Speaker 1: Theater present, Come in.
Speaker 2: Welcome.
Speaker 1: I'm e. G. Marshall.
Speaker 3: Of all the murder mysteries, the plot which most intrigues
me is the locked Room. And when you take that
as an ingredient and add to it elements of the supernatural,
both sacred and profane, then you have a tale to
tantalize and terrify, such as the one I bring you now.
Speaker 4: Now, look, doctor, the law is excuse me, hello, the
sure this star looks good of you? Seems like I'm
going to have a use for it right away. However,
Ben James, my deputyes wrote in helpful other after the
dock here left Doomdorf, seems the preacher came by, headed
for Doomsdorf's place, breathing fire and trying his gun. Looks
like all hell has finally read. Break loose up there.
Speaker 3: Our mystery drama, The Thewed Room Murder was adapted.
Speaker 5: From the MD Post story The Doomdorf Murder.
Speaker 3: Especially for the Mystery Theater by Ian Martin and stars
Howard DaSilva and Fred Gwynn. It is sponsored in part
by Bwick Motor Division.
Speaker 2: Ivy back shortly with that one.
Speaker 3: Evil and violence go with a pioneer state. But the
counterbalance had kept us viable as a nation, brought us
to leadership around the world. Compassion, share mindedness, and the
essential ingredient of America. A shrewd and pragmatical eye tempered
by religion, has built up a keel which so far
has kept our ship of state steady. So much for
philosophy as for the story, Let Judge Randolph tell us that.
Speaker 4: The Pioneer was not the only man in the great
mountains behind Virginia. Strange Indians drifted in after the colonial wars.
Adventurers were with Braddock and Lesal and rode out of
Mexico after her.
Speaker 2: Many empires went to pieces. Doundorff was one of them.
Speaker 4: I shall never forget that first day he walked into
the land office, huge black beards, with broad, thick hands,
with square fingers. Even Abner's bulk seemed to diminish in
front of him, and the child who followed Doundorff diminished
to think me, it's the place where I buy because
I want for that I'm I reckon, depends on what
you wanted for, mister Dundah and jereous Dundal. Oh excuse me, uh,
this is mister Rondog, I should say, one of our
foremost lawyers in time, save and only that's all we
got right now. One, I'm out of the Dale County clerk.
Speaker 2: I reckon you tell me? And uh what would you
want this land for?
Speaker 1: To leave?
Speaker 6: On?
Speaker 2: Uh? Huh you and your daughter me?
Speaker 4: And uh, yes, well now I got a copy of the
Washington survey and the original Crown grant here, I have
that peak already.
Speaker 7: Oh you're here on surday I got from Capital.
Speaker 2: You know, say there that's it? You sure there's land
you want? Sir.
Speaker 4: I think what happening means to say is this wedge
of rock has never been worth even running the line?
Speaker 2: Do you know what you're getting into? Have you seen
this peace property?
Speaker 4: It's a forbidding pile of rock, mister doomdwarf and isolated
and this mine I want it well pretty mean up
there right now with the wind and no shelter, I.
Speaker 3: Have ten sleeping back on my life finally, rough.
Speaker 4: Well, that's all very well for you, But for the
little girl.
Speaker 2: He's good for me, he's good for her.
Speaker 4: I don't think you quite understand. As a lawyer, I
should not like to see you taking advantage job. The
parcel of land which you have bought was never surveyed
because it is not worth surveying. It consists almost entirely
of rock.
Speaker 2: I know what he's like. He's right for me.
Speaker 4: How are you gonna feed? Ain't much game running up
in that part of western Virginia?
Speaker 3: I make god all right here here he's floored and I.
Speaker 2: Hey, love.
Speaker 4: They are the pieces of eight duckets English guineas American dollars.
You're quite a traveler, mister doomdog.
Speaker 2: What I do is my business. I mind my own business.
Speaker 3: I don't like anyone who'll stick his nose in my fairs.
He'll take the money and give me the tapo so
I can go.
Speaker 2: No offense is trying to be friendly. That's uh. Angela's
a M G E l us All right? Ye want
to spell your other name? God don't know you're right?
You'll tell me the O O M D O r F.
That was right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's coming on the winter, sir, Because anyway
we can help you build your house, right my.
