Speaker 1: Welcome to the Great Adventurers of Old Time Radio from Boyse, Idaho.
This is your host, Adam Graham. In a moment, we
are going to bring you this week's episode of Cloak
and Dagger. But first I want to encourage you, if
you're enjoying the podcast, to please follow us using your
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per month at Patreon dot Great Detectives dot net. But now,
from September fifteenth, nineteen fifty, here is today's episode, Seeds
of Doubt.
Speaker 2: To undertake a dangerous mission behind the enemy lines, knowing
you may never return alive.
Speaker 3: What you have just heard is the question asked during
the war to agents of the OSS. Ordinary citizens who
do this question answered yes.
Speaker 4: This is Cloak and Dagger.
Speaker 3: Black warfare, espionage, international intrigue. These are the weapons of
the OSS. Tonight's story Seeds of Doubt concerning an OSS
agent to track down Nazis in American uniforms is suggested
by actual incidents recorded in the Washington and files of
the Office of Strategic Services, a story that can now
be told.
Speaker 4: I'm glad I wasn't there when Celeste got my message.
If I had been, I might have called the whole
deal off found some other way to carry out my mission.
What I did was pretty brute. I know just how
it must have been. I gave the note to the
baker's delivery boy, Henri. He must have driven the dilapidated
old truck through those majestic iron gates of the Chateau Baton,
twelve miles south of Paris, circled the huge house, and
come to a stop at the servants entrance. And perhaps
it was Miriel herself, a celeste personal maid, who answered
the door.
Speaker 5: Woo, Mademoiselle Monsieur.
Speaker 4: And then Mary all began that long climb up the
Celeste roof three flights of marble stairs, and then down
the carpeted corridor to the fourth door. On the right
hand side. Mamselle Celeste was probably reading. She always was
in those days. There was a way of passing time
while she waited for some word from my friend Paul
Blanchard a.
Speaker 6: Message, ma'mselle, from message from Marie.
Speaker 5: I do not know. It was all so mysterious. It
take us truckles at the door, and the boy give
it to me while a mamiselle.
Speaker 4: Who I'm not writing it, ma'mselle.
Speaker 5: It is not not he great? Oh mon dieu.
Speaker 6: But then then it is his society. Is Paul my
police here in Pery. He is waiting for me in
the cafe, and Momparnasse. I was afraid he was dead.
Speaker 4: That's how it must have been. And all the while
I sat in a dingy little room in the back
of the cafe detoie char drinking cognac, feeling like a
dog waiting. I waited about an hour, and then Paul,
Mademoiselle Breton, Oh you are not born. No, Mademoiselle, I
was a friend of Paul. Blanche. Mademoiselle answer me very well,
Paul is dead. Like I say, it was beautiful, but
is there any way of saying it that isn't proving.
She tottered toward the table and then slumped into her chair.
Did Her face was deathly white, and yet it was
still the loveliest face I'd ever seen.
Speaker 5: But this note.
Speaker 4: This pulls handwriting well a forgery, Mademoiselle. The OSS is
well equipped to forge any man's handwriting.
Speaker 6: The OSS, Oh, I begin to understand.
Speaker 4: You are a Lieutenant Martin Ingalls Morale Office OSS, and
you deliberately too. That's right. I had to see you,
but I couldn't come to the chateau, and I knew
you wouldn't ignore a note like that.
Speaker 5: I see. I relate you for this, lieutenant, as long
as that it'll.
Speaker 4: Be rather awkward considering our future relationship.
Speaker 5: We shall have no future relationship, you and.
Speaker 4: I, I think we will. I've come to Paris to
take Paul's place. Yes, as your fiancee at first, that is,
and then later as your husband. She sat down again,
slowly and listened in stony silence as I told her
how I'd met her fiance in North Africa. I told
her how you described me, and then how he described
their Swiss frenzied courtship in Geneva, just before Paul joined
the Free French forces. Then I told her how he
died all loved France, Yes, and he told me once
that you loved her too, And that's why I'm sure
you won't refuse to make your own sacrifice for her,
and that is what mess you allowing me to pose
as Paul, letting everyone think I'm the man you met
in Switzerland.
