Speaker 1: Aculus discuss us aware now noctors at quideas patted a tree,
said rowakari grabum superasslabo.
Speaker 2: S good afternoon, father.
Speaker 3: You see I still remember my Virgil.
Speaker 1: Here you come up there.
Speaker 2: Oh you're far away.
Speaker 3: Finding the descent to hades. Easy to find your way back.
Speaker 4: Quiet roy trace one steps out to the upper air.
That's the task, that.
Speaker 3: Is the labor well. I'm taking Royer to the upper
air of the high Meden.
Speaker 2: Give him a run, seems in need of it. You
never do so now you and he were want so close,
and I.
Speaker 4: Have more to occupy me than walking a bad tempered
old wolf house.
Speaker 2: He's not bad tempered.
Speaker 3: He's been missing you. How's Alice?
Speaker 5: This moll fhee is very well, very well, indeed.
Speaker 6: With father, take them easter.
Speaker 7: Wife, Yes, take him away before I shuditary.
Speaker 6: Take it away for God, suck the medicine for mad dogs.
Or strangle still strangle with my own hands. I could
do that. You know I have the strength for it.
Speaker 4: Don't you doubt I have the strength to rid myself
of the feel old brain Southern writing.
Speaker 8: Brute the Creeping Man by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dramatized
for radio by Robert Forrest, with Clive Medicine as Sherlock
Holmes and Michael Williams as Doctor John Watson, and featuring
Robin Ellis as Professor Presbury, the Creeping Man.
Speaker 9: And fans. I've been here for half an hour, ah,
not quite, Watson, not why? And you haven't uttered a word?
Speaker 10: What a time? You shared more understanding, or for at
least patients with my protracted reveries.
Speaker 5: I do understand.
Speaker 10: Curious facts have been submitted to me that, in turn
give rise the speculation of a more general character, speculation
that you.
Speaker 5: Might share with me.
Speaker 9: Presently, since I am here at your request, your seemingly
urgent request, come at once, if.
Speaker 5: Convenient, if inconvenient, come all the same.
Speaker 10: Neatly worded, don't you think?
Speaker 5: Hmm?
Speaker 10: When I take it by your tone, it was inconvenience.
Speaker 9: It was as a matter of fact. But here you are, yes,
here I am, having had to rearrange my entire day.
My practice, you know, is not inconsiderable.
Speaker 10: And Missus Watson's concern for you it too, is considerable,
of course it is. But in addition to a thriving
medical practice and an ever watchful wife. Does a lovable
family dog play a part in your you are domestic arrangements?
Speaker 7: A dog?
Speaker 10: But if I were to study doctor Watson's dog, what
might I learn?
Speaker 5: I think, homes even you would learn little from a
hypothetical dog.
Speaker 10: Might I witness it whining at your tail? Thumping impatiently
begging to be taken out in adventures? There's only when
you and the mutt are a loan together, of course,
homes what are you talking about? I am giving serious
thought to the writing of a small monograph on the
uses of dogs in the work of the detective.
Speaker 5: You mean bloodhounds?
Speaker 10: Oh no, no, no, that's been thoroughly explored already. But
a dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky
dog in a gloomy household or a sad dog and
a happy one. Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people,
dangerous ones, and changing canine moods may reflect changes in
the family around them.
Speaker 5: Holmes, did you summon me for my work for something
so trivial?
Speaker 10: In some ways? Watson, you never change. You never learn
that the gravest issue may depend upon the smallest things.
Professor Presbury, Presbury, the Cambridge physiologists I know, of course,
but not of roy has devoted wolfhound, who, now, after
years of being the traditional, faithful best friend of the man,
has twice attacked his master. What do you make of it?
Speaker 5: Isn't it obvious? The dog is ill distempered.
Speaker 10: The beast attacks no one else and molests the professor
only on very special occasions. A curious, very curious, Aha,
young mister Bennett, admirably prompt. Now we may learn more
about our professor and his perfidious pet.
Speaker 2: The matter, mister Holmes, is very delicate. We understand, mister Bennett,
the relation in which try stand.
Speaker 10: To Professor Presbury.
Speaker 2: Yes, both publicly and private.
Speaker 10: You see, Watson and mister Bennett here is not only
a professional assistant, but a great scientist, but lives under
his roof and is engaged with his only daughter.
Speaker 5: Congratulations, mister Bennett.
Speaker 2: Thank you. But the thing is, I don't see how
I can well justify myself if I speak before before
a third person.
Speaker 10: I see, I have no fear, mister Bennett. Doctor Watson
here is the very soul of discretion.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't doubt that at all.
Speaker 5: I can assure you, mister Bett.
Speaker 10: In fact, I was just about to impart all I
know of the case to him, so please please do continue.