Speaker 3: Weak enough gold anything coming don you? We'll see are
you finished.
Speaker 2: Up paper saying oh yeah?
Speaker 4: I reckon? You sign right here? And me and mister
Randolph will witness it. Yeah, yep right, I make my heart.
Speaker 2: That he's legal.
Speaker 4: No, miss Randolph his mark. I think we can witness that.
Let us not to learn mister Doomdorf and his daughter further.
I'll add my John Hancock to that they are signed,
field and delivered. You need a possession of what we
call the Devil's Hump and welcome to our community.
Speaker 2: Do not come to me a pop of it? I told,
I said, come yo, Well is that don't bet all?
Speaker 4: A hard man, evil man, one who's done a lot
of living. Notice the scars, Yeah, wager he has bullet
ones underneath his shirt to go with the knife tracks.
Speaker 2: I sure wish he hadn't chosen arnack of the.
Speaker 4: Words to hide out him hide out? What else would
you figure? The devil hump is no place for a
man to make his home. That's the place for a
man to set his back against the wall to fight
off what he knows is coming after him. I suppose
you're right, An, The more's the pity, Why oh, that
that innocent child should be dragged along to share such
an exile.
Speaker 2: You get a real close look at her? What was
she dumb, and she couldn't speak. I doubt it.
Speaker 4: Afraid now you got it, afraid and beaten?
Speaker 2: Well I did here. That's a hard man. Uh, for all, for.
Speaker 4: All he seeks solitude, I doubt he'll find it. We
have not seen the end of mister Dundorff, only the beginning.
I'll stake my life on it. But it was not
my life there was to be staked, but others. For
a while, my uneasy feelings seemed just to be based
on a negative reaction to Doomdorf himself. He squatted on
the rock, troubling no one, seeking no help, while, by
hiring Old Robert Stewart's slaves.
Speaker 2: He built a stone house on the rock.
Speaker 4: Then, in the handfuls of earth wherever a root would hold,
he started to plant the mountain with peach trees. Then
the beginning of the end began to start.
Speaker 2: Here, or won a day of here.
Speaker 4: Uh, you're new in town. So the lady behind the
bar is the owner, a widow lady. Her name is
missus Cambridge. Here should be in the carroll.
Speaker 7: Grass, laddam Okay, I do not want to make her
of his I am looking for his friend.
Speaker 8: He's a friendly can.
Speaker 4: Who he is another migo de la guerra, A big
man with his black beard, big luck so and.
Speaker 7: This strange accent. I think maybe his real name is
the boom Door like that.
Speaker 2: Don't Mary, what is this two? We are old camarados.
I do just want to find him to settle. You
know that I owe him. Well, why don't I let
him know you here and you can meet him in town.
He's too weird. It's no Nather, but why not? I
just go see him. He's kind of queer like, like
he don't take the mixing. So good him Dante. You
see him, you tell him. Jose Garcia was look for him,
but I have not so much time.
Speaker 7: Maybe on my way back I look him up then
Ataras and I say it.
Speaker 8: Why didn't you tell him where to find Doomdorf?
Speaker 4: Just a crazy notion maybe, but I got a set
in my mind that he wanted to see him, to put.
Speaker 2: A bullet in him.
Speaker 4: We found the man who said his name was ose Garcia,
snagged on a rock at the Devil's Elbow, two to
three miles below Doomdorf's mountain Iriy.
Speaker 2: His neck was broken. That was the first of the
Doomdorf incidents so many during the next ten years, I
wouldn't wear your patience to recount them. Only the highlights.
Speaker 4: There was the night before we knew what use Doomdorf
was putting his peach crop to when he arrived at
missus Cambridge's in primed with flickor an insensate beast.
Speaker 3: Ah er.
Speaker 8: Not enough so fifteen, I think you've had enough to drink,
mister Doomdorff.
Speaker 2: I'm must ask you to leave, God said thrust the
two too runs.
Speaker 4: That comes You not ask me to leave the lady
I asked you to ride out. Mister Betty, you go
easy by yourself.
Speaker 2: You mean I don't go.
Speaker 4: You'll make me no cause for inieructions you've been drinking.
Oh you'll want no night Troddle, not me. I just
want to keep the peace.
