June 10, 2025 • 24 mins
When English professor William A. Porter unexpectedly inherits a grand seaside mansion from his late Uncle Horace, his curiosity is piqued by the unexplained circumstances surrounding his uncles death. Along with his wife and niece, he decides to spend the summer in the propertys lodge, renting out the main house. As darkness falls, the quiet seaside neighborhood takes a sinister turn, with strange occurrences and eerie events becoming the norm. At the heart of these mysteries is an ominous red lamp, a subject of local folklore and believed to cast a malevolent spell. Can Professor Porter unravel the truth behind these oddities, or will he himself become a suspect in this webs of mysteries?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section thirteen of The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Reinhardt.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. August seventeenth
one Lives and learns. Mister Bethel last night lifted a
small corner of the mystery and showed me a few
of the wheels within, with the net result that we
are where we were before. He telephoned me at nine
o'clock last night, the first time I have known him
(00:21):
to use the telephone, and asked me to see him.
Note I have, I think not mentioned in the journal
that the three bowlings, the lodge, main house, and boat
house are on one telephone. As this fact plays an
important part later, it requires explanation. I found him alone
in the library, but with certain changes from the last
time I had seen him. Thus, the windows were closed
and locked, and the heavy curtains drawn across them. Both
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the rear and front doors and the hall were bolted,
And when I was finally obliged to ring, I could
hear the old man dragging himself slowly into the hall
and there stopping. Oh is it? He called porter. I
was on the terrace, and he opened that door for me,
Working laboriously with a single useful hand. Once in side,
he left me to close it for myself and went
back into the library. When I followed him, it was
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to find him seated with the revolver close at hand.
As before, he was a strange, half sinister figure as
he sat there, But when he spoke it was as
the querulous invalid of our first meeting. I don't like
your house, mister Porter, he barked at me, without preliminary
I don't like it myself, I admitted. I am thinking
of adding to the insurance and then setting a match
to it after you are out, of course, I added.
(01:27):
That brought a sort of dry chuckle from him. But
the next moment he was back to the attack. He
supposed he was responsible for the balance of the rent.
It wasn't I morally responsible if he couldn't live there.
I had known the stories about the house, and yet
had led it to him. There was a question there,
There is no question, I said, I have no idea
of holding you up for the balance of the rent.
It seems to me, however, that he hardly heard me.
(01:48):
He was listening again as he had before, and when
he spoke it was on a totally different matter. You
offend me rather on guard. He said, I am alone
in the house where is Gordon back into the city
this morning? He has not come back. And there was
something in the way he made the statement that caused
me to look at him quickly. You mean that he
has gone for good? Now? I wish to god he had.
(02:11):
There was fear in that, and I realized then that
all the place showed fear. The locked and bolted house,
the dim light, only one lamp going, and that on
the desk, the revolver, and the old man's twisted body
crouched and watchful. I am afraid of him, mister Parter,
he said, I think he means to kill me. Nonsense,
I wish it were. Can't get rid of him, don't
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you suppose I've cried his story a story can be
called that rambling discourse, broken into by his fits of listening,
even once of sending me out to take a look around.
As as follows, he had picked the boy up in
the city, knowing a little of nothing about him, and
from the time they arrived he had not quite trusted him.
After a time, too, he began to suspect that he
was getting out of the house at night, and possibly
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using the car, not gelding in itself, perhaps, he said,
But it left me alone, for one that is not
a house so much one cares to be alone. He
glanced at me and for a nuller. Well, I needn't
tell you what has been going on. But he was
not at first really suspicious of these night excursions, save
for his resentment at being left there alone and helpless,
with the killer loose in the neighborhood. He kept a
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watch therefore, not so much over the boy as over
the house and himself in his absence. If we left
a door a window open, he said, I have at
the mercy of anybody who chose to enter. And this,
he says, was the situation. On the night of the
twenty sixth of July. He had gone to the boy's
room and found it empty, and had, after some debate,
decided to work his way downstairs and lock him out
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and myself Anne. He said it took him a long
time to do it. He says, too, that he was
very nervous. There were sounds, especially in the dining room,
nothing he could account for, but they upset him still further,
and by the time he reached the kitchen he was
in a bad way. He had to sit down there.
It was while he was sitting there that he heard
sounds on the porch and somebody at the door knob.
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From that on, he says, he was beyond coherent thinking,
but he had no doubt in the world, because of
the stealthiness of the movement, that the thing he had
feared was happening. It seems never to have occurred to
him that it was Gordon. He dragged himself to the stove,
found the poker, and as the door open, struck all
his strength. It was only when he made a late
from the bow that I knew what I had done.
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He was stricken. He felt the boy's pulse and knew
he was not dead. But off somewhere near the sun dial,
he heard some one moving That alarmed him still more.
I may never anounce his cowardice, he said wryly, until
I was put to the test. I have very little
idea of what I did next. My only clear recollection
as of finding myself in my room. I don't remember
getting there. But and this is the point the boy
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suspected him. He was sure of it. There had been
a complete change in his attitude since that time. And
watching that change, studying Gordon as he had felt obliged to,
he had felt that something underlay all this. In other words,
gradually he had begun to associate the boy with the
other crimes. He is weak, he said, weak and vicious.
And there was that curious mental state called identification. The
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week's the crimes committed by the strong, Admire them, admire
the criminal, then then begin to ape them, as Gordon
may have aped your sheep, Geller, finally even identifying himself
with this unknown adopting his symbol, or whatever one chooses
to call it. I listened carefully, trying to fit this
new light on Gordon's injury with the evidence as I
knew it true. The weaklink in her chain against him
had been that he himself had been attacked, and this
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was now solved in a perfectly matter of fact manner.
But there was some discrepancy there, something which eluded me
until I had gone over in my mind the events
of the night of the twenty sixth in their sequence.
Then I found it. But what about the man the
boy saw entered by the gun room window pier invention?