Speaker 2: There has been a there have been first developments.
Speaker 10: Excellent, That's what I hoped for. But first I shall
proceed to outline, to share with my invaluable friend and colleague,
the course of events so far.
Speaker 2: I suppose I must accept your assurances, mister Holmes.
Speaker 10: Of course you must do that. Now. The Professor is
a man of European reputee. His life has been academic, illustrious.
Speaker 2: Liver a breath of scandal, not one, certainly, not.
Speaker 10: Not one breath of scandal then in all his sixty
one years, and now this most respectable widower has become
engaged with the daughter of Professor Morphy, his colleague in
the chair of Comparative Anatomy. The lady Alice Morphy is
an admirable match for the Professor in both mind and body.
Is that not so?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 10: Yes, he is and intellectually most accomplished for a girl
of twenty four years four Watson. Then, not long after
this happy engagement was announced, a little mystery clouded the
Professor's normal routine. He left home, left home with no
indication of where he was going. He was away a fortnight,
is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yes, and return altered in certain ways. His intellect was
not affected. His lectures were as brilliant as ever, if
not even more.
Speaker 10: But there was an alteration, as if he were under
some shadow. Those are your words, mister Bennett, something sinister,
you said, Not the man you'd known and admired for years,
you frankly stated, And if I had to help you,
you must continue to be so frank with me, and
with doctor.
Speaker 2: Watson very well.
Speaker 10: You were aware of the change in the professor as
soon as he returned.
Speaker 2: From the very hour he returned. He threw himself back
into his work with if anything, more vigor, more brilliant
than before. But yes, he was altered.
Speaker 4: Blood Tomorrow, Bennett, I shall announce my return with a dissertation,
a very rhapsody on the blood of life.
Speaker 6: Blood must have its course, lad, and then very dog
its day.
Speaker 4: Yes, will you agree with mister Kingsley, Then, mister Kingsley,
mister Charles Kingsley, the chartist clergyman who railed against celibacy
and wrote much about water, an obsession instilled in him
I've always maintained by his cold compose baths at school.
Speaker 7: Put the books down, boy.
Speaker 6: And find me that portfolio. Vascular diagon.
Speaker 4: We may agree with Kingsley Bennett, who said also that
we must do noble things, not dream them. But we
can no longer agree with Harvey in his explication of
the blood. Or rather, we now see more deeply, more
clearly into the complexity and versatility that it's not up there, boy,
certainly not up there.
Speaker 7: It's a purple folder.
Speaker 6: Yes, time with yellow cord.
Speaker 4: Let's take a morning soon to reorganize this place. We've
allowed too much clatter to accumulate. But it's good to
be back.
Speaker 7: No, it's surprisingly good.
Speaker 4: My first lecture tomorrow will be a declaration of intent
on my part, my intent to do more than simplify
difficult matters for inferior immature minds.
Speaker 7: My intends to do new work, bold work.
Speaker 11: The air of the company in Prague must be supremely invigorating,
Sir Prague. Yes, I had a letter from from a
fellow student there.
Speaker 7: He mentioned in passing that he.
Speaker 6: Give you a full account of my work there.
Speaker 7: Did hear this student fellow? No?
Speaker 2: No, he merely saw you across the street.
Speaker 4: Well the matter, find that portfolio, yes, sir, Oh, it's
such a genius.
Speaker 2: The man was.
Speaker 6: William Harvey.
Speaker 7: Here.
Speaker 4: It is then to Cordice on the motion of the
Heart and Blood in Animals sixteen twenty eight.
Speaker 7: A new age began then in it.
Speaker 4: Perhaps a new age is beginning now our knowledge of
the constituents and functions.
Speaker 7: Of the blood. Leave that alone.
Speaker 6: Maybe you meddling young for being here here, h.
Speaker 2: Give it to me.
Speaker 4: This box, This box you so carelessly handled, sir, lifted,
contains only personal material, private material, no concern of yours.
Speaker 2: I understand. I was only moving it out of my.
Speaker 4: Way other things that are not your concern. Well, of course, sir,
you are not my son, and you are not yet
even my son in law. You will agree I am
entitled to some privacy, let us not say secrets, some
proper privacy from a mere secretary and assistant, however much
confidence I have in him, of course, and I do
have confidence in you, Bennett. I am confident you will
respect my wishes, carry out my instructions as to certain
correspondents I expect from London correspondence letters Bennett, letters and
packages of a strictly private nature from London, which will
be marked beneath the stamp with a cross.
Speaker 7: You understand a cross beneath.
Speaker 4: The stamp, Just sir, Letters and packages so marked are
not to be opened by you if you value your
place here and your happy position with my daughter.
Speaker 10: And correspondence so marked did arrive.
Speaker 2: Yes, there have been several such deliveries.
