Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Calm down for blast off x minus five four three
two x minus one fire from the far horizons of
the unknown come transcribe tales of new dimensions in time
and space. These are stories of the future adventures in
which you'll live in a million, could be years, on
a thousand, maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation
with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding Science Fiction, presents.
Speaker 3: He minus minus minus minus minus.
Speaker 2: The Night Story Doctor Grimshaw's Sanitarium.
Speaker 4: What you will hear in.
Speaker 2: The next half hour represents either a magnificent hoax or
the true explanation of the famous Grimshaw Sanitarium scandal which
made the headlines back in nineteen forty seven. The manuscript
upon which this account is based was removed by the
New York State Police from a fountain pen cover found
in the doorway to doctor Grimshaw's study. We offer this
manuscript as evidence only. Whether it is authentic or not,
you must judge for yourselves. My name is John Dougherty.
Speaker 5: I'm a graduate of Hamilton College, class of thirty four,
member of Theta Alpha. I'm one of those fools who
wanted some excitement in life, so instead of going to
my father's shoe business. I became a private detective. These
are facts. You can check them if you like. The
rest of what I write here is so fantastic that
I don't expect it to be believed. If anyone should
find this manuscript and read it, all I ask is
that you notify this Millicent Armbrister of two ninety nine
Wallace Avenue, Buffalo, that Johnny Dougherty is dead. On the
evening of July first, Miss Armbruster and I were driving
to a wedding, not our own, although I wish it
had been. It was Sunday, and in order to avoid traffic,
I took the Old Mill Road, a single lane dirt
affair that runs past the Gowanda Cemetery.
Speaker 6: Johnny, aren't you.
Speaker 7: Going too fast?
Speaker 5: Not for this road? There's nothing around except some tombstones.
Speaker 8: John the gate to the cemetery, what about it that
hairs look out look out.
Speaker 5: Be skidded for about twenty feet and slammed into the
back of the hearse. The two rear doors buckled and
snapped open. It was a freak. A huge oak coffin
with brass handles tipped up and began slowly to slide
back toward us.
Speaker 7: Horrible.
Speaker 5: You stay right here, baby, Okay, Mac.
Speaker 4: You don't pay much attention to speed limits, do you, Joe?
Speaker 5: Oh look, let's not get hung up on who was
right and who was wrong. I was going too fast
and you were traveling without lights after dark.
Speaker 4: Let's see a driver's license all right here?
Speaker 5: Uh, private eye, if you don't mind, who does this
joy wagon belonged to.
Speaker 4: Go on the funeral service? It's being rented to Grimshaw?
Who Grimshaw from the private sanitarium?
Speaker 5: Mind if I asked what you were doing after dark
coming out of a cemetery with a wooden Kimona.
Speaker 4: We're moving won a Grimshaw's patience to a new grave.
Speaker 5: They always travel like this.
Speaker 4: Look, Hawkshaw, how about skipping the third degree and giving
me a hand getting this box back in the wagon?
Speaker 5: Better screw on that cover again. It's gonna slide off.
Speaker 4: Let's get it in the hears first.
Speaker 5: Okay, Junior, you get on that end.
Speaker 4: Okay, you ready?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Lift, just slide it. Brother, who's in there? Can come
look for the cover. I told you that would happen.
It's a guy's name, Junior.
Speaker 4: Oh, why don't you ask him?
Speaker 5: Sherlock Home a real wise guy. I've got half a
mind to report this accident. It will go ahead, see
where it gets here. Now, if you're potton me, I'll
deliver the body.
Speaker 7: Everything all right, Johnny?
Speaker 5: I thought so until a few seconds ago. Listen, Tolik,
can you sit here in the car for another five minutes?
Where are you going for a stroll through the cemetery?
Speaker 7: Johnny stoped making Joe, and we lifted.
Speaker 5: That coffin back on the meat wagon. I got a
good look inside it. Yeah, exactly how I felt. I
figured we knocked the stuffing out of the corpse, only
I didn't expect the stuffing to be sand. What Yes,
that was a body. That was a dummy stuffed with sand,
A dummy with a wax face, which brings up an
interesting question. Who's supposed to be in that box? And
just where is the dead man spending his time? Sometimes
in my business, when things drop off, you have to
go out and dig up new clients. My next case
was a gentleman named Harlan Ward Senior, the wealthy automobile manufacturer.
I'd gotten his name off his son's tombstone.
Speaker 1: Are you trying to tell me, Dorogy that my son
Holland was never buried at go on the cemetery.
Speaker 5: Exactly, mister Wood. But why maybe if you'll tell me
the circumstances surrounding your son's death, I can help answer.
Speaker 1: That my son was a rather impetuous young man, tall,
good looking. After his graduation from Princeton, he began drinking
quite heavily. After he got into a couple of scrapes.