Speaker 2: Then snap hell twenty five? Okay, that does it? Open
and no play? Leave fight now outside. I don't want
to fight what for? You'll fight me here or outside?
One way or order. There were two big men.
Speaker 4: But Avenue It was a peaceful man and sought only
to protect himself. Well, Doomdorff was a maniac. He gouged
but It and finally took six of us to put
him off and lodge him in the jail for the night.
Speaker 2: Abnah took it in the stride, and he did everything.
Speaker 4: He was better than bruised, and just maybe if he'd
used his whole strength, he could have broken to him off.
But Admir's strength was in the mind as well as
a new dulk. The next highlight in the career of
the man whose names spelled his future was the arrival
of a circuit rider the days.
Speaker 9: A silent tomorrow hasna here's the man who thinks the
fruit of his field, and me likely with fury to
destroy him in's mind and their soul, and who is
ready to bring in your daughter and your women like
black or the use of any internalist fean.
Speaker 2: But the town was not yet ready to make any
move again to him. Is still was popular. He made
a fair brand.
Speaker 4: Of white lightning until the ultimate the unforgivable. A certain
shame all those of us who knew or at least
scent the truth. Brought everything to a head. On a wild,
rainy night, while Doc Jeffers and I were playing chess
at his house, there came a hammering at his arm.
Speaker 2: Well, let me dun dwarf, Come on in what is
he's a woman? She was in labor.
Speaker 3: I had tried, hovering, Lombino, No good, you don't come.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, of course I'll get a fine own
sad on my horse.
Speaker 4: I waited all night for doct Jeffers to return. It
was long as sunrise, with the rain still coming down.
That he did well.
Speaker 2: Now, I am a pragmatic man, and I subscribed to
no religion.
Speaker 10: But fine, damn I wish this moment I had God
to pray too. Why he left that child to a board,
a dead baby? The miracles she hasn't shot and set
to see.
Speaker 2: He didn't want a baby. I'm a judge now already.
Maybe I can help. No, no, no one can help.
Speaker 3: He's a beast, unprincipled and without pity or even the
simple human warms.
Speaker 2: But he has papers to protect him.
Speaker 3: The girl was Mexican born, literally literally sold into slavery,
and she's.
Speaker 2: My lord. She can't be any older than my teenage.
Speaker 3: Daughter, but she's his to do with as he wants
and as he wants. Oh he damn near succeeded him
killing her.
Speaker 2: Excuse me well, Hello, sheriff, new star looks good.
Speaker 4: On you, seems how I'm gonna have to use for
it right away.
Speaker 2: Oh, my Deputy Ben James has rode in here health
a leather. After the dock here left Doomdorf.
Speaker 4: Seems the preacher came by headed for the Devil's hum,
preaching fire and trying his gun. Looks like all hell
is finally ready to break loose up there, All hell
break loose, all right, but for whom? For poor little
Now there's a sad thing, poor little who we don't
even know her name. Now she has one or has
retribution caught up with Doomdorf.
Speaker 5: And if so, how and why and where? I'll return
shortly with that too.
Speaker 3: It is a long ride out to the Devil's Hump,
and the afternoon sun was burning hot and steaming above
the great chestnut trees that shaded the trail, a trail
so narrow that Judge his horse had to follow behind Abner's.
Abner had his Winchester out of the holster.
Speaker 2: Across his saddle.
Speaker 3: Whatever hell had broken loose, he was ready for it.
And now I'll turn the story back to Judge Randolph.
He can tell it better.
Speaker 4: He was there, I suppose, seeing Abner. I should have
had my own rifle out, But I'm in a different shot,
and Abner for all her loaves violence in part of
twiggle one hundred yards, I reckon, I ain't no sense,
of course. The horse is got that rock trail dridge.
We'll dismount here and climb up the rest by foot.
Speaker 2: Seems quiet enough up there. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Look at them brushes up there, you know when they
start wheeling.
Speaker 2: There's only one good reason. Well, maybe we should have
brought some men. No, I doubt it.
Speaker 4: Fears to me whatever hell broke loose is pure gone
and burns south out. We had made a detour through
a grove of peach trees before we set the horses
out to graze.
