Speaker 1: Come in.
Speaker 2: Welcome. I'm E. G. Marshall. I don't suppose I'm alone
in a fantasy I often have when I look at
some paintings. A sleepy, quiet house among trees, a street
that turns a corner behind the painted buildings, A dark,
mysterious cave burnt like a smoking hole in the side
of a bright, sun drenched Arizona cliff Well. I could
go on and on, but I won't. What all of
them have in common is the tempting allure of dreaming
that it might be possible to step into the frame
and visit that house, round that corner, explore that cave.
A tug so strong that it pulls you towards the
canvas is, though hypnotized, if you've ever had that feeling,
or even if you haven't, this is what our story
is all about. Watch that old man.
Speaker 3: He sits there like no one is there but him,
and let's cooly painting lead him alone.
Speaker 2: I think the guy could be dead or a mute.
A museum is a place for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: It's like an escape, and yet weighs list one. I
think he's got to be watched. There's something eating him
about that painting, and it's a job to protect it.
Speaker 2: Our mystery drama Portrait of a Killer was written especially
for the Mystery Theater by Ian Martin and stars Michael Wager.
It is sponsored in part by sign Off, the Sinus
Medicines and Buick Motor Division. I'll be back shortly with
that one. The Fresnik Museum is not one of the
world's great art collections, but it is surely one of
the most eclectic, by which I mean the rich man
who left it and his house to the city was
extremely choosy about what he liked or disliked. It contains
a wide ranging potpourri of special and disparate gems, from
a Rubens to a poor clay, from ancient Byzantine through
the most literal of English nineteenth century painting, to the Impressionists,
the Cubists, and even a smattering of pop art, and,
most important to us, the only museum in the world
in which hangs A. W. H. Haskell, and thereby hangs
our tale. Are you worrying about that picture again?
Speaker 3: Charlie haunts me?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Why don't they hang it in a better life?
Speaker 2: An It's just the right light for a Ciras's Girl's Charlie, Yeah,
what a Italian word?
Speaker 3: Uh you know, we go yeah, just cause your father
was born in Florence. That makes you the big art
expert carry a cask or one of you who says, well,
what's the word in plain English?
Speaker 2: W there isn't any The Curra's girl means, uh, well,
the arrangement or a treatment of the light and dark
parts in a work of art, whether color or black
and white.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this point in the air, it ain't in
black and white.
Speaker 2: It's a monochrome. And why oh like it's done in
different tones of all one color kind of greenlight.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, uh you mentioned it.
Speaker 2: That's what it is, all.
Speaker 3: Green and spooky and crawley like cheese wall.
Speaker 2: Eh, Charlie, you don't like the picture. Why do you
mean around over.
Speaker 1: It all the time?
Speaker 3: It ain't me. It's him who, the old guy who's
been coming in the last couple of weeks, just around
this time, after you go off and and nothing.
Speaker 2: He sits on the.
Speaker 3: Bench, heil leaning on a stick and keeps staring staring
at this.
Speaker 2: Yere pitchy like he was waiting for something to move
or something to move. What could move there are no
figures in it.
Speaker 3: Well I know what could move?
Speaker 2: Made me expeact. Somebody is sneaking around in all them trees.
Come on, Charlie, you know you're looking a job. Get
to you know. I get crazy notions sometimes living here
in the past, like it was with with the dead,
with the quiet and all. But y but I thought you,
being older, they wouldn't get you. I guess I was wrong.
Uh Hey, the de.
Speaker 3: Of Joe, and I mean everybody that gets tied up
with something dead and gone at my age E gives
me goosebumps.
Speaker 2: I had no figure to be around. So uh you
you will.
Speaker 1: Bury your nephews and your cousin.
Speaker 2: Sh what is it? And he comes here?
Speaker 3: Who comes the viewer with the scar from all? Eh,
Let's make ourselves scarce and he'll see.