We send him to doctor Grimshaw's sanitarium in the hopes
that he could be cured. While my wife and I
were in Europe, we received words that he died buried
in all absence. Last week, my wife and I decided
to have his body removed to the family vault here
at short Heels. How'd your son die suicide?
Speaker 5: You never saw the body?
Speaker 1: No, we couldn't get back from Europe in time. Now
you're told me that his coffin contains a dummy. How
do I know this whole thing is the plan to
fleece me?
Speaker 5: You don't, But you're a rich man, mister Ward, and
you're perfectly willing to take a chance that I'm on
the level and that your son may still be alive.
Speaker 1: You sound very sure of yourself, mister dargy.
Speaker 5: My fee is a two thousand dollars retainer plus expenses.
What sort of expenses? However? Much it cost to take
the cure at doctor Grimshaw's sanitarium. Doctor grimshaw sanitarium was
just outside Gowanda. Most of the cases were nervous breakdowns
and alcoholics. Admitted myself as a dipso and just to
make it convincing, I started at five or six bars.
On the way over, I was interviewed by Grimshaw himself,
a small man with a fringe of white hair. You understand,
mister Dougherty, that's not my real name, of course social reason.
Speaker 9: We understand. Our paid clientele is very select and our
rates are very high.
Speaker 5: You'll be paying cash and in advance. Doctor Grimshaw angs
a cure usually say that, of.
Speaker 9: Course, depends on the degree of alcoholism. This is my assistant,
doctor Boyner.
Speaker 5: How do you do?
Speaker 1: How do you do?
Speaker 9: We are accepting mister Dorothy as a patient. Better place
him in the ward with mister Kay and mister mister
Kay is a long term patient.
Speaker 5: Mister Dorothy a.
Speaker 9: Highly intelligent man, formerly a professor of plant pathology. Mister
Kkey suffers mild delusions. I think you'll find him rather amusing.
Speaker 5: After about three days, my roommate's Arthur Kay and Craigie
got used to me, and we even began to play
three handred bridge. Kay was a chronic dough adict, an intelligent,
sensitive man. Craigie was nothing but a clown. He kept
a big black cat named the Professor, which he talked
to as if it were human.
Speaker 6: And so I said to.
Speaker 10: Her, my dear countess, if you don't like the company
of my cat, then you don't like me. She looked
at me as if I were insane, but of course
the joke was on her, because I was a professor.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: The Professor was very sociable, excellent company, except.
Speaker 11: When he kills birds and deposits him in your bed.
He's nothing but a feline murderer as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 6: Ah, same, you have insulted him as.
Speaker 5: The k give me a professor. Let's make friends about
giving me your part. Scratch me, your black devil.
Speaker 6: You insulted him, you hurt his feelings.
Speaker 5: We'll just keep him away from me.
Speaker 6: It will be a pleasure. I would advise you not
to insult them again. Good afternoon and evening.
Speaker 5: Wow. He always is, not to say ever since I've
been here? What's his problem?
Speaker 6: Manic? Depressive?
Speaker 11: A little paranoid too.
Speaker 5: How long have you been here, Arthur? I'm sure two years.
Speaker 11: I left for a while, but I couldn't stay away
from the junk, so I committed myself again.
Speaker 5: Did you happen to know a patient here named Harland Warden?
Why do you ask that? Did you know him? I
met him socially a few times. I understand he died here, So.
Speaker 11: The newspapers said, I wouldn't know. Suicide, wasn't it?
Speaker 5: Was it? You're being pretty careful, aren't you, mister Dorty.
Speaker 11: What would you say if I were to tell you
that I don't believe Holland ward is dead?
Speaker 5: What makes you so certain you'd share this room with us?
She slept in the same bed you now use. I see.
Speaker 11: He was an alcoholic, doing quite well too, from what
I could observe. We all expected him to go home soon.
Then one evening he had a violent fight with Craikie.
Craggie accused him of snooping or something. Later that night,
Grimshaw and Voyner took him out where where they take
all the special treatment cases. To the charity clinic. It's
that small building on the other side of the stone wall.
A few days later we read about his death suicide.
Speaker 5: They said, does what makes you think he's still alive?
About it?
Speaker 8: This?
Speaker 5: About a month ago.
Speaker 11: I was in the garden next to the wall that
separates us from the charity clinic. Suddenly I thought I
heard a sound like a child whimpering. It stopped, and
a moment later this note came over the wall, wrapped
around a stone's say, help me, for God's sake, Carlin Ward, Arthur, how.
Speaker 5: Would you like to have some fun like? What like
sneaking out tonight and going over the wall to the
charity Ward? What do you say would break the monotony
a little?
Speaker 11: I suppose there's no real harm in it's.