Speaker 6: How do you know you could pause as poor that
someone who might not recognize you.
Speaker 4: The USS has made sure that it will be perfectly safe.
You see, Paul's father was a government official in Madagascar
for twenty years before the war. Paul visited France only
once and that was the age of eight, and from
that age until he met you in Switzerland, he hadn't
set foot in Europe. So you see, no one would
know the difference. I would know it, of course, that
would be your sacrifice, and I with.
Speaker 5: France benefit by my sphering.
Speaker 4: I couldn't blame her for putting it like that, but
I wasn't exactly flattery. I tried to explain my mission.
D Day was six months behind this, and most of
France had been liberated. But now there was bestone, the
Battle of the Bulls von Runstet's big offensive, and black
warfare is a game to complain. Morale or the lack
of it, can help decide. The oss knew that, and
so did the Nazis and that's why they're German agents
floating around Paris doing their best to plant seeds of
doubt and to destroy a lied morale.
Speaker 5: Nazis here in Peris.
Speaker 4: But now is it there, Nutcut, Well, that's my job.
It's not going to be easy because most of them
are in GI uniform. Yes, why we send agents behind
German lines, they send them behind ours. Black warfare was
Hitler's first great weapon. Why do you think Poland the
low countries? Yes, even France collapsed so fast in nineteen
forty because the Nazis had agents behind the lines. Fifth
Calumness doing the same thing then that they're doing now,
That was in nineteen First, the war isn't over yet, Mademoiselle,
far from it. And the longer these Nazi agents operate
in Paris, the longer the war going to last. Now,
that's why it's important that the OS has smoked them
out and fast.
Speaker 5: But I do not see why it should be necessary for.
Speaker 4: You to do become your husband, well, because then I'd
be the master of Chateau Breton. And what could be
more natural for a wealthy Frenchman and his wife out
of at a gratitude to the Americans than to throw
open their home the lonely Gis in Paris, parties, mademoiselle,
cocktail parties, dinners, dances, whatever might attract the Gis.
Speaker 5: And the German Asians.
Speaker 4: Nissa right, it's an affairs like that. They do their work.
They spread rumors and lies, stir up discension, and it
wouldn't take me long to spot them.
Speaker 6: There's a very clever scheme, Lieutenant. There is only one
thing wrong with it. I do not care to be
your wife.
Speaker 4: It would be a strictly I personal arrangement, and just
as soon as my job is done.
Speaker 5: No, this is added the Christian.
Speaker 4: Very well, Namsell. I'm sorry, Paul was wrong, wrong about you.
That was another dirty trick, playing on her memory of Paul,
her love for him. But it worked. In a half
hour we were engaged.
Speaker 2: Do you say, lest Penton, take this man to be
your lawful wedded husband. I do, And do you, Paul Blanchard,
take this woman to be one.
Speaker 4: Of the Paris blue bloods who crowded into the church
suspected that the headquarters colonel wasn't really a minister, and
I guess I was the only one who wished he were.
After the ceremony, Celestia and I drove out to the
chateau and settled down too. Ye housekeeping, Yes, who is
he your husband?
Speaker 5: Well, what is it you want, Lieutenant?
Speaker 4: Well, I just got back from the USO. I announced
our first open house for Saturday. Looks like we're going
to have quite a mob.
Speaker 5: We should be ready for them.
Speaker 4: You don't mind my stepping in. We can talk about it.
Speaker 5: But we just did talk about it.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, uh, yes, I guess we did.
Speaker 5: Then, good night, Lieutenant, And that.