Speaker 10: And you obeyed the professor's command. You've no idea of
that content none.
Speaker 2: They come from London. They were addressed in a rather
illiterate handwriting. Beyond that, I know nothing.
Speaker 10: Yes, in the box you so angered him by touching.
Speaker 2: Mister Hols the new development. I mentioned the incident the
night before last.
Speaker 5: Yes, I've been wondering about that.
Speaker 10: All in good time, mister Bennett, All in good order.
That's the proper method, my method. The box.
Speaker 2: I can tell you a little about it, wooden, quaintly carved.
I think he must have brought it back from Prague.
Speaker 10: Its contents, too, are a mystery too.
Speaker 2: Yes, all I know is he keeps the key to
it on his watch chain.
Speaker 10: When did the incident you've just described take place?
Speaker 2: Early in July? In fact, I can tell you the
exact date. I have it here, the second, And it
was on that date too, that Roy first attacked the
professor on July the eleventh. There was a similar scene
which Edith witnessed again on July the twentieth. Then we
had to banish the dog to the stables. But do
you have been such an affectionate Anna.
Speaker 10: I mean, you're an admirable witness. It seems you do
appreciate my methods.
Speaker 2: I learned method, mister Holmes from my great teacher, Professor Presbury.
Speaker 12: Hmm.
Speaker 10: Now, miss Edith Presbury, Edith, the Professor's daughter, you'll feel same.
Did she too note the disturbing change in her father's character?
Speaker 2: Well, yes she did, of course, but I don't see
the elephance of that. She knows even less than I
do about the marked letters.
Speaker 10: More to this than marked letters, mister Bennett. And you've agreed,
have you not to be utterly frank with me?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 10: I have, because we have to violate a deeper privacy
than the Professor's correspondence. I don't understand it is understanding
we seek, is it not? Now tell me what your
fears say? Has confided in you about her father's altered behavior.
Speaker 2: The day he came home from Prague, the first time
she saw him on his return.
Speaker 13: Come on now, Roy, good boy, we'll keep each other's
spirits up.
Speaker 3: We'll have a run in the meadow. Get the fresher.
Speaker 12: Father.
Speaker 6: Oh your home, so I am? Edis so I am?
And how wonderful it is to see we are so worried?
Speaker 2: No word from your to see Why where have you been?
Speaker 4: Both of you look radiant as the garden does, as
home does, everything does the please.
Speaker 3: We've been so anxious?
Speaker 4: Well I've been is of no matter.
Speaker 7: Now I'm home.
Speaker 5: I have nothing to tell you that you.
Speaker 2: Need to know, or that would entertain a young lady.
Speaker 10: But you you.
Speaker 2: Have much to tell me.
Speaker 3: Tell you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've been homesick.
Speaker 4: EDI's very sick and failing, indeed.
Speaker 6: But now I'm well, healthy and well and eager to
be doing.
Speaker 2: Don't I look?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 3: Yes you do, But oh I'm just nut tree.
Speaker 7: Is splendid, isn't it? And the lawn positively shines?
Speaker 2: Alice?
Speaker 10: How is Alice?
Speaker 3: She's well? But of course she too has been at
a loss us, my Alice.
Speaker 4: Not for company, our wager, And that a host of
young fools has been buzzing around her like foraging bees. Oh,
that fatuous swarm will now be dispersed, annihilated.
Speaker 12: Honey's all mine, mine, mine, alan.
Speaker 2: Pride, that was the word she used. He seemed so proud,
some breakthrough in his work. I assume new work, he
said to me, bold work.
Speaker 10: And yet, according to Edith, he didn't talk about his work,
about his alice.
Speaker 2: Gentlemen, I feel I must tell you about the night
before last.
Speaker 10: September fourth, nine nine. What a meaningful number homes. What
are you talking about? Do you tell us what happened
on this significant date, mister Bennett.
Speaker 2: It was about two in the morning. I was lying awake.
Speaker 5: I talked by the locovilla mind, been sleeping glader.
Speaker 2: With so much distress.
Speaker 10: Doctor you may consult doctor Watson A but your insomnia later,
please go on.
Speaker 2: I heard a sound in a corridor outside my room,
a dull, muffled sound. I got up, opened my door.
Mister Holmes, I believe I'm as strong nerved as any man.
But the corridor was dark, only one window half way
along through a patch of light, pale light on the floor,
and into it something was emerging, something dark, crouching, and
and it was he crawling, no creeping, not not quite
on his hands and knees more good God, more on
his hands and feet, his face sunk between his hands,
creeping but with ease, his eyes darting enough. I was paralyzed.
What's that.
Speaker 7: Bell?
Speaker 2: Coller?
Speaker 10: Who can it be?
Speaker 5: Cons Missus Hudson will discover who. I'm sorry, Jack, It's
all right.