Speaker 2: What I mean. Why do I come here because somewhere,
sometime a man named John Brown has to be remembered,
if not for himself, at least for what he could
give of himself. Who would have imagined ouible seeming the
terrible failure of my life is one last unexpected piece
of immortality remains. And how bitter that it had to
be this the visual representation of everything that brought me
a disaster and tragedy. Uh yes, watch him, Charlie. I
am hired by the museum to watch a lot more
than I said. Gray old man who comes in for
lunch and I and arrest look at him. He'll sit
there and stare at that painting without moving from now
for closing time.
Speaker 3: Oh what is it?
Speaker 2: Grabbed him? So wanted to ask him.
Speaker 3: He wanna come with me for a minute and I'll
show you why. Okay, had nice little picture. That's one
of my own favorites.
Speaker 1: He really seems to get to you, he.
Speaker 2: Said, forget it, Johnnie, what's my own bitch? I just say, hey,
you happen to know the artists.
Speaker 3: Come on, Charlie, Okay, okay, you see it's like no
one was there but him and that screwy picture.
Speaker 2: Don't bother him. The guy could be a dam or
a mute. A museum is a special place for lots
of guys. It's an escape. They knew how I wish
I were in sightless or dead, and I cannot die
as long as any trace remains, and this is all
it's left. Oh my sweet god, have I not suffered enough?
Can I not at last make the final sacrifice and
a tone for all my crimes? Is there no way back?
Some hope to change the future? And my Lord nobody
watching me? Could I step into that frame and back
into the past. Could I relieve it again, somehow change
the course of faith? How long will I hesitate to trouble?
Am I'm waiting for? If it is to be any time?
As it be?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: Show what is it now? Charlie, Hey, old.
Speaker 3: Guy sitting on the bench watching the picture. We're back
at the picture again. He just suddenly disappeared, and at
his age, he probably was a week with me.
Speaker 2: Ah, I don't mean that.
Speaker 3: He just walked into the alcohol toward the picture, and
when I moved around so I could see into it,
he was gone, as though he stepped into the.
Speaker 2: Frame and out of this world. He looked, Charlie, you
are right. Oh, I'm all right here.
Speaker 3: I know what I'm talking about. Now come here, look, Charlie,
I don't argue, come here, uh ook, look.
Speaker 5: At the picture.
Speaker 2: That picture's an obsession with you.
Speaker 3: I looked at it closely, right there on the path,
moving up towards the front door.
Speaker 2: Cerally, I think you're flipping out. Now you there are
no figures in that painting. Just look, I'm looking. I
don't see anything.
Speaker 3: It said, kiss cature, whatever you call it. It's hard
to see in the shadows and the same color and
what like there is. But he he's here, just the same,
creeping out towards the door.
Speaker 2: Who's there? The viewer? The old guy disappeared from the
bench on. You gotta be crazy. There's nobody there. How
could you see without your glasses?
Speaker 1: Parmer?
Speaker 2: I heard enough crazy, he's wandering here from the outside.
I gotta live with one on the inside. Yeah, okay,
till my glasses are on.
Speaker 3: Where is he? Mm?
Speaker 5: Yea?
Speaker 3: It took too long, didn't you see? He just went
around the corner of the building till the back.
Speaker 2: You are as nunhing as a fruitcake. I didn't see that.
I wish I Hadn't you know? He was wearing what
a tweed suit with mickers and high shoes with a
skip cap.
Speaker 3: I ain't seen her fit like that since I was
a boy myself, just before World War One.
Speaker 2: The Braxton House, That damn Braxton House. From the beginning,
it it both lured me and repelled me. Just the
house itself, long before I'd met and fallen in love
with Polly and learned to hate Gilbert Fairly, the smooth,
suave guardian her father appointed when he died. Gilbert Fairly Surely,
one of the most ironic names for a manner, was
driven to win, but happiest when he could do it
by cheating, or hurting or destroying the loser. That summer
of nineteen seventeen, sneaking around a corner of that bewitching
it lonesome house, I was bound and determined he wouldn't
get away with it with me. Charlie. I don't know
if you're putting me on, but if you're not, I'm
really gonna start worrying about you. Joe, I swear.
Speaker 3: First off, I noticed the old man had disappeared from
where you were sitting.
Speaker 2: And then I seen a.
