November 13, 2025 • 29 mins
Suspense was one of the most popular and successful radio series during it's run of over 900 episodes, spanning 1940-1962. Guest stars included Orson Welles, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Agnes Moorehead, Marlene Dietrich and Humphrey Bogart. The plots were mostly engaging crime dramas, science fiction and some horror - usually with a surprise ending.
Hope you enjoy this episode of Suspense! Find all our OTR radio stations and podcasts at theaterofthemind-otr.com - Audio Credit: The Old Time Radio Researchers Group. - All Podcasts @ Spreaker | Apple | YouTube | Spotify | Amazon | iHeart
Hope you enjoy this episode of Suspense! Find all our OTR radio stations and podcasts at theaterofthemind-otr.com - Audio Credit: The Old Time Radio Researchers Group. - All Podcasts @ Spreaker | Apple | YouTube | Spotify | Amazon | iHeart
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Auto Light and it's ninety eight thousand dealers. Bring you,
mister Peter Lawford into Night's presentation of suspense.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Tonight Auto Light presents a classic study of suspense, a
new dramatization of one of the most terrifying stories ever written,
Wilkie Collins, a terribly strange bed our star.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Mister Peter Lawford Earloo, what is so wonderful as a
day in June?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Why a world famous auto light spark plugs? Of course
have what I said. World famous auto light spark plugs
are taps hap because they're ignition engineered, designed and built
by ignition experts to give the best performance money can buy.
That's why auto light spark plugs are specified as original
equipment on many leading makes of our finest cars, trucks
and tractors.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
With what work plugs have to do with June?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Why half June is the perfect time to get your
car tuned up to get the spark plugs checked for
summer driving. So friends, see your auto light spark plug
dealer soon. He's a specialist on spark plug cleaning and
adjustment for all makes of cars, and if replacements are needed,
he will install ignition engineered auto light spark plugs either
resist or standard type best suited to your car and
(01:24):
your style of driving. Remember, from bumper to tail light,
you're always right with auto light. And now auto light
presents mister Peter Lawford in Wilkie Collins's story, a terribly
strange bed, hoping once again to keep you in suspense.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happen
to be staying in Paris with an English friend. We
were both young man and lived, I'm afraid, rather a
wild life in the city of our sojourn, and thus
had probed the various refined pleasures suitable to our class,
and search for others less elegant search for them in
(02:05):
the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, which lies covertly against
the dark river Seine, and from each closed doorway the
small echoings of small promises in there that doorway there, Oh,
you're drunk, Gerald, pleasantly, exquisitely, modestly, delicately am I drunk?
Speaker 5 (02:26):
And thereforemed?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Therefore what Gerald?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
The doorway?
Speaker 6 (02:30):
I have suggested that the word frescati painted on it,
noble word, noble mysteries. I've been there, Oh, sly sly
sly on traitors. Friend, you have been there and alone,
slyly and without.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Me, and it has a ghastly kind of respectability five
franc respectability, and it will amuse me. Come along, Gerald,
come along, girl.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
That's it, Joel, You're coming along, Billy and nice. What
I want Gerald, all that you want me want, and
you shall find him want and you shall find.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
What I want is somewhere where we can see a
little genuine blackguard, poverty stricken gaming with no false gingerbread,
glitter thrown all over it.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
No gingerbread from my friend, thank you him.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
A place not fashionable, not respectable, a place of evil perhaps,
and of emotions I've never known. Oh, Gerald, come along.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
Gerald will not come along. Jerald is content here.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Listen to me.
Speaker 6 (03:29):
Jerl is content here to lean his weariness in his
search against this doorway against Gerald.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
The door flung open behind him, and Gerald had fallen
flat on his back, and for a while laughed, Then
with my help, got up, and Gerald laughed no longer
for the room. The gaming room is tragedy, mute, weird tragedy,
and the quiet in the room horrible, and the people
(04:04):
of the room a thin haggard, long haired young man
who sunk an eyes fiercely watched the turning up of
the cards and never spoke. The flabby, fat face, perspiring
player who registered on a pasteboard how often black one
and how often red never spoke, the dirty, wrinkled old
man with avouch your eyes, And the darned great coat
(04:24):
who had lost his last sue and still looked on
desperately and never spoke, the voice of the croupier, The
voice of the croupier, dull, thick in the atmosphere of
the room. We had entered on a laugh that the
spectacle before us was something to weep over. I'd found it,
(04:46):
the pleasure I searched. I'd found it. Yeah, your eyes,
the look in them.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
Yes, And it's what you wanted, isn't it? The place
of evil and the emotions you would never.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
I want to play?
Speaker 7 (04:59):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Do come then, right and black, make your bets right,
in black, your bets right, and.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Black, your bets. A thousand francs on black, black, black wings,
leave it all of it black. Hen wait, black, black wings,
(05:32):
leave it all of it black. Yes, this is a
passion with you. No, No, not a passion idle amusement, Yes,
only amusement. Wait, black, all of it, all of it
red this time red, not passion and intoxication. But happening
is intoxication as I have never known it. Intoxication, Yes, yes, yes,
(05:59):
which has.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Become great great winds.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
All of it red, and ten thousand more, all which
has become passion, which has become passion.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Wet red wings.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Now the black croupier.
