Hello, this is Adam Graham. We continue our feature link en course with
this program from our archives. A note, as this program was played several
years back, any of the offers or information may not be valid if it's
not currently on our website. Now, let's take a lesten Welcome here to
the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio and our three hundredth episode special. As
always, feel free to send your comments to Box thirteen a Great Detectives dot
net, follow us over on Twitter at Radio Detectives. Today's episode of the
Great Detectives of Old Time Radio is brought to you through my book Tales of
the Dim Night. It's available from Splashdown Books. You can go to Great
Detectives dot net, available as an ebook for four to twenty five at a
Great Detectives dot net or Dimnight dot com for even more purchasing options. Well,
A Man who Was Thursday from the Mercury Theater on the air is this
week's production. This actually concluded the summer production of the Mercury Theater, though
it would be moving to a new Knight and would a few months later have
its famous War of the World's broadcast. We of course came to the Mercury
Theater for the first time a year ago, and it's great to be back
for another masterful performance by Orson Welles. And this story is quite unique.
The Man Who Was Thursday is a mystery story and is often considered an early
work of detective fiction, but it's also often considered a fantasy. It's hard
to define, it's hard to explain, but it definitely provokes plenty of thought,
and mister Wells will address this a little bit in his opening. One
thing that he does make reference to is that the story was set in the
age of the anarchist. Today, well, anarchism is not thought of as
a positive thing, it's not really thought of as a big threat. But
in the early part of the twentieth century the anarchists were quite dangerous and quite
violent. In fact, it was an anarchist that killed the President of the
United States, William McKinley in nineteen oh one. So in the period of
The Man Who Was Thursday, when this was released in nineteen oh six,
the anarchists were kind of like we would imagine today. Unfortunately, every recording
of this play that I found has the first paragraph or so of mister Wells's
introduction cut off, as well as the opening theme music and the CBS announcer.
Thankfully, I have found a script which means I can go ahead and
read you the first paragraph that mister Wells spoke, and then we'll head out
to the Mercury Theater to hear the rest from Orson Welles. Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen. G. K. C. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, great,
greatly articulate Roman convert and liberal, has been dead now for two years.
For unique brand of common sense, enthusiasm, for a singular gift of
paradox, for a deep reverence and a high wit, and most of all,
for free and shamelessly beautiful English prose. He will never be forgotten.
And here now is mister Orson Wells with the man who was Thursday. He're
on the great Detectives of Old time Radio. Wonderful to be famous. According
to the story, that's what the young lady said to the fat Man,
the fabulously, fatly fantastic, the famous fat Man, when he took it
to lunch at a fashionable restaurant and everybody turned it stared. Tell me,
she said, do people always recognize you? Does everybody always know who you
are, well, my dear, said mister Chesterton. If they don't they
ask mister Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is a little like that. Roughly
speaking, it's about anarchists. It was written remember in the boom of bomb
throwing, in those radical, irresponsible days of the Nihilists. And roughly speaking,
it's a mystery story. It can be guaranteed that you will never never
guess the solution until you get to the end. It is even fe but
you may not guess it. Then you may never guess what The Man who
Was Thursday is about. But definitely, if you don't you ask. I
am Gabriel Sime. I am the man who was Thursday, that particular evening,
if it is remembered for nothing else would be remembered in that place.
For its strange sunset, it looked like the end of the world. It
may be remembered by others too, because it marked the first appearance in the
place of the second poet of Saffron Park. For a long time, a
red haired revolutionary had reigned without arrival. It was upon the night of the
sunset that I Gabriel Sime ended his solitude. You say you are a poet
of law. I say you are a contradiction in terms an artist is identical
with an anarchist, mister Gregory. It is things going right that is poetical.
Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right. The most
poetical thing in the world is not being sick grayly mister sime the examples.
I beg your pardon, mister Gregory, I forgot we had abolished all convention.
So you don't expect me to revolutionize society on this lawn. No,
I don't. But I suppose that if you are serious about your anarchism,
that is exactly what you would do. Don't you think then that I am
serious about my anarchism. I beg your pardon. Am I not serious about
my anarchism? I strolled away and left Gregory, But with surprise and with
a curious pleasure, I found a red headed young lady still in my company.
It was Rosamund Gregory's sister. It's the time to the people who talk
like you and my brother often mean what they say. Do you mean what
you say now, my dear miss Gregory, when you say thank you for
the sort, you mean what you say? No, when you say the
world is round, you mean what you say. No, it is quite
true, but you don't mean it. Is he really an anarchist only in
that sense I speak, if you prefer it in that nonsense, you wouldn't
really use bombs or that sort of thing, Thank God Lord, No,
that has to be done anonymously. I strove with her to a seat in
the corner of the garden, and I defended respectability with violence and exaggeration.
I grew passionate in my praise of tidiness and propriety. All the time.
There was a smell of lilac around me. And once I heard, very
faintly, in some distant street, a barrel organ begin to play, and
it seemed to me that my heroic words were moving to a tiny tune from
under or beyond the world. In the wild events which were to follow.