Speaker 3: I knew i'd find you here, and I simply had
to see you after what happened last night. I just
couldn't wait for you to return. I couldn't remain another
night in that. Mister Holmes, I do apologize for this intrusion,
for my.
Speaker 10: Agitation, think nothing of that, Miss Presbury. Any fresh light
you may throw in your father's case the most welcome.
Speaker 5: Shall I have Missus Hudson bring up some tea?
Speaker 3: No, thank you, Doctor Watson. I'm quite recovered.
Speaker 5: Do you feel able now to tell us what happened
last night?
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Didith? We may speak as freely to Dr
Watson as to mister Holmes.
Speaker 10: Of course you may, of course you may do. Sit down,
Miss Presbury. We'll hear your account of last night's new
evidence a little later. First, i'd like to hear more
of your impressions of the change in your father since
his engagement to Miss Morphy. Alice, Miss Alice Morphy, to
whom your father became engaged in into within days of
that happy but unexpected.
Speaker 3: Well, yes it was right.
Speaker 10: Just within days of that happy but unexpected announcement. He
disappears to Prague and returns an altered man. Tell us
a little more about that.
Speaker 3: I don't quite see what you want.
Speaker 2: I confess neither do I, mister Holmes. After what I
have told you, and when Edith has experienced something, well say.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm sure confirm, Miss Presbury. The complete frankness is
essential if we're to unravel this case and complete trust
in my method.
Speaker 3: Jack very well, it was early in June, very fine, warm,
as you'll no doubt remember.
Speaker 10: That day he was.
Speaker 3: He was taking tea with the Morphies. Professor Morphy is
his closest colleague, and I knew he and Alice were.
They shared many interests, my interests are anyway. I didn't
go with him that day. I often did, But on
that afternoon I'd been strangely restless, a slight headache, and
the piano and my music as a great.
Speaker 2: Comfort to me.
Speaker 13: Good afternoon, Edith, Father, and Alice.
Speaker 3: How are you, Alice?
Speaker 13: I'm well Edith, we could hear your playings who came
across the garden, very.
Speaker 3: Sweet, sweet and sad when I'm in this headache. He
I begin with such a piece, then move to something
more light and jolly.
Speaker 13: And that is restorative, restorative, Well, yes, it helps sometimes curious,
but then you are artistic. All I can do in
such a condition is lie down in a darkened room
after taking one of my father's elixirs. Is your father, well,
oh yes, and perhaps imbibing elixirs of a different kind
right now.
Speaker 4: In celebration, Edith, And perhaps you will play something more jolly, now,
something downright joyful.
Speaker 13: I'd hope something episol is that the word it is?
Speaker 4: It is up, fair bride, and call thy stars from
out there several boxes.
Speaker 6: Take thy diamonds, rubies.
Speaker 3: Rubies, pearls and diamonds.
Speaker 7: Yes, and make thyself a constellation. A marriage song by
John Darky.
Speaker 13: No, I don't care for him. Mother used to read
his sermons to me.
Speaker 4: Oh, but in his youth alice such lines he could
spin love all alike, No season, nose, nor climb not
ours days months, which are the rags of time.
Speaker 13: I summon Ben Johnson to my case dear George. When
it comes to d George, you called my phone, Miss Murphy,
your longtime friend Alice, and now maya.
Speaker 4: Alice too has done me the stunning honor of Agreen
to be my wife.
Speaker 7: Now, where's that young Jack of yours?
Speaker 4: Jack?
Speaker 7: He must share in the celebration.
Speaker 4: Must my fine young mister Bennett in the laboratory?
Speaker 8: Is he?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 4: Yes, industrious fellow Bennett's last task today shall be to
bring up a bottle of our finest and.
Speaker 6: You, my pretty pale daughter, shall play.
Speaker 13: Hey, you are pale, Edith, And I think in no
mood for playing.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 13: No, I do has an utter surprise, do you Well?
Speaker 3: Of course there's been no hint that such as I know,
we have been very discreet.
Speaker 13: We allowed no suggestion that matters were developing in this
way until we were entirely sure of each other. Today
was his third propose.
Speaker 3: In fact, Alice, Thomas Wellwood, you and he I thought
were young.
Speaker 13: Mister Wellwood is pleasant company, and I know he has
high hopes, indeed high intention, of making his career in
the bank a sound one, but no more than sound.
There are no Newton's or Galileos in the signs of money.
But your father's work now and further attainments are ahead
for him. You must know that I'm not speaking of
merely material.
Speaker 2: Success, Edith.
Speaker 13: Your father's work of itself is endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 5: Alice.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think, I think I must take your advice.
This headache is one of the more immovable ones. I'd
best go and lie down.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 13: Of course we'll talk more late. Excuse me, Alice, Edith.