Speaker 7 (06:27):
Black, Oh, don't permit me, sir, permit me to restore
to their proper place the two coins which were dropped there,
in their proper place, a thousand francs, a tall man
(06:51):
and quite fat, pinched into a frogged and braided Soto,
a man of goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangi mustaches and a
broken nose, and the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yet in the mad excitement, his look, his hands held
no repelling influence on me. For now, in the mad excitement,
in the reckless triumph, I was ready to accept even
such as he.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
What a wonderful luck, ash your sir, I pledge in
my word of honor as an old soldier in the
course of my long experience, and this sort of thing never,
but never have I seen such luck as yours.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Thank you, go on, sir, boldly handsomely break the bank.
I assure you, sir, I have every intention to it.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
It, Sir, go on, break the bank, my gallant English comrade,
boldly break the.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Back, all of it black. And I did go on,
went on at such a rate that than an hour.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for tonight.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
In an hour, in an hour of a kind of
ecstasy ever known. All the notes and all the gold
in the bank now laying a heap under my hands,
the whole floating capital of the gambling house under my hands,
waiting to pour into my pockets.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
No, no, no, no, not in your pockets, sir, for
no breeches, pockets, whatever sould could hold such heavy winnings.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
And then how may I.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Take your pocket handkerchief, sir? Thank you? Ah, tie it up, sir,
Tie it up in your handkerchief, as we used to
tie up a bit of dinner in the army. Yeah,
shovel it in no answer to tight double knots each
way with your provision, Ah, and the money safe.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Thank you?
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Feel it, feel it, sir, hard and round, hard and
round is a cannon ball. Feel it a champagne, Sir,
I will buy you champagne.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
No, thank you, I pull for.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
Your friend Henry's friends, amiable gracious englishman, champagne, champagne for
the friend the conqueror of the bank, and for me, Come,
sir to my table. I am Fabian, Nero Gallon says,
and you Henry.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Corner, and this is my friend, Gerald Titchenow.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
Henry, Gerald Fabien.
Speaker 8 (09:15):
Lovely, lovely, lovely Henry Gerald, heh Henry and Gerald Fabian.
Speaker 7 (09:26):
Here we are friends, aren't who have touched your sleeves
to have you seated chair beside me? This old soldier's
heart will burst, my eyes will weep my hands. Ah
the champagne h A toast, gentleman, A toast not for me, please, oh,
(09:47):
of course, not for you Gerald. And I then will
geraldied him a toast to the goddess Fortune who embraced
tonight our Henry and smiled secretly upon him. And this
will very close the goddess Fortune.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Gentlemen, an English chair.
Speaker 7 (10:04):
Hurah hourrah hourrah hourah horah hurrah ah hurah.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Ah Fabian, quickly enough.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
For Gerald, you were tipsy before, now you're Henry not
to permit the golden blood of France to flow through
the veins of this viviacious englishman.
Speaker 7 (10:23):
And Gerald, your friend, all shame, every shame, a dring Gerald.
Speaker 9 (10:30):
Thirst to France, the president company, to the croupiers, and
the croupier's wife, and the croupier's daughter, Ah, the croupier's daughters,
and the ladies elsewhere, and to ladies.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I should like coffy, Fabian coffee, Coffee for me and
for Gerald intoxication coffee. It shall be a coffee coffee
for the darling of fortune.
Speaker 10 (10:59):
Coffee.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
The word pronounced by Fabian Nero seemed to have a
magical effect on the company present. They suddenly had lost interest,
and all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to
profit by my intoxication, by the proffering of Champagne, the
finding I would have none of it, had now abandoned
all hope of thriving pleasantly on my winnings. Whatever their
(11:26):
motive might be, at any rate, they went away in
a body, and the silence of the foe was now
deeper than ever. Then from a sort of vestibule at
the far corner of the room, a woman appeared bearing
a tray of coffee and glasses, and walked towards us,
enveloped in silence, woman of emaciated face and burning bright eyes,
(11:48):
and wisps of colorless hair drifting across her rouged cheeks.
Speaker 10 (11:52):
Your coffee, sir, Thank you, you will signed it strong and.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Good, Thank you.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
Strong and good, handsome sir. Here you are, sir, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
I am past for first, and it was kind of
you and a fabian and gracious and generous.
Speaker 7 (12:16):
How wise you are, Henry, to drink this coffee of Milly's,
the coffee of Milliprudam.
Speaker 11 (12:21):
Milliprudom, beautiful MILLIPRUA handsome sir. Will you have coffee, no.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Champagne, Milly.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Ah, to drink of beauty?
Speaker 7 (12:40):
How wiser than your friend Gerald, to drink coffee and
rid yourself of your little amiable exaltation of spirits before
you think of going home. And you must, my good
and gracious friend, for with all that money, gracious pray,
with all that money to take home to night. It
is a sacred duty to yourself to have your It's
about you drink, Henry, drink your coffee.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
You are known to be a winner.
Speaker 7 (13:06):
To an enormous extent by several gentlemen present to night,
who are but mortal mensa and have their own amiable weaknesses.
Drink Henry, who'd surely rob and murder.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
If you were to wait. Wait, Ristern, I'm ill, I'm
very poor.
Speaker 10 (13:23):
He is ill, very ill. I will weep.