This girl had no part at all. I never saw again until all my
tear was over. And yet in some indescribable way, she kept recurring,
like a motive in music through all those mad adventures afterwards, and the glory
of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill drawn
tapestries of the night. For what followed was so imp probable that it might
well have been a dream. When I left the party and went out into
the Starlit street, I found Gregory waiting for me. Mister Simeon, mister
Gregory, this evening, you succeeded in doing something rather remarkable. You did
something to me that no man has ever succeeded in doing before. You irritated
me. I'm very sorry. That it's only one way by which that insult
can be erased, and that way I choose. I am going, at
the possible sacrifice of my life and honor to prove to you that you are
wrong in what you said. In what I said, you said I was
not serious about being an anarchist. Mister Syme, May I ask you to
swear, by whatever gods or saints your religion involves, that you will not
reveal what I am now going to tell you to any son of Adam,
and especially not to the police. Will you swear that if you will consent
to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a knowledge
you should never dream about, I will promise you. In return, you
will promise me in return, I will promise you a very entertaining your author
is far too idiotic to be declined. You say that a poet is always
an anarchist. I disagree, but I hope at least that he is always
a spot. Permit me here and now to swear that as a Christian,
and to promise is a good comrade and a fellow artist. But I will
not report any of this, whatever it is, to the police. And
now what is it? I think that we will take a cab. A
cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beer shop. We seated ourselves
in a close and dim sort of bar parlor at a stained wooden table with
one wooden leg. Because I'm if in a few moments this table begins to
turn around a little. Please don't put it down to the champagne. I
don't wish you to do yourself and injustice. Well, if I'm not drunk,
I'm mad, but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either
situation. May I smoke? Seven minute? I went of't mine. I
took this aga and started to light it. Almost before I had begun,
the table at which we were sitting began to revolve, first slowly and then
rapid. You mustn't mind it. It's kind of screw. Quite so,
a kind of screw. How simple that is. The next moment we two
were our chairs and tables shot down to the flaws of the earth had swallowed
us. Gregory let me down a low vaulted passage, at the end of
which was a heavy iron door. Who is it, mister Joseph Chamberlain.
It was obviously some kind of password. He stepped into a queer steel chamber,
whose walls were hung with dubious and dreadful shapes, things that looked like
the bulbs of iron plants or the eggs of iron birds. They were barred.
And now, my dear mister Sime, now we are quite cozy,
so let us talk properly. You said you are quite certain I was not
a serious anarchist. Does this place strike as being serious? It does seem
to have a moral under all of its gaiety. But tell me we have
a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of
calling yourself mister Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel instruments, which make the
place, if I may say so, more impressive than home. Like why
after taking all this trouble to barricade yourself in the bars of the earth,
you then parade your whole secret by talking anarchism to every silly woman in saffron
parts into simple When first I became one of the new anarchists, I tried
all kinds of respectable disguises. But at last I went in despair to the
President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe.
What's his name? You wouldn't know it, that is his greatness. He
looked at me, You want to save disguise, do you? I nodded,
Why then dress up as an anarchist, you fool. I took his
advice and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women
day and night, and by Heaven, they would let me wheel their pabulators.
It took me in. What do you call this tremendous president of yours?
We call him Sunday. You see, there are seven members of the
Central Anarchist Council, and they are named after the days of the week.
He is called Sunday by some of his admirers. Bloody Sunday. Yes,
that you should mention the matter, because this day night we've called a meeting
to elect a successor to the post of Thursday. And I don't mind telling
you that it's almost a settle thing that I am to be Thursday. Gregory.
I gave you a promise before I came to this place. Would you
give me, for my own safety a little promise of the same kind?
Yes, a promise. I swore before God that I would not tell your
secret to the police. Will you swear, by humanity or whatever beastly thing
you believe in, that you will not tell my secret to the anarchist?
Your secret? Have you got a Yes, I have a secret. Will
you swear yes? I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell
me, but look sharp, they will be here in a couple of minutes.
I don't know how to tell you the truth more shortly by saying that
your expedient of dressing up is names poet is not consigned to you or your
president. We've known the dodge for some time at Scotland Yard. What do
you say, yes, Gregory, I'm a police detective. Chamberlain did Joseph
Chamberlain. It was repeated twice and thrice and then thirty times, and the
crowd of Joseph Chamberlain's a solemn thought could be heard trampling down the corridor.
Here are your friends, Gregory, Comrade, I suppose this man is a
delegate. The fact is, Comrade, I have been specially sent here to
see that you show a due observance of Sunday. Well, Comrade, I
suppose we'd better give you a season. Anything Gregory I could see was in
an agony of diplomacy. Yes, I think it is time we began.
The tongue is waking on the river. I move that, comrade, Buttons
take the chair. I comrade, comrades, we all the men are sad
to see the heroic workan who occupied the post of Thursday in the Central Council
until last week he organized the great dynamite coup of Brighton, which, under
happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on the tier. Upon you tonight,
comrades, it devoves to chose out of the company present, the man
who shall be called Thursday. If any comrades have gent the name, I
will put into the vote. I will the comrade Gregory be elec thirdays Thanny
one second the most. Before I put the matter to the vote, I
will call on Comrade Gregory to make a statement. Gregory rose, He must
have figured out that his best chance was to make a softened, an ambiguous
speech such as would leave in my mind the impression that the Brotherhood was a
very mild affair. After all, my friend back there, it is deep,
deep under the earth, that we, the persecuted, are permitted to
a temple as the Christians, as templed in the catacombs. Suppose we seem
as shocking as the Christians, because we are really as harmless as the Christians.
Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians, because we are really as
me, I am not me. Comrade with a school tells us that he
is not meet, how little he knows himself. We are simple as they
were simple. Look at comrade with uspoon. We are modest as they were
modest. Look at me. We are merciful, ny, we are merciful
as the early Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent that they're being
accused of eating flesh. Now we do not eat human flesh. Shame,
Why not? Comrade with a spool is anxious to know why nobody eats him
in our society at any rate, which loved him sincerely, which is hounded
on love, No, no, down with lances honded on love. There
will be no difficulty about the aims which we self pursue with a buddy,
or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of that body.
Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory a real time comrade, Comrade timeless
special delegation. Can we come into this Comrade, we line these walls with
weapons and bar that door with death. Rest. Anyone should come and hear
Comrade Gregory saying to us, be good and you will be happy. Honesty
is the best policy, and virtue is its own reward. Comrade Gregory has
told us we are not the enemies of society. But I say that we
are the enemies of society, and so much the worst for society. Comrade
Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows that's what as I do, that
I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. I do
not mince words, I do not pretend to. We do not want the
Supreme Council of anarchy infected with a Martin Mercil. Gregory is milk and water
metas on the Supreme Council. I would offer myself for election. How would
I tell you as an amendment of Comrade Time, the appointed to the post.
Stop all this, I tell you to stop it. It is all
impossible. I make the second election, comred I kneel to you. Do
not elect this man. The question is the Comrade Time be elected to the
post of Thursday on the General's Council. And three minutes afterwards, mister Gabriel's
Time of the Secret Police Service was elected to the post of Thursday on the
General Council of the Anarchists of Europe. Moment later I found myself, somehow
or other, face to face with Gregory. And you are a gentleman,
Comrade Thursday. The boat is quite ready. Comrade Gregory, you've kept your
word. You're a man of honor, and I thank you. You mean
what did I promise you? A very entertaining evening. My name is really
Gabriel Syme. I'm not merely a detective who pretends to be a poet.
I am really a poet who has become a detective. I come of a
family of cranks. One of my uncles always walked about without a hat,
and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing
else. Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, I had
to revolt into something. So I revolted into the only thing left, which
was sanity. Now, some months before that evening in Saffron Park, I
appeared before a high official in Scotland Yard. I was led to a side
door, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I was suddenly
shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled me like a blaze
of light. Are you the new recruit? All right, you're engaged.
I really have no experience. No one has any experience of the Battle of
Armageddon. But I'm really unfit. You're willing. That is enough. Well,
really, on any profession of which mere willingness is the final test I
do. Martyrs, I am condemning you to death. Good day where my
adventure ultimately led me, I've already told you. At about half past one
on a February night, I found myself steaming on a small tug up the
Silent Thames, the duly elected Thursday of the Central Council of Anarchists. As
we came alongside, the great stones of the embankment were big and black against
the huge white dawn. I leapt out of the boat on at the slimy
steps. The tuck put off again and turned up stream, and I saw
that there was a man leaning over the parakelet and looking out across the river.
And then the man smiled, And his smile was a shock, for
it was all on one side, going up the right cheek and down on
the left, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness and
the great dripping stones. There was something unnerving in it. There was the
silent river and the silent man, and there was the last nightmare touch that
his smile had suddenly went wrong. We walk up towards Lester Square. We
shall just be in time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an earlid breakfast,
but one corner of Leicester Square that projected the balcony of a prosperous but
quiet hotel. The balcony contained a breakfast table, and round the breakfast table,
glowing in the sunlight, were a group of noisy and talkative men,
all dressed in the insolence of fashion. Here then with the secret conclave of
the European dynamiters. Then as I continued to stare at them, I saw
something that I had not seen before, literally because it was too large to
see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part
of the perspective, with the back of a great mountain of a man.
I first thought that the weight of him must break down the balcony of stone.
This man was planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue,
carved deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair I seen from
behind, looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood
out from it looked larger than human ears. His sense of size were so
staggering. But when I saw him, all the other figure seemed quite suddenly
to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were still sitting there as before, with
their flowers and frock coats, but now it looked as if the big man
who was entertaining five children to tea. I never thought of asking whether the
monstrous man almost filled and broke the balcony was the great President Sunday, whom
the others had stood in awe. I knew it were so. As I
walked across the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday grew
larger and larger, and I was gripped with the fear that when he was
quite close, the face would be too big to be possible, and that
I would scream aloud. I remembered that as a child I would not look
at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it was a face
and so large. By an effort brave than that of leaping over a cliff,
I went to an empty seat at the breakfast table and sat down.
At that moment, the President was addressing a man, out of whose collar
that sprang a bewildering bush of brown hair and beard that almost obscured the eyes,
like those of a sky terrier. The man's name, it seemed,
was Go Go. He was a pole, and in a circle of days
he was called Tuesday. Our friend. Tuesday insists on the ways of the
stage, considered us. No. If a gentleman goes about London in a
top atham a prop coat, no one need knows that he's an anarchost.
