Speaker 1: The CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents.
Speaker 2: Come in, Welcome, i'my G.
Speaker 3: Marshall. For centuries we have heard of the search for.
Speaker 4: The fountain of youth, for the magic elixir of life eternal. Oh,
to be young, always, to hold age and death at
arm's length.
Speaker 3: Put it this way, if you could.
Speaker 4: Live forever, would you want a word of caution before
you reply? What might seem at first blush to be
a vision of delight could also be a reality of horror.
Speaker 5: I just thought i'd call I'm your neighbor. Welcome to
Lake Raymond.
Speaker 2: Thank you, wild you come in, missus Mallory, missus Mallory.
Eleanor has gone to town on an air.
Speaker 5: Such a lovely looking child must be wonderful to have
a granddaughter like that.
Speaker 2: Granddaughter.
Speaker 6: Well, she is your granddaughter, ain't she?
Speaker 2: Eleanor happens to be my wife?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, I.
Speaker 6: Me and my big mouth.
Speaker 2: That's all right. She does look young, doesn't she?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 6: Yes, yes she does.
Speaker 2: How old you guess?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 6: Sixteen seventeen eighteen?
Speaker 2: Top deceptive, deceptive She was eighteen the day we were married.
Speaker 6: Oh are you are you? Newly weds?
Speaker 2: Newly wedds? My dear missus Mallory, We're about to celebrate
our forty fifth wedding anniversary.
Speaker 4: Our mystery drama Age Cannot Wither Her was written especially
for the Mystery Theater by Sam Dan and stars Jennifer Harmon.
It is sponsored in part by Buick Motor Division and
Anheuser Busch Incorporated brewers of Budweiser. I'll be back shortly
with Act one. There are those women who seem to
inspire hopeless passion in men. They are women whose love
can never be won, and if captured.
Speaker 3: Can only be held for the moment.
Speaker 4: We tend to sympathize with the unfortunate men who are
caught on their web, but the truth is it's the woman,
as usual who pays the price in the end. Our
story is set in the town of Raymont, named, of course,
after the celebrated Lake Raymont, that vast, beautiful body of
water high in the Adirondack Mountains. A very determined looking
middle aged ladies walking with purposeful.
Speaker 3: Stride down the main street.
Speaker 4: She has an expression on her face that bodes ill
for someone sheriff. Oh yeah, missus Mallory.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, missus Mallory.
Speaker 6: Roberta Mallory. It used to be the sheriff knew everybody
in town.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, missus Mallory, I'm new here.
Speaker 5: I spoke to my husband and the neighbors and they said,
what are you getting involved for?
Speaker 3: Involved in what?
Speaker 6: But I'm a citizen now it's my duty to.
Speaker 3: Uphold the law as the law of it.
Speaker 6: Violate is murder a violation of the law, Sheriff.
Speaker 3: You hear a reporter murder.
Speaker 5: These people, the Burnhams. They have the house next to
ours on the lake. Now, he's in his sixties, maybe seventies.
She can't be more than twenty. Now what kind of
marriage is that?
Speaker 3: Now, missus Maury, I must ask you.
Speaker 5: Those things don't work, They can't work, and they can
lead to murder.
Speaker 3: Will you have any facts for me?
Speaker 6: Well, it was just this morning.
Speaker 5: We're sitting around the dark, my husband and me, and
we share the stuff with the Burnhams. You see, well,
him and her, him in swimming trunks, and she and
that Nikmia hers had come down to the water. We
exchange polite hellos. We're not close, and they get into
the sailboat. They got the sixteen footer and off they go. Yes, well,
three four hours later, the sailboat comes back.
Speaker 6: He's all alone. She's not with him. So I say
to him, where is missus burning?
Speaker 5: And you know what he answers, Well, he gives me
the funniest look and he says, if obviously she's not.
Speaker 3: Here, or what happened to us?
Speaker 6: I don't know what happened to us.
Speaker 3: What did mister Burnham say it happened to her?
Speaker 5: He said absolutely nothing. Now here's my point. He can
keep his mouth shut when I asked him, but he's
got to open it when you ask him.
Speaker 3: Mister Burnham, tell me what happened.
Speaker 2: To your wife?
Speaker 3: I don't know, sir, as I understand it to you
went sailing this morning and you came back alone. Yes,
where's your wife, Sheriff, I've already told you.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Did she leave the boat?