Speaker 12 (13:27):
Henry is ill, and I am dr Miller, will sub
will you swil a shit of giddiness?
Speaker 4 (13:36):
The room worlds round and round. Furious, Henry, your voice
deafens me.
Speaker 7 (13:44):
Furiously, My dear friend, my dear friend, Madness to go
home in your state would be robbed murdered. You need
a walking and then asleep, and not a murdering, a
walking and then.
Speaker 10 (13:56):
Sleep, and in a safe safe.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Henry, there's walk.
Speaker 7 (14:03):
Sleep in the safe place, the place of Millie Prudom,
a rooming house above the gable, and the capital beds
of Millie's rooming house.
Speaker 10 (14:11):
Hi, don't leadness to go to your own home. Leave
at Milli Prudin, and tomorrow tomorrow.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Go home safely with your winnings tomorrow, in full flow
of life and in broad daylight.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
Tomorrow is Gerald beds writing. If anyone needs see Buce Shirley.
Speaker 7 (14:32):
Come then quickly come then quickly I will help you
from about me.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
That's their dear.
Speaker 11 (14:39):
Boy, mill Yes Gerald, come.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Ah injure, Henry.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
Here the choicest room of MILLI prudon the capital bed
there imitation furnishing, and the deep sleep of your head,
and the safe one till tomorrow. Henry.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
I don't know how to thank you.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
You have thanked me enough already with the exaltation of
your splendid company, and that I could have been of
some small service to your small malady.
Speaker 10 (15:28):
Let me go geral.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Comedy.
Speaker 12 (15:37):
Henry wants to sleep those of violently Oh hell, milliprud see.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Gerald passed into his particular oblivion in the middle of
a sentence. I walked over and locked the door. Then
I took my money, my winnings, wrapped in a handkerchief,
and placed beneath the pillow of my bed. I lay down.
My senses still swam, and I looked up at the
heavily brocaded canopy, and it seemed to move somehow to move,
(16:21):
And for an instant I thought this was a terribly
strange bed.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
All the light is bringing you, mister Peter Lawford in
Wilkie Collins, a terribly strange bed the night's presentation in
radio's outstanding theater of thrills suspense.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Will harlu vacation times nearly here.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yes, hap, but not for spark plugs. They're the very
heart of your car's ignition system, and if they're not right,
the chances are you won't get smooth and efficient engine
operation during summer's hot and heavy driving.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
That's why now's the time to check them. He Harlem, Yes.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Happen when replacements are needed. Wise drivers insist on ignition
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Speaker 3 (17:35):
And the Autolight Resistor is only one of a complete
line of auto light spark plugs designed for every use.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Right Harlem, Right half, So, friends, see your autolite spark
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you need replacements, take nothing less than ignition engineered auto
light spark plugs, either standard or resistor type.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
You'll be glad you did.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Because from bumper to tail light, you're always righted with
auto light.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And now auto light brings back to our Hollywood soundstage
mister Peter Lawford in Elliot Lewis's production of a terribly
strange bed, a tail well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I could not sleep. Restlessness took me over, and I
got out of bed. There was the dim, quiet flicker
of a single candle, and next to it a washstand.
I plunged my face into the water. There was a
single chair, and I sat down and tried to compose myself. Slowly, slowly,
the giddiness left me. Shut her and a window shut her,
(18:48):
attached by a single hinge and flapping against the side
of the house. And no lock on the window, no
way of locking the window.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Helly, Gerald, Gerald.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You are where where?
Speaker 4 (19:02):
In a room over the gaming place. It's all right.
I've locked the door, but the window.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
And there's a window.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Listen, did you hear? I was wide awake, and every
one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. Piano
(19:35):
and a song I had never heard, and then behind
it the laughter. Wide awake, Yet somehow the effects of
whatever drug I had drunk seemed suddenly to arise again,
and for an instant toil with my perception. So I
reached for the wall to steady myself ast I fall down,
leaned against the wall for support.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
From England.
Speaker 10 (20:00):
Oh, dear and Sabian, Dadian, Sadian, Sabian the youth and
his friend and his friend and the handkerchiefs Now.
Speaker 7 (20:12):
He's such a dear boy.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yes, such a deal Yeah, such a dear boy. He's
such a dear boy.
Speaker 7 (20:20):
I'm such a deal boy.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
The moment their voices waved and fled, a kind of
melancholy seized me. I walked over to the window and
looked out, looked out upon blackness, a swarm of blackness.
No shapes definable could be made out through the gloom,
except a lighter grayness of a sort, as if an
abutmentt of some kind. I supposed directly across the window
and somewhat below it. But how far across, into what
(20:44):
length below I could not determine. For all purposes. Then
I knew only that we were above the street level
and some three stories, And having felt the walls directly
adjacent the window, I found them to be sheer. No
one could enter there. I walked over to the bed
and took a pillow and placed it beneath Jerrel's head.
(21:05):
The bed again, and I lay down this bed that
now I was lying upon. I must again described to
you a four post bed with a regular top line
with chintz. The regular fringe balance all around was ridiculous.
Now that I tried to sleep, I couldn't even close
my eyes. I resolved then to beguile the tedium of
(21:30):
my wakefulness by making inventory of every article of furniture.