Speaker 3: Guy in the picture movie dressed just like I said.
But that wasn't what.
Speaker 2: Scared me so much. M What was it?
Speaker 3: Right here on the path you see where this kind
of a spot of moonlight or sunlight or whatever it is. Yeah,
right there He stopped for a moment, and he sort
of looked back over his shoulder just long enough so
I could get a glimpse of his face, and.
Speaker 2: He looked like, uh boris colored?
Speaker 3: Uh no, but so help me. I know who he
did look like, by the way he could have looked
back there.
Speaker 2: Around that time. Yeah, and now you're gonna tell me
it was your bed sitter, right, your what does it
you call him? Your viewer? It's just what I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: I laid dollars to down, I said, old Bomb used
to visit or sneak into this house around fifty years
ago when.
Speaker 2: He was a young guy. So maybe he did.
Speaker 5: But what's it to you?
Speaker 2: What do you care?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 6: Do know?
Speaker 3: It is sure you a hell?
Speaker 1: And I want to know what went.
Speaker 3: On in that house that was strong enough to call
a man back from today to walk through.
Speaker 2: That frame day yesterday. So what do we have An
elder citizen filling a job who is slipping into senility
without realizing it, or a valid case of dreams come true?
An old man who has come back from Lord knows
what to moon over a picture that represents his youth
and in some magical way has beckoned him back to
it to change the course of events, or only to
relive them. I shall return shortly. It is the year
nineteen seventeen, America was racked with the agonizing debate over
whether or not America should enter the Great War, which
was raging in Europe. But somehow, individuals continued to be
as absorbed as ever in their own personal problems. For example,
a young man with the undistinguished name of John Brown,
an artist with limited prospects and even more limited funds,
fell helplessly in love with a young heiress named Polly Braxton,
and she with him. I mention this only because, if
I repeat, it were possible for someone to step back
through a picture frame into the past, and that man
happened to be John Brown, this is where he would
have found himself. It was a long wait, as always
for Polly and the gazebo, but at last she came
quickly and silently to my arms and back to my
waiting heart.
Speaker 5: Oh, John Darling, forgive me for being so late. I
I couldn't get away from him tonight.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter now you're here. I love you, Polly,
and I love you.
Speaker 5: I don't understand why he's so dead set against you,
knowing it's what I want.
Speaker 2: I'm an artist, which automatically means I have nothing. How
could I support you who cares about money?
Speaker 5: I have plenty for both of us.
Speaker 2: Not till you're twenty one. Oh, I I couldn't live
off you anyway, Polly.
Speaker 4: Only till you're a successful artist and everyone realizes how
wonderful you are.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you something. I don't say I'm gonna
be famous, but I think I found a sponsor who
missus Chelton Presnik a ancient old grass, would it? Oh grass?
She might be ancient, she isn't exactly m Johnny Brown.
Speaker 5: I'm surprised at you scarcely twenty two. She must be
all of thirty and beyond.
Speaker 4: And everyone knows her husband was old enough to be
her father more when they married.
Speaker 2: All things considered hero to have been your guardian instead
of instead of me, mister Brown, mister Philly Gilbert.
Speaker 5: I didn't see you approaching.
Speaker 3: I made no effort to conceal my approach. I made
them carrying a torch. As you can see, I was
not aware you had an appointment with mister.
Speaker 1: Brown's not it I clandestine?
Speaker 4: A point from I need no protection against Johnny, and
I hope you never.
Speaker 2: Have cause to regret those words. I intend to do
all in my power to make sure you don't. Now
just a moment, mister Phierley, I.
Speaker 3: Will ask you not to meddle in family matters. Mister Brown,
I'll talk to you in a Marland polly.
Speaker 1: Take this torch. Mind your way along the path.
Speaker 4: I'm not leaving.
Speaker 3: You will do as I tell you, or I swear
by Heaven, I will lock you in your.
Speaker 1: Room till your twenty first birthday. The torch it will
light you back to the house.
Speaker 2: Do as he says you sure you want me to live?
Trust me, darling, I do.
Speaker 6: Good night.