Speaker 14: I'm sorry, Alice. I do feel rather fair a moment.
Only you and I have been friends since childhood. I
want to still to be friends, do you well, of course?
And more than that, let me be frank. While your
father and I are married, we will of course live here.
But you mustn't think of me as you're.
Speaker 13: That's too upsurd even to say we should be like sisters, Edith, sisters.
Speaker 5: Edith's pressed, Rey, Are you feeling unwell?
Speaker 2: What is it? It is? Dr Watson.
Speaker 5: There's no need to continue if you don't feel after it.
You've told us enough.
Speaker 13: At the moment, I must tell you about last night, Edith.
Speaker 2: If you're unwell, you mustn't force yourself to see a
boy that woke me.
Speaker 3: I think certainly he was barking from the stables when
I was fully awake, and I know I was.
Speaker 5: I was awake.
Speaker 3: I remember thinking, it is my door locked? But of cod,
who is this these days? The moonlight at the window
was it was very bright. I could see quite clearly.
What was there?
Speaker 2: What was there at the window? You mean in the.
Speaker 3: Square of light?
Speaker 2: My father?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 3: My father's face pressed against the windowpane.
Speaker 2: But your room is it's on the second floor.
Speaker 3: One of his hands was raised as if it had
been about to push the window up. If that window
had started to rise, I know I'd have gone mad.
There have been times when I thought I am already,
but it was no delusion. He was there for about
twenty seconds or so, and I couldn't move if when
he vanished, I still couldn't budge. Paralyzed. All I could
do was lie and shiver until dawn. Then at breakfast
he didn't mention it. And did you know I made
an excuse to come to town here?
Speaker 7: I am curious, must curious.
Speaker 2: It's uncanny.
Speaker 10: But last night so soon, that is curious. Do you
have something in mind? Homes here an inn in Cambridge? You,
mister Bennett, shall return to your duties with as normal
a manner as you can pretend. While your fiance remains
in London. Your visit can be prolonged, Miss Presbury, yes easily.
And you and I, Watson, if you can, without too
much inconvenience, up route yourself from practice and domesticity, you
and I shall for the next few days be in
the most pleasant surroundings of that ancient and commendable hostel
that checkers in the linen is above reproach, report, above mediocrity.
There now you agree about the port.
Speaker 9: Mm very fine.
Speaker 10: And now that we're properly refreshed, we're fit to discuss
the place. What's your opinion?
Speaker 5: Mine? You want my opinion?
Speaker 10: Why shouldn't I?
Speaker 9: These days sounds I think I have become little more
than a habit to you, like a violin or your
old black pipe. Sometimes you consent to think alive in
my presence. But wouldn't it be as useful to.
Speaker 5: Address your pipe or that glass in your hand?
Speaker 7: And did know, Watson?
Speaker 10: My pipe doesn't register what I say, nor does it interject.
Speaker 5: As you do. You can't even to say so now.
Speaker 10: When Bennett found Prespery creeping along the corridor at night
in that strange stooped position. What do you make of that?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 9: As a medical man, I've known a severe attack of
lumbago make a person walk in such a.
Speaker 5: Way lumbago affection that can certainly be trying to the temper.
Speaker 10: Let's not be too flat footed. Watson Bennett told us
he was able to walk erect again. I was joking
home and the change and prosperous character his mysterious trip abroad.
Have you something suitably facetious to say about those aspects
of this case?
Speaker 9: No, speaking in all seriousness as a medical man, I
believe it's a case for an alienist. A quite elderly
gentleman falls in love, seriously so with a much younger woman.
His cerebral processes are disturbed by the affair. His journey
to Prague may be a last and futile attempt to
break himself of the fashion.
Speaker 10: And the secret letters and packages in the locked box.
Speaker 9: They may not even be directly connected some other private
transaction alone, perhaps will share.
Speaker 10: Certificates when the wall sound disapproves of this financial dealing. No,
no nerves moretimate all than this, all all connected.
Speaker 5: And how to propose we find out what more there
is in the morning.
Speaker 10: Now we confront prosperous and cajole an explanation from him,
But I'd value a good plose look at him. His
daughter's told us that he seems to have little or
no memory of those times when he's altered. I've thought
of a bold and provoking approach to take advantage of
that fact.
Speaker 4: And are you familiar with Cambridge, mister Holmes, I have
been summoned here before.
Speaker 7: That would suggest you are here?
Speaker 4: What's the phrase on a case?
Speaker 2: We are, yes, but we.
Speaker 10: Don't yet know quite how time consuming it might be.
Speaker 4: Then I must consume as little of your time as possible.
What can I do for you? Gentlemen?