I could see window, washstand, chest, chair, dressing table. Picture
upon the wall opposite the bed, A picture a fellow
in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of
tiring feathers, a swarthy, sinister ruffian looking upward. It might
(21:53):
be at some tall gallows on which he was going
to be hanged. Such was the picture, a chair, candlestick picture.
It seemed to be moving. The hat had been pulled
over the eyes, and there the hat itself was gone,
The hat was gone, the plumes. That was the bed moving.
(22:23):
Now now it was it a brief and terrible dream.
How could the top of a bed move? Brief terrible dream?
Trick of the eye and the mind's going down for
a moment into sleep yep Ye, I let my mind,
say it. The top of the bed had moved, Gerald, Gerald,
(22:43):
wake up, open your eyes, well, now watch quietly, keep
your voice in a quiet tone.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Why what were you?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Listen above you, directly above you. Look, there's a picture
you see it? Yes, a minute ago the man was
wearing a hat. He was wearing a hat. Now he
is not my friend.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Give at drunk, and the part of you your fool.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Listen to me, all right, demy. Where there was a
hat is now a peep hole, and we are being watched,
all right, Henry, Now stay where you are, but be alert,
all right, Henry, Henry, Yes, what are you going to do?
Make sure of a thing? What thing? The bed? What?
(23:34):
Keep your eye on the canopy. I'm going to lie
in the bed now, Gerald, and make sure that they're
not trying to murder us. Oh by feigning sleep? What
by feigning sleep? Gerald? Just that now? Quiet? Yes, now,
(23:55):
I am constitutional, anything but timid. I have been on
more than one ACA Asian in peril of my life,
and I have not lost my self possession for an instant.
But when the conviction settled on my mind that the
bed top was actually moving, it loosed a feeling within me.
Foreign laced through with terror. So I lay there, motionless, speechless, breathless.
(24:23):
The candles spent went out, but the moonlight still brightened
the room. I lay there. It descended, the whole canopy
(24:43):
came down close down. I lay there, literally spellbound by
what was happening. But once I could not tell whether
reality was here or my imagination was taking hold. Closer, closer,
Henry Gerald's voice shattered this warm sea of fascination that
bound me, and I leapt from the bed. Look. Look, yes,
(25:05):
the middle of the bed top, the huge wooden screw
like a press to smother me and relieve me of
my winnings, and then kill you. Open open the light
of the morning, Gerald, and look it comes up and
through the window across the narrow shaft another building. We
can leap it, what not high?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
My legs are still unsteady.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
If I should stand upon that sill, i'd fall into
his face.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Then wait and hurry, Yes, hurry, hurry. The rest of
my story is soon told. From the building next door,
I reached the ground and saw police with them. I returned.
(25:51):
Mister Fabin was seized, as was Missus Prudarm. The police
congratulated me on my good fortune and Gerald's on his,
and told us that they would probably never know how
many people had been smothered in this diabolical bed. So
tightly was the canopy pressed to the bed that I
could not retrieve my money. The mechanism had to be
released from the room above. The police bade us go, and,
(26:14):
finding ourselves walking homeward, Gerald said to me, I know.
Speaker 6 (26:18):
A place where gambling is carried on at such a
fever pitch that you will be carried to the heights
of excitement.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Needless to imagine, I refused to go along with Gerald.
My adventure cured me of ever again trying rouge noire
as an amusement. The sight of a green cloth with
packs of cards and heaps of money on it, well,
henceforth would be associated in my mind with the sight
of a bed canopy descending to suffocate me in the
(26:45):
silence and the darkness of the night.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Suspense presented by Autolite Tonight Star mister Peter Lawford, Here
are the results of the great one hundred thousand dollars
Autolite Family charity drawing Over five million. Two hundred thousand
entries were received for this event last week. The final
drawing was held in New York under the supervision of
a distinguished committee. Here are the names in the order
(27:23):
of their selection.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Fifty thousand dollars will be distributed to the charity or
charities designated by Dessi l Irish of Valeo, California. Twenty
thousand dollars will go to the charity or charities designated
by Lucille Foisse of Miami, Florida, five thousand dollars to
the charity designated by Vincent W. Sisler of Howe, Indiana,
(27:46):
three thousand dollars to the charity designated by Stuart Smith
of Ogdensburg, New York, and two thousand dollars to the
charity designated by L. G. Bridgewater of Kennewick, Washington. These
people and twenty others who will each designated one thousand
dollars to their favorite charities, have all been notified. And
now this is Harla Wilcox wishing you a summer of
(28:08):
safe driving with the reminder that wherever you travel, from
bumper to tail light, you're always right with auto light.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Next Tuesday night, June fifteenth, we will continue with a
new series of suspense programs. At that time and through
the summer. We hope that you will join us and
that we will be able each Tuesday night to keep
you in suspense. Suspense is produced and directed by Elliot Lewis,
(28:46):
with music composed by Lucian Morrowick and conducted by lud Gluskin.
A Terribly Strange Bed was adapted for suspense by Morton
Fine and David Freekin from the story by Wilkie Collins.
In Tonight's story, Sorry, Ben Wright was heard as Gerald,
Paula Winslow as Mildred, Joseph Kerns as Fabian, and Vic
Perrin as the croupier Leader. Lawford may currently be seen
(29:09):
co starring in the Columbia picture It Should Happen to You.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
And Remember.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Suspense continues on Tuesday nights beginning next week, at which
time we will present The Earth Is Made of Glass.