Speaker 2: Obviously she wasn't there when I returned to the dock.
Speaker 3: Mister Burnham, are you feeling all right? I suppose it
was carelessness on my part. She had a very strong
breeze on the lake, and I was she let go
the boom in order to attack, and it swung free. Well,
you know how swimt it travels during them a new
red just caught me across the head muster passed out
for how long?
Speaker 2: I don't know. When I came to she was gone when.
Speaker 3: This accident with the boom occurred. Where was the boat Well,
we were quite some most several miles from shore. Is
your wife a good swimmer?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: No, then if she did fall overboard she drowned?
Speaker 2: No? No, because well she couldn't.
Speaker 3: Well, how can you say.
Speaker 2: That because nothing can happen to her?
Speaker 3: Of mister Burnham, you better explain what that means.
Speaker 2: I can't explain it. I can only tell you that
nothing can never happen to her. Mister Burnham.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid you don't understand the seriousness of your situation.
Speaker 2: Or I understand. I understand that a marriage, my marriage
of forty five years, is.
Speaker 3: Over when a man and a wife go sailing and
a man returns al What did you say about being
married for forty five years?
Speaker 2: Today?
Speaker 3: It was our forty fifth anniversary, mister Burnham. Your wife
has been described as a woman of about twenty.
Speaker 2: I know, I know she hasn't changed one bit and
almost do you realize it's almost half a century, Sheriff.
This has been a It's been a devastating day for me.
I'm I'm required to rest in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I I gotta get these answers.
Speaker 2: What happened to your wife? Well, as I say, she
had decided to leave me, and of course she was right.
I was making it difficult for her. Well, and I
was knocked unconscious. She may have thought this would be
the best time to go. So she's sailed the boat
to shore. Her got out and she said me, you
drift again? And where would she go away? Lose yourself
once again in the world.
Speaker 3: Wearing nothing but a bikini, carrying nothing. Oh, I'm sure
she had access to whatever she needed. I see you
got a picture of your wife.
Speaker 2: Well, we have only one picture in the house. It
was taking the day we were engaged. Here, this one
over here, I'm the cabinet.
Speaker 3: But that cat be the way she looks now, Yes, yes, exactly.
Oh no, she's forty five years older. You would think so,
but that's not true. When that was taken, I was
twenty five and she was nineteen. Today I'm seventy, but
she's still nineteen. Sure, excuse me, I'm very very tired.
Uh yeah, yeah, why don't you just lie down.
Speaker 2: For a few minutes. May I thank you so much?
Speaker 3: That's her, Missus Mallory. Please look at this carefully. This
is a picture of a nineteen year old girl.
Speaker 6: That's right, that's all she was.
Speaker 3: And this is her, Missus Mallory. This picture is forty
five years old.
Speaker 6: Oh no, no, why the dress she's wearing, the head.
Speaker 3: Well, those stars have come back. And that's not her boyfriend,
it's her husband.
Speaker 6: But she's a young girl.
Speaker 3: Examine this photo very careful. It couldn't be somebody who
resembles her. Let's say her daughter.
Speaker 6: I'm a student of people.
Speaker 5: Missus Burnham had this slight squint and a left eye
you see, and a little more right side of her chin,
and a kind of curved little scar just above her
left eyebrow. This is missus Burnham and I saw her
just this morning. She can't be close on seventy.
Speaker 6: Why that would make her older than me?
Speaker 3: Oh I feel mister Burnham.
Speaker 2: Why have I been arrested? Why am I in the hospital.
Why are psychiatrists having a field day with me?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a part of a mental examination. In other words,
the consensus is that I'm crazy. Oh, let's say that
your behavior after you realize your wife was gone has
not been normal. To believe me, Sheriff, when I tell
you that my wife is alive and well, I'd like
to believe you, But first you've got to explain certain
things you said. You told me she couldn't swim, yet
if she fell overboard, she couldn't drown.
Speaker 2: That's right, because nothing can ever happen to her.
Speaker 3: That's what you have to clear up.
Speaker 2: I can't. You won't believe me.
Speaker 3: Why won't I.
Speaker 2: Well, if I tell the true story, they'll put me
in an them for the rest of my life. Well,
and if you should believe me, they'll put you there too.
Speaker 3: Believe me, mister Burnham, you've got nothing to lose.
Speaker 2: Well, my wife was nineteen the day I met her
forty five years ago. She's been nineteen ever since, and
she'll be nineteen till the world comes to an end.