Speaker 3: You are never going to see my ward again. I'm
warning you, John Brown, I'm carrying a gun at this
moment and consider you a trespasser.
Speaker 1: This time, I'll let you go, but if you ever.
Speaker 3: Show up at Braxton House again, I will shoot you
on sight.
Speaker 2: Fine, I may show up with a gun myself.
Speaker 3: You won't get very far from now on. I'm turning
loose trained dogs who tear any stranger within the property apart.
Speaker 2: I like, quietly enough my tail between my legs, but
not as far as mister Gilbert fairly thought I'd gone
by the front of the house. I doubled back to
the trellis in the Wisteria and was up on the
porch roof in a moment, knocking at Polly's window gently.
Speaker 6: Sh shit, why.
Speaker 2: Do you love me?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: I do what then?
Speaker 2: And let me in. We've we've got to talk about
our future, if we're ever going to have any Hey, Joe,
not the w h Haskell? Yeah? Yeah, what is it
this time?
Speaker 3: The guy that was sneaking up the path? You know,
I just saw him climbing up on top of the.
Speaker 1: Porch and one of the windows was lighted up there.
Speaker 4: Oh, come on, Charlie, not only that bread, what happened?
Speaker 2: Nothing happened, isn't that it? When closed? The ride's out?
Speaker 3: It's just like there was Moro and just the way
it's always been.
Speaker 2: Hope, Johnny, it's our only hope. I told you what
he said. He he'd shoot me or turn the dogs
on me if I try to come back and see you.
Speaker 7: But how well how.
Speaker 5: Can we get married?
Speaker 2: I mean without his consent, cross the state line and
you're old enough in that state. Without consent, how.
Speaker 5: Would we get there? What would we live on?
Speaker 2: I have a sponsor, remember, I'm sure if I talk
to her, she'll by the rest of what I've got.
She's already brought one of my paintings, and I have
that saved up a whole hundred dollars that will pay
for the wedding and the trip at all. But couldn't
Gilbert have the marriage and know not if you well,
I mean not.
Speaker 5: If oh, oh yes, yes, yes, darling, we'll do it.
Speaker 2: I'll meet you. It had four holks on the way
to church. I can borrow a model team. We can
drive all that day and may get across the state
line in time to remarried. By the time Fairly gets back,
finds you gone traces your If you can, everything will
be well. I mean it won't be util Monday morning,
but by then I'm oh.
Speaker 5: Stop stammering, darling. I wanna belong to you, to be yours,
and once I am, he'll just have to accept things
as they are till Sunday.
Speaker 2: Till Sunday, you'll never regret it. You'll never regret it
if either of us could ever have dreamed. But at
that moment, I was too concerned with another problem that
lay ahead of me, which also concerned a woman. My sponsor,
Marsha Fresnick.
Speaker 7: Poor Johnny Brown, who would have expected view this late?
And wasn't it clever of you to pick the maid
to night. I'll come in.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to bother you, Missus Fresnick, but well, something
has come up at all.
Speaker 7: Right, Johnny, But do we have to talk about it
in the hall. Let's go inside and be comfortable. And
does it have to be missus Fresnick.
Speaker 2: Well, now, uh, come on and sit beside me on
the couch.
Speaker 7: Now, let's get that unhappy frown off our handsome face
and tell mama what the trouble is.
Speaker 2: Well, I, oh, you kind of like the sort of
thing I do, don't you?
Speaker 7: Well, i'd I don't know. You haven't exactly started doing
it yet.
Speaker 2: I met my painting. Oh that well, well, I mean
you did say something about helping me. I I you
did sort of promise to be my patron. You you
bought one picture from me?
Speaker 3: Yes, I did.
Speaker 7: And let's be fair to Chelton. He recognized your talent
for a painting. That is, he thought you had quite
a future, but you don't. Well, I'm temporarily interested in
the present, so am I. How I'm delighted to hear it.
Do you wanna tell me.
Speaker 2: Why missus, I mean, Marsha, how do I have all
of me?
Speaker 7: Well, that's quite a proposition. Why this sudden capitulation as
that's the world.