Speaker 2: But now we were climbing in the open under the
burning sun. When I saw that gaunt.
Speaker 4: Old circuit rider Bronson was sitting bareheaded, hands on the
pommel of his saddle in a paved court for the door.
His big red horse was dripping with sweat. I braced
myself for anything.
Speaker 2: He seemed in a kind of chance. Bronson, where's doomdar?
Speaker 7: Surely he's covered his feet in his summer chamber.
Speaker 4: Now look here, Bronson. No leave me, He's in his
own world. Not ours him on, Judge.
Speaker 2: Hate. Mister Doomdar is.
Speaker 4: Signor it's Sheriff avenuer Dale and I'm Judge Randolph.
Speaker 2: Where's mister Doomdark? Oh?
Speaker 8: He went to lie down in his south room upstairs
after the midday meal.
Speaker 2: Was he feeling all right?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 8: That is what he does every day. It is his custom.
Speaker 2: So did you send Ben James Ross send photo?
Speaker 8: No, singer, but coming, I will take you upstairs. I'm
glad you're here.
Speaker 2: Why man?
Speaker 8: But I was in the orchard to gather some fruit,
if it was right. But when I came back, this
is his door. I cannot wake him.
Speaker 2: Can you open the door? Oh no? Why why are
you afraid to?
Speaker 8: I could not.
Speaker 5: If he's bolted.
Speaker 2: Does he always bolt it.
Speaker 8: When it goes to lie down, yes, or whenever he
sleeps anywhere?
Speaker 2: Why because he's afraid of something?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 8: Those men?
Speaker 2: What man?
Speaker 8: The ones he stole from that he fought with in
Mexico for the.
Speaker 4: Revolution and then he he run, leaving them to die.
Speaker 5: I think not all.
Speaker 8: They still come after him, but he's too careful here.
He cannot be surprised.
Speaker 4: Maybe just for once. He wasn't so careful, and they
did knock on the door. Sure, I think, don't dark,
don't dark, wake up? You're man, Let me, let me
don't dark. It's all right, this is Judge Randolph. Don't
dark come out.
Speaker 8: If he could come out, he would.
Speaker 2: I do not think he can come out any other
doors to this room. No windows.
Speaker 8: The house is built on the cliff. No way in
from the outside.
Speaker 2: All right, an, let's break it down. Stand back, Judge,
I'll get it.
Speaker 4: This time. Keep back until I make sure the coast
is clear. Doom dark, doom dark?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 8: She's dead?
Speaker 2: I'm afraid, so.
Speaker 4: I'd better go after her.
Speaker 2: No need, where can she go? No, we better look
at him first. I'll close the door. He's been shot, Yeah,
pretty near ripped him in a half.
Speaker 4: Looked at the size of that hole in his waistcoat.
Smells like burnt powder in here. You're sure we're alone?
See if yourself, Judge.
Speaker 2: Not in the room, but some chairs, couch. He's lying
on that table with a bottle on it.
Speaker 4: No doors, windows, shutters thrown back, but the windows closed.
Well at least we though he wasn't shot from outside.
Speaker 2: Kind of looks that way. You sure he's dead? He
he's cold in the macro. Even something coming him couldn't
keep him warm. Where's the weapon?
Speaker 4: Well, right behind you, I'd say, I'm them two dogwood
farks on the wall. Those be made to rest it
on the shot gun. Yes, it's been fired quite recently.
There's a freshly exploded cap right.
Speaker 2: Under a hammerk. Yeah, it's all that.
Speaker 1: Mm.
Speaker 4: He'd been drinking some heavy I'd say, you think it's suicide.
Speaker 2: I don't hardly think after he got a whole blow
of that size in him, then he'd get up and
hang up that gun nice neat. No, I don't hardly
think so. Neither of this is murder.
Speaker 4: The woman took that gun down and shut doomed door
while he was sleeping on that couch.
Speaker 2: Could be, I suppose.
Speaker 4: But what about Bronson. He came in here breathing death
and destruction, or he's just a mid old circuit preacher
who's been preaching a crusade far and wide through the
hills against Doomdar for furnishing.
Speaker 2: There's here, moonshine.
Speaker 4: We have a murder on our hands, and you think
the woman is guilty? Or what else well, let's go
ask Bronson first who killed him?
