Speaker 1: Suspense, which is usually heard at this hour on Thursday nights,
Speaker 1: is taking its customary summer holiday. Suspense returns to the
Speaker 1: air eight weeks from tonight on Thursday September.
Speaker 2: First, you are drifting on the glossy surface of a
Speaker 2: burning tropical sea, trapped aboard a flimsy raft with three
Speaker 2: murderous companions from whom you cannot escape.
Speaker 1: We offer you escape designed to free you from the
Speaker 1: four walls of today, for a half hour of high adventure. Tonight,
Speaker 1: we take you to New Caledonia, in the South Pacific,
Speaker 1: not far from the town of Neumeya, a French penal
Speaker 1: colony as notorious as Devils Island, and a trip that
Speaker 1: staggers the imagination. As John Russell told it in his
Speaker 1: gripping tale The Fourth Man.
Speaker 3: The raft stood to open sea. A matt of pandanus
Speaker 3: leaves served for its sail, in a paddle of wood
Speaker 3: for its helm. Its flooring was woven of reeds and
Speaker 3: bamboo sticks, and rested on triple rows of bladders. It
Speaker 3: was light, elastic, hit to ride any weather, and it
Speaker 3: carried four men. Three of them sat huddled together at
Speaker 3: the far end. Their bodies were blackened with dried blood.
Speaker 3: The hair upon them was long and matted. They wore
Speaker 3: only the rags of convict's blue canvas uniforms. On wrist
Speaker 3: and ankle. They carried their mark, the dark, wrinkled stain
Speaker 3: of the mats. There was the bulls doctor, leader, man
Speaker 3: of the world, murderer.
Speaker 4: Friends, the thing is done.
Speaker 3: And fenero forger ladies' man, weakling coward. Yes we got
Speaker 3: away all right, and the one known as the parrot
Speaker 3: beef and cutthrow.
Speaker 5: So far, so good.
Speaker 6: And by way of celebration, gentlemen, may I offer you cigarettes?
Speaker 5: Cigarettes?
Speaker 7: Doctor, You are a marvel a magician. Oh look at them,
Speaker 7: white and precious. So they had just come from the package.
Speaker 5: How did you do it?
Speaker 6: Every six months they're about seventy five escapes from Numeya.
Speaker 4: Not more than one succeeds.
Speaker 6: Ours would be that one I knew, so three weeks
Speaker 6: ago I bribed the nightguard bore these very cigarettes, so
Speaker 6: that we might sit here, my friends, as we are doing.
Speaker 4: And celebrate.
Speaker 5: I want a light, ah, a light for the.
Speaker 7: Paric our doctors a wonder he thinks of everything. He
Speaker 7: gives us cigarettes, matches and our freedom.
Speaker 5: Wait till you've got your two feet on a pavement again.
Speaker 5: That will be the time to talk about freedom.
Speaker 7: Oh, to wear starched collars again, to stroll with a girl,
Speaker 7: clean and fresh from a bath down the place la conter.
Speaker 6: Because we get a storm, it's not the season of storms,
Speaker 6: just the same.
Speaker 5: Suppose we get a.
Speaker 6: Storm, parrocut, my friend, you must not be so impatient.
Speaker 6: We were convicts back there, festering and oblivion. Now we
Speaker 6: stand on the rosy threshold of the big round world again.
Speaker 6: We are men raised from the dead.
Speaker 5: Suppose we get a storm. You've got the gift for
Speaker 5: a speech, doctor, But where is the ship that was
Speaker 5: going to meet us here?
Speaker 6: This is the days agreed it will meet us.
Speaker 5: This wind will blow us to shiny if we keep on.
Speaker 6: We can't lie any closer to the shore. Don't forget
Speaker 6: there's a government launch at Torreon. I doubt if the
Speaker 6: native trackers have given us up.
Speaker 4: Careful, parrot, they'll eat you. Yet I have heard the put.