Speaker 2: Because I need money. I I I paint because I
want to one everything I paint. I I never wanna
let go, never wanna sell. But it's well, just how
I need money? Oh is that all? But don't be silly.
Speaker 7: I have plenty for both of us, and you can
still hang on to your precious kindnasses plenty.
Speaker 3: For both of us.
Speaker 2: I I don't understand.
Speaker 7: Well, let's not talk about that in the living room.
We could make it all much clearer upstairs up stairs.
Speaker 2: Hm, oh no, look, Marsha, I don't I don't need money.
W Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that, joss Of. But what well,
I need money for us to get married married. But
I I don't mean to you.
Speaker 7: I mean to Polly Polly, Oh you mean Polly Braxton.
Gerald Fairley would never let you have her.
Speaker 2: He has his.
Speaker 7: Sights on her for himself, mister Fairley, he's old enough
to now let's not discuss who's old enough to be
Who's what? And I don't wanna talk about that, silly
little baby like Polly. Let's just concentrate on us. Sure,
but what are through my husband's connections. I can arrange
a one man's show for your paintings, but that will
take time.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, there's you and me. I can't wait
for a seor and I. I I just like to
be able to say, oh, I have to.
Speaker 7: Raise some cash so you can try to marry Polly Brack.
Speaker 3: Yes you prefer her to me?
Speaker 2: Well, morse, it's it's different with.
Speaker 7: Us, A damn right it is. You don't mind letting
yourself out, do you?
Speaker 1: Sins?
Speaker 7: In a larger sense? You already have.
Speaker 2: The first thing. The following morning, I went straight to
mister Fresnick Steeler, who had handled the one sale i'd made.
I laid my cards on the table about needing money.
He said he couldn't handle what I want, but he
would refer me to the Kopleman Galleries, and that that's
all you have every canvas I finished, mister Kopleman, mm
vm gir or renoir. You're not. I wouldn't expect to
be yet. Besides, there not my style. But my style
needs to buy what I can sell, So buy now?
Handle you show you maybe, but right now I need cash.
M I'll take it on consignment the usual percentage agreement,
and I'll push it all I can. Is it what
I needed it? Don't rush me. I didn't finish. If you,
I'll make a special deal, an advance against future sales
five hundred and I can see that's not enough. I'll
spatch a little a thousand dollars cash. But that is
as far as I can go. When could I have it?
I have a wagon downstairs. You help me stack these
canvases in it, and you'll get it right away. I
didn't question anything for a moment. Things had gone even
better than I could have hoped. Polly and I met
that Sunday's plan across the state line by mid afternoon
and got Polly Fellert in the hotel. We registered as
man and wife, which we were going to be as
soon as I found the justice of the peace. Then
came the first blow.
Speaker 6: John, where have you been?
Speaker 5: What took you so long? When do we get the license?
Speaker 2: Oh? Honey, I is anything wrong?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 2: We? Well, we can't get married yet.
Speaker 5: Oh I knew it.
Speaker 6: God is punishing us.
Speaker 5: I knew it was too good to be true. We
still have to wait two years until I know?
Speaker 2: I say, take it easy, daring, Not two years, just
two days? Forty eight hours? Oh?
Speaker 5: Is that all?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 1: Everything's all right? Sure?
Speaker 2: Only I know.
Speaker 6: This was to be our wedding night. We waited so long?
Why does it have to be longer?
Speaker 2: I yes, it's just the way the rules are made.
Speaker 4: But we are going to be married in forty eight hours.
We are man and wife already.
Speaker 5: In our hearts. Couldn't we been those old rules just
a bit? Do we have to wait any longer?
Speaker 6: What harm would it do?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: I guess? I I guess, considering how much we both
want each other, it wouldn't do any harm at all.
