Speaker 1: Tired of the everyday grind, ever dream of a life
Speaker 1: of romantic adventure, want to get away from it all?
Speaker 1: We offer you.
Speaker 2: Escape, Escape designed to free you from the four walls
Speaker 2: of today for a half hour of high adventure.
Speaker 3: You are in a lighthouse of the steaming coast of
Speaker 3: French Guiana, while around you, frightful in its fury, a
Speaker 3: nightmare of terror and violence closing in on you, a
Speaker 3: nightmare from which there is no escape to night.
Speaker 2: By popular request, we repeat one of the most terrifying
Speaker 2: stories ever presented on Escape. Listen now as we bring
Speaker 2: you three Skeleton Key by George two Doos.
Speaker 4: Picture this place a gray, tapering cylinder welded by iron
Speaker 4: rods and concrete to the key itself, a bare black
Speaker 4: rock one hundred and fifty feet long, may be forty wide.
Speaker 4: That's at low tide. At high tide, just the light
Speaker 4: rising one hundred and ten feet straight up out of
Speaker 4: the ocean, and all about it the churning water, gray
Speaker 4: green scum, dappled warm as soup, and swarming with gigantic
Speaker 4: batlike devilfish, great violet schools of the Portuguese man o' war,
Speaker 4: and yes sharks, the big ones the fifteen footers. And
Speaker 4: as if that wasn't enough, there was a hot, dank, rotten,
Speaker 4: smelling wind that came at us day and night, off
Speaker 4: the jungle swamps of the mainland, a wind that smelled
Speaker 4: like death. Set in the base of the light was
Speaker 4: a water tight bronze door, and in you went and up,
Speaker 4: yes up and up and round and round, past the
Speaker 4: tanks of oil and the coils of rope, the cases
Speaker 4: of wicks, racks of lanterns, sacks of spuds, and cartons
Speaker 4: and cans, and up and up and up, round and round.
Speaker 4: Over the light storeroom was the food storeroom, and then
Speaker 4: over the food storeroom was the bunk room, where the
Speaker 4: three of us slept. And over the bunk room was
Speaker 4: the living and cooking room, and over the living and
Speaker 4: cooking room was the light. She was a beauty, balanced
Speaker 4: like a ballerina on the glistening steel axle of her
Speaker 4: rotary mechanism. And at night you'd lie there on the
Speaker 4: stone deck of the gallery with her revolving smoothly and
Speaker 4: quietly over your head, easing her bright white eye three
Speaker 4: hundred and sixty degrees around the horizon. You'd lie there,
Speaker 4: watching to see that the feeders kept working and everything
Speaker 4: ran right, and it wouldn't be bad the other two
Speaker 4: fellows snoring in their sacks two levels down. You'd smoke
Speaker 4: your pipe to kill the stink of the wind, and
Speaker 4: it wouldn't be bad about those other two. Louis and August.
Speaker 4: What a pair Louis he was. Headman was a big
Speaker 4: fellow from the Basque country, black beard, little hard, black eyes,
Speaker 4: and a pair of arms that I tell you, those
Speaker 4: arms were as big around as my legs. Yes, headman
Speaker 4: he was, and what word he let go was law.
Speaker 4: A silent fellow. And although I spent my first two
Speaker 4: weeks trying to strike up a real conversation, the most
Speaker 4: I could ever get out of him was John.
Speaker 3: I took up this profession because I don't like people.
Speaker 3: They talked too much. It's quiet, work like tendy. Let's
Speaker 3: keep it that way. Understand, you're getting to be as
Speaker 3: bad as a goost. That maybe for one thing.
Speaker 4: That was Louis that when you accuse me of becoming
Speaker 4: like our goosts, I quietened down because our ghost was
Speaker 4: the talkingest man I've ever met, the talkingest and the ugliest.
Speaker 4: He was hunched back stood four feet high, had red
Speaker 4: hair and big blue eyes. It seems he'd been an
Speaker 4: actor in Paris.