That's impossible, let's see. That's the point. Now, you say,
tell me the story. I know, sooner start When you
say impossible, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. How did you meet
your wife? I met her in a bank forty five
years ago, at a bank in Philadelphia. I'd go in
there every Friday afternoon to cash my paycheck, and I
noticed this very pretty girl's probably there for the same reason. Well,
I fell in love with her, but I didn't know
how to go about meeting her. I was I was
very shy. Well on this particular afternoon, the bank was crowded,
but I saw her standing in line. I was wondering,
hoping how I could meet her, when suddenly everybody put
up balls.
Speaker 7: Friday.
Speaker 6: What's that, phol though operator, this is the Merchants Bank
on chestn O. There's a hold up in progress? Are
six men all wearing masks? What's up?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that anyone in the bank was fully
aware of what was happening. At the sound of the shooting,
everybody threw himself to the floor, jumped behind desks, but
I couldn't take my eyes off her in the confusion.
After the bandits ran out, she just very calmly walked
through the door. I ran after her.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen, I have to talk to you.
Speaker 6: Who are you?
Speaker 3: I think what you just did was what was It
was absolutely terrific.
Speaker 6: Would you excuse me?
Speaker 2: Look, this isn't a pickup or anything. My name is
John Burnham, I'm a chemical engineer. What can be more
respectable than that.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, and I'm not interested.
Speaker 2: I looked at that ring finger on your left hand,
and I see you're not married or even engaged. Now,
if you're going with somebody, or if you're in love
with somebody, okay, okay, I'll take a walk.
Speaker 6: That's exactly the way it is. I'm very much in
love with you.
Speaker 3: No, it can't be true. It can't be because the
very second I saw you, I knew, I just knew
that you and.
Speaker 6: I were shut up. No, no, forgive me, forgive you what.
I'm in love with you be in love with me.
No one must ever be in love with me. Please
go before it's too late, before I fall in love
with you.
Speaker 2: Oh, you can't help it. You're minding your own business
and suddenly, just like that, it happens.
Speaker 6: Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: I saw you pick up that phone, and when they
started shooting at it was well, it was a miracle,
a miracle. All those bullets could have missed you see
some of them even rip through your dress? Looks either
your dress is torn.
Speaker 6: John Berman, Please turn around and walk away as quickly
as you can. No, No, you say you love me,
but I tell you one day you'll hate me.
Speaker 2: How could I ever hate you?
Speaker 6: They all hate me in the end?
Speaker 2: Oh what do you mean? How many were there?
Speaker 6: John?
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 6: I shouldn't even be talking to you. But I'm a woman,
and like all women, I need love. And it's been
so long, Oh how long it's been.
Speaker 2: I love you.
Speaker 6: I know that I should send you away, but I
want to be loved again. It's wrong, but I I
can't help myself.
Speaker 2: What are you saying? Why is it wrong?
Speaker 6: Maybe this time, maybe this time it'll be different. Maybe
you'll be different, of course I will. Yes, Maybe you
can be different. Maybe you can do something that none
of the others could. Maybe you can find a way
for me to die.
Speaker 3: All right, that's a request you don't hear every day.
Speaker 4: Why should she want to die? She's young, she's beautiful,
she should have a whole, glorious life in front of her.
And yet didn't she try to die back there in
the banks? Didn't she force the bandits to fire at her?
Could every bullet have missed her? Or try to answer
all these questions for you when I return in just
a few moments.
Speaker 3: With that too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: Now, in the ordinary way, dying is hardly ever a problem.
Speaker 3: It's living that presents us with all sorts of difficulties.
Here we have a.
Speaker 4: Young lady who is about to become missus Elinor Burnham.
And what does she want her husband to give her
for a wedding gift? She would like for him to
find a way for her to die. All this is
part of some explaining that John Burnham has to do
to the sheriff, and he's describing how things were the
day he met.
Speaker 3: His bride to be some forty five years ago.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, find a way for you to die?
Speaker 6: You should know something about me, like why my age?
For instance, nineteen or twenty. Let's walk inside that restaurant.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, how about lunch.
Speaker 6: You'd better be sitting down when I tell you how
old I am. It would be wrong for me to
let you go one step further without telling you the
truth about me.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's have the truth. Not that it matters my age.
Speaker 6: You said, I look nineteen or twenty, I'm only eighteen.