But if a gentleman puts on the top headmen of prop coat, and then
goes about on his ends and knees, well, he made it like the
gen I am not good that conceal him. I am not ashamed of the
cord. If you are, my boy, and so he is the cause
of you, I am not good that deception. Right, my boy,
right, you aren't good at anything. As I looked at the others,
I began to see in each of them exactly what I had seen in the
man by the river. Each man was subtly and differently wrong. Next to
me sat Tuesday, the tousel headed go Gol. Next was Wednesday, a
certain Marquis de Saint Eustache. In the gloom and thickness of his beard,
a dark red mouth showed sensual and scornful. Whatever he was, he was
not a Frenchman. Then came me next, a very old man, Professor
de Worms, who was Friday. The red flower in his buttonhole showed up
against a face that was literally discolored like lead. The whole hideous effect was
as if some drunken dandies had put their clothes upon a corpse and right at
the end sat the man called Saturday. His name was doctor Bull. There
was nothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark,
almost opaque spectacles, and it occurred to me that his eyes might be
covered up because they were too frightful to see. Such were the six men
who had been sworn to destroy the world. M Only three days afterwards,
it appeared the King of England was to meet the President of the French Republic
in Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their sunny balcony, these
beaming gentlemen and decided how both should die. Even the instrument was chosen.
The black bearded Marquis appeared was to carry the bomb. Whilst the talkers paid
little attention to me, but the President was always looking at me steadily and
with a great and baffling interest. I was sure that, in some silence,
an extraordinary way, Sunday had found out that I was a spy.
Meantime, the men were eating as they talked. The Marquis took a great
bite of bread and jam. I have often wondered whether it wouldn't be better
for me to do it with a knife, and it would be a new
emotion to get a knife into a French president and wriggle it or wrong,
you are wrong. A knife was merely the expression of the old personal quarrel
with a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our
best symbol. It expands, it also destroys because it broadens and brain.
A man's brain is a bomb mind brain. See you like a bomb,
night and day. It must expand. It must expand. A man's brain
must expand if it breaks the universe. I don't want the universe broken up
just yet. I want to do a lot of disently things before I die.
I thought of one yesterday instead. The question that is, how Comrade
Wednesday is to fight the blow. As to the actual arrangement, I suggest
that tomorrow he should go. First of all, we discussed that I have
something very particular to say. The instant of choice had come. At last,
the pistol was at my head. More speeches, more COMPROMI go,
go sit down with the other judgment at this table for the first time this
morning. Something intelligent is going to be said. I sat down first.
No one except me seemed the have any notion of the blow. That was
about a four comrades, we have spun out this past long enough. We
were discussing plans and naming places. I propose that those friends and places should
be left only in control of Comrade Saturday comfortable. Not one word more about
the friends and places must be said at this meeting. They almost feverishly in
their seats except me. I sat stiff in mine, with my hand in
my pocket and on the handle of my loaded revolver. Gentlemen, there is
a spy at this table. No more words. His name half rose from
my seat. My finger firm on the treme is Google, he said,
hairy humbug over there, who pretends to be a poone? No man,
I gather that you fully understand your position. You bet, I see it's
a fair cup. All I say is I don't believe any poor could have
emitted that my accent like I did his. I can see the point.
I believe your excellent to be inimitable. Who I still practice it in my
bar. You may leaning your beard with your card not a bit Tuesday,
if you ever tell the police or any human soul about us, I don't
have exactly two and a half minutes of discoveries. You're discompany. I will
not wed good day. I understand. It's the detective who esqueraded as Goggle.
Rose to his feet without a word and walked out of the room with
an air of perfect nonchalance. There was a slight stumble outside the door,
which showed that the departing detective had not minded his step. I ams,
saying, I must get on the butt. I have taken care of the
humanitarian meeting. Would not be better to discuss further the details of our project
now, then, that the spy has left us, Secretarve, you take
our head home and boil it for a turn if it might be useful.
I can't say that it might. I really fail to understand. To understand,
are you dancing, donkey? You didn't want to be overheard by a
spy? To you? How do you know you are overheard? Now with
these words, Sunday showed it his way out of the room, shaking with
incomprehensible scorn. Now, if the last words of the president meant anything,
they meant that I had, after all not past unsuspected. The other four
got to their feet, but took themselves elsewhere to find lunch. Only the
old anarchist old Professor de Worms remain behind, seated before me at the table
with the Gabriel sam Yes, Professor, you policeman. A policeman. Never
made you think of a policeman in connection with me? The process was simple
enough. I thought you look like a policeman. I think so. Now,
why must I be a policeman? Do let me be a postman.
You'll give me ask a plain question, your paltering spy. Are you or
are you not? The police detective? No, you swear it. If
you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the
devil dances at your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on your
grave? You are an anarchist, You are a dynamiter. Above all,
you are not in any sense a detective. You are not in the British
Police. I am not in the British Police. Professor de Worms fell back
in his seat with a curious air, kindly collapse. Well, that's a
pity, because I am because you are what I am, a policeman,
a special policeman, and I serve under the man in the dark room.