Speaker 5: Is it true, doctor, that the natives keep all the
Speaker 5: runaways they can capture the fatten.
Speaker 4: On they prefer the reward.
Speaker 6: Still, I doubt if they've entirely lost the habit of cannibalism.
Speaker 7: Peace, by peace, parrot. At first they'll sample you.
Speaker 4: And then they'll make a skew of your brains.
Speaker 7: They want to miss a.
Speaker 5: Thing, the filthy brutes.
Speaker 7: Ah, I almost forgot we have one of them with us.
Speaker 3: The fourth man was steering the raft. He sat crouched
Speaker 3: in the stern, his huge dark hands holding the steering paddle.
Speaker 3: He was motionless, like an idol, his eyes on the
Speaker 3: empty sea. The fourth man.
Speaker 5: On the raft.
Speaker 6: You are looking at a kannak, my friends. You will
Speaker 6: see nothing superior, no line of beauty to redeem the
Speaker 6: low angle of the forehead, the knobby joints of the body.
Speaker 6: Nature has stamped him with the mark of inferiority. And
Speaker 6: he set the final seal himself with that twist of
Speaker 6: bark about his middle, and that prong of pig irolly
Speaker 6: through his nose.
Speaker 7: Nonetheless, he is a man, and there's a price on
Speaker 7: our heads. He could be taking us where he like.
Speaker 6: Arm yourself, an Ah, this is a very simple animal
Speaker 6: and infant.
Speaker 5: Really does that mean he couldn't double cross us?
Speaker 4: He does.
Speaker 6: He's bound by his duty. I made my bargain with
Speaker 6: his cheap up the river, and this one is sent
Speaker 6: to deliver us on board our ship. That's the only
Speaker 6: interest he has in us, and he do it. You will,
Speaker 6: That is the nature of the native.
Speaker 7: I don't trust you, not for a minute.
Speaker 5: The brute, the animal.
Speaker 4: You it's you.
Speaker 5: Ain't talking about you, fifty brooch.
Speaker 4: Ah ah, save your breath, parrot.
Speaker 6: He speaks no language, only a few noises, a few signs.
Speaker 5: Hey, I don't feel right on the same raft with that,
Speaker 5: me eh me.
Speaker 4: I'll just stretch out a little under these mats.
Speaker 6: Yes, we should all sleep a little, conserve ourselves. When
Speaker 6: we awake, she'll be there, the ship, our saucy little
Speaker 6: topsil schooner, her mass standing out against the sky, will
Speaker 6: be on our way to France. Sleep, my friends.
Speaker 3: The two younger convicts dozed under the heat of the day,
Speaker 3: but not doctor de Beau's. He stood once again to
Speaker 3: sweep the sky line under his shaded hand. His plan
Speaker 3: had been so careful, so precise. He had counted absolutely
Speaker 3: on meeting the ship, the small schooner, one of those flitting,
Speaker 3: half piratical traders of the Copra Islands that can be
Speaker 3: hired like cabs in a dark street for any sinister enterprise.
Speaker 3: But there was no ship and there was no cross
Speaker 3: roads where one might sit and wait.
Speaker 8: Er.
Speaker 4: E f good morning, doctor, it's afternoon.
Speaker 5: No, yes it is.
Speaker 3: I slept like a colt.
Speaker 5: And where is the ship? Doctor? It was going to
Speaker 5: be there when we woke.
Speaker 4: I'm thirsty, dying with thirst, so we all can roam.
Speaker 3: Where's the flask?
Speaker 7: I am roasted in the sun.
Speaker 6: You will have to roast some more. This crew is
Speaker 6: put on rations.
Speaker 5: What you're talking about? Where is that water? I have
Speaker 5: it here? Yes, sure you have. You think it is yours?
Speaker 4: It is ours? Parrot.
Speaker 5: I wanted drink, doctor, think.
