps, No tourists, nobody, just the girl
and me, and whenever her name was, the wooden door
(11:16):
bangs behind us. I didn't know a place could be
so dark. Well, we stood there and looked at the
white top table and the moving picture of Santa Monica
on it, and I have to admit it's quite kicked
the first time to see it, but I hadn't seen
anything yet. I twisted the wheel around and the pictures
(11:39):
slid across the table top and never the breakers rolling in.
There was a Monica ballroom in the merry ground and
the pier and people fishing and people walking around, and
I thought about what was under that pier, if it
was still there. And then a man walked by, real close,
so he almost stilled a whole picture. He turned and
(12:01):
he seemed to look right at us stop out that
table top and what he was staring right at me
and kind of smiling, and right behind him and the
picture of the pier. I left him on him and
he stood there, and she fumbled at the door and
threw it open, and the light and lettered over the
picture and he was gone, Yes, And when I went outside,
(12:24):
he was gone from there too.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But we saw him inside. We both saw him.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I don't know. I couldn't tell her it was impossible
for Phil Vanderberg to stand outside the camera Secura that afternoon,
could I M. I had to go along with her.
I had to say, Chure, you'll see him again? Sure
are you to get you two hundred dollars back? He said, sure,
are you show up again? Every time I said it,
I got that chilly, cold seaweed feeling between my shoulder blades.
(12:54):
I should have had sense then, And going up to
Clarence Web's office and turned myself in and said, Clarence,
I murder Phil Vanderbert, and you'll find him tied to
were piling under the pier out there, just the other
side of that's hall. I should have done that. All
they had just done to me was send me up
the boats and put the black hat on me. But no,
I had to do it the hard way. I had
to get away with murder. Had the hunch, and I
(13:18):
didn't play it. I wish I had that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Song, let's go over to the camera up the jewel
against side.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I didn't wanna go to the camera stewa age. I
didn't wanna go in there in the dark. I didn't
wanna see that picture. I didn't wanna see Phill vander Port.
This afternoon, the pod was already coming in. We couldn't
see the end of the pier. And as you looked
out toward the bay, that white wall kept easing end
closer and closer, And I had the feeling that when
(13:49):
it got to me, I disappeared too right, and broad
daylight should get that field. It was warm in there
in the camera sciritae shine that had been beating down
on it all that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
One morning look at the fog, SI.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Look hy you a fog in the picture swirl as
side a little. There was somebody coming toward us, and
I had the illusion that he was actually coming toward us,
right out of the picture. And then the fog blew
away a little more from his station.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Still see him again, and she ran out of the place,
and the door slam shut, and I was all alone
in there.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
She ran on the steps, and I could see her
in the picture, and Phil came walking steadily towards me,
and then I could see her in the pictures. She
ran toward him outside there, and I could hear her
calling outside, and then she ran toward him in the picture,
and I could see them boat just as plain as
I see you. She ran straight through him, as if
he was part of the fog himself, and he kept
on coming closer towards me, closer closer. I don't know
(14:56):
how I got out of there. I had his lead
on a I remember I couldn't find the door in
the dark. And when I finally did get off, my
pants were all full of splinders from pounding on the walls,
and there was the cash over my eye where I
fell down the stairs and I'd never been so scared
in my life. I mean to say, I had never
been so scared in my life. Cause he something tripped
(15:20):
me as I opened the door. Something caught my ankle
and threw me. No, it wasn't so bad at wards hand,
as you were probably thinking. There was a long strand
of wet seaweed. It kind of gets all tangled around
the pilings under the pier.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Over it the camra scure.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
I said, I'll never go to that place again. I
will never go to that place again.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I'm going anyway. You don't wanna go, I'm.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Going, I said, I'm going. It's foolish you go to
that place.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Some reason why I self hanging around that place and
I wanna go there.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I thought, I know why. I don't know why he's
hanging around there.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
No, I won't go to the movies with you going
over to the camera sture, whether you wanna go or not.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And I knew I had to go. I said to myself,
if you let that girl go over there by herself,
you'll see him again. And what don't you find out?