Speaker 3: Well that's great, I'm twenty five.
Speaker 6: I was born in the year fifteen fifty four.
Speaker 3: Well, every girl should marry a more mature man.
Speaker 6: Did you hear what I said? I was born in
fifteen fifty four.
Speaker 2: Sure that means you have to be more than four
hundred years old. See, it's the same thing for men.
They should also marry mature women.
Speaker 6: John, I was eighteen years old in the year fifteen
seventy two. I'm eighteen years old ever since. I simply
don't grow older. I can't grow older.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic.
Speaker 6: Do you realize how long I've lived, how many lives
I've lived?
Speaker 3: What an absolutely tremendous imagination.
Speaker 6: I'm telling you the truth. I can't grow older. I
can't be killed. I can't die.
Speaker 2: How what's wrong with that?
Speaker 6: You don't understand You'll be thirty fifty sixty five and
I'll still be eighteen.
Speaker 2: Has that bad?
Speaker 6: You'll die and I'll still be eighteen?
Speaker 2: Come on, I want to tell us talk about dying.
Everybody dies when his time comes.
Speaker 6: Not me. My time never comes. I can't die.
Speaker 2: Now, How do we ever get on this subject?
Speaker 3: Anyhow?
Speaker 6: You saw in the bank they all fired their guns
and me nothing happened.
Speaker 2: Well, that's because they all missed.
Speaker 6: Let me tell you why I can't die.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: If it'll make you feel better, I must tell you.
Speaker 6: Please listen, and then afterward, if you still want to.
Speaker 3: Marry, I am going to marry you no matter what.
Speaker 6: I was born in Paris.
Speaker 3: Paris, Darlene, where's your French accent?
Speaker 6: I've had enough time to lose it. I was born
in the year fifteen fifty four. My father was a chemist.
Speaker 3: I was amasy. You see we have something in common.
Speaker 6: Today you would have called him an alchemist. He was
always experimenting, trying to find what he called the elixir of.
Speaker 3: Life, the elixir of life.
Speaker 6: The elixir of life everlasting. I was eighteen. I remember
it was August twenty third, the eve of Saint Bartholomew's day.
I was to marry a young lieutenant and King Charles Regiment.
Speaker 2: No, come, no, no.
Speaker 6: You must let me tell this. It was late at
night and I heard a knock on the door, and
when I opened it, sil let me in quickly. I
must not be seen here. But it's bad luck to
see your bride the night before the wedding. Come with
me at once. What do you say.
Speaker 3: There is no time to lose I can hide you
in my uncle's house. We can trust him.
Speaker 6: Philip, what are you?
Speaker 3: The king has planned.
Speaker 7: A massacre, all the partisans of Prince Area and Navah,
and all the Huguenots.
Speaker 6: You can't be serious.
Speaker 3: My own regiment is entrusted to carry it out.
Speaker 6: It is impossibly.
Speaker 3: Please, there is no time to talk to argue. It
has already begun. Oh, my father, you and your father,
both of you are marked for death. I'll come quickly.
Speaker 6: I won't leave without my father.
Speaker 2: Get him.
Speaker 6: We have no time. He's downstairs in the cellar.
Speaker 7: Hurry, father, child, interrupt Father, this is almost complete.
Speaker 6: Father, listened that glass.
Speaker 3: Bottle from which the vapor is see me handed to me.
Speaker 6: Father. We must leave here at once.
Speaker 3: And me a bottle.
Speaker 7: Child, care carefully. It may explode. Oh my, poor my,
poor girl. Here let me see. Oh hear me, how
fortunate for breaking glass, mister eye instructed just above the bra.
Speaker 6: Father, there's going to be a massacre. Philip has come
to help us.
Speaker 3: A scale, a press, a clean cloth to the wound.
Speaker 2: It is not deep.
Speaker 6: We cannot stay here. A moment longer, must.
Speaker 3: Wait, A moment longer.
Speaker 7: A moment is all I need to mix the potion.
You ancient gods, in all your might lead my way.
Speaker 3: Grant me light.
Speaker 6: Father.
Speaker 3: I know, I know.
Speaker 7: Philip has come to rescue us, but there is no rescue.
Philip will never get us through the streets alive.
Speaker 6: We cannot stay here and be murdered.
Speaker 3: No, you will not be murdered here. This is now ready.
Drink it.
Speaker 6: What is it?
Speaker 7: I think I have found it.