Speaker 10: What can you do for us? I'm sorry that was
the question I was about to put to you. To me, yeah,
you see, I heard through an agent of mine that
Professor Presbury of Cambridge had need of my services. There
is only one. But as a Pressbury, I'm sure indeed
there is only one. And on the twenty six of
last month, you don't recollect communicating with my agent.
Speaker 4: It is not a matter of recollection. At no time
have I considered dealing with any detective Ah.
Speaker 10: And my agent must be an error. We can only
apologize for troubling you, Professor.
Speaker 4: Just a moment, gentlemen, perhaps my agent can throw some
light on the matter. It's not every day a man
gets the opportunity to assist a detective of your stature
and your informant, mister Holmes, would I know his name?
Speaker 6: Ah?
Speaker 10: I doubt it very much, And my business is in
this respect like the good doctors here, there must be
the strictest confidentiality between investigator and klan.
Speaker 4: Oh I too put great value on confidentiality.
Speaker 7: Bennett, Yes, sir.
Speaker 4: These two gentlemen have come from London under the impression
that they have been summoned.
Speaker 5: Do you know them?
Speaker 4: Know them, sir, Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson?
Speaker 2: Well, of course I know of pain.
Speaker 10: Tup yourself no more, Professor, Press, bring.
Speaker 7: No trouble, mister Holmes.
Speaker 4: You handle all my correspondence, don't you, Bennett, Yes, sir.
And have you a note of any kind of any
communication going to mister Holmes, or any letter, telegram, any
scrap of paper at all two or from any third
party concerning this, mister Holmes, nothing at all, sir, And
perhaps you'd show these misplaced and mistaken gentlemen out and
return to me at once.
Speaker 12: His nerves are in extreme disall that you must return
to him quickly.
Speaker 10: Miss Bennette, here you may be in for a rather
uncomfortable time.
Speaker 2: And still I hate to tell the man lies.
Speaker 9: Let him have his own way as far as you can.
Try to cross him as little as possible before you go.
Speaker 2: Which is Miss Presbury's bedroom window, second floor, third from
the right, And you'd better have this, mister Holmes, what
is it? It's the address of the man in London
with whom the Professor is secretly communicating. Well, now he
wrote to him this morning, and I got it from
his blotting paper. I must go and please please clear
all this up soon the blotting paper.
Speaker 10: Indeed, then the young man has the makings of a
detective Watson storag curious name.
Speaker 5: Holmes. Look at that window, Miss Presbery.
Speaker 10: To have lord as a creeper below and a water
pipe above which gives some foothold door rack Slavonic assume are.
Speaker 12: You suggesting you could climb to that window door rac?
Perhaps a behemior a prague, Yes, there's one, connect Watson.
But the once faithful dog that so hates him the
ivid war no normal man could scale.
Speaker 5: Glad you admit that is creeping date. We didn't learn
much from our bold close inspection, did we he?
Speaker 10: Apart from his poly concealed rage without intrusion, he gave
little away. But his memory is more reliable than his
daughter believes.
Speaker 9: He struck me as being in possession of a perfectly
clear and logical brain.
Speaker 5: And physically there was nothing remarkable.
Speaker 9: Portly smooth skin, and his complex in the eyes quite
at skinned, apart from the knuckles, of course, knuckles, but
always rock.
Speaker 10: The hands first, watsons, then cuffs, trouser, knees, and boots.
The Professor's knuckles were thick and horny in a way
that's quite new it what is it?
Speaker 12: The ivy the knuckles of the dog and prag crag
and good god, now surely.
Speaker 5: Not what connections?
Speaker 12: Horrifying connections?
Speaker 10: Back to London, Watson, you to seek out this dorac,
I to visit miss Edith Presbury.
Speaker 3: And haven't I told you how I felt about the engagement, mister.
Speaker 10: Honey, Yes you have, and I would press you no
further if I didn't think it necessary.
Speaker 3: And why is it so necessary? Forgive me but you
ask me for a most unusual frankness about matters that
are delicately yes of a personal and family nature. Certainly,
so may I not ask for an equivalent openness from you?
Speaker 10: Quite right? My investigations so far have led me to
begin to make certain connections in my mind. How worth
these connections lead will decide how I must approach your father,
how I might help him, help all yours. I want
to bring this way. I am being so bold as
to ask her lovely and decorous young lady to share
with a virtual stranger those secrets young women friends my chair?
Can you do that? Miss Presbury? Can you do that
to save your father? Save him and alas, to save
them both?
Speaker 2: Bravo?
Speaker 3: Your playing does improve Edith. And what a complex piece
it was. There's a deeper passion in it. I can't
quite reach what it might express.
Speaker 13: I can't say, but she is still required. It's a
science too in a way, isn't it? Is it costematics,
each note in its place, like the components of an equation.