I feel certain had he accused me, he knew the
matter of a night excursions would come out. That was
the last thing he wanted. He was My next remark, however,
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which has left us, as I wrote at the beginning
of this entry, just where we were before. You haven't
said anything about the rope, mister Bethel. That is always rope,
he said, slowly. What rope? He was tied hand and
foot when I found him. She glanced at me and
then down at his helpless hand. Very long time since
I have been able to die rope, mister Porter, he
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said quietly. I remained with him until an hour or
so after the last train from the city had arrived,
but there was no sign of Gordon. I offered to
remain for the night with him, but he declined. He
would not go to bed, however, and I left him
there at last, his revolver within reach of that later talk.
There was one matter of real importance to record. I
have a strange picture in my mind bearing on the
relations of these two, the old man and the boy,
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and leading up to it, each watching the other. The
old man terrified, the boy deadly, and on the surface
before any Cochrane, all well enough between them, dictation taken,
and the book growing small surface differences, perhaps, but underneath
suspicion on one side, and revenge and Hateford on the other.
Then Gordon took to locking his room. It was any
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Cochran who told Bethel, and from that time on that
locked room played its own part between them, the old
man asking himself what was hidden in it, the secretary,
with his sneering smile, quietly carrying the key. It grew
I gathered to have a peculiar place in the old
man's imagination, wandered down the passage to it more than once.
Finally Andy Cochrane caught him there trying the knob, and
he had made some excuse and gone away. But the
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night young Gordon flung out of the house the same
matter saw the figure at the foot of the stairs.
Any Cochrane had come to him before leaving, with the
key in her hand. I thought you might like this, sir,
she said, I find it fits mister Gordon's door. Then
she had gone, and he went to the room and
entered it. The knife and the rope were there, and
he took them. What was I to say that night
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when the constable came down and reported nothing there in
ten minutes or an hour, you are going to leave
me here with him. He was watching me. He knew,
and I dare say he was right. No matter what
statement had been made relative to the rope under the knife,
there was no reason for Gordon's arrest that night. In
ten minutes or an hour, they would have been left together,
and who knows what might have happened. August eighteenth, Gordon
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came back early this morning. I invented an errand to
the house soon after breakfast, but found that mister Bethell
was still sleeping as though he might, and the preparations
for tomorrow's depart subera bowl under way. While Gordon was
busy on the lower floor, Thomas and I made a
tour of the house with a view to closing it.
I have instructed him to paint and put up the
window boards which closed the windows on the lower floor.
(08:12):
I shall know no peace until the place is sealed
and left to its demons or its ghosts. But I
took advantage of my legitimate presents on the upper floor
to examine the locked closet in which I had stored
the red lamp. It is still there and apparently has
not been disturbed. Halliday to day advised from me a
period of masterly inactivity. Not that he calls it so,
but that is what he means. I have an idea,
(08:34):
as skipper. He said that this calling Greenow off the
case was cheerbluff, a remove he made was being watched,
and unless I miss my guess, you'll find he's at
bass Cove or some place nearby under another name. I
thought I saw his fortnight or so ago. What I
finally gathered is that Holladay wants to eliminate me from
the case for my own sake. Just now, he said,
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you are sitting very pretty, but one more bit of
bad lock wise he's ready to jump above, he smiled.
I have an idea that he is deadly serious, that
he knows Greeno is not far away, and that for
some unknown reason, he expects another bit of bad luck.
His face is thin and haggard these days, and from
the fact that he sleeps a great deal in the daytime,
I am inclined to think that he sleeps very little
at night. Between him and Edith, too, I surmise some
(09:16):
sort of mysterious understanding. At the same time, there is
a noticeable absence of those three angled conferences in which
some little time ago we were free to air our
various theories. Willy Nilly, I am consigned to innocuous desietude.
Heyward started yesterday on his vacation. August twentieth four a m.
Mister Bethel was murdered between eleven o'clock and midnight last night.
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Gordon has escaped seven a m. Jane's at last asleep,
and I have had some coffee. Perhaps if I record
the events of the night, it will quiet me. After all,
one cannot forget such things. The only possible course is
to bring them to the surface, to face them. But
I will not face that room. Murder. The very word
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is evil, but no one has ever known how evil
until he has seen it. Such things cannot be written.
They should not be seen, They should not be We
have had this murder. We have gone over inch by
inch the scene of it. We have been spared no shock.
The evidence of the struggle is on the walls, the floor,
the furniture. We have the very knife with which it
was committed. We have even gone further than that. We
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have followed it outside, along the drive to the garage,
and from there by the car to the salt marsh
beyond Robinson's point. And yet according to Halliday, until we
have gone still further, we have had no murder according
to the law. Ever since daylight I have been struggling
to see the justice of a law where when Gordon
is found, and Greenow believes he will be found, we
cannot convict him unless we also find that bit of
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old flesh and blood and bone which was once Samon Bethel.
Is it only necessary to escape justice that a criminal
artfully dispose of his crime? And by how narrow our
merchant did he escape it? A matter of minutes between
my calling Halliday on the telephone and my meeting him
at the terrace, perhaps even between that and our entrance
into that wrecked room, a matter of minutes in one
thing only did he make an error. And even that
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may not have been an error. He may coolly have
abandoned his suitcase, backed and hidden in the shrubbery. He
may have stood there a second or so considering it,
and then decided to let it lie. The most grievous
thing to me is that I should have given him
the warning. And the most terrible picture I have is
that when I called Holliday, he stood listening in at
the telephone, craftedly calculating can I make it? Can I not?
(11:24):
With that behind him, Crafty as old in crime as
crime is old, for all his youth, out on the bad,
disposing of his horrible freight, and watching the lanterns as
they searched for the boat, seeing them scatter, looking for
other boats with which to follow him out onto the water,
and then quiet the heading back into the creek again
and escaping through the woods. Crafty beyond words. August twenty first.
(11:47):
The excitement is still intense. I have hardly seen holiday
since our trouble. He is working with the police, of
which number have come to assist Greenow. Curious crowds stand
outside our gates, which we have been obliged to close
and lock. A few of the more adventurous getting admission
by the lane are turned back there by guards who
are on duty day and night. Thomas, standing at the gate,
has orders to admit only the detectives and duly accredited
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members of the press. On the bay we have once
more the familiar crowd of searching boats off the point.