A man in the dark room. I understand now. Of course, you
are not an old man at all. I can't take my face off here.
It's rather an elaborate make up. Did you know that that man Gogo
was one of us? No? But didn't you? I knew no more
than the dead. Then there were three of us, there, three of
us sitting here out of seven, and it's a fighting number. If we
do only known that there were three and were three. If we had been
three hundred, we still could have done nothing. Not if we were three
hundred against four. No, not if we were three hundred against Sunday professor.
It's intolerable. Are you afraid of this man? Yes? I am
so, are you? Yes, you're right, I am afraid of him.
Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I
fear, until I find him and strike him on the mouth. If Heaven
were thrown in the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him
down. Now, why, because I'm afraid of him. No man should
leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid. You any idea exactly
what you're going to do. Yes, I'm going to prevent this bomb being
thrown in Paris. Any conception you remember, of course, when we broke
up rather hurrid The whole arrangements for the autrocity were left in the private hands
of the Marquis and doctor Bull. The Marquie is by this time probably crossing
the channel. The only man who knows where he's going is doctor Bull.
Confound it. We don't know where Bully is. Yes, I know where
he is. Will you tell me? I'll take you there. What do
you mean, would you join me? Would you take a risk? Young
man? You think that it is possible to pull down the President? I
know that it is impossible, and I'm going to try it. Call your
special attention to the new series of broadcasts by the Mercury Theater with Orson Wells
as star and director, which will commence next Sunday night at eight pm Eastern
Daylight Saving time. And now a brief pause for station identification. This is
the Columbia Broadcasting System. We continue now with the performance of G. K.
Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday by Orson Wells and the Mercury Theater on
the air. The Professor met me to a very respectable inn, and in
that place we dine very thoroughly. Can you play the piano? Yes,
I am supposed to have a good touch, would have done just as well
if you could work a typewriter. Thank you, you flatter me. There
is no man except the President who is so seriously startling and formidable as doctor
Bull. A little grinning fellow and goggles depend upon it. Sunday was not
asleep when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in the round blackhead
of doctor Do you think that this unique monster will be soothed if I play
the piano to him? I mentioned the piano because it gives one quick and
independent fingers. Simon, if we are to go through this interview and come
out sane or alive, we must have some code of signals between us that
this brute will not see. I have made a rough alphabetical sight for corresponding
to the five fingers like this. Listen, b A D bad, a
word we may frequently require. I began to study the scheme. Didn't take
me long to learn how we might convey simple messages about what would seem to
be idle taps upon a table and knee. Tis not long before doctor Bull
came in sat down at our table. He smiled brightly, you're early this
evening gentlemen. A quiet, good humor of his manner left us helpless.
We sat staring at each other and silent. I have an intuition, and
sit on it. TI is quite an extraordinary intuition, extraordinary rock. I
am a poet. You are a kid. May have scarcely realized how poetic
my intuition is. It has that sudden quality we sometimes feel in the coming
of sprinkled lasers. Doctor Ball, Doctor Ball, Doctor bourr, would you
do me a small favor? Would you be so kind as to take off
your spectacles? Doctor bou rose slowly, still smiling, and took off his
spectacles. He was sitting in the chair before us, and we saw there
a very boyish looking young man. The smile was still there, but it
might have been the first smile of a baby, doctor Bour. I am
a police officer. The dark room, the dark room. Well, I'm
awfully glad you came in to the warlifere. We can all start for plans
to gether. Yes, I'm in the vore all right, Good heavens.
If this were true, there are more blasted detectives in the world, blasted
dynamiters of the blasted council. We might easily have fought. We were four
against three. No, no, we were not four against three. We
were not so lucky. We are four against one hour later we were already
on the Calais boat. The fact it comes of it is this, we
three are alone on this planet. Now we must do something to keep the
Marquie in Calais till tomorrow midday, while the king goes safely through Paris.
The only thing I can see to do is actually to take advantage of the
very things that in the Marquis favor. Gentlemen, I'm going to profit by
the fact that he is a nobleman and has many friends and moves in the
best society. The devil you're talking about, the Marquis cannot deny that he
is a gentlemen, And in order to put the matter of my social position
quite beyond a doubt, I propose, at the earliest opportunity to knock his
hat off. But here we are in the harbor, gentlemen, we've reached
Calais. A band was playing in a cafe Chanta. Hidden somewhere among the
trees, where's that the Marquis de sa Ustache. The man had two companions,
solemn frenchmen in silk hats. Who was your sign? I think,
and you are the Marquis de sa Stash. Permit me to pull your nose,
which I attempted to do, but the two men in top hats held
me back. This man has insulted me incled you went, Oh, just
now he's insulted my mother. Your mother? Well anyhow, my aunt?
But how can the marquis have insuld John Angos? Now he's been sitting here,
Hold the down was what he said? Nothing at Paul, except about
the band. I only said that I like Wagner. Well, it was
an allusion to my family. My aunt played Wagner badly. It was a
painful subject. We are always being insulted about it, it seems most for
I assure you, the whole of your conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions
to my aunt's victims. Oh this is nonsense. I for one, have
said nothing for half an hour except that I like to see if that girl
with the black hair there you are again? My aunts was red. It
seems to me that you're simply seeking a pretext to insult the marquis. By
George, what a clever chap you were speaking a quarrel with me by Evander,
what dever a man went to seek? Long? These gentlemen will perhaps
act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. Let us fight
this evening, Marquis. Your action is worthy of your fame and blood.
