Speaker 1: Unsolved mysteries. Out of deference to people who may still
Speaker 1: be living. Character names in some of these true unsolved
Speaker 1: mysteries have been changed. Make mad the guilty, and appalled
Speaker 1: the free, confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, the very faculties.
Speaker 2: Of eyes and ears.
Speaker 1: This quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet could well have been written
Speaker 1: about tonight's unsolved mystery, the Mystery of the Chinaman's Cells.
Speaker 3: P M.
Speaker 1: The scene is a wide flung plantation bungalow high up
Speaker 1: on the slopes of Monarchaia in Hawaii. Far below the
Speaker 1: rolling slopes.
Speaker 2: The blue Pacific sparkles through.
Speaker 1: The green of the palm trees above. The volcano tints
Speaker 1: the cloudless sky in the reflected red from the crater
Speaker 1: hale Momo Haley's House of Everlasting Fire. On the line
Speaker 1: of the bungalow, facing the tennis courts, the guests are
Speaker 1: sitting watching the play. Their host, Jim Ferguson, turns to
Speaker 1: face them as their laughter dives down.
Speaker 4: Oh, you fellows don't believe in hanted houses.
Speaker 1: Well I don't, Jim, I believe that there's an explanation
Speaker 1: for everything. Well, isn't a ghosts an explanation for a
Speaker 1: haunted house.
Speaker 2: Oh, you have a champion, Jim. Are you really serious, Betty?
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm serious to see both Jim and I have
Speaker 1: reason to believe in ghosts and haunted houses, haven't we, Jim, not.
Speaker 4: Only reason to believe in them, but reason to thank
Speaker 4: them or him or it, depending upon on how one
Speaker 4: feels inclined to refer to a goot. Well, why have
Speaker 4: we never heard of this before?
Speaker 5: Betty?
Speaker 1: Been keeping secrets from your school day?
Speaker 2: Joms?
Speaker 4: Have you?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I never mentioned it in the company because I don't
Speaker 4: like to remind Jim of it, and I avoid the
Speaker 4: subject because I don't like to have Betty thinking too
Speaker 4: much about it. You see some of our Japanese help
Speaker 4: and the hulldoo for them to realize that their boss
Speaker 4: is a believer in the same sort of thing. Stupid reasoning,
Speaker 4: isn't it, But it seems to work that way.
Speaker 2: Now, don't go into a lengthy talk on keeping up appearances.
Speaker 2: Just the sidetrack air inquiries about this haunted house.
Speaker 1: Oh, but it isn't a haunted house.
Speaker 4: Well, what is it?
Speaker 1: Then? I suppose i'd better tell them.
Speaker 2: You might as well, since you've managed to get yourself
Speaker 2: in as deeply as you have.
Speaker 4: Well, when I first came out to the islands, things
Speaker 4: were a good bit different. No electric lights in the
Speaker 4: plantation houses, no automobiles. Everyone rode horseback, and going visiting
Speaker 4: was an adventure. I was auditor at one of the
Speaker 4: bigger plantations and Betty was teaching school. We well, we
Speaker 4: were rather fond of one another, even at that early
Speaker 4: stage in the proceeding. One Monday morning I arrived down
Speaker 4: at the mill to find an excited group Japanese Portuguese.
Speaker 1: The bye, everybody's.
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: What's up?
Speaker 1: What's the matter?
Speaker 4: To much?
Speaker 1: A pretty key are twenty touble got someone right into
Speaker 1: store on stealing money.
Speaker 4: The dickens, you say, he William there, Where are you going?
Speaker 4: I'm the auditor. Oh hello, by mister Watkins.
Speaker 2: The manager. Mister Watkins here tells me that you're the
Speaker 2: only man who has access to the safe. But I'm not.
Speaker 4: Mister Watkins has access to the safe.
Speaker 1: Oh jare you what do you mean by implying that
Speaker 1: I stole the money?
Speaker 4: Didn't you imply that I stole it when you told
Speaker 4: the sheriff that I was the only one who had
Speaker 4: access to the safe. You got keys to the safe too,
Speaker 4: but my keys are in the safe.
Speaker 2: I think you better come on me, mister Jim Ferguson,
Speaker 2: All right, come along, see you later, mister Watkins off
Speaker 2: to jail. March's Jim Ferguson.
Speaker 1: A preliminary hearing decides that he must stand trial. Time
Speaker 1: drags by on leaden feet, and time is passing is
Speaker 1: made less bearable by the knowledge that everyone on the
Speaker 1: plantation believes Jim Ferguson guilty, everyone that is, but Betty.
Speaker 1: And one night, quite late, Jim hears the clanging of
Speaker 1: the after deep and hollowing of footsteps approaching down the
Speaker 1: long stone flagged corridor leading to his cells. Why bet he,
Speaker 1: sheriff wants to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, sheriff, young fellow. I don't know whether or
Speaker 2: not you're guilly. I know he's not. Thanks, Betty, Well,
Speaker 2: it's as I say, I don't know. Well, I have
Speaker 2: my doubts. I want you to do something for me.
Speaker 2: I'll do anything, anything at all. All right. I want
Speaker 2: you to change cells. I want to put you in
Speaker 2: the old cell block. It's damp and it's uncomfortable, but
Speaker 2: it'll only be for one night.
Speaker 1: But what's the idea please do.
Speaker 2: With the sheriff oxygen all right? And one other thing.
Speaker 2: I don't want you to open your mouth to I
Speaker 2: don't say a word.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm not likely to. There isn't anyone to talk.
Speaker 2: To when I'm having some guests visit the prison in
Speaker 2: a few moments. Frendy yours, And that's why I'm warning you.
Speaker 2: No matter what happens, don't you say one word, I
Speaker 2: won't come on. Then we gotta hurry in here. Well,
Speaker 2: it is cold and damp here.