You can buy auto light standard or resistant type spot plugs,
auto light stay full batteries, and auto light original service.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Parts at your neighborhood auto light dealers switch to Autolite
good night.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
This is the CBS Radio Network.
Auto Light and it's ninety eight thousand dealers. Bring you,
mister Peter Lawford into Night's presentation of suspense.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Tonight Auto Light presents a classic study of suspense, a
new dramatization of one of the most terrifying stories ever written,
Wilkie Collins, a terribly strange bed our star.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Mister Peter Lawford Earloo, what is so wonderful as a
day in June?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Why a world famous auto light spark plugs? Of course
have what I said. World famous auto light spark plugs
are taps hap because they're ignition engineered, designed and built
by ignition experts to give the best performance money can buy.
That's why auto light spark plugs are specified as original
equipment on many leading makes of our finest cars, trucks
and tractors.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
With what work plugs have to do with June?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Why half June is the perfect time to get your
car tuned up to get the spark plugs checked for
summer driving. So friends, see your auto light spark plug
dealer soon. He's a specialist on spark plug cleaning and
adjustment for all makes of cars, and if replacements are needed,
he will install ignition engineered auto light spark plugs either
resist or standard type best suited to your car and
(01:24):
your style of driving. Remember, from bumper to tail light,
you're always right with auto light. And now auto light
presents mister Peter Lawford in Wilkie Collins's story, a terribly
strange bed, hoping once again to keep you in suspense.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happen
to be staying in Paris with an English friend. We
were both young man and lived, I'm afraid, rather a
wild life in the city of our sojourn, and thus
had probed the various refined pleasures suitable to our class,
and search for others less elegant search for them in
(02:05):
the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, which lies covertly against
the dark river Seine, and from each closed doorway the
small echoings of small promises in there that doorway there, Oh,
you're drunk, Gerald, pleasantly, exquisitely, modestly, delicately am I drunk?
Speaker 5 (02:26):
And thereforemed?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Therefore what Gerald?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
The doorway?
Speaker 6 (02:30):
I have suggested that the word frescati painted on it,
noble word, noble mysteries. I've been there, Oh, sly sly
sly on traitors. Friend, you have been there and alone,
slyly and without.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Me, and it has a ghastly kind of respectability five
franc respectability, and it will amuse me. Come along, Gerald,
come along, girl.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
That's it, Joel, You're coming along, Billy and nice. What
I want Gerald, all that you want me want, and
you shall find him want and you shall find.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
What I want is somewhere where we can see a
little genuine blackguard, poverty stricken gaming with no false gingerbread,
glitter thrown all over it.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
No gingerbread from my friend, thank you him.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
A place not fashionable, not respectable, a place of evil perhaps,
and of emotions I've never known. Oh, Gerald, come along.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
Gerald will not come along. Jerald is content here.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Listen to me.
Speaker 6 (03:29):
Jerl is content here to lean his weariness in his
search against this doorway against Gerald.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
The door flung open behind him, and Gerald had fallen
flat on his back, and for a while laughed, Then
with my help, got up, and Gerald laughed no longer
for the room. The gaming room is tragedy, mute, weird tragedy,
and the quiet in the room horrible, and the people
(04:04):
of the room a thin haggard, long haired young man
who sunk an eyes fiercely watched the turning up of
the cards and never spoke. The flabby, fat face, perspiring
player who registered on a pasteboard how often black one
and how often red never spoke, the dirty, wrinkled old
man with avouch your eyes, And the darned great coat
(04:24):
who had lost his last sue and still looked on
desperately and never spoke, the voice of the croupier, The
voice of the croupier, dull, thick in the atmosphere of
the room. We had entered on a laugh that the
spectacle before us was something to weep over. I'd found it,
(04:46):
the pleasure I searched. I'd found it. Yeah, your eyes,
the look in them.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
Yes, And it's what you wanted, isn't it? The place
of evil and the emotions you would never.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
I want to play?
Speaker 7 (04:59):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Do come then, right and black, make your bets right,
in black, your bets right, and.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Black, your bets. A thousand francs on black, black, black wings,
leave it all of it black. Hen wait, black, black wings,
(05:32):
leave it all of it black. Yes, this is a
passion with you. No, No, not a passion idle amusement, Yes,
only amusement. Wait, black, all of it, all of it
red this time red, not passion and intoxication. But happening
is intoxication as I have never known it. Intoxication, Yes, yes, yes,
(05:59):
which has.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Become great great winds.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
All of it red, and ten thousand more, all which
has become passion, which has become passion.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Wet red wings.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Now the black croupier.
Speaker 7 (06:27):
Black, Oh, don't permit me, sir, permit me to restore
to their proper place the two coins which were dropped there,
in their proper place, a thousand francs, a tall man
(06:51):
and quite fat, pinched into a frogged and braided Soto,
a man of goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangi mustaches and a
broken nose, and the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yet in the mad excitement, his look, his hands held
no repelling influence on me. For now, in the mad excitement,
in the reckless triumph, I was ready to accept even
such as he.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
What a wonderful luck, ash your sir, I pledge in
my word of honor as an old soldier in the
course of my long experience, and this sort of thing never,
but never have I seen such luck as yours.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Thank you, go on, sir, boldly handsomely break the bank.