Speaker 3: It's the elixir, Father.
Speaker 6: Such a change thing is impossible.
Speaker 3: You say, drink it and you will never die.
Speaker 6: Please massacres for gods quickly.
Speaker 2: Nothing worth to be able to father with is nope
of escape.
Speaker 3: I might have found the potion. I have said a prayer.
Speaker 2: Drink it quickly.
Speaker 3: Save yourself. You drink there.
Speaker 2: Is poorly enough for one.
Speaker 6: I don't want to live if everyone else is.
Speaker 2: I am your father. I command you to drink. Drink
that would follow it.
Speaker 3: Follow it myself now, my child.
Speaker 2: Nothing can hurt you.
Speaker 6: I fainted from fright from shock. When I recovered later,
my father was dead beside me, The servants were dead.
The house was in ruins, but by that time the
madness had spent itself. It was safe to be on
the streets again. I made my way to Philip's house
and he married me.
Speaker 2: I guess that means that I'm not your first husband,
am I?
Speaker 6: No? My second? No, my third. You see, my father,
at the very last moment, had discovered his elixir of life.
And what it does is it prevents you from aging,
and aging is what causes death. Sure, and whenever a
part of my body is injured, it heals immediately. So
I can't be killed.
Speaker 2: Now, Why would anyone want to kill you? You are
so adorable.
Speaker 6: Don't do this to me. Don't make me fall in
love with you.
Speaker 2: Oh, but I intend to do just that.
Speaker 6: It'll be so much harder for me to leave you
when the time comes.
Speaker 2: You know, you know you should be a writer. You
should write horror stories and you know those science fiction things.
Speaker 6: And I wouldn't know how to write.
Speaker 2: Oh, you should know how to do everything. I mean,
if what you're telling.
Speaker 3: Me is true, you should be You should be the
wisest person in the world. Why.
Speaker 2: Why because you've lived for what four hundred years or
according to what you say, and you should have learned things,
acquired wisdom.
Speaker 6: Well that's not true. I was just an ordinary girl.
I had no special talent or ability. And over the years,
over and over again, I kept leading the same kind
of life.
Speaker 3: No, why do you have the need to claim that
you've been You.
Speaker 6: Notice my left eye, the scar just above the eyebrows.
That glass bottle exploded just before I drank the elixir.
And that's the last time I have ever been injured,
the very last time.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I believe you.
Speaker 6: You don't really believe.
Speaker 2: Oh what does it matter? I love you.
Speaker 4: Love.
Speaker 6: When you're young, you think love is all there is,
and then it lasts forever.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 6: I know what love is, and I know what forever is.
Speaker 3: The nurse story strike you is kind of peculiar, well, Sheriff,
I didn't care, mister Burnham. I'm trying to help. All
I know is an elderly gentleman and his very young wife.
Speaker 2: You know, she's older than I am, than anyone alive today.
Speaker 3: Could I just tell you what we're faced with now?
The two of them go off sailing, he comes back,
she doesn't am I correct? So far, Yes, something happened
to the wife. The husband doesn't seem to be alarmed.
He doesn't notify anybody.
Speaker 2: I told you, why, why nothing could ever possibly happen
to her?
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, the woman is missing, and you come up with
this fantastic yarn.
Speaker 2: I admit it sounds fantastic, and you just swallowed it. No,
I didn't just swallow it. I went to see a doctor.
Speaker 3: You went, she's the one who needed it, But she
wouldn't go.
Speaker 2: Why does she lie to me doctor?
Speaker 6: Well, a woman may lie because she's unsure of her
husband's love.
Speaker 3: Oh that isn't so. Now she knows I love her.
I couldn't possibly be more attentive, more affectionate. There's Oh,
it's just something strange. Why does she insist on having
such a past.
Speaker 6: But you'd have to tell me something about her background?
Speaker 2: Her background?
Speaker 6: Are her parents living well?
Speaker 2: She claims that her father was killed in the massacre
of fifteen seventy two.
Speaker 6: Well, she must have friends. She did go to school somewhere,
she was raised someplace.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, out west good where I don't know. She
never talks about that.
Speaker 5: Oh well, then, mister Burnham, getting down to it, you
know absolutely nothing about your wife.
Speaker 2: Well, none of that seemed important when I fell in love.
Speaker 5: I see, when you fell in love, you felt that
love was enough?
Speaker 2: Still is?