Speaker 4: Was married life. That the chateau. We're talking. It's a
good thing our series of parties didn't start. Then took
my mind off other things. It looked like every joe
in the European theater attended those parties. The champagne flowed,
the cannapase vanished. Each clam bake was a bigger success
than the one before it, except I didn't spot any
Nazi agents. Yes, we're plenty of rumors. Sure, that's one
thing an army always has plenty of. I tell you,
I hear we're getting our brains beat out at best Stone.
This man's boring over yet, pale. The guy was telling
me the other day how the brass and that food
things at can't bray like a guy was standing the
other day.
Speaker 7: If Hitler wants to negotiate, I'll next negotiate and get
it over with sous.
Speaker 4: We can go home.
Speaker 7: I heard Hitler's got a secret weapon, bacteriological stuff.
Speaker 4: He's just waiting for the right time to use it.
If I'd arrested every guy I heard repeating a rumor,
I'd have had half the gi and Paris in the clink.
The guy I was looking for was a guy who
did all the talking the other day. I knew he
was one of the guys lounging in the living room
or sprawled on a patio, or loafing in the gardens. Yes,
but which one. For several days I didn't get anywhere,
And then I noticed Corporal Alan Chester. I might never
have paid any attention to him if he hadn't paid
so much attention to Celeste. Every time I looked up,
they had their heads together, and Celeste was smiling, And
the time I found them sitting on a bench in
the garden, she was actually laughing. Oh well, if it
was a good story, you're going to have to tell
it again, Corporal.
Speaker 5: It was a very good story. You have met my husband,
haven't you? Alla? This is goodbar and shisted.
Speaker 4: We've met so many times it's getting embarrassing. I've already
a pilot.
Speaker 7: As to your wife, monsieur, for wearing out my welcome,
No apologies necessary. My only excuse is I can't stay away.
Your chateau is the first place I fell at these
since I left home. Whereas home cover Lafayette, Indiana, lafa
yet well, an American town with a great French name.
Speaker 4: It's right.
Speaker 7: Maybe that's why I feel like I found a second
home right here, twenty kilometers from Paris.
Speaker 4: There wasn't much to go on, just the word that
didn't ring quite true. I took Celesti aside and asked
her about it.
Speaker 5: Alan Schester, do you think he might be? You're out
of who lieuten Maybe?
Speaker 4: But I still want to know why I said kilometers
In Indiana they say miles.
Speaker 5: I told you he was a Harvard graduate.
Speaker 4: They say miles at Harvard too. Only Europeans say kilometers.
Speaker 6: And because of that you suspect him of being and
Nazi Asian.
Speaker 5: How absurd. He is the most shaming of all the
men who have come here.
Speaker 4: I noticed you thought, so.
Speaker 6: Did you, Lieutenant, Then maybe Nattie st Lisa and you
suspect him.
Speaker 4: I admitted she might have something there. I admitted her
to myself that it was not to select. An hour later,
a jeep with four gis and it rolled through the
gates of the chateau, and one of the gis was
Corporal Alan Chester. And thirty seconds later I was behind
the wheel of Celeste little Jaguar following the jeep. Dusting
was falling, and the road to Paris was lined with traffic,
and it wasn't too hard to keep a few cars
behind the jeep, seeing without being seen. In town, the
gee pulled up in front of a cafe on the
Boulevard San Germain, and Corporal Chester climbed out and wave
goodbye to the other three. Luckily it was a gloomy joint.
He walked straight across the dance floor. I hug the
walls and moved in the same direction. He didn't stop
at the bar, he didn't sit down at the table.
He headed straight for a back door. He opened it
and he went out. I gave him ten seconds. Then
I went out the back door too. It was an
alley and as dark as only a Paris alley can
be so dark. I thought there was only one guy
leaning against the building.
Speaker 7: Hard Monsieur gives a cigarette.
Speaker 4: I dug into my pocket for a cigarette. That's when
I knew that there were two guys. I whirl around.
The second one was standing behind me, and there was
something in his hand that looked like a black jack.