I assure you, sir, I have every intention to it.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
It, Sir, go on, break the bank, my gallant English comrade,
boldly break the.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Back, all of it black. And I did go on,
went on at such a rate that than an hour.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for tonight.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
In an hour, in an hour of a kind of
ecstasy ever known. All the notes and all the gold
in the bank now laying a heap under my hands,
the whole floating capital of the gambling house under my hands,
waiting to pour into my pockets.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
No, no, no, no, not in your pockets, sir, for
no breeches, pockets, whatever sould could hold such heavy winnings.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
And then how may I.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Take your pocket handkerchief, sir? Thank you? Ah, tie it up, sir,
Tie it up in your handkerchief, as we used to
tie up a bit of dinner in the army. Yeah,
shovel it in no answer to tight double knots each
way with your provision, Ah, and the money safe.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Thank you?
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Feel it, feel it, sir, hard and round, hard and
round is a cannon ball. Feel it a champagne, Sir,
I will buy you champagne.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
No, thank you, I pull for.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
Your friend Henry's friends, amiable gracious englishman, champagne, champagne for
the friend the conqueror of the bank, and for me, Come,
sir to my table. I am Fabian, Nero Gallon says,
and you Henry.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Corner, and this is my friend, Gerald Titchenow.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
Henry, Gerald Fabien.
Speaker 8 (09:15):
Lovely, lovely, lovely Henry Gerald, heh Henry and Gerald Fabian.
Speaker 7 (09:26):
Here we are friends, aren't who have touched your sleeves
to have you seated chair beside me? This old soldier's
heart will burst, my eyes will weep my hands. Ah
the champagne h A toast, gentleman, A toast not for me, please, oh,
(09:47):
of course, not for you Gerald. And I then will
geraldied him a toast to the goddess Fortune who embraced
tonight our Henry and smiled secretly upon him. And this
will very close the goddess Fortune.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Gentlemen, an English chair.
Speaker 7 (10:04):
Hurah hourrah hourrah hourah horah hurrah ah hurah.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Ah Fabian, quickly enough.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
For Gerald, you were tipsy before, now you're Henry not
to permit the golden blood of France to flow through
the veins of this viviacious englishman.
Speaker 7 (10:23):
And Gerald, your friend, all shame, every shame, a dring Gerald.
Speaker 9 (10:30):
Thirst to France, the president company, to the croupiers, and
the croupier's wife, and the croupier's daughter, Ah, the croupier's daughters,
and the ladies elsewhere, and to ladies.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I should like coffy, Fabian coffee, Coffee for me and
for Gerald intoxication coffee. It shall be a coffee coffee
for the darling of fortune.
Speaker 10 (10:59):
Coffee.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
The word pronounced by Fabian Nero seemed to have a
magical effect on the company present. They suddenly had lost interest,
and all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to
profit by my intoxication, by the proffering of Champagne, the
finding I would have none of it, had now abandoned
all hope of thriving pleasantly on my winnings. Whatever their
(11:26):
motive might be, at any rate, they went away in
a body, and the silence of the foe was now
deeper than ever. Then from a sort of vestibule at
the far corner of the room, a woman appeared bearing
a tray of coffee and glasses, and walked towards us,
enveloped in silence, woman of emaciated face and burning bright eyes,
(11:48):
and wisps of colorless hair drifting across her rouged cheeks.
Speaker 10 (11:52):
Your coffee, sir, Thank you, you will signed it strong and.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Good, Thank you.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
Strong and good, handsome sir. Here you are, sir, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
I am past for first, and it was kind of
you and a fabian and gracious and generous.
Speaker 7 (12:16):
How wise you are, Henry, to drink this coffee of Milly's,
the coffee of Milliprudam.
Speaker 11 (12:21):
Milliprudom, beautiful MILLIPRUA handsome sir. Will you have coffee, no.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Champagne, Milly.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Ah, to drink of beauty?
Speaker 7 (12:40):
How wiser than your friend Gerald, to drink coffee and
rid yourself of your little amiable exaltation of spirits before
you think of going home. And you must, my good
and gracious friend, for with all that money, gracious pray,
with all that money to take home to night. It
is a sacred duty to yourself to have your It's
about you drink, Henry, drink your coffee.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
You are known to be a winner.
Speaker 7 (13:06):
To an enormous extent by several gentlemen present to night,
who are but mortal mensa and have their own amiable weaknesses.
Drink Henry, who'd surely rob and murder.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
If you were to wait. Wait, Ristern, I'm ill, I'm
very poor.
Speaker 10 (13:23):
He is ill, very ill. I will weep.
Speaker 12 (13:27):
Henry is ill, and I am dr Miller, will sub
will you swil a shit of giddiness?
Speaker 4 (13:36):
The room worlds round and round. Furious, Henry, your voice
deafens me.
Speaker 7 (13:44):
Furiously, My dear friend, my dear friend, Madness to go
home in your state would be robbed murdered. You need
a walking and then asleep, and not a murdering, a
walking and then.
Speaker 10 (13:56):
Sleep, and in a safe safe.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Henry, there's walk.