Speaker 5: I played it over two hundred different productions, my dear
Speaker 5: boy at the Grand Guignole. Oh, but it was monstrous,
Speaker 5: horrible the way we used to scare the audiences, and
Speaker 5: I I was hated.
Speaker 6: Yes, they used to throw things in hiss and bear
Speaker 6: their teeth at me.
Speaker 5: But finally, finally it got too bad and I couldn't
Speaker 5: stand it any longer.
Speaker 6: I gave up the theater my nerves, you.
Speaker 5: Understand, Yes, gave it up completely. I really did, couldn't stand.
Speaker 4: It any longer. It all started one morning at two thirty.
Speaker 4: I was on watch, lying on the cool stone deck,
Speaker 4: pulling on my pipe, bearing out at the blackness with
Speaker 4: phosphorus and combas and the big yellow scars, when out
Speaker 4: of the corner of my eye I noticed something show up.
Speaker 4: For a second, something the light had touched far off.
Speaker 4: I waited for her to come round again, and when
Speaker 4: she did, there it was a three master, a big one,
Speaker 4: about a half mile up and coming down out of
Speaker 4: the Norner West, coming straight for us. You must understand
Speaker 4: our light was where it was for a very good reason.
Speaker 4: Dangerous submerged reefs surround us, and ships kept clear. But
Speaker 4: this one, this sailing vessel, was coming straight on. I
Speaker 4: went over to the gallery door and yell, lay lay
Speaker 4: ere headed for the reefs. I had the glasses out.
Speaker 4: Now I couldn't make a name, but I could see
Speaker 4: her quite plainly, all sails set, the poem creaming away
Speaker 4: under her bow, A beautiful line. The Dutch ship, I
Speaker 4: guessed her. But why didn't she turned every time it passed?
Speaker 4: Our light hit her with a glare of day ship. No, no, wes,
Speaker 4: light will touch you in a moment. Can't they see
Speaker 4: look at her? She just keeps coming on?
Speaker 7: Square heads?
Speaker 4: What is it? What is it? Watch Nona West, I know,
Speaker 4: I know what it is.
Speaker 5: What the Dutchman? The flying Dutchman. We did a play
Speaker 5: about her once. Oh what a performance you ghastly Carrion
Speaker 5: had written, curst driven must.
Speaker 3: All she's loving, Yes, a sloppy way to come about. No,
Speaker 3: she's derelict.
Speaker 4: That's it, derelict.
Speaker 3: The crew left her for some reason or other. But
Speaker 3: instead of sinking, she's gone on running before every wind.
Speaker 6: She'll not run along, not with these reefs to break
Speaker 6: her up.
Speaker 3: Beautiful ship. Now, why would men leave a beautiful ship
Speaker 3: like that?
Speaker 4: He didn't ram us, although we all expected it. But
Speaker 4: as we waited for the crash, she luffed again, caught
Speaker 4: some ard gust, and went about. We watched her the
Speaker 4: rest of those black hours, healing and rocking, pushed and
Speaker 4: pulled by every stray wind, every freak current. Watched her
Speaker 4: until the dawn came, till the sea turned from black
Speaker 4: to a pearly gray, and on she came again, heading
Speaker 4: for us. We all had our glasses trained on her.
Speaker 3: Now, oh, goose, you can kill the life rightchi.
Speaker 4: He doesn't look so good by daylight. I thinks you're
Speaker 4: ground this time? I said, Do you think you're ground
Speaker 4: this time?
Speaker 3: It is impossible, absolutely impossible.
Speaker 4: What hmm?
Speaker 7: Here, Take my glasses, they're better than yours.
Speaker 4: All right, what is it that you're I have to focus,
Speaker 4: and then my breath frose in my throat. The decks
Speaker 4: were swarming with a dark brown carpet that looked like
Speaker 4: a gigantic fungus, but undulating, and on the masts and
Speaker 4: yards the guys and all were hundreds, no thousands, no millions,
Speaker 4: I don't know, an uncountable number of tremendous rats. You
Speaker 4: see them, Yes, I see them.