Speaker 3: I met Thomas Wellwood yesterday.
Speaker 13: Oh he was passionate. He can be embarrassingly fervent to
that young man.
Speaker 3: He seemed torn between grief and anger. He suggested you
and he had an understanding.
Speaker 13: He misunderstood, and his passion will fade. The bank will
soon cure him of such adolescent indulgement.
Speaker 3: Already such a sweet man, Alice, sweet, a kind of.
Speaker 13: Shallow winsomeness is not for me, but my father is
most certainly.
Speaker 3: You you love my father.
Speaker 13: I don't object to the word, but are more precise ones.
I respect him, even revere him. I am honored that
such a brilliant and striving man should want me to
be his wife. I know he'll protect me. Raise my
understanding of the world, and I don't shrink from confessing it.
Raise my position in the world, I mean the world
of learning, of civilization.
Speaker 3: Or I feel all these things for Jack.
Speaker 13: I hope so, but we expect more then. You have
high experts.
Speaker 3: Surely it's not overly ambitious to pray for children from
our marriage.
Speaker 13: I have no such ambition.
Speaker 3: Your life together will be one entirely of the intellect
of civilization.
Speaker 13: And companionship, of course, no other fulfillment.
Speaker 3: You're only a few years older than I, and.
Speaker 13: I will be your father's faithful wife. We are not French, Alice.
That's as delicate as I can be to make sure
you understand.
Speaker 3: And does he understand that companionship.
Speaker 13: Is I'm sure he must. Your father, after all, has
already lived the kind of fulfillment you're talking about. You
are its result, and he is justly.
Speaker 2: Proud of you.
Speaker 3: I remember his face when he announced your engagement. He
looked fervent, his eyes were young. Please can we let.
Speaker 13: This subject rest?
Speaker 3: Have I given away enough secrets?
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 10: I think you have. And your connections they become more clear.
Speaker 3: In what direction do they lead?
Speaker 10: They lead me to Cambridge. Here they're compelled to stay
here out of danger.
Speaker 9: Dear God, Homes, I cannot believe this is happening there.
Speaker 5: It is what it's can mut me. But I see
it too while we are both awake the winds.
Speaker 10: You have your revolver, yes, I think, And something as
monstrous as this is unaged to. We must be ready
for anything.
Speaker 12: Look his son hiding around the side of the house
towards the Stable's good that the wolfhound is there.
Speaker 10: And so should our third man be there.
Speaker 2: The speed of him he moves.
Speaker 10: Like, Yes, Watson, I know what he moves like. Come
on now after him, Come.
Speaker 7: On you toothless, can't reach me, can't touch me.
Speaker 6: Of course you don't.
Speaker 2: You're the until I'm the master, dying chains and I'm
in charge the master.
Speaker 5: That's all mine.
Speaker 6: Go rich, having the sake, having the blood, having the.
Speaker 2: Brains, and me all brains and brawl, all from vain.
Speaker 6: That's the first aw man, come, man of blood and
lor and.
Speaker 2: Put down, stay back down, right, put down.
Speaker 7: You'll sleep for some time.
Speaker 5: The morphia should see to that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, doctor, Thanks for your help, mister Bennett.
Speaker 9: But he should be seen by a first class surgeon. No,
we had him firmly by the throat.
Speaker 2: And you've dressed the wound.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 2: I do have a medical degree.
Speaker 9: Then you know the teeth passed dangerously close to the
carotid artery.
Speaker 2: But he'll survive.
Speaker 5: Ah, yes, I think the dangerous past.
Speaker 2: Then no more outsiders, please if his condition gets beyond
these walls.
Speaker 5: But what is his condition?
Speaker 9: I still can't quite believe what I saw there on
the wall, on the way he was climbing, mister Bennett,
climbing on the ivy with the most extraordinary speed and agility,
leaping from branch to branch like a isn't that so Holmes,
it was like a dream on that moonlit wall. In
his dressing gown, he looked like a huge bat, and
he seemed to climb for the sheer joy of it.
His agility was.
Speaker 5: I can't fathom it. For pleasure.
Speaker 2: He climbs an ivied wall for pleasure.
Speaker 5: That's it looked.
Speaker 9: The other night when he appeared at the Young Ladies,
he must have been well indulging in this, this mad.
Speaker 2: Pastime when mere chance brought him to Edith's window.
Speaker 5: Yes, we must assume. So is that your opinion?
Speaker 9: Homes homes? What mere chance brought him to his daughter's window?
Speaker 10: Oh, no doubt, no doubt, Holmes.
Speaker 7: What is this?
Speaker 5: How could he do those things? Is it madness?
Speaker 7: Madness?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 10: Yes, it's that you're.
Speaker 2: Interest in the dates? Nine days? You said? Are you
thinking of some connection between bouts of insanity and phases
of the moon?