Speaker 9: Mm.
Speaker 2: But by the time we got to the outer courtyard, the.
Speaker 4: Old man had disappeared, although his red horse stood tethered
to a rail. I hesitated for a moment or two,
turning the strange and tragic event that had taken place
over and over in my mind. Come with me, Judge,
around the other side of the house. Huh, very well,
you have a stay behind me for cover, cover.
Speaker 2: From what Who knows? There's a murder around here somewhere.
Speaker 4: Well, a woman is already fro first, and I think
she's not quite right in the.
Speaker 2: Head, after all, she's gone through hate hold it.
Speaker 4: But the back of the house flush with the edge
of the cliff over a hundred foot dropped of the river.
Speaker 2: Judge, Doomdorf was his sojore right, Well, how do you
reckon that? For certain? Any good general.
Speaker 4: First make sure his rare is protected, and he couldn't
be franked. The only way to flush Doomdorf out was
up that goat path we climbed to the house. He
knew what he was doing when he made this.
Speaker 2: His canceled.
Speaker 4: Yes, I recognized that years ago when that matter called
themselves God see it came looking for him.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there were others who came. After all.
Speaker 4: That goal he brought strap of his money built only
one difference with them, or maybe two. Well, they didn't
ask questions, and we never found their bodies.
Speaker 2: I suppose you're right. I hold no brief for Doomdorf,
the man reeked of evil.
Speaker 4: For the fact is, as officers of the law, we
do have a body, and there are things to be done.
Right enough, for the sun is getting low in the sky.
You expect me to arrest the woman, Well, at least
we must question her. Come we should question Bronson too.
Why it's a notion I got just make.
Speaker 2: It all neat and tidy. Yeah, there he is now, Bronson.
Speaker 3: I cannot tell your brother I am about the Lord's work.
Speaker 4: Where are you going to that damnable still with this accent?
Speaker 3: In the name of Him who is my shield and
my strength, I shall destroy the evil work that immoral
Doomdorf has rocked.
Speaker 2: Bronson? What who killed Doondorf? Why do you have to ask?
I killed him.
Speaker 3: I cut him down in the prime of his fling
fight the almighty?
Speaker 2: What is this? Saddener? Everybody couldn't have killed him. Who
can tell how many had a hand in it?
Speaker 4: Are you deliberately trying to mystify me? The thing is impossible.
The impossible here looks like the truth. Come with me, Judge,
and I will show you a thing more impossible than all.
I followed Abner.
Speaker 2: Back into the house and up the stair again, up
to the room.
Speaker 4: The door swung open, the shuttered edge of it with
a luck hanging half out, and Abner closed it carefully
behind us after we entered. I want to show you something, Judge,
the boat. They kept the door closed, Yes, sir.
Speaker 2: But I want you to see that it is no
way connected with the lock itself. Heh. And it is
on the inside.
Speaker 4: Now, how could the one who killed Doomdorf get into
the room when we know the door was bolted and
we had to break it down to enter only one
other way through the windows. And well, let's look it
down now. Remember we have seen from the outside that
there is a sheer drop of at least a hundred
feet of the river, and the rock is as smooth
as glass.
Speaker 2: Now try try looking out.
Speaker 4: Oh, just as you said, the wall of the houses
plum with a rock face. You know that is not.
You can't open these windows. He examined the frames. They're
cemented into their casement with dust, and they're bound along
the edges with cobwebs.
Speaker 2: That's right, these windows have never been opened. And then
how did the assassin enter?
Speaker 4: Well he, of course the answer is evident. Whoever killed
Doomdorf hid in the room.
Speaker 2: Till he was asleep, then he shot him and went out?
Where could he hide?
Speaker 4: And even supposing he could when he left, how did
the assassin boat the door behind him? When the boat
was on the inside of the door. Then who knows?
Speaker 2: Maybe Doomdorf did kill himself. No, we ruled that out yesterday.
Speaker 4: Then there's only one open road out of the mystery.
Both the woman and Bronson claim they killed Doomdorf. Let
us go down and ask them question. In the law
cart that procedure, it could.
Speaker 2: Be considered sounds sense. But Judge, we are in God's court.