I make no moral judgments. I only comment that twice recently,
John Brown has made compromises with the two most important
things in his life, his art and his love for
some men. In any day and age, this has afforded
no problem for John Brown. Marked by fate, or if
you wish to call it retribution, it pulled his whole
existence down upon him like a falling house of cards,
spelled his immediate failure and final doom. I shall return
shortly with Act three. That morning, Polly and John woke
up together, man and wife in every sense, but the
piece of paper that would make it legal. Two things
happened that affected their future. The United States declared war
on Germany, and Gilbert Fairley, not entirely by accident, discovered
where his missing ward had disappeared to. Both of these
events set a series of actions in motion which are
to bring us back full circle through fifty years to
the Fresdic Museum and the haunted painting. But let us
leave the future for the future and stay for the
present with the past. Are you awake, John, Yes, Polly. Uh.
For a long time, I I didn't wanna wake you.
Speaker 5: Oh, good morning mister Brown, Good morning this Brown husband.
Speaker 2: Wife. Oh, I feel so wicked, me too. In about
thirty four and a half hours, it can all be
nice and legal.
Speaker 5: Well, don't sound so bored about it.
Speaker 2: Well I'm not. After all, it's only a matter of
for him. Now.
Speaker 5: You're not worried about making a dishonest woman enough.
Speaker 2: Meeting, But why should I be, since I have every
intention of making you the other two the other What
an honest woman. We didn't know how short our happiness
was to be. Hell has no fury like a woman's scornful.
Perhaps that's an apt quotation, but I never thought Marsha
would have felt that strongly, but I guess she did.
I'm sorry if I'm late for lunch, Marsha, so I,
But then at the habit of yours, don't be cross.
I am going to be very cross with you for
many reasons. You intend to marry Polly Braxton. Of course
if I don't before she's twenty one, she could bounce
me out.
Speaker 1: I'm quite possibly will.
Speaker 2: Where is Polly now?
Speaker 1: Down to fin o?
Speaker 3: That's why I was late for our meeting?
Speaker 2: Do you have any idea I might?
Speaker 1: Well, it's damned important to me. Really?
Speaker 2: Why you know why I'm not in the best of shape.
Should my guardianship be examined now? But we're in a
couple of years with Polly as my wife. I need
have no worries, and I.
Speaker 7: Have a piece of information that's worth your whole empire.
What do I get in exchange?
Speaker 2: What do you want?
Speaker 7: A continuance of our present relationship? Nobody pleases me quite
like you. Granted your little pigeon has flown the coup
to get married. You have about let's see a little
over twenty four hours to stop it. Would you like
to know where to find her?
Speaker 6: Who?
Speaker 5: Who is that?
Speaker 6: Darling?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm terribly frightened.
Speaker 2: Trying not to be Go into the bathroom, darling. I'll
answer it. Okay, okay, I'm coming. Oh it's you. Where
is she? Where's Polly? None of your damn business. She's
she's my wife.
Speaker 1: Now, Oh, no, she's not.
Speaker 3: I took care to check on that at the registrar's
office before I came here. I'm gonna have you off
a statutory rape, and I have enough evidence on you
to make it stick.
Speaker 5: No, please, I'll go in court and swear it.
Speaker 1: You can only hurt him.
Speaker 3: You're nineteen and still my ward, and without a marriage license,
you'll still not reach the age of consent.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm giving you both one choice.
Speaker 3: Take it, or I'll shame you and Polly out of
all society, and I'll ram you in jail for the
best part of your life. Mister John Brown, what's the choice?
Speaker 2: We have just gone to war.
Speaker 1: We'll need plenty of canon.
Speaker 3: Father. I shall expect you, mister Brown, to report to
the nearest recruiting station today or at the latest tomorrow
and Polly. I'm going to do something for Polly that
you couldn't or wouldn't do. I'll make her my wife
and an honest woman.
Speaker 2: I won't go through all the pleating, the threats, the
tears from Polly, and the vicious obstinacy of Gilbert. Today
it would seems senseless. In nineteen seventeen, it was a
different world, and I ended up with one of the
first catteries to ship overseas to the mud and the trenches,
a member of the American Expeditionary Force. I think I
prayed that a book would find me, put me out
of my misery, but with the perversity of fate. Since
I didn't care about living, I was one of those
who came back as our troopship doctored was delilium. Everyone
in transports of happiness, there was none for me. Of
all the letters I've ever written, I never had one
reply from Pa. I was surprised Tomsham that he had died,
surprised that she was there, but surprised more than anything
at how she had aged. So good to see you home,
Johnny Ow. It should be glad to be back, or
at least grateful house with Polly.