Speaker 5: Of course not. I'd go alone, but I'll need help
scaling the wall. Will you do it?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 5: I'll go with you. Ull clear, give me your hand
and I'll lift you careful when you drop.
Speaker 11: Ready, go ahead, Yah, there's a charity building over there,
the one with the lights in the basement.
Speaker 5: Of Come on, let's crawl over. Maybe we can see something.
Now listen, can you make out what he's saying? No,
I can believe, good law. What was that? Han't some
patient having the DTAs. Let's have a look easy. It
wouldn't do to get caught now, see anything, some sort
of laboratory. I can see Grimshaw and Voin on something else.
But there's a child with its back toward me.
Speaker 9: Please, no, it will all be over soon.
Speaker 5: You won't remember anything.
Speaker 3: No, I don't want to know.
Speaker 11: Why not give it to him?
Speaker 5: Good Lord?
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 5: What did they do to that child?
Speaker 1: Either?
Speaker 9: That wasn't a child.
Speaker 5: It was a midget, the smallest midgard I've ever seen,
trying to give it some sort of injection. When it resisted,
Buena knocked it out.
Speaker 8: What do you suppose they were doing to it?
Speaker 5: I don't know. Other well I know is that when
it fell it had the face of harland Ward. All
the way back to our room, my brain was working
like some frantic pinball machine. Only the score somehow wouldn't
add up. The pieces were there, all right, A crazy
old doctor, a brutal assistant, a private sanitarium, and a
midget with a dead man's face. I thought that when
I got back to our room, i'd have some time
to think about it. I'd forgotten about our friend, the
happiness boy. Sound, Craky Crown caught you? Fine, you've caught us. Now,
how about crawling back into the woodwork like a good
little count? Will you mink hunting? Arthur and I like
to go mink hunting at night?
Speaker 6: You make fun of Craig, I shall report you to
doctor Vna.
Speaker 5: It better not if you know what's good for you.
Speaker 6: Oh you threaten me me, Count Craiky, I should scream
for help.
Speaker 5: Did you hurt him? Just knocked him out? We put
him to bed, hope that he wakes up in the
morning he's forgotten the whole thing, and he hasn't. He's
too crazy for them to take seriously anyway. Come on,
let's get him back in a bed. I went to
sleep in my own room, and the next thing I
felt was the sharp jab of the hypodermic needle in
my left arm. Hold it.
Speaker 9: It'll be useless to start with, mister Dorothy. In a moment,
your motor nerves will be completely paralyzed. Ursus about grimshock,
I might ask the same of you, my good friend. Come,
Creakie informs me. You and mister Ky decided to do
some snooping earlier tonight he followed you, and so you
climbed the wall.
Speaker 5: Craigie is insane, mister Dorty.
Speaker 6: That is a matter of opinion.
Speaker 5: Quicky, what is this?
Speaker 6: Perhaps, my assistant, that the grim Shaw would be good
enough to explain, Assistant, Yes, you see, I am the
actual head of the Grimshaw Sanatarium.
Speaker 5: Come.
Speaker 9: Craikie paints many delusions, mister Doroty, but in this case
he is telling the truth. Hunt Creiky is actually Professor
Ernst Hassler. Professor Hasler and I work together in the
Berin Neurological Institute before and during the last war.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, my political affiliations with the Third Reich were under
investigation by the War Crimes Commission. However, doctor Grimshaw managed
to smuggle me into this country, where I masqueraded as
a mental patient, in order that we might continue certain
experiments which were interrupted by the American Army.
Speaker 5: I can imagine the short of experiments you conducted.
Speaker 9: You and your friend mister k will discover their exact
nature very shortly.
Speaker 5: Mister Doughty.
Speaker 9: It is a magnificent opportunity to serve science.
Speaker 5: The past half and the next thing I knew I
was coming to in a different room and hearing the
voices of Voyner, Grimshaw and craigy is it from a
great distance the turtry?
Speaker 4: What this is? CC?
Speaker 6: All the measurements reducing rapidly you'll operate at once have
won us start the anesthesia?
Speaker 5: Very well?
Speaker 4: Doctor come.
Speaker 5: When I came to again, I had a blinding headache.
I began to wonder if Craikie and Grimshaw weren't doing
something to drive me insane. Because I lost all sense
of perspective. The room seemed to grow in size. I
don't know how much time passed, but one day Craikie
came into the room of the bundle in his arms,
about the size of a newborn baby. The bundle was
my friend Arthur kay and bourse. Yet I was exactly
the same size that he was.
Speaker 6: Let me out of here. Put me out, Allow me
to congrat your latude, gentlemen, how are you feeling you're
thirty monthster? I'm disappointed. Do you not feel privileged to
be a part of an experiment that will place me
at the very top rank of the world's endocrinologist?
Speaker 7: What are you doing to us, you madman?