Dragging has been going on with no result, owing to
the fact that no guards were placed by the boat.
A large portion of it has already been taken away
by morbid individuals, who will place their trophies, I dare say,
on tables or mental pieces, and thereafter gloat over them. Truly,
just as the lunatic always insists that he is sane,
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so do the saine often demonstrate that they are mad.
And so far nothing nothing that is which leads to
Gordon's apprehension. From the time he turned back in the
boat and landing made his escape into the woods above
Robinson's Point, he disappeared entirely here and there a clue
has turned up to end in disappointment. Greenow believes that
he will be found that he cannot escape the police dragnet.
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But I am not so sure. Although almost forty eight
hours have passed, Jane has not yet opened up the
subject of the telephone, and because of her morbid reserve
on such matters, I have not told. The police asked
how I happened to be at the telephone and thus
received the alarm, I have replied that the bell rang,
that I went to the instrument and was immediately aware
that one of the receivers was down. Either at Hallidays
went at the main house, that I heard a crash
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over the wire, followed by a second nearer one, and
after that a silence. That following that I heard near
the receiver the sobbing breath of exhaustion. And then immediately
after that the receiver went up, and I called Halliday frantically,
and that on his reflying, I told him my suspicion
that something was wrong with the main house, and to
meet me there at once. But there is a discrepancy
here which may cause me trouble if they come back
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to it. A telephone such as ours does not ring
if one of the receivers is down, and the plain
fact is that our telephone did not ring at all
that night. As I have not yet recorded the events
of that tragic evening in their sequence, I shall do so. Now.
Halladay had dined with us and had been more like
himself than for some time past. The news that the
house was to be given up and seemed to relieve
him for some strange reason. And I remembered he said
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something which puzzled me at the time. After all, he said,
we can't undo what has been done, and it may
be the end. After dinner, he and Edith sat on
the veranda, and going to lower shade. I saw that
she was holding a match while he drew something on
a bit of paper. But the match went out almost
at once, and I would have thought no more of
it had I not heard Edith say, and the cabinet
was there in the corner. He replied, I am no eavesdropper,
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so I drew the shade and turned away. He left
it something after ten and Edith joined us. She was
very quiet and sat watching me play solitaire while Jane
sewed industriously. At half past ten or thereabouts, Jane suddenly said,
the telephone is ringing. Both Edith and I looked up
in amazement. The instrument was in the small hall, not
ten feet from where I sat. It would have been
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impossible for it to ring without our hearing it, and
we had heard nothing. You have been asleep, Jane. Edith
accused her, but I glanced at her, and I remember
that she was oddly relaxed in her chair. Her face
looked white, and her eyes were slightly fixed. It is ringing,
she said thickly. And that is how I happened to
be at the telephone that night, and how too, I
gave the alarm which enabled the murderer to escape by
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calling Holiday, get your revolver and meet me at the
main house. I said, there's something wrong there. I know
that had I not run the telephone, had I gone
for Halliday instead, we would have caught the criminal. But
to ring the one house was to ring the other.
He may still have been standing there, gasping. He had
for all he knew up to that time, the rest
of the knight. He wished to finish his deadly work,
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to dispose of the body, to gather up his suit
case waiting outside, and get away. But I called Halliday
and he listened. He knew then that instead of hours,
he had only minutes. He must have worked fast in
that ghastly shambles of her room. The car was probably
already out in the lane. He may even have stood
there at the corner of the lane, the engine turning
over quietly, and watched Holliday running up toward the house.
(15:45):
And perhaps he laughed that secret laugh of his which
had always rather told me. Then he simply got into
the car and drove away, cool and crafty to the last,
no body, no murder. He made for the boat. He
left behind him only two real clues, the knife, which
any Cochrane identifies as one taken from the kitchen and
his packed suitcase not intentional this last he must have
(16:09):
needed clean linen, and certainly that diary of his in cipher.
He would not want that in the hands of the police.
But what would the diary matter, after all if he
himself escaped August twenty second. As time goes on, the
cases complicated with the eagerness of all sorts of people
to bring in extremeous circumstances which they consider important. For instance,
Livingston's butler, the one who bought the knife in Oakville,
(16:30):
caused so much excitement by so doing, has been over
to get a description of Gordon, preserving an air of
mystery which under other circumstances would be vastly entertaining. Another
story concerns a middle aged man of highly respectable appearance
and of a square and heavy build, who was seen
walking uncertainly along the main road to the Livingstone place
at one am the night of the murder. A passing
car seeing his state, stopped and asked if he was
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in trouble. He replied that he had been struck by
a car an hour or so before and had been
lying by the road. Ever since his condition bore this
out as he was stained with blood, and he accepted
the offer of a lift and was left at the
railroad station at Merton's Ferry to catch the express there
for the city. There have been many similar ones. An
innumerable number of people are convinced that they have seen Gordon,
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and apparently almost any dapper youth of twenty or so
with what Edith calls patent leather hair and inveterate cigarette
habit as likely at any time to be tapped on
the shoulder and taken to a police station. Of clues
of other and less resorts, there has been almost an embarrassment.
Both the library and that portion of the hall near
the telephone have furnished fingerprints. But as Greno says, fingerprints
do not discover criminals, they identify them. Nevertheless, great pains
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have been taken to preserve them. On the white marble
mental a very distinct imprinted blood was photographed without difficulty. Others,
less clear were dusted with black powder before the camera
was used. Detailed pictures were made of the library and
hall before any attempt to put them back to order
was permitted, and these prints have been in large and
carefully studied one of them, with a strange result. Greeno,
hinding it to me today, said, as as defective, you
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can keep it if you care to. But I wonder
if it is defective. There is what Gueno calls a
light streak in the lower corner. But it requires very
little imagination to give to this misty outlined the semblance
of a form, and to the lower portion of it
the faint but recognizzable appearance of Brocade. I have said nothing.