I said to myself, you gotta go with her, so
if you you can keep her from fanning out whatever
she might find out, and I said, well, all right,
I'll go just this one time. There wasn't any fought
(16:32):
this time. It was a beautiful right day. It was
just the two of us, or I should say that
three of us. Yeah, we saw him again. This time
was the payoff. As far as she was concerned, wrong
to everything, there wasn't anything wrong with the picture, as
long as we had the lensay into her town. She
(16:53):
turned to wheels slowly and the picture flow pasted on
the table up northward towards the Mirra Morro Hotel, down
motion bova out of the palm trees in front of
the little real estate offices. And then we were looking
at the Broadway, and I could see Harry Cowan walk
out of the store and in the Llewellings, and then
the gas station came into view, and we looked down
Ocean Boulevard the other way, and then the rustic fence
(17:13):
at the edge of the palisades, and the spires of
the dance hall on the pier swam across the board,
and there was still leaning against a palm tree not
twenty feet away. It seemed very and justice if he
had heard her He looked up at this and grinned,
and he lifted his hand and beckoned me again. I
had a curious feeling that he was real. He was
three dimensional lair in the pictures. And she opened the
(17:36):
door and went out, but she came right back in.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
No, I didn't know what he's there.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I could have told her. I knew her.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
There's nobody else there there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
He was on the table, grinning at us, and he
said to him, I could see his lips more.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
What did he say?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I didn't hear anything.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I'm gonna look again.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
She opened the door, and Phil's lips and I could
read his lists. Anybody could read that word. Try it sometime.
He's dead, murderer.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I'm sure there wasn't anybody there, And a little.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Figure and the picture smiled again, and he raised his
hand and quite a straight of me, and I could
see his lips move again, and I knew she had
read his lips too. He said it again, murderer.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I saw what he did. I saw it now. I
know now I know where we can't see him out there.
He's tuning you. You killed him? You?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Oh? What else could I do? She knew she'd tell
and I'd hang so and I can't even remember her name.
(19:04):
There's quite a bit of space on the table in there,
and it's dark, Like I said, After a little while,
I opened the door and looked out Harry casually, Harry.
They was seen to be normal. I saw a Bobby
Clock the motorcop go by on his bike. Harry Collin
was walking back into the store. Nobody was looking at me.
(19:25):
I was about to start down the stairs when a
sudden thought struck. I had n't looked at the table
top of the picture. And they closed the door and
turned around, and Bill was still there in the picture,
still looking at me from there beside him under the
palm tree. Where's the girl? Not much left of the story. Now,
(19:56):
I should have gone there and confessed. Think good bit easier,
But well, I knew nobody'd ever find still, and I
didn't want anybody to find her. They locked the place
up at night, but the door came open easy. I
didn't bring any light. It was three o'clock in the
(20:19):
morning and night fog was hanging from the sky like
a wet velvet curtain. You couldn't see a street light
of block away. I went in and I crumbled around
out of the table where I left her. She wasn't there.
I found a paper matches. Finally, she wasn't there. You
(20:45):
thinks you know what terror is?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Don't let me tell you?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I stood up at last time, and the night was
so still, like I hear the fog gorn from the
way up toward point June. The fog, as I told you,
was thick as well. I glanced at the table. There
they were, the two of them, and there wasn't any
fog in a picture. I couldn't mistake him fell in
the girl, and together they raised their hands and they
(21:11):
back into me. I knew I couldn't move, but I
opened the door. I went down the steps into the fog.
There was just one tiny spark up hope in the
back of my mind, just one tiny spark. I knew
they wouldn't be there, but they were. And they turned
(21:34):
and stided away, and I followed them through the fog,
down past the suburban station, down the hill to the pier,
down across the boardwalk, down across the clinging, sticky, wet
sand in the fox running its fingers through my hair,
and under the pier with a wet, spongy pilot making
(21:58):
hells one high forest around me, This smell of tad
things cast up in the sea of them, the waves
reaching for me, and they went out had I followed,
and the waves beat at my knee, and the other
toe crushed at my waist, and I followed, and then
(22:23):
I tell my dressing snack from me.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
There was a long squarter of sea to cross my face.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Then the taste the song Mmm, you have listened to
(22:56):
Quiet Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper.
The man who spoke to you was Ernest Chapel, and
the girl was played by Jerita Bauer. As usual, the
music for Quiet Please is composed and played by Jean Brazo.
And now for a wordy about next week's Quiet Please,
here is our writer, director Willis Cooper. The music of
(23:17):
Claude Debisi was the inspiration for next week's story, which,
borrowing the composer's title, I have calonde la fillo hu
had Lain, the girl with the flaxen hair. If you
like charming ghosts, you'll probably like her. And so until
next week at the same time, I am quiet to yours,
(23:38):
Ernest Chamber. Quiet Please comes to you from New York.
This is a Mutual Broadcasting System
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