Things are done in a somewhat stranger way.
Speaker 3: In what way do you mean?
Speaker 2: In a way that still must be put to the proof,
And for that we need to borrow time.
Speaker 4: But I have every faith that time will show us
exactly who murdered or perhaps the better word might be executed.
Speaker 2: The man who lies dead before.
Speaker 3: Us, I said in the beginning a story to terrify
and tantalize and tantalizing, it must be a man, alive
and alone by himself in a locked room, has met
death by the blast of a shotgun, neatly returned to
its place on the wall.
Speaker 5: By whose hand?
Speaker 2: In what way?
Speaker 3: These are the questions and others to be answered. When
I returned shortly with Act three.
Speaker 1: In the room with the dead man.
Speaker 3: Judge Randolph faces Sheriff Abnerdale, a frown of puzzlement on
his patrician face. His eyes searched the expression of the great,
lumbering young man in front of him, whose whole physical
appearance suggests a man of action rather than one of
thought or mental ability. The judge is the first to
break the silence posed by the seemingly insoluble problem they face.
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
Speaker 4: We are in God's court and things are done in
a somewhat stranger way.
Speaker 2: Before we go.
Speaker 4: Question those who are so anxious to be convicted of
the assassination of Doundorff. Let us find out, if we can,
at what hour he actually died, how and I seem
to remember he wore a watch. Yeah, here it is
in the westcoat pocket, broken by the shot. That's what
ours stand the hands just past one o'clock. By the
look at Bronson when we found him here, he must
have been far off.
Speaker 2: Still in his way to his place.
Speaker 4: And the woman, by her story, was down the mountains
picking fruit among the peach trees.
Speaker 2: That's how I had it. Take it.
Speaker 4: But why waste time on speculation anymore?
Speaker 2: We know who did this thing.
Speaker 4: Let us go down and get the story of it
out of their own mouths. Either Bronson or the woman
killed the man. I could better believe it, but for
the inevitability of a certain awful law. All day that
take the sword shall perish with the sword or the
good book, Matthew, we reap what we sow.
Speaker 2: Thus we receive what we give, and nothing else. That
is God's law very well in a sense. But in
this this case, by all means, let us go try
the method of your law, courts, your faith, lies, and
the wisdom of their ways.
Speaker 4: We came down the stairs together abnor, calm and reflective,
myself tortured and mystified.
Speaker 2: Bronson, how did you kill Dundorf?
Speaker 3: I killed him as the Elijah killed the captains of
Isaiah in their fifties. But not by the hand of
any man did I pray the Lord God to destroy
him with the fire from heaven.
Speaker 4: I prayed him to destroy Dundorf. Give me the action
in your hands, so now explain yourself. His hands were
red with blood.
Speaker 3: The widow and the orphan cried to heaven against him.
I will surely hear their cry, as the promise written
in the book.
Speaker 2: And you were the instrument raised up to heed their cry.
And the land was weary of him.
Speaker 3: And I prayed the Lord God to destroy him with
fire from Hiven.
Speaker 2: Because he destroyed the prince.
Speaker 4: There is a gamar in their palaces with fire from heaven.
Come Abner, we waste our time here a moment. Bronson, Bronson,
you hear me, I hear you, Avenue Gale. A little
while ago, when we came, I asked you where Doomdorf was,
and you answered me in the third chapter of the
Book of Judges.
Speaker 2: Why do you answer me like that?
Speaker 3: When I said, surely he covereth his feet in his
summer chamber. Yeah, the woman told me he had not
come down from the chamber where he had gone up
to sleep. It was then I knew that he was
dead in his summer chamber, like egg Long king of
moab Ow.
Speaker 2: Could you know? I look you off there to the south.
I came here from the Great Valley to cut down
these groves are.
Speaker 9: Valid to empty outter speaking abomination.
Speaker 3: But I did not know that the Lord has heard
my prayer and visited his raft on Doomedorf until I
was come up the mountain to his door.
Speaker 2: But when the woman throw, I knew it. Now work
here is done.
Speaker 4: I must ride where's a larger cowls?
Speaker 2: Just a minute? Why it's happened? You're right, you're right.
That was only a waste of time.