Speaker 3: Now we know why she's a daily Yes.
Speaker 4: Now we know.
Speaker 6: What are you two doing here?
Speaker 7: Give me a low purse, Give him the glasses. Take
Speaker 7: a good look, chatterbocks, give you something to talk about.
Speaker 4: They're still heading for us. And if she's going to turn,
Speaker 4: she better turn soon.
Speaker 3: Suppose she doesn't, you mean, suppose she piles up on
Speaker 3: the key slow tide.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes it is.
Speaker 7: There was all the.
Speaker 3: Conversation, August, Eh, here you want the glasses again, you
Speaker 3: want another look?
Speaker 4: No, she's still coming on.
Speaker 7: Go away, go away, turn, I say, I rave you turn.
Speaker 7: She's struck.
Speaker 4: The rats look underwater, like a cop swimming.
Speaker 7: Sure they're swimming.
Speaker 4: These the ship's rats swimming for the rocks.
Speaker 6: The door below its open.
Speaker 7: Come along a goose, get the windows. Maybe they can climb, right, sheep.
Speaker 7: But why you see them?
Speaker 4: No? Oh, yes I do. Hop at the other end
Speaker 4: of the rocks.
Speaker 7: Look at the millions. They smell it. Here they gone
Speaker 7: the door, Close the door. Don't like me? You made?
Speaker 8: Oh what? He was as big as a tom down, bigger,
Speaker 8: eyes were wild and reddish, teeth long, sharp and yellow.
Speaker 4: He went for a sound ramolous, and we bought him.
Speaker 4: We put that one right all over the room. It
Speaker 4: was it was like fighting a panther. God it, we're
Speaker 4: gonna get a lot. As we ran up the winding staircase,
Speaker 4: we passed the tiny windows of the various levels, and
Speaker 4: at every one was a thick, wriggling, screaming curtain of
Speaker 4: brown fur. I was ahead of Louis, and I readily successful.
Speaker 9: Level.
Speaker 4: Suppose they found away.
Speaker 7: In it's a nightmare.
Speaker 4: Well you look at the room here at the gallery
Speaker 4: was thick and fetted with the stink of them. The
Speaker 4: light was dim, brown, filtered through the crawling mask that
Speaker 4: thwawned over the glass all about us. We couldn't see
Speaker 4: the sky, nothing, nothing but them, their red eyes, the claws,
Speaker 4: the wriggling, hairy snouts, and their teeth. The rats screamed
Speaker 4: and howled and threw themselves against the glass. They were starving.
Speaker 9: And we three we stood in the center of the
Speaker 9: glassroom until a beautiful light, and we waited.
Speaker 7: What can we do? What can we do? See? Take
Speaker 7: it easy or take it easy?
Speaker 6: I can't I just it?
Speaker 4: Do you any good time? What do you any good?
Speaker 4: To stand here and shake that's right.
Speaker 6: Go away, go away, do you hear me? Go away?
Speaker 1: This day?
Speaker 7: They won't go away until until what until they've been said?
Speaker 2: We will return to escape in just a moment. Academy
Speaker 2: Award winner Joan Fontaine will be your starr in Leave
Speaker 2: Her to Heaven on the Luck Summer Theater on CBS
Speaker 2: Radio tomorrow evening. You'll enjoy this celebrated story of a
Speaker 2: ruthless woman who destroys the thing she loves and you
Speaker 2: like Joan Fontaine in this dramatic role. That's Leave Her
Speaker 2: to Heaven starring Joan Fontaine, Tomorrow Evening's Luck Summer Theater
Speaker 2: Show on most of these same CBS Radio stations. And
Speaker 2: now back to Who Escaped.
Speaker 9: You can take so much horror and then you get
Speaker 9: used to it. And they were interesting to watch, you know.
Speaker 9: They couldn't understand the glass. They could see us, and
Speaker 9: they could rush at us, but that thin, invisible barrier held.
Speaker 4: Them off and stopped them.