Speaker 7: But as soon as you can break three, why don't
we go somewhere and talk?
Speaker 2: Were you taking me back home with me?
Speaker 7: You surprised to see a woman driving a car?
Speaker 2: Shyes, not you, but was in general? Yes?
Speaker 7: When I learned why you boys were overseas, the women's
auxiliary did.
Speaker 6: What it could.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that. What about Holly? Well, she married Gilbert,
you know from all my unanswered letters, I could have
guessed right after I left.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 7: No, she waited his arm as she could. But you
say your letters were unanswered.
Speaker 2: That's right, dear lord. It's worse than all thought. What
does that mean?
Speaker 3: But I I guess she could never have received them, John,
I don't think she.
Speaker 7: Would have married Gilbert if she had, I mean, if
you told her that you still loved her.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 2: Oh what's the difference now? I don't suppose anything's happened
to my paintings, I mean anything of interest?
Speaker 7: I mean no, did you do anything over there?
Speaker 2: You mean painting? O? Good lord?
Speaker 4: No, I hope you will again.
Speaker 7: You won't pay any of the old Braxton houses still
in my ex husband's collection. The others, well, you'd you'd
have to ask Gilbert about those, Hubert, it was a
condition Polly made before she'd marry him. They were brought
from a dealer named Copperman and put in her name.
You have quite a sum waiting for you in the bank, Johnny,
I don't want it.
Speaker 2: Hut. I got out my pictures.
Speaker 7: Well they are yours now to claim What what do
you mean?
Speaker 2: She left them to you in her will when she
put once you once you wro Marcia's Polly Polly dead? Yes, Johnny,
Polly is dead.
Speaker 6: Oh, oh she was.
Speaker 7: She was going to have a child, but she go
She committed serious hanged herself before the child was born.
Why why, That's something else you'll have to ask Gilbert about,
he said, And he he had a telegram.
Speaker 2: To prove it that you had been killed in action.
Speaker 7: We all thought you were dead.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: And suddenly it was all crystal clear, that cold fish
carrying through his plots that no matter what cost, the
child mine and Polly's not his. The intercepted letters broke
her thinking I no longer cared for her, And then
with that false telegram, the last frail hope crushed and
her ghastly escape from his cruelties and demands taking our
child with her, and so half in samee. With rage,
I went to Braxton Hospital the last time to face
the man I felt could shame the devil.
Speaker 3: I heard you were back in the stage, John Brown,
and I've been rather expecting her to turn up here.
Speaker 2: Aren't you afraid of?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: Did you tear me?
Speaker 1: Limb from limb?
Speaker 2: I prepared that German lucre.
Speaker 3: I purchased it from one of our brave Yankee doodle
boys like you.
Speaker 2: You're a fool.
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid to die, my dear Johnny. I have
no intention of shooting you.
Speaker 2: I have better ways of bleeding you slowly to death,
making you writhe helplessly.
Speaker 1: As I have those past. Yeh, come with me and
let me give Polly's legacy to you.
Speaker 2: I followed him from the hall up the stairs to
an unused room. We entered, and I looked about the
room in blank horror and blinding anger. Every canvas, safe
one that I had ever painted, blooded and drenched with
bright red paints, and ripped to tatters by knife slashes
in their frames. The rest of your children mad to destroyed, ruin,
How could.
Speaker 1: My revenge for my humiliation?
Speaker 2: And now the last.
Speaker 1: I say this one letter that I intercepted for you,
read it.
Speaker 2: I read it on, but the sentences that remained in
my mind were these.
Speaker 6: You must understand, my darling, that I only married him
to save you, and you will never touch me.
Speaker 5: Our child is growing inside me.
Speaker 6: And when you come back, we will.
Speaker 5: Arrange a divorce or in a moment so that we
can be married. Please be careful, you must come back.
Speaker 6: I love you forever now.
Speaker 5: And if God should only.
Speaker 6: Allow that in the beyond.