Speaker 7 (14:03):
Sleep in the safe place, the place of Millie Prudom,
a rooming house above the gable, and the capital beds
of Millie's rooming house.
Speaker 10 (14:11):
Hi, don't leadness to go to your own home. Leave
at Milli Prudin, and tomorrow tomorrow.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Go home safely with your winnings tomorrow, in full flow
of life and in broad daylight.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
Tomorrow is Gerald beds writing. If anyone needs see Buce Shirley.
Speaker 7 (14:32):
Come then quickly come then quickly I will help you
from about me.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
That's their dear.
Speaker 11 (14:39):
Boy, mill Yes Gerald, come.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Ah injure, Henry.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
Here the choicest room of MILLI prudon the capital bed
there imitation furnishing, and the deep sleep of your head,
and the safe one till tomorrow. Henry.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
I don't know how to thank you.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
You have thanked me enough already with the exaltation of
your splendid company, and that I could have been of
some small service to your small malady.
Speaker 10 (15:28):
Let me go geral.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Comedy.
Speaker 12 (15:37):
Henry wants to sleep those of violently Oh hell, milliprud see.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Gerald passed into his particular oblivion in the middle of
a sentence. I walked over and locked the door. Then
I took my money, my winnings, wrapped in a handkerchief,
and placed beneath the pillow of my bed. I lay down.
My senses still swam, and I looked up at the
heavily brocaded canopy, and it seemed to move somehow to move,
(16:21):
And for an instant I thought this was a terribly
strange bed.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
All the light is bringing you, mister Peter Lawford in
Wilkie Collins, a terribly strange bed the night's presentation in
radio's outstanding theater of thrills suspense.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Will harlu vacation times nearly here.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yes, hap, but not for spark plugs. They're the very
heart of your car's ignition system, and if they're not right,
the chances are you won't get smooth and efficient engine
operation during summer's hot and heavy driving.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
That's why now's the time to check them. He Harlem, Yes.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Happen when replacements are needed. Wise drivers insist on ignition
engineered auto light spark plugs like the famous Autolight resistor
spark plug. That's the amazing double life spark plug that
gives top performance for twice as long as ordinary spark plugs.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
And the Autolight Resistor is only one of a complete
line of auto light spark plugs designed for every use.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Right Harlem, Right half, So, friends, see your autolite spark
plug dealer tomorrow for a spark plug checkup. And if
you need replacements, take nothing less than ignition engineered auto
light spark plugs, either standard or resistor type.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
You'll be glad you did.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Because from bumper to tail light, you're always righted with
auto light.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And now auto light brings back to our Hollywood soundstage
mister Peter Lawford in Elliot Lewis's production of a terribly
strange bed, a tail well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I could not sleep. Restlessness took me over, and I
got out of bed. There was the dim, quiet flicker
of a single candle, and next to it a washstand.
I plunged my face into the water. There was a
single chair, and I sat down and tried to compose myself. Slowly, slowly,
the giddiness left me. Shut her and a window shut her,
(18:48):
attached by a single hinge and flapping against the side
of the house. And no lock on the window, no
way of locking the window.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Helly, Gerald, Gerald.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You are where where?
Speaker 4 (19:02):
In a room over the gaming place. It's all right.
I've locked the door, but the window.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
And there's a window.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Listen, did you hear? I was wide awake, and every
one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. Piano
(19:35):
and a song I had never heard, and then behind
it the laughter. Wide awake, Yet somehow the effects of
whatever drug I had drunk seemed suddenly to arise again,
and for an instant toil with my perception. So I
reached for the wall to steady myself ast I fall down,
leaned against the wall for support.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
From England.
Speaker 10 (20:00):
Oh, dear and Sabian, Dadian, Sadian, Sabian the youth and
his friend and his friend and the handkerchiefs Now.
Speaker 7 (20:12):
He's such a dear boy.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yes, such a deal Yeah, such a dear boy. He's
such a dear boy.
Speaker 7 (20:20):
I'm such a deal boy.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
The moment their voices waved and fled, a kind of
melancholy seized me. I walked over to the window and
looked out, looked out upon blackness, a swarm of blackness.
No shapes definable could be made out through the gloom,
except a lighter grayness of a sort, as if an
abutmentt of some kind. I supposed directly across the window
and somewhat below it. But how far across, into what
(20:44):
length below I could not determine. For all purposes. Then
I knew only that we were above the street level
and some three stories, And having felt the walls directly
adjacent the window, I found them to be sheer. No
one could enter there. I walked over to the bed
and took a pillow and placed it beneath Jerrel's head.
(21:05):
The bed again, and I lay down this bed that
now I was lying upon. I must again described to
you a four post bed with a regular top line
with chintz. The regular fringe balance all around was ridiculous.
Now that I tried to sleep, I couldn't even close
my eyes. I resolved then to beguile the tedium of
(21:30):
my wakefulness by making inventory of every article of furniture.
I could see window, washstand, chest, chair, dressing table. Picture
upon the wall opposite the bed, A picture a fellow
in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of
tiring feathers, a swarthy, sinister ruffian looking upward. It might
(21:53):
be at some tall gallows on which he was going
to be hanged. Such was the picture, a chair, candlestick picture.
It seemed to be moving. The hat had been pulled
over the eyes, and there the hat itself was gone,
The hat was gone, the plumes. That was the bed moving.