Speaker 6: Then why have you come to see me? What?
Speaker 2: Okay? Okay?
Speaker 3: I see now that I'll just have to put up
with those little fables.
Speaker 2: It's the only fault she has. Oh, and I think,
what's wrong with the wives of other men? I know, well,
a few years went by, we were happy, I started
doing well financially. It seemed to me that there is
no reason. Well, see, I'm old fashioned, and I think
one of the basic reasons for marriage is a family. No,
but you like kids. I've seen you around children.
Speaker 6: I don't even want to talk about having children.
Speaker 2: We've been married ten years.
Speaker 6: You're twenty eight, I'm eighteen.
Speaker 2: You should have.
Speaker 3: Kids before, well, your first one before thirty.
Speaker 6: Look at me? Do I look a day older?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 6: Now do you look ten years older? You're still young,
but you're over thirty, and you look All.
Speaker 2: I want is for us to have children.
Speaker 3: But if you have a good reason the answer is no,
Well let it be no.
Speaker 2: But tell me why.
Speaker 6: I don't want to bury any more of my children.
I can't go through all that again, John, There are
certain things you must never ask me.
Speaker 2: Have you had children?
Speaker 6: Yes, I've had children, Well.
Speaker 2: What happened to them? Where are they?
Speaker 6: They're dead?
Speaker 2: Dead?
Speaker 6: How how four hundred, three hundred, two hundred years ago?
Children died like flies. The ones who weren't killed by
fever died of old age. I refuse to outlive another child.
Speaker 2: All right, Eleanor, and no, look, I think it is
time for this nonsense to end. You've got to rid
yourself of this terrible delusion.
Speaker 6: No, keep away from me, don't touch me, Let me
out of here. Oh you look like a soldier stabbed
my father, like the Indian who scaled my daughter, Eleanor
out of the owner.
Speaker 3: She ran out of the house. Her car was part
of the curb.
Speaker 2: And she got inside and drove off wildly, madly. My
car was in the driveway, and I started after her.
We lived in the hills, we always loved the country,
and I was barely able to keep her in view.
We were climbing and higher along a narrow, twisting road
along the side of the mountain, when suddenly she took
a turn too quickly. The car swerved out of control,
right through the WireGuard rail and down down down the
side of the hill, turning over completely and landing on
the rocks hundreds of feet below. There was an explosion.
The wreckage was a mass of bright flames of fiercely
burning funeral fire. And I climbed down the hill as
quickly as I could. I stood helplessly by the car.
And then then she just walked out of the wreckage.
Every stitch of her clothing had been burned away. The
gold ring must have melted off her finger, but not
a hair was singed. There wasn't a mark on her body.
She looked at me.
Speaker 6: And smiled, darling, you'd better lend me your coat.
Speaker 3: Well, what does it take to make a believer?
Speaker 6: She was in the car.
Speaker 3: It did crash.
Speaker 2: The impact the flames would.
Speaker 4: Have been enough to kill anyone, or perhaps anyone not
fortified by the elixir of life. It's quite a drink,
but it needs a chaser, as we should discover when
I returned shortly with Act three. Age cannot wither, nor
custom stale her infinite variety, said the poet. Well, our
friend William Shakespeare was talking figuratively for someone whom age
really cannot wither. We present Eleanor Burnham, or missus John Burnham.
Speaker 2: I prefer.
Speaker 4: Eleanor claims she was born in fifteen fifty four, that
she drank a mysterious elixir of life when she was eighteen,
and she's been eighteen ever since, or at least that's
the story of her husband. John is telling the sheriff
elder Eldor it's it's a miracle.
Speaker 6: No, it's not a miracle. It's the alexa to live
through that curst.
Speaker 3: John.
Speaker 6: Do you believe me now? Do you believe me?
Speaker 2: Yes, honor, Yes, I have to believe you.
Speaker 3: Are you telling me that she lived through a car
crash like that one?
Speaker 2: Yes, Sheriff.
Speaker 3: Yes, mister Barnum, you're an intelligent man, but you evidently
found yourself in well an intolerable situation. You were jealous
of your wife's youth, beauty, you could no longer keep
pace with him, Sheriff.
Speaker 2: I didn't kill her.
Speaker 3: I love her. So you manufacture this? Uh, well, it's
up to you. We'll drag the lake, we'll find her body. No, No,
she went away to begin another lifetime. No, sir, she
might have gone away if you hadn't drowned her. And
we know with whom.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Would the man's name be Peter Collins?