Speaker 2: And suddenly I went for search.
Speaker 4: You fer you killed her.
Speaker 1: Remember my arm. If you think that will only back,
damn you.
Speaker 3: You'll you'll shot me.
Speaker 2: A lot of us brought Lucas home with us. I
had mine and it's bulleted, and.
Speaker 1: You're gutting a doctor and a doctor die.
Speaker 2: It'll take a long time, though, and it will hurt,
maybe hurd enough to make up for what you did
to Polly. And just to make sure, I am going
to make an end of this Charnel house. I am
going to burn it on the ground. It can be
your funeral. Pire with police found me at Marsha's. I
was arrested, tried and convicted of ourson and murder and
committed to an insane asylum for life, where I stayed
until I escaped one week ago.
Speaker 3: Way, Joe, Joe, come on, don't argue, an, I can
really show it to you. Show me where there's a light,
A right longe red light in that upper window.
Speaker 2: Uh a wee back at the w. H.
Speaker 3: Haskell again, Yeah, yeah, yeah a not only last the.
Speaker 2: Old bomb of visitor.
Speaker 3: He's back sitting on the bench. Yeh see, yeah, you
know I see him all right.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 3: But what you're right there? You see not only the
upstairs window, but the other one over there and downstairs. Yeah,
looks like the house is on fire. The damn fool,
the whole pictures on fire.
Speaker 1: But loo ho hold until I can join extinguisher.
Speaker 2: So it is finally the last of everything. Even wh
Haskell funny all those years ago as a boy to
feel that no painter of note would be just playing
Johnny Brown wh Hascal sounded more like it, And in
the end even he had to go, no immortality for
any of us, Johnny, Johnny, Polly, hurry up, darling.
Speaker 3: We're waiting for you, we me and your son, your son.
I I'm coming.
Speaker 2: I'm coming time at last to put an end to
tragedy and face and new at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that does it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Uh, No, that it'll help the painting much. It's destroyed.
Oh you were right about that old boy.
Speaker 3: He is a vandal.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess h.
Speaker 2: I guess he'll get what's coming to him. The cops
are on their way.
Speaker 3: Eh oughta be a little late, Joe, Right, old fella here,
he's gone dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hm, I wonder what he had against that picture. I
guess maybe we'll never know.
Speaker 1: No, something, Joe. I don't think I will want to.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's changed my own fascination for the idea
of walking through a picture frame like Alice through the
looking glass, just to find out what lay deep in
the heart of the forest, or the cave or the
house with the blank windows that showed no life. It's
none of my business, really, and maybe I wouldn't like
what I found there. I'll be back shortly. If any
of you should come across a painting by W. H. Haskell,
grab it for what you can, if it can be authenticated.
After the incident in the museum, the old story was
raked up again, and regardless of what artistic ability Joe
Brown had anything from his hand is, if not priceless,
at least tremendously price worthy. In his own strange way,
he did achieve a sort of immortality. Our cast included
Michael Wager, Robert Dryden, Joan Lovejoy, Jodda Rowland and Russell Horkan.
The entire production was under the direction of Hyman Brown.
And now a preview of our next tale. You killed
a cab driver named Joe Paulson. But what he's saying,
why would I kill him? You took his cash, purus
the ring? How did I kill him with a gun?
That's impossible, You know me, Lieutenant Davis. I never work
with a gun until now.
Speaker 1: I don't even have a guy. Oh, yes you do, Eddie.
Speaker 3: We found it in your apartment, a gun, the Hot
thirty two, the gun that killed Paulson.
Speaker 2: But I thought, remember if you killed him when you
were high, would you remember? Well, no, no, that's it, Eddie.
You got the ring and the gun. How do you
want to make a statement.
Speaker 3: I don't remember killing a lieutenant. But if you've got
all this evidence, I guess I didn't.
Speaker 2: Radio Mystery Theater were sponsored in part by Buick Motor
Division and sign Off The sinus medicines.
Speaker 6: This is e. G.
Speaker 2: Marshall inviting you to return to our mystery Theater for
another adventure in the macabre. Until next time, pleasant dreams.