Speaker 4: A little parrot.
Speaker 6: Now we have to guard our supplies like reasonable men.
Speaker 4: I don't know how long we may be floating here,
Speaker 4: so that's how you talk.
Speaker 5: Now you don't know how long. But you were sure
Speaker 5: enough when we started.
Speaker 6: I'm still sure the ship will come. She cannot stay
Speaker 6: for us in one spot. You'll be cruising too unprovntill
Speaker 6: she interceptis we must wait er.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 4: Wait.
Speaker 5: And in the meantime, what fry here in this heat?
Speaker 5: Our tongue hanging out while you deal us, I'll drop
Speaker 5: by drop. I No, the man does not live. Who
Speaker 5: can feed me with a spoon. You'll stop what you're
Speaker 5: in this tube? Any role with this captain who thinks
Speaker 5: of everything and still puts to see you without provisions.
Speaker 4: Go on laugh again.
Speaker 7: I wasn't laughing para true to a bad piece of
Speaker 7: work for a captain of runaway, unless you would die
Speaker 7: very speedily.
Speaker 4: We must guard our water.
Speaker 5: And whose fault is it mine?
Speaker 4: I admit it?
Speaker 5: What then?
Speaker 4: Here we are in here and stay. Can only do
Speaker 4: our best what we.
Speaker 5: Have, all right, doctor, do your best. Give me a drink.
Speaker 6: You may have your share, of course, be worn when
Speaker 6: it's gone. Don't come to us to phenuin me.
Speaker 4: What is fair? Is fair?
Speaker 5: My drink?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: A thimbleful? One thimble this.
Speaker 6: Way we should have enough for three days before, with
Speaker 6: equal shares among the three of us.
Speaker 4: That's right, there are only three of us.
Speaker 6: Were you thinking of him, Pheneroh, of our pilot. He
Speaker 6: look someone like us, doesn't he? But his body has
Speaker 6: never known clothes or his feet shoes. His mind has
Speaker 6: never known a single thought. Look at us, three gentlemen.
Speaker 4: You Phenerou a.
Speaker 6: Forger, You perat us thief, eye doctor Dubos a murderer.
Speaker 6: Yet we are civilized men. This is a savage animal.
Speaker 6: Our provisions are only four men.
Speaker 1: What are Americans, Chinese, Italians, Arabs, Latin Americans and other
Speaker 1: citizens of the world doing today to make life better
Speaker 1: for you and your children? Next Sunday Night on most
Speaker 1: of these same stations, CBS presents an hour long dramatic
Speaker 1: account of this work in the World Today, written by
Speaker 1: Norman Cowen, Citizen of the World stars Lee J.
Speaker 5: Cobb.
Speaker 1: Be sure to hear it next Sunday night. And now
Speaker 1: we returned to the second act of Escape and tonight's
Speaker 1: story the Fourth Man.
Speaker 3: The three men awoke to their second day on the raft.
Speaker 3: They looked and saw the far round horizon, the empty
Speaker 3: desert of the sea, and their own shadows that slipped
Speaker 3: slowly before them over its smooth, slow heaving. The land
Speaker 3: had sunk away from them in the night. The trap
Speaker 3: had been sprung as the savage sun kindled upon them
Speaker 3: with the power of a burning glass. A calm fell,
Speaker 3: an absolute calm. The air hung waiting, the sea heaved
Speaker 3: and fell in polished undulations, and the sun shone. They
Speaker 3: crawled to the shelter of their mats, gasping, shriveling, while
Speaker 3: the fourth man, the Savage, the beast sat silent and unmoving.
Speaker 4: The water, the world.
Speaker 3: Of water was whacked thick as all.
Speaker 5: How lonely it is, doctor Duvos. Where is your ship?
Speaker 5: A saucy little schooner? Those were your words? Well where
Speaker 5: is it?
Speaker 4: It will come?