Speaker 2: What do you know about Peter Collins?
Speaker 3: And some investigating Your wife has been having an affair. No,
it wasn't an affair. We talked about it Helen and
I Well, if it wasn't an affair, what was it,
Eleanor if it isn't an affair, what is it?
Speaker 6: I was driving into the city and the car started
acting up. I had to pull over to the side
of the road, and he happened by. He was very nice,
nice enough to fix it.
Speaker 2: How many times have you seen him? So many?
Speaker 6: Just a few times?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 6: John? The day you and I met, I I said,
John Berman, walk away, turn around and walk away fast
as you can. One day you'll hate me. That day
is here. Why do you have to ask? Why? Look
at yourself. You're almost seventy. I'm still eighteen. But I
can't help it. I can't help myself. Please, Oh John, John,
I've never had a chance to become anything but an
eighteen year old girl. My blood is eighteen, my heart,
my the things I want, the things I need. I'm sorry,
You're no longer.
Speaker 2: I love you.
Speaker 6: It's no longer the kind of love I need, Eleor
Oh John, please pity me, pity you, yes me. How
many times have I stood like this, talked like this,
had my heart broken like this? And I must do
it again and again each time. I I hope I pray,
maybe he'll be different, Maybe he'll be different. I thought,
maybe you'd be different.
Speaker 2: I tried. I tried to love you more.
Speaker 6: But I don't want love. I've had too much love.
I want death. If you really loved me, you'd kill me,
kill me, and I would be free.
Speaker 2: How can I kill you? You? You can't die?
Speaker 6: Find a way? I don't know how? How? What do
I know? I'm just a young girl who was born
at the end of the dark ages. This is a
new world, civilized, scientific. Can't you find a way? You're
a part of that world.
Speaker 3: You want me to kill you?
Speaker 6: Kill me? Take me with you when you die, I'll
go with you. I love you best, I love you
more than any of them. But I don't know the
first time I have hope. You're a man like my father.
You're a chemist.
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm a chemical engineer and.
Speaker 6: He was an alchemist. It's the same mystery, isn't it.
Well he found an elixir of life. You you find
me and alixir of death.
Speaker 2: I thought it was crazy, but what could I do?
I tried. I had to try, and so I went
about it scientifically. Something existed in her blood, her tissues.
I boned up again on pathology, biology, hematology.
Speaker 3: I analyzed her blood, I searched.
Speaker 2: I tried every approach I could think of, but there
was nothing to be seen, nothing to be found. Did
you ever hear your father mention any names of things
of chemicals?
Speaker 6: Sulfur? And I tried that. I think gold, silver, merch.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Anne, oil, what kind of oils?
Speaker 6: The only kind of oils used in those days were
olive oiled. They were used for everything, for cooking, for soothing, wombs, for.
Speaker 3: Soothing wounds, burns. Yes, yes, now let's see leixtureless postion.
You drank?
Speaker 2: What did it taste?
Speaker 6: I can't remember.
Speaker 3: You must remember it was so long ago.
Speaker 2: Try to remember.
Speaker 6: They were breaking down the door to kill us. I
was so frightened.
Speaker 2: We've tried to remember.
Speaker 6: Well, he recited a certain verse.
Speaker 2: What do you mean verse?
Speaker 6: It was a prayer, a magic prayer. I guess you'd
call it an incantation.
Speaker 2: I don't mean nonsense like that.
Speaker 6: Don't call it nonsense. My father believed it. Without the incantation,
it couldn't nothing could have ever been done. Listen, I
remember how he would say it, you ancient gods, and
all your might lead my way and grant me light.
Speaker 2: Well, all I can do is try keep trying. And
I did, Sheriff, I did.
Speaker 3: I suggest you either get a new story? Are you
stick to that one? You try to make it just
a bit more believable?
Speaker 2: And I know, I know it is difficult for you.
Speaker 3: Say you try to find a way to kill her?
Speaker 2: Yes? And the other morning I thought I had matched
something that well, I called her into my laboratory.
Speaker 6: What is it?
Speaker 2: Drink it?
Speaker 6: Do you think you found?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Drink it?
Speaker 6: First, you must say the prayer. Oh, please hold the
cup to the light. Now pray say it. You ancient
gods and all your might lead my way and grant
me light.