My fist shot out quick and connected, but Number one
was on me then with a hole. It hurt. I
broke away and I'll let him have it, And that's
when I found out what it was. The other man
held that looked like a black jack. It was a
black jack.
Speaker 6: I hit the.
Speaker 4: Cobblestone the moment I saw Number two standing over me
and heard a girl singing far away, and I didn't
see or hear anything more for a long time. It
was dawn when I climbed up to the third floor
of the chateau. If so Less was sleeping, she woke
up plenty fast, and if she had to get into
that shrie house coach, she wore, she must have done
it in record time. Du you look terrible. I didn't
tell her that she looked wonderful. I didn't ask her
if I could come in either I had just walked
past her and I sat down on the van. I
told her what had happened in the alley off the
Boulevard sam Germain. But all the time I talked I
was thinking of something else. That we were alone. She
was very beautiful and.
Speaker 6: So now, of course you are quite certain that Kirkbery
sches there is a German agent.
Speaker 4: Well that's how it adds up, doesn't it.
Speaker 6: Perhaps I am not so good at figures. These ment
me have been thieves. They took your money in his path.
Speaker 4: Well that doesn't prove anything. Well, that could have been
a cover up.
Speaker 6: But why would Kirberry schester I have wanted you beatn up?
Speaker 4: Why to stopped me from tailing him? Now that cafe
may be a regular hang out, and hiss boys may
hang around outside to take care of any shadows who
show up.
Speaker 5: Did you think he did not know you were following
him to night?
Speaker 4: Well, as boys may have reported that they slugged the
guy in the alley, but but they can't be sure
who I was, even that I was telling him. See
I look that funny.
Speaker 5: No, I am just thinking what a fool you are.
Speaker 4: Strange I was thinking the same thing myself. What do
you mean a man who has a wife as lovely
as you doesn't even kiss her. He is a fool,
is he?
Speaker 6: He would be even more of a fool if you tried.
Have you forgotten that bargain strictly impersonal relationship?
Speaker 4: You said? I said it when you said you'd be
loyal to Paul Blonchard's.
Speaker 5: And am I not being loyal?
Speaker 4: I don't know. The way you smiled at Alan Chester
wouldn't suggest you are.
Speaker 5: You do not like to rear smelled him?
Speaker 4: I don't like it at all.
Speaker 5: Then naturally you would not wish me to accept this invitation?
Speaker 4: What invitation?
Speaker 5: That is why I call you a fool?
Speaker 6: Looking on you think Ellen hires men to keep anyone
from finding out where he is staying.
Speaker 5: Why then, is he so careless with me? Why does
he invite me to his room?
Speaker 4: Why that?
Speaker 5: Of course? If I went, I could tell you where.
Speaker 6: He is staying, very apps, I could tell you a
great deal more. If he's a Nazi agent, I would
surely find it out. But you do not want me
to go.
Speaker 4: You're to go, whether I want it or not.
Speaker 5: Oh nob, you are lieutenant.
Speaker 4: So she kept her date with Corporal Allen Chester and
I paced the rooms of the chateau and waited for
her and suffering. It was dawn once you got back. Well,
let's have a.
Speaker 6: Report, the personal one, Lieutenant, or the impersonal one.
Speaker 4: The impersonal one is the only one that concerns me.
Speaker 6: Maybe, Well, I found out nothing, and I am more
certain than of it that there is nothing to find out.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you. Well, maybe you'll try again some other night.
Speaker 6: The maron it is unarranged, I see, and I will
give you the personal report to lieutenant, even though it
does not concern you.
Speaker 5: I had a lovely time.
Speaker 4: It was the next night when I began to suspect her.
I suppose I started even before she came home. I
tried to look at things straight, and I asked myself
if I were being taken for a ride. She walked
in an hour later.
Speaker 6: You are wasting precious time, Lieutenant. I still think Ellen
is just what he says. He is an American soldier
on detached service in Ferry. I have seen his arders.