Speaker 9: From time to time he caught a glimpse of the
Speaker 9: rocks below, more apps down there, warming brown velvet in
Speaker 9: the bright tropical sunlight.
Speaker 4: And then the tide began to rise.
Speaker 7: If only it was some of them I don't draw
Speaker 7: you curse had stop curmbing up to the slow spuns
Speaker 7: around us is getting thicker.
Speaker 4: What's the time?
Speaker 7: Water thick?
Speaker 4: You got the bird? Watch th right?
Speaker 7: Wake me at tack.
Speaker 3: I will come along a goose.
Speaker 4: It was getting dark. One side of the room was lit,
Speaker 4: a soft filtered red sunset through the raft. Oh very pretty.
Speaker 4: I set the wick that checked my fuel and membered
Speaker 4: the lamp.
Speaker 9: It caught them, slit them in a gigantic, wriggling web
Speaker 9: of pale, hairless bellies, twitching red tails, bright eyes, and
Speaker 9: I started the rotary motor the light shove the mad
Speaker 9: as she swung fowly and smoothly about she blinded them
Speaker 9: in the fifth snapping bar of lights, moving continually about, ever, turning, ever, touching, ever,
Speaker 9: moving around and around, and they twitching and shuddering, eyes
Speaker 9: flaming when they were stuck by the light, A bright light,
Speaker 9: moving and behind on the dark side of the room,
Speaker 9: So close, so close, I dare not turn my back,
Speaker 9: but you can't help turning you back when you're.
Speaker 6: In a room made of glass.
Speaker 4: On the dark side of the room, you couldn't see them, but.
Speaker 9: Only there ye thousands of points of flank red light,
Speaker 9: sleeping and punting.
Speaker 7: Like the skies of hell.
Speaker 9: Lowie relieved me at ten, but I didn't get much
Speaker 9: sleep that night. And when I came up into the
Speaker 9: gallery early the next morning, there stood our Goods, his
Speaker 9: back to me. He was bowing to the rat, waving
Speaker 9: his arms, and so helped me making a seat. And
Speaker 9: this morning, my dear, dear audience, I'm going to play
Speaker 9: once again that magnificent role which made.
Speaker 6: Me the ghost of the Pera Theater, the lucky, the
Speaker 6: evil unius of the medievil Underweld. I am he who
Speaker 6: did guide the dark told of the Mary Charles into
Speaker 6: the nether pod.
Speaker 9: They kept turning, I said, staring at him.
Speaker 4: I didn't notice me. The man had gone mad.
Speaker 9: They kept turning, telling his story for all the rapt,
Speaker 9: leaving no one.
Speaker 6: Else another one at least Timer take his seat on the.
Speaker 9: Eyeletp Head got done, didn't stuff. He went on following night,
Speaker 9: craping to the rap he think, blue eyes, rolling and wheezing,
Speaker 9: his wild red hair waving.
Speaker 6: About him, grabbed him body.
Speaker 7: Arm and rapt.
Speaker 4: He looked at me like a child, and then they
Speaker 4: screwed up. We were about to cry go below go on.
Speaker 10: Very well.
Speaker 6: Later, my dear Audian later that's na to day.
Speaker 4: He was crazy.
Speaker 9: I guess we all were a few hours later he
Speaker 9: came back up and caught Glewie and me teasing the rap.
Speaker 6: Yet sounds horrible. It was fun.
Speaker 9: We'd get right up against the glass and make faces. Happen,
Speaker 9: it proves them crazy. They would scratch away, trying to
Speaker 9: get in our eyes. Our boose joined in too, Oh,
Speaker 9: very ingenious, our boots. He learned that if he himself
Speaker 9: against the glass, they'd bunch and bundle against his figure,
Speaker 9: and then he leaped back loose.
Speaker 6: My thought ridden that it went on all.
Speaker 4: Day like that.
Speaker 9: They put our wrists in bed. We went to sleep
Speaker 9: like a baby, smiling. And then it was about midnight.
Speaker 9: I was I was very tired, and I was just
Speaker 9: beginning to fall up to sleep myself when I became conscious.