What can I say. One thing which puzzles the police
is the violence of the battle. It seems incredible that
Bethel could have made the fight for life, which he
(18:18):
evidently did. At the same time, they have two problems
to solve, which repeated searching of the house and wide
publicity have not yet answered. One is the disappearance of
the manuscript on which Bethel had worked all summer. Andy
Cochrane has testified that this manuscript was kept locked in
a drawer in the library desk. When Halladay and I
entered the house, this drawer was standing open and the
manuscript was missing. It has not yet been located. But
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perhaps the most surprising is the failure of any friend
or relative of Simon Bethel to interest himself in the case.
Kimberon's note to Larkin before Bethel rented the house expressly
disclaims any previous knowledge of him. Here is a possible
tenant for mister Porter's house, he wrote, of which he
spoke to me some time ago. I have no acquaintance
with mister Bethel, say that he called on me a
day or so ago, in reference to the statement in
(19:00):
a book of mine. I imagine, however, that he would
be a quiet and not troublesome tenant. Howiday brought up
this curious situation yesterday in one of the very moments
he has given us since the murder, as it had
occurred to your skipper, He said that it is strange
that no one belonging to mister Bethel has turned up.
I daresay a man can outlive most of his contemporaries
and most of his friends. He wasn't as old as
(19:21):
all that, And he asked, apparently irrelevantly, a moment later,
the total evenings you saw him and talk to him,
how did he impress you and be in the state
of his mind the last time? Of course, he was
frankly frightened, he said, as much, and before that he
didn't say so, but he was more or less on guard.
He had his revolver. Of course, those were rather perlous times.
(19:42):
As a matter of fact, the case is anything but
a clear one against Gordon. As it develops, Greenoud has
been all along as convinced of Gordon's guilt as he
had previously been of mine, but eventually is more open
to conviction, And a conversation between Howaday and him this
morning on the law near the terrace is still learning
in my mind. How Day had been protesting against Green
was methodive, following a single idea until it went up
(20:02):
a blind alley and died there. Of course, he said quietly,
you can make a case against Gordon. It's all here,
but you'll have something left over that you won't know
what to do with. We know that it was mister
Bethel who had Gordon and knocked him out some time ago,
but who tied him? Where's the boy's own story about
seeing a man at the gun room window? Mister porter
Hare later on finds that same window open and sees
(20:23):
the man in the lower hall who was that the
same hand tied the boy that tied Carraway And Gordon
hadn't even seen this place at that time. What are
you going to do with that? Then? Where's Gordon now, bitch?
He asked, practically enough, I don't know. Dead maybe? But
she stood thinking I think I get the idea, he said,
The fight you think was between mister Bethel and this
(20:44):
unknown of yours. The boy either saw it and got
mixed up in it, or he knew he'd be suspected
and beat it. Is that it well? I would say
that a man about to commit such a crime doesn't
back his suit case with the idea of escaping with it,
the thought which I admit had never occurred to me
until that moment. As a result of this conversation, Benchley
has advanced a theory of his own which accounts at
least for the failure of any relatives to make inquiry.
(21:06):
This is that the old man was in hiding under
an assumed name heading in the most secluded spot he
could find, from some implacable enemy who had finally caught
up with him. How he reconcileed this with the caraway
murder and the disappearance of Maggie Morrison I do not know,
but certain facts seemed to bear out this idea. He was,
in one sense a man of mystery. His accounts were
paid in cash. The automobile in which he arrived had
(21:27):
been bought a secondhand a few days before by the
secretary and in the same manner, and all identifying marks
had been carefully removed from his clothing. In addition to
all this, there is the puzzling report on the knife itself.
Examination under the microscope shows fibers of linen as well
as fragments of cellular tissue, but it also reveals minute
particles of tobacco leaf. Surely had gone through a pocket,
(21:47):
but mister Bethel is not a smoker. At some one
time then bel though thoroughly secured the knife and wounded
his assailant, not seriously, evidently, since after that he was
able to do what he did do, but sufficiently to
turn the minds of the police toward the men who
claimed to have been struck by an automobile. This clue, however,
has developed nothing. The night was dark, and his rescuers
had no description of him save of a heavy set
(22:08):
figure and a dazed manner of speech. They carried him
to Martin's ferry, but the conductor of the night express
room was carrying no such passenger. Greener today showed me
Gordon's diary rescued from the suitcase it has at some
time undropped into water, and certain pages are not legible,
if indeed that word may be used for nothing is
legible where each page presents such jumbles of large and
small letters as the following sentence, which I have copied
(22:29):
as a matter of interest. Quote capital T small R
small N space small G period capital K period space
capital G capital T capital R small G small G
space capital U small N, capital M, capital T space
small A small O small T space capital L small
(22:51):
M capital G capital T space capital M small O
small T small R capital T period close quote. The
record not a daily one, but apparently was used for
jotting down odd thoughts or ideas. It continues, however, at intervals,
but the entire period of his stay at twin Hollows,
the last entry having been made on August seventeenth. Certain
entries are neat and methodical. The one on July twenty seventh, however,
(23:14):
after his injury, is by hand and shows certain erasures
and changes once or twice at August. The record is long,
covering more than a page, while the July entries are
all brief. On the last page, however, and without comment,
he has drawn in rather carefully a small circle in
closing a triangle. Grino, while attaching a certain interest to it,
has not yet sent it to be deciphered by the
code experts of his department. As a matter of fact,
(23:37):
was suspect him of holding it out with the idea
of being able to claim the reward he finds Gordon,
which reward, by the way, now stands at ten thousand dollars.
August twenty third, Halliday saw a red light in the
house the night Buffel was killed. He has just told me.
He ran out after I telephoned him, and from the
foot of the lawn he saw it. It was gone
almost at once. He has asked me to experiment with
(23:58):
him to night, using the limp from the attic. I
have given him the keys. Apparently what he wishes to
discover is the approximate location of such a light. I
have no idea of his purpose. I understand that the
guards who have been watching the house at night have
been withdrawn, and that hereafter only such watch will be kept,
as will suffice to keep away the curious crowds that
are still throng here in daylight hours to day any
Cochrane and Thomas have been putting the house in order
(24:20):
preparatory to its final closing. I shall never open it again.