Speaker 4: Bronson did not kill Doomdorf, but new realized judge how
he did die, at least not by Bronson and not
by fire from heaven. Doomdorf was dead before Bronson got.
Speaker 2: Here with his fire breathing scripture. The woman must be
the guilty One.
Speaker 4: Knight had entered the valley with the setting of the sun,
and there were other things to do before the inquisition
of the woman. By candlelight, the shadows weird and fearsome on.
Speaker 2: The wall we made a coffin.
Speaker 4: We put Doomdorf in it, straightened out his limbs and
folded his arms across his shutout heart. And we set
the coffin on benches.
Speaker 2: In the hall.
Speaker 4: Then we kindled the fire in the living room, where
the woman had put some meat and golden cheese and a.
Speaker 2: Loaf on the table. You'll have eaten enough, as much
as is fitting.
Speaker 8: I believe it as it is, in case you should
want more. I am going now where to the sea
and the sheep. He is dead and I am free.
Speaker 4: Not quite, there's a question still to be settled. Who
killed your Who killed doom Darth?
Speaker 8: But I have told you I killed him.
Speaker 2: It was fair fair.
Speaker 8: I remember an old old man sitting against a sunny wall,
and a little girl who plucked yellow flowers from the
grass and put them in her hair. She laughed and
she was happy because she was twelve years old, and
in a few days she would be thirteen, and she
would make her novena. But they were bad times, and
the big stranger with the black beard and the hard
hands came to the old man and talked, And after
he had talked a long time, they gave the old
money a gold chain and some money, and he took
the little girl away. He used her in a way
she did not know. And if she tried to run
away or kick him away. You like to look at the.
Speaker 9: Scars on my back.
Speaker 8: You want to ask the doctor he was too late
to save my baby. Oh, it was fair to kill him.
Speaker 2: But where will you go?
Speaker 8: My abuelo will be gone by now. My grandfather was
dying ten years ago. But the wall will still be there,
and maybe the sun and the yellow flowers. It is
all right that I gone.
Speaker 2: It's up with the judge. I cannot find it in
my heart to hold you or in the law. Not
a jury in Virginia, it would convict you for shooting
a beast like that.
Speaker 8: I thank you, judge, But I I have not shoot.
Speaker 2: Him, not shooting him. And the man is riddled.
Speaker 8: I kill him, but I have not shoot him. I
kill him with which words I remembered from my mother.
Speaker 2: Hey, you can't kill a man with words.
Speaker 8: Man, Oh, I know, sen you. That is why I
make a doll in wax, and I put a needle
through his breast, and you die very quickly. No, senor,
I may go.
Speaker 4: It was good that you let her go, judge, No,
it was pathetic, a homocidal dream to rid herself of
a monster with a enchanted strong man. I think she
had money in her saddle bag, but I slipped some
extra gist in chase.
Speaker 2: And now where are we waiting like her for the dawn?
Speaker 4: This was the strangest thing that ever happened. Someone shot
the man, But who and how did the killer get out.
Speaker 2: Of that shut up room? For that matter, how did
he get in through the window?
Speaker 4: Through the window here yourself have showed me that was impossible.
Speaker 2: You proved it could never have been open. I did
it never was open, Amner. What are you trying to
tell me how Doomdorf died.
Speaker 4: You're trying to say that the one who killed him
climbed that sheer wall, got in through a closed window
without even disturbing a crumb of dust or breaking a cobweb.
I'm telling you the murderer of doom Dark did even more.
What we must wait for tomorrow when the assassin returns.
There are shy who killed doom Darth and how? I
could have argued, But I knew that set look on
Abner's face too well to waste my time. I could
not have believed that I could sleep with the thoughts
spinning in my brain.
Speaker 2: But I did. We ate, and through the morning dug
a gray for the dead man in silence.
Speaker 4: By the time the last spadeful of earth was thrown back,
it was high noon, and Abner squinted.
Speaker 2: Up at the sun.
Speaker 4: Time to throw our space down. Go lay an ambush
for the assassin. He's already on the way here. Judge,
where do we go? Back the house and up to
Dundarf's room. Now we must make certain preparations.
Speaker 2: What are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm loading the shotgun as it was before it took
Doom's door. It's life, and now I place it back
on its rack, exactly as I found it.