Speaker 7: Suppose your friends leave you to doctor, leave part and
Speaker 7: be to rot here. That would be a joke, doctor,
Speaker 7: to wait for a ship that will never come.
Speaker 4: It will come. My friends will not fail me. Why
Speaker 4: how do you know? How can you be so sure? Eh?
Speaker 6: There is a safety vault in Paris full of papers
Speaker 6: to be opened at my death. Those papers contain confessions. No, gentlemen, no,
Speaker 6: my friends will come. It will come.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: That savage kannack does not join us. He does not
Speaker 6: look at us. He sits on his heels in the
Speaker 6: way of the Native, with his arms hugging his knees.
Speaker 6: He sits at the stern, motionless, under the shattering sun,
Speaker 6: raising out into vacancy. Whenever I raise my eyes, I
Speaker 6: see nothing else, only this knack.
Speaker 7: He seems to be enjoying himself quite well, Yes.
Speaker 4: I was thinking so myself.
Speaker 5: The cannibal, the savage, doesn't seem to suffer. How does
Speaker 5: he do it? Has he no feelings?
Speaker 4: Been wondering maybe that his fibers are tougher.
Speaker 5: We have had water and he has not.
Speaker 4: And yet see his skin fash and moist?
Speaker 5: Is his belly fat as a football? Don't tell me
Speaker 5: the savage thirsty to anyway he could steal our supplies.
Speaker 5: Suppose he has his own supplies hidden? What we'll see
Speaker 5: such the latter? Look look under the matter.
Speaker 4: Nothing Ah, here, you are mistake.
Speaker 5: He has nothing hidden. You are along about him? Doctor,
Speaker 5: When you say he has no understanding, there is one
Speaker 5: thing he knows, and knows well.
Speaker 9: Paint him. Stop there, scum.
Speaker 5: That will teach you not so chip? And how are
Speaker 5: you not so happy with your luck? That will make
Speaker 5: you feel.
Speaker 6: M m. Come come back, my friends, back under the mat.
Speaker 6: The glare of the sun is not so bad there.
Speaker 3: So the day is dragged by the second, the third,
Speaker 3: and no it was the fourth day, and still there
Speaker 3: was no breeze, and still there was no ship.
Speaker 4: Doctor, Yes, what do you stare at savage?
Speaker 5: Look at him?
Speaker 4: Look at us?
Speaker 6: We are dying, how powers heavy and naked, wild, brutish.
Speaker 4: He has yet to give the slightest sign of complaints.
Speaker 4: Weeks yes, yes, it's night.
Speaker 6: He stretches out and sleeps through those long hours when
Speaker 6: we wrestle and fight with despair. He sleeps like a child,
Speaker 6: and in the morning he resumes his place, aft, unchanged, fixed, growing.
Speaker 5: Wonder, doctor, is this a man but a fiend? A man?
Speaker 5: He's a man? No a miracle.
Speaker 6: Oh, here's a man, a very poor and wretched example
Speaker 6: of a man. You'll find no lower type anywhere. Look
Speaker 6: at his cranial angle, the high years, heavy bonesy skulls,
Speaker 6: scarcely above an ape.
Speaker 4: And what he he has a secret?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Secret?
Speaker 7: But we see him every move he makes, every minute.
Speaker 7: What chance has he a secret?
Speaker 4: What kind of secret?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: I can't say.
Speaker 6: Perhaps some method of breeding, some strange posture he uses
Speaker 6: to cheat the sense, slations of the body.
Speaker 4: Such things are known among primitive people. Who knows knows?
Speaker 5: We can know, We can find out.
Speaker 6: Ask him, Ah, it's useless. He will not tell. Why
Speaker 6: should he? We scorn him, We give him no share
Speaker 6: with us, We abuse him, so he falls back on
Speaker 6: his own expedients. He remained silent. He always haspenis, he
Speaker 6: always will be. He never tells. The secrets. They are
Speaker 6: the means by which he has survived from the depth
Speaker 6: of time and by which he yet may survive.