Thomas has already painted the window boards and put some
of them in place. Let us pray that they keep
inside what should be inside, and outside what should be
out and of Section thirteen
Section thirteen of The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Reinhardt.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. August seventeenth
one Lives and learns. Mister Bethel last night lifted a
small corner of the mystery and showed me a few
of the wheels within, with the net result that we
are where we were before. He telephoned me at nine
o'clock last night, the first time I have known him
(00:21):
to use the telephone, and asked me to see him.
Note I have, I think not mentioned in the journal
that the three bowlings, the lodge, main house, and boat
house are on one telephone. As this fact plays an
important part later, it requires explanation. I found him alone
in the library, but with certain changes from the last
time I had seen him. Thus, the windows were closed
and locked, and the heavy curtains drawn across them. Both
(00:43):
the rear and front doors and the hall were bolted,
And when I was finally obliged to ring, I could
hear the old man dragging himself slowly into the hall
and there stopping. Oh is it? He called porter. I
was on the terrace, and he opened that door for me,
Working laboriously with a single useful hand. Once in side,
he left me to close it for myself and went
back into the library. When I followed him, it was
(01:05):
to find him seated with the revolver close at hand.
As before, he was a strange, half sinister figure as
he sat there, But when he spoke it was as
the querulous invalid of our first meeting. I don't like
your house, mister Porter, he barked at me, without preliminary
I don't like it myself, I admitted. I am thinking
of adding to the insurance and then setting a match
to it after you are out, of course, I added.
(01:27):
That brought a sort of dry chuckle from him. But
the next moment he was back to the attack. He
supposed he was responsible for the balance of the rent.
It wasn't I morally responsible if he couldn't live there.
I had known the stories about the house, and yet
had led it to him. There was a question there,
There is no question, I said, I have no idea
of holding you up for the balance of the rent.
It seems to me, however, that he hardly heard me.
(01:48):
He was listening again as he had before, and when
he spoke it was on a totally different matter. You
offend me rather on guard. He said, I am alone
in the house where is Gordon back into the city
this morning? He has not come back. And there was
something in the way he made the statement that caused
me to look at him quickly. You mean that he
has gone for good? Now? I wish to god he had.
(02:11):
There was fear in that, and I realized then that
all the place showed fear. The locked and bolted house,
the dim light, only one lamp going, and that on
the desk, the revolver, and the old man's twisted body
crouched and watchful. I am afraid of him, mister Parter,
he said, I think he means to kill me. Nonsense,
I wish it were. Can't get rid of him, don't
(02:33):
you suppose I've cried his story a story can be
called that rambling discourse, broken into by his fits of listening,
even once of sending me out to take a look around.
As as follows, he had picked the boy up in
the city, knowing a little of nothing about him, and
from the time they arrived he had not quite trusted him.
After a time, too, he began to suspect that he
was getting out of the house at night, and possibly
(02:54):
using the car, not gelding in itself, perhaps, he said,
But it left me alone, for one that is not
a house so much one cares to be alone. He
glanced at me and for a nuller. Well, I needn't
tell you what has been going on. But he was
not at first really suspicious of these night excursions, save
for his resentment at being left there alone and helpless,
with the killer loose in the neighborhood. He kept a
(03:16):
watch therefore, not so much over the boy as over
the house and himself in his absence. If we left
a door a window open, he said, I have at
the mercy of anybody who chose to enter. And this,
he says, was the situation. On the night of the
twenty sixth of July. He had gone to the boy's
room and found it empty, and had, after some debate,
decided to work his way downstairs and lock him out
(03:37):
and myself Anne. He said it took him a long
time to do it. He says, too, that he was
very nervous. There were sounds, especially in the dining room,
nothing he could account for, but they upset him still further,
and by the time he reached the kitchen he was
in a bad way. He had to sit down there.
It was while he was sitting there that he heard
sounds on the porch and somebody at the door knob.
(03:57):
From that on, he says, he was beyond coherent thinking,
but he had no doubt in the world, because of
the stealthiness of the movement, that the thing he had
feared was happening. It seems never to have occurred to
him that it was Gordon. He dragged himself to the stove,
found the poker, and as the door open, struck all
his strength. It was only when he made a late
from the bow that I knew what I had done.
(04:17):
He was stricken. He felt the boy's pulse and knew
he was not dead. But off somewhere near the sun dial,
he heard some one moving That alarmed him still more.
I may never anounce his cowardice, he said wryly, until
I was put to the test. I have very little
idea of what I did next. My only clear recollection
as of finding myself in my room. I don't remember
getting there. But and this is the point the boy
(04:38):
suspected him. He was sure of it. There had been
a complete change in his attitude since that time. And
watching that change, studying Gordon as he had felt obliged to,
he had felt that something underlay all this. In other words,
gradually he had begun to associate the boy with the
other crimes. He is weak, he said, weak and vicious.
And there was that curious mental state called identification. The
(04:59):
week's the crimes committed by the strong, Admire them, admire
the criminal, then then begin to ape them, as Gordon
may have aped your sheep, Geller, finally even identifying himself
with this unknown adopting his symbol, or whatever one chooses
to call it. I listened carefully, trying to fit this
new light on Gordon's injury with the evidence as I
knew it true. The weaklink in her chain against him
had been that he himself had been attacked, and this
(05:21):
was now solved in a perfectly matter of fact manner.
But there was some discrepancy there, something which eluded me
until I had gone over in my mind the events
of the night of the twenty sixth in their sequence.
Then I found it. But what about the man the
boy saw entered by the gun room window pier invention?
I feel certain had he accused me, he knew the
matter of a night excursions would come out. That was
the last thing he wanted. He was My next remark, however,
(05:43):
which has left us, as I wrote at the beginning
of this entry, just where we were before. You haven't
said anything about the rope, mister Bethel. That is always rope,
he said, slowly. What rope? He was tied hand and
foot when I found him. She glanced at me and
then down at his helpless hand. Very long time since
I have been able to die rope, mister Porter, he
(06:03):
said quietly. I remained with him until an hour or
so after the last train from the city had arrived,
but there was no sign of Gordon. I offered to
remain for the night with him, but he declined. He
would not go to bed, however, and I left him
there at last, his revolver within reach of that later talk.