Speaker 4: Of the news sound. I couldn't figure it at first.
Speaker 4: I got up, I lift the lamp, went to the window,
Speaker 4: and even if I looked at.
Speaker 6: It, I saw one of the.
Speaker 4: Panes begin to fag. They'd eaten the wood away.
Speaker 6: Louis.
Speaker 9: They followay in. I held the glass with my hand
Speaker 9: and they were all going crazy. Other short of the
Speaker 9: the cliff of this maneuver, were all nibbling away at
Speaker 9: the wood. Louis ran below and then returned with a
Speaker 9: large pet of tin.
Speaker 4: It against the window and hammered it into place. Even
Speaker 4: as we did so, we felt the heavy body is
Speaker 4: putting against the other side of the window.
Speaker 7: Gave away the hold. If it doesn't, we're done for.
Speaker 4: Rats can't eat tin, no they can.
Speaker 6: What was that?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 11: He came from below the storeroom window. They're in the
Speaker 11: swarming up the stairs, got the tap right to them,
Speaker 11: gone in, tell them.
Speaker 4: Who he didn't have time to get. Then they came
Speaker 4: to us. I looked the one side, I grabbed them
Speaker 4: aulin spike, swung and smashed one in the air. I
Speaker 4: were to see Louis with the other his hand up
Speaker 4: and the blood was pouring all over the pace. He
Speaker 4: held his handle left and kicked at the starling wrap
Speaker 4: and s gut him.
Speaker 7: Had he got my hand?
Speaker 4: That's about them. I'll get you something to tie up blood.
Speaker 7: Look at my blood.
Speaker 4: I'm bleeding. Yeah, all right, I want this handkerchiff. That'll
Speaker 4: be okay, bloody, Yeah, that's not bad. That's just the best.
Speaker 4: And then then I became conscious of a new sound.
Speaker 4: They were gnawing their way through the wooden trap door.
Speaker 4: I watched the wood fascinated, and Eason, if I did,
Speaker 4: it began to give away, and a bristling, whiskery nose
Speaker 4: showed through. Louis, we've gotta go off wrap the next
Speaker 4: level with the living waters and kitchen, and slammed the
Speaker 4: tap there.
Speaker 6: But if two was of.
Speaker 7: Wooden, lad John, what are we going to do?
Speaker 10: I don't know if they'll be through this one in
Speaker 10: a moment the gallery. The trap door on the gallery
Speaker 10: is metal. Good tom On, who.
Speaker 4: Lay across the trap exhausted, while below us the rats
Speaker 4: took over the entire tower. I could hear them howling
Speaker 4: and fighting over our food supply, our water, our lever
Speaker 4: and all about us. The other screamed and cleared in
Speaker 4: at a swede.
Speaker 9: And a tangled mass, hypnotized by the ever turning light.
Speaker 4: By morning, the air and the little room was horrible.
Speaker 4: Until now we'd been getting air from the tower below,
Speaker 4: and now that was sealed off, and so was all
Speaker 4: our food and water. Well exhausted, panting, waiting, waiting, the
Speaker 4: hours crawled on. I was almost dozing from fatigue when
Speaker 4: I heard a sight that brought me too fast.
Speaker 6: Would you like to come in, my beauties? Would you?
Speaker 6: I hold the power of life and death, and I
Speaker 6: can let you in.
Speaker 4: You know, our ghost was standing by the glass, and
Speaker 4: in one hand he held a big wrench was tapping
Speaker 4: the glass gently, not quite hard enough to break it. Slowly,
Speaker 4: I gazed myself to my feet and slowly, very slowly,
Speaker 4: tiptoe toward him. Hah, all I have to do is
Speaker 4: tap just a little harder. I found a coil of
Speaker 4: wire and the tool kitten. I trust him up, fastened
Speaker 4: him to a stanchion in the center of the room.
Speaker 4: Slowie was of no help. He lay on his side,
Speaker 4: looking at his bloody hand, weak and sick of a baby.