Speaker 10: Now a drug, a drug administered at regular nine day intervals.
The incident out of sequences, appearance at the window or
the fourth of September. But either he didn't increase the
dose or the effects were growing out of his control.
I inclined to the latter theater.
Speaker 5: But what drug could bring about her horrible transformation.
Speaker 10: Perhaps we'll find the answer in that precious locked box
of his. You said, the keys on his watchchain, yes, yes,
and the box in the laboratory it was, yes. And
bring the key and show us the way. As I
warned you, we may have to violate his deepest privacy.
Speaker 2: Yes, it fits not much here, but enough you were
right home.
Speaker 9: A hypodermic syringish.
Speaker 2: One empty file, one nearly full. And the letters you
see with the cross under.
Speaker 9: The stamp from our bohemian friend in London, Dorac. Well,
I've already settled him.
Speaker 2: The police should be interviewing him now.
Speaker 10: Ah, he's no more than an errand boy, I'm sure
you'll find a more significant name in that other letter.
Speaker 2: This one it's from Prague.
Speaker 10: Should I read it, mister Holmes, if you can face
all the truth?
Speaker 2: Well, of course I why should I not? I shall
read it. No one named h Lowenstein.
Speaker 10: Lowenstein, I know that.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, he.
Speaker 2: Says, no.
Speaker 9: Let me see, honored colleague, the treatment enjoined caution not
without danger.
Speaker 7: The serum of.
Speaker 9: Of anthropoid would have been better have used black faced
languor a specimen was accessible languel an ape from the Himalayas,
is it not, Yes, the most human of climbing monkeys.
Speaker 2: He was injecting himself with apes serum.
Speaker 9: Lowenstein is already known and condemned by his profession for
his ruthless search for the secret of rejuvenescence, for the
elixir of life, his.
Speaker 2: Strength, his agility, new use, new.
Speaker 10: Virility.
Speaker 9: And of course the dog must have sensed the change
in him before anyone else his.
Speaker 15: He smells Alice, dear God, Alice, Holmes. Even Lonstein, when
presist due, We're right to him. Yes, even go there,
go to Prague, confront him with his criminal responsibility for this,
this obscenity.
Speaker 10: Yes, yes, we can stop Loernstein. But others will follow.
Others may find a better way, the sensual, the material,
the worldly. They will prolong their worthless lives. There's more
of the spirit, will resist the temptation. So who will survive?
What sort of cesspool might our world become? So you
think you understand, mister philosopher.
Speaker 7: Holmes, Professor, how can you?
Speaker 5: Professor? You should not be moving?
Speaker 16: He still, doctor, My elixir is more powerful than any
common saw bones can know, more potent than your morphia.
Speaker 5: You must go back to bed.
Speaker 16: And you, Holmes, you lecture me about when my work
should be done, when my life should be over?
Speaker 7: Are you not lecture?
Speaker 10: I merely observe with horror.
Speaker 6: Horror, the meddling detective, the grubby snoop is horrified.
Speaker 4: How could you understand my horror that I should wither
before my work, my life is.
Speaker 7: Fulfilled?
Speaker 4: How can you understand my.
Speaker 17: Meed Ah professor, Dear God, strange to hear that name
from one who'd flout nature's laws.
Speaker 6: Down here to pray homes my.
Speaker 7: Way as yourself listen to yourself?
Speaker 10: Is this the man of renewed youth will wait at
the altar for miss Alice Morphy. And don't you think
a wife, even one as innocent as she, will sense
that you stand there with blood in your veins. That's
a front to nature, Blood that flows from a monstrous
experiment that's already brought you like an animal to your
daughter's window in the middle of the night. That's aroused
disgust and fear in your family, your friends, even your
own dog. Watsn't Yes, And as a nearly trained to town,
but I think we have time to return to the
checkers first for a refreshing cup of tea. What's become
of me?
Speaker 5: Ah?
Speaker 10: You have a loyal servant in mister Bennett here, and
I think still a devoted friend.
Speaker 7: Of course, God bless you.
Speaker 10: Here and your daughter will see you through what will,
no doubt to be a long and painful convalescence. And
perhaps perhaps you will have a wife to guide you
with proper discipline to a full recovery. Now, Watson, the Checkers,
and that team.
Speaker 8: In The Creeping Man, Sherlock Holmes was played by Clive
Madison and Doctor Watson by Michael Williams, with Robin Ellis
as Professor Presbury. Edith Presbury was played by Deborah Berlin,
Alice Murphy by Annabel Mullion, and Jack Bennett by Oliver Smpton.
Speaker 7: The violinist was Leonard Friedman.
Speaker 8: The Creeping Man was dramatized for radio by Robert Forrest
and directed by Patrick Raymer.