There was one matter of real importance to record. I
have a strange picture in my mind bearing on the
relations of these two, the old man and the boy,
(06:25):
and leading up to it, each watching the other. The
old man terrified, the boy deadly, and on the surface
before any Cochrane, all well enough between them, dictation taken,
and the book growing small surface differences, perhaps, but underneath
suspicion on one side, and revenge and Hateford on the other.
Then Gordon took to locking his room. It was any
(06:45):
Cochran who told Bethel, and from that time on that
locked room played its own part between them, the old
man asking himself what was hidden in it, the secretary,
with his sneering smile, quietly carrying the key. It grew
I gathered to have a peculiar place in the old
man's imagination, wandered down the passage to it more than once.
Finally Andy Cochrane caught him there trying the knob, and
he had made some excuse and gone away. But the
(07:07):
night young Gordon flung out of the house the same
matter saw the figure at the foot of the stairs.
Any Cochrane had come to him before leaving, with the
key in her hand. I thought you might like this, sir,
she said, I find it fits mister Gordon's door. Then
she had gone, and he went to the room and
entered it. The knife and the rope were there, and
he took them. What was I to say that night
(07:28):
when the constable came down and reported nothing there in
ten minutes or an hour, you are going to leave
me here with him. He was watching me. He knew,
and I dare say he was right. No matter what
statement had been made relative to the rope under the knife,
there was no reason for Gordon's arrest that night. In
ten minutes or an hour, they would have been left together,
and who knows what might have happened. August eighteenth, Gordon
(07:50):
came back early this morning. I invented an errand to
the house soon after breakfast, but found that mister Bethell
was still sleeping as though he might, and the preparations
for tomorrow's depart subera bowl under way. While Gordon was
busy on the lower floor, Thomas and I made a
tour of the house with a view to closing it.
I have instructed him to paint and put up the
window boards which closed the windows on the lower floor.
(08:12):
I shall know no peace until the place is sealed
and left to its demons or its ghosts. But I
took advantage of my legitimate presents on the upper floor
to examine the locked closet in which I had stored
the red lamp. It is still there and apparently has
not been disturbed. Halliday to day advised from me a
period of masterly inactivity. Not that he calls it so,
but that is what he means. I have an idea,
(08:34):
as skipper. He said that this calling Greenow off the
case was cheerbluff, a remove he made was being watched,
and unless I miss my guess, you'll find he's at
bass Cove or some place nearby under another name. I
thought I saw his fortnight or so ago. What I
finally gathered is that Holladay wants to eliminate me from
the case for my own sake. Just now, he said,
(08:54):
you are sitting very pretty, but one more bit of
bad lock wise he's ready to jump above, he smiled.
I have an idea that he is deadly serious, that
he knows Greeno is not far away, and that for
some unknown reason, he expects another bit of bad luck.
His face is thin and haggard these days, and from
the fact that he sleeps a great deal in the daytime,
I am inclined to think that he sleeps very little
at night. Between him and Edith, too, I surmise some
(09:16):
sort of mysterious understanding. At the same time, there is
a noticeable absence of those three angled conferences in which
some little time ago we were free to air our
various theories. Willy Nilly, I am consigned to innocuous desietude.
Heyward started yesterday on his vacation. August twentieth four a m.
Mister Bethel was murdered between eleven o'clock and midnight last night.
(09:37):
Gordon has escaped seven a m. Jane's at last asleep,
and I have had some coffee. Perhaps if I record
the events of the night, it will quiet me. After all,
one cannot forget such things. The only possible course is
to bring them to the surface, to face them. But
I will not face that room. Murder. The very word
(09:58):
is evil, but no one has ever known how evil
until he has seen it. Such things cannot be written.
They should not be seen, They should not be We
have had this murder. We have gone over inch by
inch the scene of it. We have been spared no shock.
The evidence of the struggle is on the walls, the floor,
the furniture. We have the very knife with which it
was committed. We have even gone further than that. We
(10:21):
have followed it outside, along the drive to the garage,
and from there by the car to the salt marsh
beyond Robinson's point. And yet according to Halliday, until we
have gone still further, we have had no murder according
to the law. Ever since daylight I have been struggling
to see the justice of a law where when Gordon
is found, and Greenow believes he will be found, we
cannot convict him unless we also find that bit of
(10:41):
old flesh and blood and bone which was once Samon Bethel.
Is it only necessary to escape justice that a criminal
artfully dispose of his crime? And by how narrow our
merchant did he escape it? A matter of minutes between
my calling Halliday on the telephone and my meeting him
at the terrace, perhaps even between that and our entrance
into that wrecked room, a matter of minutes in one
thing only did he make an error. And even that
(11:03):
may not have been an error. He may coolly have
abandoned his suitcase, backed and hidden in the shrubbery. He
may have stood there a second or so considering it,
and then decided to let it lie. The most grievous
thing to me is that I should have given him
the warning. And the most terrible picture I have is
that when I called Holliday, he stood listening in at
the telephone, craftedly calculating can I make it? Can I not?
(11:24):
With that behind him, Crafty as old in crime as
crime is old, for all his youth, out on the bad,
disposing of his horrible freight, and watching the lanterns as
they searched for the boat, seeing them scatter, looking for
other boats with which to follow him out onto the water,
and then quiet the heading back into the creek again
and escaping through the woods. Crafty beyond words. August twenty first.
(11:47):
The excitement is still intense. I have hardly seen holiday
since our trouble. He is working with the police, of
which number have come to assist Greenow. Curious crowds stand
outside our gates, which we have been obliged to close
and lock. A few of the more adventurous getting admission
by the lane are turned back there by guards who
are on duty day and night. Thomas, standing at the gate,
has orders to admit only the detectives and duly accredited
(12:09):
members of the press. On the bay we have once
more the familiar crowd of searching boats off the point.
Dragging has been going on with no result, owing to
the fact that no guards were placed by the boat.
A large portion of it has already been taken away
by morbid individuals, who will place their trophies, I dare say,
on tables or mental pieces, and thereafter gloat over them. Truly,
just as the lunatic always insists that he is sane,
(12:31):
so do the saine often demonstrate that they are mad.