Speaker 2: Oh very well, very well, you ancient gods and all
your might lead my way, and grant me light. Now
drink it.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know how shall I try to die?
Speaker 2: Have you ever thought of drowning? Erling? We're out of
sight of everyone.
Speaker 6: Now I should have gone out alone.
Speaker 2: Why I want to be here?
Speaker 6: Well, the mallories they saw a sleeve. If you come
back alone, they might.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, dear, But I won't come back alone,
because you see, you're not going to die I'm not No.
This potion, this formula, whatever you one call it, it
can't work.
Speaker 6: I feel you, But you said the prayer.
Speaker 2: I also overheard the phone conversation, which comes I wasn't asleep.
I listened on the extension. I shouldn't have. But you
and Peter planned to run away today, John. I don't
blame you.
Speaker 6: John. If you can't kill me, I can't live with
you any longer.
Speaker 2: And Peter's going to be waiting for you at the
south end of the lake. If I'm still alive, you'll
be alive.
Speaker 6: No, somehow, I believe you're the one who's destined to
be different. You have found the way to kill it.
Speaker 2: I've found nothing.
Speaker 6: But you said the prayer, just the way my father
said it, the same tone in your voice.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll be happy with Peter.
Speaker 6: I loved you. Hold down the tiller. I'm going to
release the boom.
Speaker 2: The swinging boom caught me. I heard her scream and
then I blacked out. When I came to well, I
told you the story. So you think she ran off
with the guy Peter. Yes, it was what she had planned,
and I don't blame her.
Speaker 3: Mister Sheriff, Yeah, Uh, sure, okay, I'll bring him right over.
You want to put on your roll and slippers, mister Burnham?
Oh where are we going for a little walk? There's
down the hall there around the corner. Stop at the
next door.
Speaker 2: Why did we come here?
Speaker 3: That lettering on the door, what does it say? Morgue?
Speaker 2: Why did we come to the morgue after you?
Speaker 3: Mister Burnham?
Speaker 2: Why are we here.
Speaker 3: On the table? Mister Burnham, you see who that is
on the table? No Elelenor. They just got her body
out of the lakes, drowned.
Speaker 2: Then that I found the elixir. I don't even remember
what I mixed. But the important thing you knew what
the important thing.
Speaker 3: Was, sheriff, The prayer, the prayer. But Douc says, she
didn't die drowning. She's been poisoned. Of course. It was
the elixir of death, and now she's free. Well she
may have been free, but poor John wasn't.
Speaker 4: He was accused of poisoning his young wife, and although
the jury lent a sympathetic ear to his story, they
turned an analytical mind to the verdict, which was life.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll be.
Speaker 4: Back with other verdicts in just a few moments. The
fountain of youth, the count of the young, How we
worship them in this country, the young, the strong, the beautiful.
How we hate to age, to mature, to crow old,
and yet to stand still while the world goes by
is to be left behind in.
Speaker 3: A strange, alien place forever.
Speaker 4: Our cast included Jennifer Harmon, Joe Silver, Brianna Rayburn, Ken
Harvey and Earl Hammond. The entire production was under the
direction of Hymon Brown and now a preview of our
next tale.
Speaker 6: I'm only saying what everybody else is saying.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's what everybody keeps saying, all right, because what
isn't true?
Speaker 6: You had the identification? Damn Colt. What made you change
of mind? Oliver? You were paid off? How much did
you get?
Speaker 8: I didn't get anything.
Speaker 6: Do you expect me to believe that? Yes, Son, you're
a four.
Speaker 2: You're the one.
Speaker 8: You're the one who kept saying, don't then evolved, don't
identify him. Think of the safety of your family.
Speaker 6: You also had a duty as a citizen.
Speaker 8: Now you're hopping on that bandwagon.
Speaker 6: What bandwagon?
Speaker 8: Before the trial, you were saying to me, Ali, you're crazy.
They're going to fish your carcass out of the river.
Well he's getting mixed up in it for okay, So
I backed off. And now everybody said, an account of
guys like you, crime is going to take over the country.
How much would they tell you to keep your mouth shut?
Speaker 6: That's what I run now? How much?
Speaker 4: Radio Mystery Theater was sponsored in part by Anheuser Busch Incorporated,
brewers of Budweiser and Buick Motor Division.
Speaker 2: This is E. G.
Speaker 4: Marshall inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for
another adventure in the macabre. Until next time, Pleasant Dreams
five