Speaker 4: Well, orders can be fatal, Sissa Hea.
Speaker 6: Then if you are still suspicious, I will keep another
date with you the marrow night, I.
Speaker 4: Decided the better be three of us on that date.
She told me the name of his hotel, an old
and honorable one, and the route of old that you are.
I slipped into its musty larvae. Early the next morning.
An old man with bushy brows and a faintly familiar
face eyed me as I approached the desk. I told
him I was Paul Blanchard, the master Chateaubret.
Speaker 8: If you say you are Paul Blanchell monsieur, then you
are Paul Blanchell.
Speaker 4: Any reason to suppose I'm not mean.
Speaker 8: Al monsieur, none at all, just as there was no
reason doing the reastance to suppose that you are an
OSS agent.
Speaker 4: I remembered him there. He'd been in the Marquee, you know,
I work with on a mission before D Day. It
was Pierre Salon, a patriot. It was a break, and
I knew that I was safe, safe enough to tell
him as much as necessary, it.
Speaker 8: Shall be done it and on this coupled Chester is
in room six thirteen, whom six twelve.
Speaker 4: Will be vacant all evening. Here's the key to a lieutenant.
Speaker 8: The dough between the two rooms will be unlocked. Unfortunately,
there was a paper thin.
Speaker 4: Five minutes after Celesti had left that night, I was
on the road to Paris. At the hotel, I went
straight The room six twelve let myself in. Was empty,
pitch blackening. There was no sound from six thirteen. Celestian.
Corporal Chester had probably gone to a cafe first. It
might be a long wait. It was a long wait,
and a hot one. The windows were closed, the room
was stuffy. I stood there in the blackness, and the
sweat poured down my face. In the minutes ticked by.
Then at last the door the six thirteen opened. I
pressed my ear against the wall. Oh, the air was
right about that wall. It was paper thick. I would
never get up here, darling, or I could kiss you.
I've been wanting to kiss you all evening. The sweat
was rolling down my face harder than ever. I'm never
going to be able to leave your celest This is
really our last meek, leaving Paris tomorrow morning.
Speaker 5: It is very hard to please. If I were not
married before, we're not really my husband.
Speaker 4: What's the use of saying that he is your husband?
Speaker 5: But what if I tell you is not? What if
I can't fess it is only sham and mockery.
Speaker 4: I wasn't sweating anymore now I was so cold.
Speaker 7: I ship I don't understand, celest. You mean he's only
pretending to be your husband only? But why in order
to trap you?
Speaker 6: He is an officer in the oasis.
Speaker 5: He thinks you are an annunciation.
Speaker 4: The butt of my revolver was cold too. My hands
squeezed tight around it. Is that true, Celeste? He actually
thinks I'm a German?
Speaker 5: Yes, and I think so too. I know you are, Celeste,
but I don't care. I would not have told you
as I did. I loved you.
Speaker 4: How long would you go on loving me?
Speaker 7: I were an enemy of fracts any country, to any woman,
I would love you no matter.
Speaker 5: What you are?
Speaker 4: All right? So Lessen You're right. I'm a member of
the intelligence service of the Third Right. I twisted the knob,
jerked open the door, and stepped in the room six thirteen.
Thank you for selling me out, mademoiselle. You weren't a traitor.
I might never have been sure about. Corporal Chestnut with
a lamp on the table, the only light in the room,
and it stood behind him as I spoke. A swift
movement of his arms and a crashing to the floor.
Now there was darkness again, enveloping all three of us.
We all moved, We changed our positions swiftly, silently. None
of us could speak without tipping off where we were.
Neither Chester nor I could fire for fear of missing.
So we circled the room and we waited for our
eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. And then he
must have thought he saw me. He missed me. The
bullet struck something near the door, but the flash of
his gun was all I needed. I fired, and then
on the third shot. It wasn't until old Pierre Salon
opened the door and light from the hall flooded the
room that I saw what the light Corporal Chesters bulleted,
it hit it mistaken celest for me. She lay dead
where she had dropped.