Permit me to consult with the gentleman in whose hands I shall place myself.
Good day, mime, what are you up to? Allison Carefley, Poor
professor? You are my seconds, and you must insist on the due coming
off after seven tomorrow so as to keep him from catching the seven forty five
for Paris. If he misses that training misses the King of England, you
understand. So at seven twenty we met on a small meadow not far from
the railway. I'd made up my mind that I could avoid disabling the Marquis
and prevent the Marquis from disabling me for at least twenty minutes. In twenty
minutes, the Paris train would have gone by. Gentlemen engaged. I'm not
a bad fighter. Every now and then I had almost fancied it. I've
felt my fight go home. But there was no blood on the blade or
my shirt. And now we could hear the Paris train. There was no
doubt about to hit this time. I was as certain that I had stuck
my blade into my enemy as the Garden of the stuck his spade into the
ground. Yet there was no blood on it at all. Marquis thought wildly.
He can't have looked away at the railway line, almost as if he
feared the train more than the pointed steel. I ain't left of the Marquise's
body, and more at his throat and head. A minute and a half
to it, I felt the point end of the man's neck below the jaw.
It came out to clean. I thrust again. It made what should
have been a bloody scar on the market's cheek. There was no scar.
Stop. I want to say something. It is rather important. It's a
sign. You expressed a wish to pull my nose. Would you oblige by
pulling my nose now as quickly as possible. I have to catch a train
both the regular Will you or will you not? Pull my nose? Come?
Come, mis your sign. Don't be selfish, pull my nose at
once. When I asked you, I took two paces forward and seized the
Roman nose of this remarkable nobleman. I pulled it hard, and it came
off in my hands. Anyone has the use for my left eyebrow, I
can habit. Do accept my left eyebrow. It is the kind of thing
that might come in useful any day. The marquis was recklessly throwing parts of
himself right and left about the field. You are making a mistake, but
it can't be explained. Just now I tell you the train has come into
the station. Yes, our key, and the train shall go out of
the station and shall go out without you. Will you drive me mad?
You shall not go by the train, great flat laugh, that blair blandering,
wandering brain, as toddering glass of pool, you great sunny pink.
They fire the training. You should not go by this train. And why
in ther finel brass that I want to go by the train. We know
all you are going to Paris to throw a band, going to Chericho to
throw a shabba walk. I didn't care about catching the train. I care
about whether the train caught me, And no, by God, it has
caught me. What do you mean? It means everything, the end of
everything. Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand. What do
you mean by us the police. Of course I am the Marquis, I
am Inspector Rectliffe of Scotland. Yard then it's then the whole bellet a lot
of us on the Anarchist Council. We're against anarchy. Every born man was
a detective, except the President in his personal secretary. What can it mean?
Means that we are struck dead? Don't you know, Sunday until you
He's bought every trust, He's captured every cable. He has control of every
railway line, a specially that railway line. The whole movement was controlled by
him. Half the world was ready to rise for him. But there were
just five people, perhaps who could have resisted him, and the old devil
put them on the Supreme Consul to waste their time in watching each other.
Someday knew that the Professor would chase Sime through London, that Sime would fight
me in France, and he was combining great masses of capital, seizing great
lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were running after each other like a
lot of confounded babies playing blind Man's buff And since you really want to know,
what was my objection to the arrival of that train. I'll tell you
my objection was that Sunday or his secretary has just this moment got out with
him. We all turned our eyes towards the station. A considerable bulk of
people seemed to be moving in our direction, maybe ordinary tourists. One an
a tourists wear black masks half way down the face. It was quite true
that the leader in front wore a black half mask almost down to his mouth,
and the mouth was smiling a crooked smile on one side of the face.
I believe it. The thing is nonsense. A plain people of a
peaceable French tower prayer jumi or amox fuctable. You are talking, I think
about the plain people of a peaceable French town. If you come to police,
they're changing them out. No now they're forming along the bridge. If
one flung their car by heath and they light a fire on them, only
have joined the mob. The mob a dancing steadily, was almost on top
of us. Charge the anique. There was no doubt of it. The
leader was Monday Monday secretary of the council under the black masks mouth was working
horribly Monday to charge the anarchist swords. Where our time has come to die.
Some mistake, is the sime. I hardly think you understand your position.
I arrest you in the name of the law. But you were the
secretary of the anarchist Council. Nonsense. I am a detective from Scotland.