Speaker 4: And our wisdom is dust.
Speaker 5: Ways of learning secrets, I know them all useless.
Speaker 6: He can stand and in torture you might let saw
Speaker 6: how he made before. No, that's not the way talk.
Speaker 5: I am tired of all this talk. Kill him all.
Speaker 5: Let's be a middle of this thing we gain. Then,
Speaker 5: what do you.
Speaker 4: Want to win? That's what I want to win.
Speaker 5: To beat him at the game.
Speaker 4: For our own sakes, for our own racial pride.
Speaker 6: We must todd last him, to prove to ourselves we
Speaker 6: are his master's be better brains, my better organization, whole.
Speaker 6: Watch him, watch my friends, so we can trap him.
Speaker 4: So we can find out and to fit him in
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 5: Watch, I'll watch you all right, you will win. Bag.
Speaker 5: I am not sleeping anymore and leave you alone with
Speaker 5: that battle bottle.
Speaker 6: But I've been meaning to discuss our rations with you.
Speaker 6: Have you running very short? I'm afraid we must take
Speaker 6: a cut again.
Speaker 5: And what are we done to now?
Speaker 4: Doctor half a thimbleful?
Speaker 5: No, we must keep our wits.
Speaker 4: I say no, and we'll put it to a vote.
Speaker 7: You say no, I say yes, yes, yes, anything, but
Speaker 7: give me mynd.
Speaker 4: Now then it's a half thimbleful for monsieur your chef federal.
Speaker 10: More more, I'll die more, Alma, you must, you must,
Speaker 10: doctor today, Look a ship high sphere where.
Speaker 5: Doctor?
Speaker 4: Not the battle?
Speaker 5: Yes, the battle he's.
Speaker 9: Taking h.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look at him? You killed him with that aw?
Speaker 5: What about the battle?
Speaker 4: Has some left? You caught him.
Speaker 6: Just in time, and you caught the battle just in time,
Speaker 6: seems I did.
Speaker 5: And there is no ship. There will be no ship.
Speaker 5: We are done because of you and your dirty promises
Speaker 5: that brought us here. Doctor lah fool, I'm.
Speaker 6: Any closer unless you want this bottle broken over your head.
Speaker 5: No, I wouldn't want that stink parrot.
Speaker 4: Parrot? Why should you and I fight? We can see
Speaker 4: this trouble through and win. Yet this weather can't last forever. Besides,
Speaker 4: there will be only two of us to divide the water.
Speaker 5: Now, yes, it is true?
Speaker 8: Is yes?
Speaker 5: Finnau kindly leaves us his share an inheritance. All right,
Speaker 5: I take mine now, my share right now, if you please,
Speaker 5: later we will see.
Speaker 4: So be it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, your share, many thanks, And now Finny Doo's share
Speaker 8: to me, please.
Speaker 4: As you say.
Speaker 5: And now another another good doctor.
Speaker 4: Three and that's enough, parachute.
Speaker 5: No doctor is not enough. Now I take yours.
Speaker 4: I am your army.
Speaker 9: I'll kill you if you don't.
Speaker 8: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 11: You see I have manners, heaven't I? And I have
Speaker 11: wisdom too, because I fully very wise man.
Speaker 5: I toast your doctor. Best man wins. That was a
Speaker 5: bright and the murish.
Speaker 4: So the best man wins.
Speaker 6: A parrot forgot I am adopted in the water you
Speaker 6: would kill for has killed you. Man cannot go without
Speaker 6: water for four days and drinkies fill and still live,
Speaker 6: go on, parrot gaspot of workless life while I laugh.
Speaker 6: The best man always wins, parrot the best man, ah.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 3: The best man wins.
Speaker 4: Yes, doctor, you you.
Speaker 7: Forgot my knife, didn't you?