Speaker 2: What do you wanna do with this pillow? And just cold?
The blood is not entirely dry. Here, give it to me.
We'll wrap the.
Speaker 4: Coat around the pillow as if it were a body,
and place it here on the couch, just.
Speaker 2: Where Doomed door lay. Now, look out the window. Is
the day still clear? Not like flowered in the sky?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 2: Just like yesterday?
Speaker 4: It's not hotter now for the moonshine or this bottle
of still liquor let's see good. You can see by
the dust ring on the table that it sets just
where it did yesterday as I return it to its
resting place.
Speaker 2: Whatever you say, but but I I still don't see.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: What sh.
Speaker 2: We are about to trick the murderer in the act.
But we came without guns. How can we protect ourselves?
We need no protection, judge, it is all in the
hands of the Lord. Look, the assassin is creeping along
the wall.
Speaker 5: Where should look?
Speaker 2: That point a light?
Speaker 6: I followed the line of his extended finger and saw
what he meant, A tiny disc of focused, white hot
sunlight moving slowly across the wall toward the shotgun.
Speaker 2: He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.
Speaker 4: The water bobble full of doom d'orfliquor is focus in
the sun to the heat of a lighted match as.
Speaker 2: It travels to the lock and fire and pin of
the shotgun. The answer to Bronson's prayer the fire from heaven.
Now Watch.
Speaker 4: Now, as the pinpoint of sunlight reached the percussion cap
and the gun exploded as though the trigger.
Speaker 2: Had been pulled. The pillow wrapped in the dead man's.
Speaker 4: Coat, lying on the couch where the man himself had
lain some twenty four hours before, leaped and shuddered like
a living thing, and collapsed in earthly. The room was
still echoing with the sound of the explosion. My own
voice sounded cramped and hoarse, as I said, and we
mistrust coincidence? Why it is a world filled with the
joinder of accidents.
Speaker 2: It is a world filled with the mysterious justice of God,
the answer to the mystery of the doom, dwarf murder.
Our fate well deserved and.
Speaker 3: Brought only on himself by the dead man, who had
little right or reason to live. Wouldn't have been nice
if an equal fate could be the lot of so
many people, each of us know except U.
Speaker 2: Who are we to be the judge that.
Speaker 3: Belongs, thank God, to the higher power I inadvertently named.
Speaker 2: I'll be back shortly.
Speaker 3: It seems to me necessary in conclusion to put a
quote used in this story in its exact context. When
Jesus had been betrayed by Judas, and when the High
Priest's men came to take him by force, one of
those with him struck out against the attackers, wounding him.
It was then that Jesus spoke the full quote saying,
put up again thy sword into its place, for all
they that take up the sword shall perish with the sword.
Speaker 2: As you see, it was still and.
Speaker 5: Always the Prince of Peace who spoke.
Speaker 3: Our cast included Howard da Silva, Fred Gwynn, Bryana Raeburn,
Ian Martin and Earl Hammond. The entire production was under
the direction of Hymond Brown. And now a preview of
our next tale.
Speaker 11: It's the sign. It's the sign we saw out on
the main road.
Speaker 8: Oh, maybe it's one like it, an old one.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's the same sign.
Speaker 11: So the one that pointed to the two ruts through
the field.
Speaker 8: Why would mister Broker have it in here?
Speaker 11: It wasout the sign out there. You could go right
past that field, go right past.
Speaker 2: Grahamville'll never know it was here.
Speaker 8: Is Is that what they want?
Speaker 11: Maybe your suspicions weren't so wrong.
Speaker 8: Jane, Oh, Mike, what does it mean?
Speaker 11: I want to ask some questions, but don't let on.
Speaker 2: We found this. Huh.
Speaker 11: Come on, Let's get out of here fast before Broker
gets back.
Speaker 8: Let's leave this town right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I only hope we can.
Speaker 8: Jim Egan did oh did he you.
Speaker 11: Were suspicious about that sudden departure.
Speaker 5: Now I'm beginning to wonder he departed.
Speaker 2: But I'd like to know where this is.
Speaker 8: E g.
Speaker 3: Marshall inviting you to return to our mystery theater for
another adventure in the macabre.
Speaker 5: Until next time, pleasant dreams.