Speaker 5: Goodbye, finalogy, goodbye here.
Speaker 2: Come on, that's better. They will be here any moment.
Speaker 1: Puzzled as to what the Sheriff has in mind, Jim
Speaker 1: Ferguson stands in his cell, gripping the bars and staring
Speaker 1: out into the moon flooded jail yard. Beyond behind jailed
Speaker 1: wall a group of Hawaiians from their ukuleles, while the
Speaker 1: Sheriff and Betty stand on the jail steps awaiting the
Speaker 1: arrival of their guests.
Speaker 4: Well there we are, Sheriff.
Speaker 2: I'm right into the jail. It's gotta be the first
Speaker 2: time for everything.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: How many prisoners. We don't have much crime. We only
Speaker 2: built this new block because the old one is uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: not because we needed more room. How old is the
Speaker 2: old block? About seventy years? It's built a block, shallava.
Speaker 2: Now here's where we go through the lock? All clear?
Speaker 1: Oh, all the doors open at one time.
Speaker 2: Now, now step inside.
Speaker 4: I thought you were coming with me with us.
Speaker 1: I hate you go back with me.
Speaker 2: Yes, he is really quite a comfortable jail jails. Go
Speaker 2: now we go through this way the old cell.
Speaker 1: Block or anyone in there now, yeah.
Speaker 2: Jim Ferguson, go in and see him. There he is
Speaker 2: in that cell next to the Chinaman's cell. Chinaman's cell. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's haunted.
Speaker 4: Who ever heard of a cell being haunted?
Speaker 2: This one is what's fun?
Speaker 1: Haunted seal, What a rubbish.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised that you, shriff, believing in that stuff.
Speaker 2: Perhaps no one yet has been able to stay a
Speaker 2: night in it. Imagination? Your imagination.
Speaker 5: Yeare you to go in?
Speaker 2: Yes, there you too, and let you take me to
Speaker 2: the downstairs to day.
Speaker 1: If you do, that's a bargain.
Speaker 4: All right, Eruff open her up.
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid of your ghosts.
Speaker 2: I'm warning it.
Speaker 4: Rot open up.
Speaker 1: Watkin steps into the Chinaman's cell. The guests turn and leave.
Speaker 1: The moon sinks until only a slender beam of ghostly
Speaker 1: light shines over the empty jail yard. In a moment,
Speaker 1: that too is gone. Blackness, walls, cell bars, passageway all
Speaker 1: merge into one black, yawning void which was there. Watkins
Speaker 1: starts and peers into the darkness. A light, a bluish
Speaker 1: phosphorescent light, moving slowly across the front of the cell.
Speaker 1: A lantern, yes, a lantern carried by a yellowed, wrinkled hand.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing else, no arm, no body, only a hand,
Speaker 1: a hand that lays the lantern down. Twisted, gnarled, crooked fingers,
Speaker 1: yellow fingers, ghostly fingers, reaching out out.
Speaker 4: Let me out, Let me out, Thank God, let me alone,
Speaker 4: help leve me out.
Speaker 2: It's coming closer, twisting, groping, let me out, let me out.
Speaker 2: I'll confess I did it, I took the money. I'll
Speaker 2: admit anything. Only let me out, let me out, let
Speaker 2: me out.
Speaker 1: In just a moment, you will hear a solution to
Speaker 1: the mystery of the Chinaman's cell.
Speaker 6: At one time time.
Speaker 5: Prisms at, say, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Inasmuch as any solution must have necessity, be supposition. Liberties
Speaker 1: of time, place, and character exist in the solution for
Speaker 1: which you've been waiting. We returned to the Lanai before
Speaker 1: Jim Ferguson's house, where the guests await an explanation that
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't experience.
Speaker 2: You see, the sheriff didn't really believe Jim guilty, not
Speaker 2: after I told him that Watkins had been paying attention
Speaker 2: to me, and Betty.
Speaker 4: Was certain that Watkins took the money to get me
Speaker 4: sent to jail and out of the way.
Speaker 1: But the chinaman's cell, I don't understand it.
Speaker 4: The sheriff told us that a chinaman guilty of murder
Speaker 4: and waiting execution hanged himself in that cell.
Speaker 2: What of it?
Speaker 4: Well, anytime the sheriff wanted to get a confession, he
Speaker 4: placed his suspect in that cell, and before long they
Speaker 4: were shrieking to get out. Oh so yours wasn't the
Speaker 4: only experience, Oh.
Speaker 2: By no means all?
Speaker 4: In all, the sheriff has obtained over seventy confessions that way.
Speaker 4: Even if the person put into the cell doesn't know
Speaker 4: about the chinaman's suicide, it makes no difference, apparently. Oh,
Speaker 4: but there must be a logical explanation let me read
Speaker 4: you extracts from the papers of the Society for Psychical Research,
Speaker 4: Volume fifteen, page sixty four. While inquirers believe that the
Speaker 4: appearances are due to the agency of spirits of the dead,
Speaker 4: they usually suppose the method to be a telepathic impact
Speaker 4: on the mind of the living by some automatic projection
Speaker 4: from a consciousness which has its center elsewhere.
Speaker 2: I end the quotation.
Speaker 4: But here's an interesting remark in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The
Speaker 4: cases abundantly offered in the proceedings of the Society for
Speaker 4: Psychical Research suggest that certain localities, more than others, are
Speaker 4: centers of permanent possibilities of being hallucinated in a manner
Speaker 4: more or less uniform. So by Joe, even science admits
Speaker 4: the so called ghosts. Yes, and even if science didn't,
Speaker 4: I do. I saw it working on Watkins, and that's
Speaker 4: all the proof I need.
Speaker 6: The co f fan compare
Speaker 3: A po