Speaker 4: So there I was alone at and a coward for company.
Speaker 4: That night I tended the light, but its flame was
Speaker 4: devouring our oxygen. The following day we lay first tormented, starving, waiting, waiting.
Speaker 4: And the following night I again tendered the light, but
Speaker 4: the small supply of spare wiking we kept in the
Speaker 4: gallery had become exhausted, and at about midnight the light
Speaker 4: began to flicker. And slowly, so slowly, began to go out.
Speaker 4: There was nothing I could do. Wicks were stored three
Speaker 4: levels below. Nothing, I could do nothing. By time, the
Speaker 4: time had strike a match to see the clock, and
Speaker 4: when I did, it lit up the millions red eyes
Speaker 4: about us, all about watching, waiting below. It had grown quiet.
Speaker 4: They had cleaned us out, and now they too were waiting,
Speaker 4: all waiting. And then the rats quite suddenly were silent.
Speaker 4: And then I heard it, and then I saw the
Speaker 4: sky and the stars. The rats were gone. I went
Speaker 4: to the glass. Up there on the water, a small freighter,
Speaker 4: a banana boat, showing a few lights, came softly and
Speaker 4: innocently at us. The light was out. They didn't know.
Speaker 4: I wanted to open the windows, to call out to them,
Speaker 4: to warn them, but I was afraid. But if the
Speaker 4: rats were hiding from me, stricking me, so I waited.
Speaker 4: She grounded very softly on a reef not two hundred
Speaker 4: yards from the key, granded so gently that the man
Speaker 4: playing the cornet was he a passenger? A crew man
Speaker 4: of watch. Didn't even stop playing. They tried washing her off.
Speaker 4: I could have told them to save their fuel. The
Speaker 4: tide was driving. Would have floated up wree and I waited.
Speaker 4: That's all. That's the story. The sun came up and
Speaker 4: there wasn't a rat on the whole key. Every last
Speaker 4: one of that terrible army had left us, gone back
Speaker 4: to sea on the new ship how Goose insane asylum.
Speaker 4: He never recovered that Louis. They took him into Cayenne
Speaker 4: when he died of blood poisoning from his bike. Yes,
Speaker 4: that's the whole of it. Now, if you'll excuse me,
Speaker 4: I must go set my traps. No, no mouse traps,
Speaker 4: No rats in this lighthouse, I should say not. Life
Speaker 4: in the lights isn't bad. But sometimes when I see
Speaker 4: a strange vessel approaching, I get a little nervous. Yes,
Speaker 4: when you know that somewhere on the sea, says a
Speaker 4: little banana boat without a crew, there is without a
Speaker 4: human crew.
Speaker 2: Under the direction of Anthony Ellis, Escape has brought you
Speaker 2: three Skeleton Key by George to Doos, adapted by James
Speaker 2: Paul starring Ben Right as Jean, Paul Freese as Louis,
Speaker 2: and Jane Devello as a Goost. Special music for Escape
Speaker 2: was composed and conducted by Leif Stephens. Next Week.
Speaker 3: You are one hundred miles from your own lines, waiting
Speaker 3: for the enemy who will lead you to your destination,
Speaker 3: while with every moment the danger to you and your
Speaker 3: men becomes more acute, for if you are discovered, the
Speaker 3: only road of escape will be dead.
Speaker 4: So listen.
Speaker 2: Next week, One Escape will bring you Gus Bay's exciting
Speaker 2: story The Thirteenth Truck. Tomorrow evening, CBS Radio's Crime Classics
Speaker 2: presents the stirring story of the acts and the Droop
Speaker 2: family how they fared. It's several pages of criminal history
Speaker 2: you're sure to enjoy. So be listening for Crime Classics,
Speaker 2: presented by CBS Radio tomorrow evening on most of these
Speaker 2: same CBS Radio stations. This is George Walsh speaking. And
Speaker 2: remember there's action as a policeman really finds it in
Speaker 2: twenty first Precinct Tuesdays on the CBS Radio Network.
Speaker 3: Com acoun