And so far nothing nothing that is which leads to
Gordon's apprehension. From the time he turned back in the
boat and landing made his escape into the woods above
Robinson's Point, he disappeared entirely here and there a clue
has turned up to end in disappointment. Greenow believes that
he will be found that he cannot escape the police dragnet.
(12:53):
But I am not so sure. Although almost forty eight
hours have passed, Jane has not yet opened up the
subject of the telephone, and because of her morbid reserve
on such matters, I have not told. The police asked
how I happened to be at the telephone and thus
received the alarm, I have replied that the bell rang,
that I went to the instrument and was immediately aware
that one of the receivers was down. Either at Hallidays
went at the main house, that I heard a crash
(13:14):
over the wire, followed by a second nearer one, and
after that a silence. That following that I heard near
the receiver the sobbing breath of exhaustion. And then immediately
after that the receiver went up, and I called Halliday frantically,
and that on his reflying, I told him my suspicion
that something was wrong with the main house, and to
meet me there at once. But there is a discrepancy
here which may cause me trouble if they come back
(13:36):
to it. A telephone such as ours does not ring
if one of the receivers is down, and the plain
fact is that our telephone did not ring at all
that night. As I have not yet recorded the events
of that tragic evening in their sequence, I shall do so. Now.
Halladay had dined with us and had been more like
himself than for some time past. The news that the
house was to be given up and seemed to relieve
him for some strange reason. And I remembered he said
(13:58):
something which puzzled me at the time. After all, he said,
we can't undo what has been done, and it may
be the end. After dinner, he and Edith sat on
the veranda, and going to lower shade. I saw that
she was holding a match while he drew something on
a bit of paper. But the match went out almost
at once, and I would have thought no more of
it had I not heard Edith say, and the cabinet
was there in the corner. He replied, I am no eavesdropper,
(14:21):
so I drew the shade and turned away. He left
it something after ten and Edith joined us. She was
very quiet and sat watching me play solitaire while Jane
sewed industriously. At half past ten or thereabouts, Jane suddenly said,
the telephone is ringing. Both Edith and I looked up
in amazement. The instrument was in the small hall, not
ten feet from where I sat. It would have been
(14:42):
impossible for it to ring without our hearing it, and
we had heard nothing. You have been asleep, Jane. Edith
accused her, but I glanced at her, and I remember
that she was oddly relaxed in her chair. Her face
looked white, and her eyes were slightly fixed. It is ringing,
she said thickly. And that is how I happened to
be at the telephone that night, and how too, I
gave the alarm which enabled the murderer to escape by
(15:02):
calling Holiday, get your revolver and meet me at the
main house. I said, there's something wrong there. I know
that had I not run the telephone, had I gone
for Halliday instead, we would have caught the criminal. But
to ring the one house was to ring the other.
He may still have been standing there, gasping. He had
for all he knew up to that time, the rest
of the knight. He wished to finish his deadly work,
(15:22):
to dispose of the body, to gather up his suit
case waiting outside, and get away. But I called Halliday
and he listened. He knew then that instead of hours,
he had only minutes. He must have worked fast in
that ghastly shambles of her room. The car was probably
already out in the lane. He may even have stood
there at the corner of the lane, the engine turning
over quietly, and watched Holliday running up toward the house.
(15:45):
And perhaps he laughed that secret laugh of his which
had always rather told me. Then he simply got into
the car and drove away, cool and crafty to the last,
no body, no murder. He made for the boat. He
left behind him only two real clues, the knife, which
any Cochrane identifies as one taken from the kitchen and
his packed suitcase not intentional this last he must have
(16:09):
needed clean linen, and certainly that diary of his in cipher.
He would not want that in the hands of the police.
But what would the diary matter, after all if he
himself escaped August twenty second. As time goes on, the
cases complicated with the eagerness of all sorts of people
to bring in extremeous circumstances which they consider important. For instance,
Livingston's butler, the one who bought the knife in Oakville,
(16:30):
caused so much excitement by so doing, has been over
to get a description of Gordon, preserving an air of
mystery which under other circumstances would be vastly entertaining. Another
story concerns a middle aged man of highly respectable appearance
and of a square and heavy build, who was seen
walking uncertainly along the main road to the Livingstone place
at one am the night of the murder. A passing
car seeing his state, stopped and asked if he was
(16:50):
in trouble. He replied that he had been struck by
a car an hour or so before and had been
lying by the road. Ever since his condition bore this
out as he was stained with blood, and he accepted
the offer of a lift and was left at the
railroad station at Merton's Ferry to catch the express there
for the city. There have been many similar ones. An
innumerable number of people are convinced that they have seen Gordon,
(17:12):
and apparently almost any dapper youth of twenty or so
with what Edith calls patent leather hair and inveterate cigarette
habit as likely at any time to be tapped on
the shoulder and taken to a police station. Of clues
of other and less resorts, there has been almost an embarrassment.
Both the library and that portion of the hall near
the telephone have furnished fingerprints. But as Greno says, fingerprints
do not discover criminals, they identify them. Nevertheless, great pains
(17:35):
have been taken to preserve them. On the white marble
mental a very distinct imprinted blood was photographed without difficulty. Others,
less clear were dusted with black powder before the camera
was used. Detailed pictures were made of the library and
hall before any attempt to put them back to order
was permitted, and these prints have been in large and
carefully studied one of them, with a strange result. Greeno,
hinding it to me today, said, as as defective, you
(17:57):
can keep it if you care to. But I wonder
if it is defective. There is what Gueno calls a
light streak in the lower corner. But it requires very
little imagination to give to this misty outlined the semblance
of a form, and to the lower portion of it
the faint but recognizzable appearance of Brocade. I have said nothing.