Speaker 6: It has long been established gentleman, that dwarfism and giantism
result from injury to or malfunction of the pituitary and
thyroid glands. The interlock between these glands was thought to
be a hormone. I have discovered that this was incorrect.
It was an enzyme, an enzyme I isolated some years ago.
I was well on the way to synthesis in Germany
when the surrender interrupted me. The interruption also limited the
number and type up subjects on whom I could experiment.
I was forced to find others, such as Harland Wood.
Mister Ward was only a control experiment.
Speaker 5: I suppose you plan the same for us.
Speaker 6: No, gentleman, for you, I have reserved a special privilege.
Speaker 10: You, gentlemen, will be the.
Speaker 6: First to test the full effects of the end enzyme
in shorts. I intend that you, mister Kay, and you,
mister Dougherty, when the experiment is completed, will emerge as
perfectly healthy, normal individuals, except of course, that you will
be only fine inches tall.
Speaker 5: The days and nights have followed were a living nightmare,
a nightmare from which Arthur and I awoke for brief
periods to find ourselves in a strange new world, a huge,
frightening world where everything seemed enlarged a one hundred times. When
we finally emerged, we found ourselves imprisoned in a tiny
mouse cage. Judging by the relative size of things, we
could not have been more than five inches tall. Now
we realize the experiment was at an end, and from
now on it was either escape or be destroyed.
Speaker 7: How's it coming? At another moment?
Speaker 9: His lack?
Speaker 8: And if we escape, then what we'll worry about that
after we get out of this mass cage? Suppose we
don't take it. At least you've written a story on
that scrap of paper. Someone may find.
Speaker 7: It and read it. Nobody will believe it.
Speaker 8: And why did you bother to write it?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I suppose I want the world to know what happened
to me.
Speaker 5: That does it help?
Speaker 8: We push the door open?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 8: What the first job is getting down to the floor.
I think we can make it by sliding down the
telephone card are you name? Go ahead, I'm right behind you, easy,
now look out.
Speaker 6: That does it?
Speaker 8: Now we can figure out a way to get out
of the room.
Speaker 7: That should be Oh listen, somebody's coming. It must be creaky.
We got to hide here. You're close. If he finds.
Speaker 6: Us, well, my friends, I'm for feeding. I trust that
you will so. Oh you have managed to break out,
it won't do you know? There is no way you
could have gotten out of the room with the door
and window locked. I know you are in here. I
would advise you to save yourselves trouble and give up.
Speaker 5: Very well, my.
Speaker 6: Tiny friends, if you prefer to play the game of
cat and mouse, and I shall be happy to furnish
the cat.
Speaker 10: There is no way you can get out.
Speaker 7: What now he's gone to?
Speaker 9: The cat?
Speaker 5: Is that monster? Ever gets in here? With Goddess?
Speaker 8: There must be what you see that in skind of
wire running along the morning for by, it's the automatic
fire alarm. When the alarm is tripped by a fire
a short circuit, all the box is.
Speaker 5: Gone, so the patients can skip in the rooms.
Speaker 8: If I can shot that wire before quickly lets the
cat to the building.
Speaker 7: Let's go.
Speaker 8: There's a tiny sliver of skill from the cage on
the floor, and look at that. Keep an air of
the door.
Speaker 5: Go ahead.
Speaker 7: The situation is as wrong, I hurry apart for God's sake.
Speaker 8: Stand away, I'm going to short it ready, Okay, here.
Speaker 5: Goes the door.
Speaker 7: Let's make a run for it down the hall. If
we can get to the guy and we got a chance,
I not smoke shot. May actually is time to pire.
Come on, wait a minute, I have to go back
the nine. You script see a fool. There's no time.
Come on, you go ahead. I'll cantchell me up. I'll
wait only a second.
Speaker 5: I got it.
Speaker 7: Come on, there's nothing to stop us. Now, father, where
are you? It's funny, father, father, father, what's happened to you?
Speaker 2: This is the record found in a fountain pen cover
in the burned out hallway of doctor Grimshaw's sanitarium. There's
nothing to add except that the fire which destroyed the
sanitarium and killed so many of its occupants, including doctor
Grimshaw and doctor Voyna, was definitely of incendiary nature.
Speaker 5: It is believed by the.
Speaker 2: Fire chief that some small creature, possibly a mouse, chewed
the insulation off the wire and short circuited the system.
The two patients, John Doherty and Arthur Kay, vanished completely
after the fire, and their remains were never fond whether
the manuscript which you have just heard is authentic or
whether it was the work of one of the more
demented inmates of the sanitarium. We leave to your judgment.
You have just heard X minus one, presented by the
National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers
of astounding science fiction. Your announcer Fred Collins. This one
was directed by Fred Way, and there's an NBC Radio
Network production minus minus one
Speaker 4: M