Yard. That night, five bewildered but hilarious detectives returned to London, and
next morning, having found Goggle, we marched stolidly toward the hotel in mister
Square. This is more cheerful. We're six men going to ask one man
what he means. I think it's a bit queerer than that. I think
it's six men going to ask one man what they mean. We saw at
once the little balcony in the figure that looked too big for it. He
was sitting alone with bent head, pouring over a newspaper. But all his
counselors would come to vote him down. Cross that square, as if we
were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes. We went up the dark
stair in silence, so pleased to see you all. On an excuse is
did no, sir, there has been no massacre. I bring you news
of no such disgusting spectacle. Disgusting spectful you mean Doctor Bull's spectacle. I
spectatles are blacker, but I'm not. Look at my face. I dare
say it's the sort of base that grows on one. Infact, it grows
on you. It will grow on me some they we have come here to
know what all this means? Who are you? What are you? I
want im if you want to know what you are? You're a set of
highly well intentioned and jackets. And you what are you? And what am
I? The President rose slowly to incredible heights, like some enormous wave about
to arch above us and break. You want to know what I am?
Do you full? You're a man of science, grabbing the roots of these
trees and find out the truth about them. Same you're a poet. Stare
at those mourning clouds and tell me the truth about mourning clouds. I tell
you this that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and
the topmost cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the seas,
and I shall still be a riddle. You shall know what the stars are
and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world, all
men have hunted me like a woman, kings and sieges and poets and law
givers, all the churches and all the philosophers. But I have never been
caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turned to bay.
I have given them a good run for them and it and I will
now. Before any of us could move, the monstrous man had swung himself
over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before he dropped, he pulled himself
up again and thrust his great over the edge of the balcony. There's one
thing I'll tell you, though, about who I am. I am the
man in the dark room who made you all policeman. Sunday fell from the
balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a great ball of India rubber,
and went bounding off towards the corner of the Alhambra, where he hailed a
handsome cab and sprang inside of it. Of course, we all followed him,
and at the highest ecstasy of speed, Sunday turned round, and,
sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, he made a horrible face
at us, flung a ball of paper at me and vanished. I caught
the paper. Let's see, no one would regret anything in the nature of
an interference by the Archdeacon. More than I I trust it will not come
to that. But for the last time, where are your goloshes? The
thing is too bad, especially after what uncle said. The fire engine appeared
at the President leads incredibly from his Handsom caught the back of the engine and
slung himself onto it. It's no mistaking the pirate our captain flipped up their
horses in. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming to the back of the
fire engine, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hands, and finally flinging out to
us a neatly folded notes read fly at once the proof about John bull Off?
Friends, what places this Sunday had jumped from the fire engine over an
iron gate, and we'd follow him to kind of park? Can it be
the old Devil's house? Oh? You pulled the zoo's come this way?
That's what come Where elephants gone mad and run away? Cause he's run away
with the old gentlemen, of poor old gentlemen. It was right there,
what sort of old gentlemen, gentlemen? And like gay clothes. The elephant
has not run away with him. He has run away with the elephant,
and by thunder, there he is. There was no doubt about it,
this time, clean across the space of grass with a crowd, screaming and
scampering medium with a huge gray elephant on it, back exact President Sunday,
with all the vicinity of a sultan. You'll beyond the gates the balloon fights.
He's out of the gate. Through street after street, through district after
district, went the prodigy of the flying elephants. And we followed it through
the city, out in the suburbs and find into a fair grounds the President
that disappeared. Look, we's come there. Look at what? Look at
the captive balloon? Why the blages should I look at the captain balloon?
What is that queer bottle captain balloon thing? Except that it isn't Captain thousand
Devils. He's stunned into it. We'd followed that balloon all afternoon. We'd
followed it, and then about twilight the preposterous thing had staggered in the sky
and sunk from view into the woods. Or if he's cheated us all by
getting killed, it would be like one of his locks. And almost at
the same moment, all six of us realized that we were not alone in
the little field. Across a square of turf, a tall man was coming
towards us, leaning on a strange long staff like a scepter. His advance
was very quiet. He might have been one of the shadows of the wood.
Gentleman, my master has a carriage waiting for you in the road just
by. Who is your master? I was told who knew his name?
Whereas this carriage has been waiting only a few moments, My master has only
just come home. All six of us compared notes afterwards and quarreled, but
we all agreed that, in some unaccountable way, the place where we came
that night reminded us of our boyhood. It was either this elm top of
that crooked path, that was either this scrap of orchard or that shape of
a window. But each man of us declared that he could remember this place
before he could remember his mother. Refreshments are provided for you in your room,
I under a spendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for
me. I have put out your clothes clothes. I have no clothes except
fees. My master asks me to say that there is a fancy dress.
Ball tonight, you're to be dressed as Thursday. C dressed as Thursday doesn't
sound a very warm costume, Yes, sir, Thursday costume is quite warm,
sir. It fastens up to the chin. I was led on to
a very large old English garden full of torches and bonfires, by the broken
light of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. I
seemed to see every shape in nature imitated in some crazy costume. There was
a man dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man dressed as an
elephant, a man dressed as a balloon. There was a dancing lamp post,
a dancing apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that
the untameable tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field
and street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when I was middle
aged and at rest, I could never see one of those particular objects,
a lamp post, or an apple tree, or a windmill, without thinking
that it was a strayed reveler from that revel of a masquerade. On one
side of this lawn, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs,
the thrones of the seven days. And so the night wore on,
and finally the last of the dancers vanished, and the fire faded. At
the long, slow, strong stars came out, and we seven strange men
were left alone, like seven stone statues on our chairs of stone. Then
Sunday spoke, we will eat and drink later. Let us remained together a
little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and the thought so
long. I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war with you were always
heroes, epic on epic, iliad on iliad, you always brothers in arms.