Speaker 8: Ah sid Homage, little all Sidomage in this wall.
Speaker 4: Even the innocent was the innocent. He was a trader.
Pierre No No died just as much as that rattle
over there.
Speaker 8: But if that is so, then I should not have
told her. Lieutenant, I am sorry. I told her what
she passed by the desk. I thought she was working
with you.
Speaker 4: You did, yes, yes, But what did you say to.
Speaker 8: Her, I said, or as well, ma'amiselle, what the lieutenant
has I he is in whom six twelve?
Speaker 4: Good Lord? Then she knew all the time. Then the
only possible reason why she would have told him who
I was was was to persuade him to confess who
he was. She would have been crazy to say what
she did otherwise, knowing that I was listening.
Speaker 8: Then she did not betray.
Speaker 4: You, No, Pierre, No, she didn't betray me.
Speaker 8: Perhaps it was you she loved, the lieutenant.
Speaker 4: No, Pierre, it was France you loved. The rest was easy.
In Corporal Chester's room, he found a list of names
in code. We broke the code before dawn the next morning.
By that night we had every Nazi agent and GI
uniform corral.
Speaker 3: And once again the report of another OSS agent closes
with the words mission accomplished. Listen again next week to
another true adventure from the files of the OSS on
Cloak and Dagger, heard in Tonight's Clock and Diger Adventurers.
Lieutenant Ingalls was Chuck Webster, Celeste Alice Frost, Corporal Alan Chester,
Joseph Julian. Others were Carl Weber, Heavelnjuster, Jerry Jarrett Lois Sren,
Horace Bram and Anna Karen. The script was written by
ken Field and music was under the direction of John Gart,
sound effects by Many Siegel and John Powers, engineering.
Speaker 4: By Don Abbott.
Speaker 9: Tonight's Oss Adventure was based on the book cloakan Dugger
by Cary Ford and Alistair McBain. This program was produced
by Lewis G. Collin and Alfred Hollander under the direction
and supervision of Sherman Marx.
Speaker 4: Three Times Mean Good Times on NBC.
Speaker 1: Welcome Back probably not the OSS's best moment. It's a
case where the lieutenant got his mind off the mission,
got distracted by personal feelings, and as a result, she
lost her life. And I think that she picked up
on the fact that he was distracted, that he was
letting personal feelings get in and behaving in a way
that he promised not to, and so she distrusted him,
and he was not doing a whole lot to hide
how he felt, so it was all rather obvious. I
don't think he ever stood a chance with her, particularly
after the method of introduction, which even given the explanation
of him not wanting to be seen at her place,
there had to be a better way than that this
is an American occupied seri. As it was, things started
off with a lot of suspicion and distrust, and he
only confirmed her reasons to be distrustful. It's a bit
ironic that the morale officer whose job was to stop
the spread of false propaganda in order to avoid undermining
the American mission believes lies and ultimately undermines the mission.
On a more positive note, you get a really good
performance from Alice Frost. She gave a performance that had
a lot of ambiguity and kept the audience guessing along
with Lieutenant while her character also had hidden depth and
looking back, you can understand her actions when you fully
understand what was going on in the story. I also
thought the discussion of the role black warfare and psychological
propaganda by Hitler in preparation for conquest was fascinating, even
more so as the Allied advance was continuing. And this episode,
of course, is a bit of a reversal of the
typical OSS story. All right, well, listener comments and faeback
now over on Spotify, Mechanics sixty six wrote regarding the
episode War of Words good one and regarding the episode
the Black Radio Mark says thank you over on YouTube. Well,
thanks so much, appreciate your con comments. Now it's time
to thank our Patreon supporter of the day, and I
want to go ahead and thank Mark. Mark has been
one of our Patreon supporters since January twenty sixteen, currently
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this is your host, Adam Graham signing off.