Speaker 3: My knife.
Speaker 12: Forgot me lying at your feet while you divided my
Speaker 12: shell of the water.
Speaker 4: Gave me up for that, didn't you.
Speaker 3: But I.
Speaker 12: Phenal will outlast the two of you, phinal, The best
Speaker 12: man always wins.
Speaker 4: General, you fool the water it's running.
Speaker 3: Out, Barrett.
Speaker 4: A line on do God?
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean bad luck, sir.
Speaker 3: The rapt coss you all the time, not to merch
Speaker 3: away from us.
Speaker 4: That come such a misfortune. Hell we are they the passengers.
Speaker 5: They are all dead.
Speaker 6: One he stopped to death, another his scird crushed, the
Speaker 6: other fried by this sun.
Speaker 3: All dead.
Speaker 2: Well, then all the better. They will cost nothing to feed.
Speaker 2: But how hog said my friend. The hog says in
Speaker 2: the afterhold, fill them nicely with brian, and there we are.
Speaker 5: I do not understand your dull motto, Very dull.
Speaker 2: The gentleman's passage was all paid before we left Sydney.
Speaker 2: I contracted to bring back three escaped convicts. Well, try'll
Speaker 2: bring them back in pickle. So if you'll go back
Speaker 2: my tone and bring them aboard for the trip, I'll
Speaker 2: be much obliged.
Speaker 5: Very well.
Speaker 7: On, there's a fourth men under reft captain, a canak,
Speaker 7: still alive.
Speaker 5: Eh, what will we do with him?
Speaker 2: A canak? There's no word in my contract about any canock.
Speaker 2: Leave him there, He's only a savage.
Speaker 3: And so doctor de Bolts and Fenerol and the parrot
Speaker 3: went aboard for the long trip to their beloved Paris.
Speaker 3: Their body is pitching and rolling gently in the huge
Speaker 3: vats of brine on the raft. The fourth man raised
Speaker 3: his head slightly as a wind freshened from the west.
Speaker 3: He watched until the schooner turned shaping away for Australia.
Speaker 3: Then he spread his sail of pandanus leaves and headed
Speaker 3: the raft eastward back toward New Caledonia, back toward Hall.
Speaker 3: Feeling somewhat dry after his exertion, the native plucked a
Speaker 3: hollow reed at random from the rushes on his raft. Slowly, lazily,
Speaker 3: he stretched himself at full length in his accustomed place
Speaker 3: at the stern. He thrust the reed down into one
Speaker 3: of the bladders underneath the raft and drank his fill
Speaker 3: of sweet water. He had a dozen such storage bladders
Speaker 3: remaining built into the floats at intervals above the water line,
Speaker 3: quite enough to last him safely.
Speaker 1: Hall Escape is produced and directed by Norman MacDonald. Tonight
Speaker 1: we have presented The Fourth Man by John Russell, adapted
Speaker 1: for radio by Irving Ravitch and narrated by Larry Dobkin.
Speaker 1: Featured in the cast were Joseph Kerns, Ben Wright and
Speaker 1: Barney Phillips, with Jack Krusian and Wilms Herbert. Special music
Speaker 1: arranged and conducted by Wilbur Hatch.
Speaker 2: Next week, you are deep in the remote hill country
Speaker 2: of Afghan, face to face with the fierce Paithan warriors
Speaker 2: trapped into a hopeless fight from which there seems no escape.
Speaker 1: Next week we escape with Rudyd Kipling's famous story Drums
Speaker 1: of the Fore and Aft. Be sure to tune in
Speaker 1: at the same time next week when once again we
Speaker 1: offer you escape. Casey Crime Photographer is another top ranking
Speaker 1: CBS sleuth who's taking no time out for vacation this summer.
Speaker 1: You can hear his adventures over most of these same
Speaker 1: CBS stations just a little later tonight. This is Tip
Speaker 1: Corning speaking or CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System