Tell me who are you? I am the Seven, I am the
Peace of God. I'm grateful to you, not only for wine and hospital
to hear, but for many a fine scamper and free fight. But I
should like to know my soul and heart are as happy and quiet here as
this old garden. But my reason is still crying out. I should like
to know. It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides
and thought yourself, hey, have heard your complaints. Here I think comes
another to complain. You will hear him also. And we saw standing before
us the red headed poet of Saffron Park Gregory. Why this is the real
anarchist. Yes, I am the real anarchist. There came a day when
the sons of God came before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.
All right, I am a destroyer. I would destroy the world if
I could. Almost unhappy, man, try to be happy. I've read
here, Like your sister, I know what you are, all of you,
from first to last. Not the people in power. You're the police,
the great bat, smiling men in blue and buttons, God a law,
are the seven a DoLS of heaven? And you had no troubles.
Oh, I could forgive you everything if I could feel for once that you
had suffered for one hour a real agony such as I I see everything,
everything, everything that there is. Why does each thing on earth war against
each other thing? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe?
Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason
that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the days, so
that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and the isolation of the
anarchist, So that by tears and torture. We may earn the right to
say to this accuser, we also have suffered, Hi repel the slander,
not been happy. I can answer for every one of the great gods of
law whom he is accused. At least and I saw suddenly the great face
of Sunday? Have you ever suffered? As I gazed, the great face
grew to an awful size, larger than the colossal mask of Memnon, which
had made me scream as a child. It grew larger and larger, filling
the whole sky, then in the blackness, before it entirely destroyed my brain.
I seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that I had
heard somewhere. Can ye drink of the cup I drink on? When men
in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in some place in
which they might have fallen asleep. I could only remember that. Gradually and
naturally I knew that I was awake and had been walking along a country lane.
Dawn was breaking over everything in colors at once clear and timid, as
if nature made a first attempt at yellow, and a first a tempt at
rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet that one could not think it
blew from the sky. It blew rather through some hole in the sky.
I felt a simple surprise when I saw, rising all round me on both
sides of the road, the red, irregular buildings of Saffron Park. I
walked by instinct along one white road on which early birds hopped and sang,
and found myself outside a fenced garden. And there I saw the sister of
Gregory Rosamond, the girl with a gold red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast,
with a great unconscious gravity of a girl. Tonight, the Columbia Broadcasting
System, through its member station's Coast to coast and the network of the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, has brought your production of G. K. Chesterton's The Man
Who Was Thursday by Orson Wells and the Mercury Theater on the air. The
adaptation for radio was made by mister Wells. This Monday Night concludes the summer
broadcast which have introduced the Mercury Theater as the first complete theatrical producing company in
radio. But the tremendous response with their efforts of drawn from all parts of
the country has insured their continuance with us through the coming months. The Columbia
Broadcasting System is therefore proud to announce a new series of weekly productions by Orson
Wells and the Mercury Theater on the air, beginning next Sunday evening, September
the eleventh, from eight to nine o'clock Eastern daylight saving time. The first
play next Sunday at eight will be Vincent van Gogh, an original drama based
on the letters of the famous painter to his brother Theo and the records of
his biographers. In the cast this evening Sunday, Eustace Wyatt, the Professor,
Ray Collins, Gregory, George Coloris, the Marquis, ed Gebarrier,
Gogol, Paul Stewart, Bull, Joseph Cotton, the Secretary, Erskine Sandford
Witherspoon, Alan Devitt, Rosamond, Anna Stafford, and Gabriel Syme. The
Man who was Thursday by Orson Wells Davidson Taylor supervised for the Columbia Network.
This is dan Seymour speaking. The orchestra was directed by Alexander Somber. Remember
next Sunday evening at eight o'clock Eastern daylight saving time. Orson Wells and the
Mercury Theater on the air in Vincent van Gork. Be sure to be at
your radio next Monday at nine pm Eastern daylight saving time. That's when the
Lux Radio Theater begins its new series of broadcasts, same stations as last year.
The first presentation will be Spawn of the North with George Raft, Fred
McMurray, John Barrymore, Dorothy Lamore and Aquem Tamuro next Monday at nine pm
Eastern daylight saving time. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System welcome back. Well,
you can unravel the meaning of that for yourself. The Mercury Theater did
a fantastic job. This is why it's always such a trait to be able
to bring you one of their productions in Chesterton. Just the way he said
things, the dialogue, the descriptions, it is just such beautifully unique language
that always makes anything by Chesterton great to listen to. By the way,
if you'd like to hear a more expansive version of this, the BABC produced
a thirteen part version of this and it was actually played on BBC Radio seven,
their online drama station, back in July. All right, well that'll
do it from here. We'll be back tomorrow with the thin Man and the
Meantime. Send your comments to Box thirteen at Great Detectives dot net, follow
us over on Twitter at Radio Detectives, and you can always give us a
call to eight nine to nine one four seven eight three From Boise, Idaho,
this is your host, Adam Graham signing off.