What can I say. One thing which puzzles the police
is the violence of the battle. It seems incredible that
Bethel could have made the fight for life, which he
(18:18):
evidently did. At the same time, they have two problems
to solve, which repeated searching of the house and wide
publicity have not yet answered. One is the disappearance of
the manuscript on which Bethel had worked all summer. Andy
Cochrane has testified that this manuscript was kept locked in
a drawer in the library desk. When Halladay and I
entered the house, this drawer was standing open and the
manuscript was missing. It has not yet been located. But
(18:40):
perhaps the most surprising is the failure of any friend
or relative of Simon Bethel to interest himself in the case.
Kimberon's note to Larkin before Bethel rented the house expressly
disclaims any previous knowledge of him. Here is a possible
tenant for mister Porter's house, he wrote, of which he
spoke to me some time ago. I have no acquaintance
with mister Bethel, say that he called on me a
day or so ago, in reference to the statement in
(19:00):
a book of mine. I imagine, however, that he would
be a quiet and not troublesome tenant. Howiday brought up
this curious situation yesterday in one of the very moments
he has given us since the murder, as it had
occurred to your skipper, He said that it is strange
that no one belonging to mister Bethel has turned up.
I daresay a man can outlive most of his contemporaries
and most of his friends. He wasn't as old as
(19:21):
all that, And he asked, apparently irrelevantly, a moment later,
the total evenings you saw him and talk to him,
how did he impress you and be in the state
of his mind the last time? Of course, he was
frankly frightened, he said, as much, and before that he
didn't say so, but he was more or less on guard.
He had his revolver. Of course, those were rather perlous times.
(19:42):
As a matter of fact, the case is anything but
a clear one against Gordon. As it develops, Greenoud has
been all along as convinced of Gordon's guilt as he
had previously been of mine, but eventually is more open
to conviction, And a conversation between Howaday and him this
morning on the law near the terrace is still learning
in my mind. How Day had been protesting against Green
was methodive, following a single idea until it went up
(20:02):
a blind alley and died there. Of course, he said quietly,
you can make a case against Gordon. It's all here,
but you'll have something left over that you won't know
what to do with. We know that it was mister
Bethel who had Gordon and knocked him out some time ago,
but who tied him? Where's the boy's own story about
seeing a man at the gun room window? Mister porter
Hare later on finds that same window open and sees
(20:23):
the man in the lower hall who was that the
same hand tied the boy that tied Carraway And Gordon
hadn't even seen this place at that time. What are
you going to do with that? Then? Where's Gordon now, bitch?
He asked, practically enough, I don't know. Dead maybe? But
she stood thinking I think I get the idea, he said,
The fight you think was between mister Bethel and this
(20:44):
unknown of yours. The boy either saw it and got
mixed up in it, or he knew he'd be suspected
and beat it. Is that it well? I would say
that a man about to commit such a crime doesn't
back his suit case with the idea of escaping with it,
the thought which I admit had never occurred to me
until that moment. As a result of this conversation, Benchley
has advanced a theory of his own which accounts at
least for the failure of any relatives to make inquiry.
(21:06):
This is that the old man was in hiding under
an assumed name heading in the most secluded spot he
could find, from some implacable enemy who had finally caught
up with him. How he reconcileed this with the caraway
murder and the disappearance of Maggie Morrison I do not know,
but certain facts seemed to bear out this idea. He was,
in one sense a man of mystery. His accounts were
paid in cash. The automobile in which he arrived had
(21:27):
been bought a secondhand a few days before by the
secretary and in the same manner, and all identifying marks
had been carefully removed from his clothing. In addition to
all this, there is the puzzling report on the knife itself.
Examination under the microscope shows fibers of linen as well
as fragments of cellular tissue, but it also reveals minute
particles of tobacco leaf. Surely had gone through a pocket,
(21:47):
but mister Bethel is not a smoker. At some one
time then bel though thoroughly secured the knife and wounded
his assailant, not seriously, evidently, since after that he was
able to do what he did do, but sufficiently to
turn the minds of the police toward the men who
claimed to have been struck by an automobile. This clue, however,
has developed nothing. The night was dark, and his rescuers
had no description of him save of a heavy set
(22:08):
figure and a dazed manner of speech. They carried him
to Martin's ferry, but the conductor of the night express
room was carrying no such passenger. Greener today showed me
Gordon's diary rescued from the suitcase it has at some
time undropped into water, and certain pages are not legible,
if indeed that word may be used for nothing is
legible where each page presents such jumbles of large and
small letters as the following sentence, which I have copied
(22:29):
as a matter of interest. Quote capital T small R
small N space small G period capital K period space
capital G capital T capital R small G small G
space capital U small N, capital M, capital T space
small A small O small T space capital L small
(22:51):
M capital G capital T space capital M small O
small T small R capital T period close quote. The
record not a daily one, but apparently was used for
jotting down odd thoughts or ideas. It continues, however, at intervals,
but the entire period of his stay at twin Hollows,
the last entry having been made on August seventeenth. Certain
entries are neat and methodical. The one on July twenty seventh, however,
(23:14):
after his injury, is by hand and shows certain erasures
and changes once or twice at August. The record is long,
covering more than a page, while the July entries are
all brief. On the last page, however, and without comment,
he has drawn in rather carefully a small circle in
closing a triangle. Grino, while attaching a certain interest to it,
has not yet sent it to be deciphered by the
code experts of his department. As a matter of fact,
(23:37):
was suspect him of holding it out with the idea
of being able to claim the reward he finds Gordon,
which reward, by the way, now stands at ten thousand dollars.
August twenty third, Halliday saw a red light in the
house the night Buffel was killed. He has just told me.
He ran out after I telephoned him, and from the
foot of the lawn he saw it. It was gone
almost at once. He has asked me to experiment with
(23:58):
him to night, using the limp from the attic. I
have given him the keys. Apparently what he wishes to
discover is the approximate location of such a light. I
have no idea of his purpose. I understand that the
guards who have been watching the house at night have
been withdrawn, and that hereafter only such watch will be kept,
as will suffice to keep away the curious crowds that
are still throng here in daylight hours to day any
Cochrane and Thomas have been putting the house in order
(24:20):
preparatory to its final closing. I shall never open it again.
Thomas has already painted the window boards and put some
of them in place. Let us pray that they keep
inside what should be inside, and outside what should be
out and of Section thirteen
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.