(22:23):
Now now it was it a brief and terrible dream.
How could the top of a bed move? Brief terrible dream?
Trick of the eye and the mind's going down for
a moment into sleep yep Ye, I let my mind,
say it. The top of the bed had moved, Gerald, Gerald,
(22:43):
wake up, open your eyes, well, now watch quietly, keep
your voice in a quiet tone.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Why what were you?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Listen above you, directly above you. Look, there's a picture
you see it? Yes, a minute ago the man was
wearing a hat. He was wearing a hat. Now he
is not my friend.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Give at drunk, and the part of you your fool.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Listen to me, all right, demy. Where there was a
hat is now a peep hole, and we are being watched,
all right, Henry, Now stay where you are, but be alert,
all right, Henry, Henry, Yes, what are you going to do?
Make sure of a thing? What thing? The bed? What?
(23:34):
Keep your eye on the canopy. I'm going to lie
in the bed now, Gerald, and make sure that they're
not trying to murder us. Oh by feigning sleep? What
by feigning sleep? Gerald? Just that now? Quiet? Yes, now,
(23:55):
I am constitutional, anything but timid. I have been on
more than one ACA Asian in peril of my life,
and I have not lost my self possession for an instant.
But when the conviction settled on my mind that the
bed top was actually moving, it loosed a feeling within me.
Foreign laced through with terror. So I lay there, motionless, speechless, breathless.
(24:23):
The candles spent went out, but the moonlight still brightened
the room. I lay there. It descended, the whole canopy
(24:43):
came down close down. I lay there, literally spellbound by
what was happening. But once I could not tell whether
reality was here or my imagination was taking hold. Closer, closer,
Henry Gerald's voice shattered this warm sea of fascination that
bound me, and I leapt from the bed. Look. Look, yes,
(25:05):
the middle of the bed top, the huge wooden screw
like a press to smother me and relieve me of
my winnings, and then kill you. Open open the light
of the morning, Gerald, and look it comes up and
through the window across the narrow shaft another building. We
can leap it, what not high?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
My legs are still unsteady.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
If I should stand upon that sill, i'd fall into
his face.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Then wait and hurry, Yes, hurry, hurry. The rest of
my story is soon told. From the building next door,
I reached the ground and saw police with them. I returned.
(25:51):
Mister Fabin was seized, as was Missus Prudarm. The police
congratulated me on my good fortune and Gerald's on his,
and told us that they would probably never know how
many people had been smothered in this diabolical bed. So
tightly was the canopy pressed to the bed that I
could not retrieve my money. The mechanism had to be
released from the room above. The police bade us go, and,
(26:14):
finding ourselves walking homeward, Gerald said to me, I know.
Speaker 6 (26:18):
A place where gambling is carried on at such a
fever pitch that you will be carried to the heights
of excitement.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Needless to imagine, I refused to go along with Gerald.
My adventure cured me of ever again trying rouge noire
as an amusement. The sight of a green cloth with
packs of cards and heaps of money on it, well,
henceforth would be associated in my mind with the sight
of a bed canopy descending to suffocate me in the
(26:45):
silence and the darkness of the night.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Suspense presented by Autolite Tonight Star mister Peter Lawford, Here
are the results of the great one hundred thousand dollars
Autolite Family charity drawing Over five million. Two hundred thousand
entries were received for this event last week. The final
drawing was held in New York under the supervision of
a distinguished committee. Here are the names in the order
(27:23):
of their selection.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Fifty thousand dollars will be distributed to the charity or
charities designated by Dessi l Irish of Valeo, California. Twenty
thousand dollars will go to the charity or charities designated
by Lucille Foisse of Miami, Florida, five thousand dollars to
the charity designated by Vincent W. Sisler of Howe, Indiana,
(27:46):
three thousand dollars to the charity designated by Stuart Smith
of Ogdensburg, New York, and two thousand dollars to the
charity designated by L. G. Bridgewater of Kennewick, Washington. These
people and twenty others who will each designated one thousand
dollars to their favorite charities, have all been notified. And
now this is Harla Wilcox wishing you a summer of
(28:08):
safe driving with the reminder that wherever you travel, from
bumper to tail light, you're always right with auto light.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Next Tuesday night, June fifteenth, we will continue with a
new series of suspense programs. At that time and through
the summer. We hope that you will join us and
that we will be able each Tuesday night to keep
you in suspense. Suspense is produced and directed by Elliot Lewis,
(28:46):
with music composed by Lucian Morrowick and conducted by lud Gluskin.
A Terribly Strange Bed was adapted for suspense by Morton
Fine and David Freekin from the story by Wilkie Collins.
In Tonight's story, Sorry, Ben Wright was heard as Gerald,
Paula Winslow as Mildred, Joseph Kerns as Fabian, and Vic
Perrin as the croupier Leader. Lawford may currently be seen
(29:09):
co starring in the Columbia picture It Should Happen to You.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
And Remember.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Suspense continues on Tuesday nights beginning next week, at which
time we will present The Earth Is Made of Glass.
You can buy auto light standard or resistant type spot plugs,
auto light stay full batteries, and auto light original service.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Parts at your neighborhood auto light dealers switch to Autolite
good night.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
This is the CBS Radio Network.
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