Speaker 1: The CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents.
Speaker 2: Come in.
Speaker 3: Welcome. I'm e. G.
Speaker 1: Marshall. How conscious all of us are who drive the
freeways and the through ways of the beamuth of the road,
the tractor trailer truck.
Speaker 3: Most of the time we mumble.
Speaker 1: Under our breaths at the size of these thirty forty
ton monsters, particularly on wet nights when the rain is
slanting down and that's swirling mist in their trail, fogging
and dirtying our windshields. But we seldom spare much thought
to the men who drive them. I see that science
theater is whether I'm lucky I can see the road?
Speaker 3: What to say, Joe? Help pass out? Thirty four miles?
That's thirty four miles too far?
Speaker 4: And I'm hang in Steve another hour or so and
you and me are really gonna tie you one on
and help me out?
Speaker 3: Oh not again, I got things to do.
Speaker 4: Ever since you took over the seven runs from Big Jim,
you've been alone, and well.
Speaker 3: Maybe after this trip you won't have to put up
with me anymore. Joe, what is unlan? Well? Well, what
kind of things? Well, first off, I must find my wife,
and then I'm gonna kill Her.
Speaker 1: Or mystery drama The Reluctant Killer was written especially for
the mystery theater by Ian Martin and stars Tony Roberts.
Speaker 3: I'm going to kill her.
Speaker 1: There was something so final and deadly about the quiet
statement that it got to Joe. For once in his life,
he knew enough to keep quiet. He just sat in
his corner of the cab, watching the big, darkly handsome
man at the wheel, who handled his thirty ton rig
as easily as if it were a small compact car.
The face was impassive, but that was an illusion, because
a stormy sea of memory was battering against the inside
of his skull, like waves of pain that shattered every
nerve end as they broke.
Speaker 3: I was always big for my age. I'm too strong.
My mom always kept reminding me, and it was just as.
Speaker 1: Well, even though I long ago found that out for myself.
My cousin was eight and I was just six. On
around just wrestling. I did something to was neck put
him in the hospital for.
Speaker 3: Near a month. I didn't mean to hurt him.
Speaker 5: He's my best friend, who's my uncle.
Speaker 3: Jam got me interested in football, So.
Speaker 4: My little strong man, this is where I come every
Saturday to pay our American.
Speaker 1: Football a rough game but still good for.
Speaker 4: The character, and fifty dollars extra a week during the season.
Speaker 3: That's manner from heaven.
Speaker 4: You like to grow up and be football player?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I tell you what.
Speaker 4: I bring you and your mama here next Saturday and
you take a look.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 4: Then if you like, maybe I teach you to play.
Speaker 6: You will have some coffee, young and some cake.
Speaker 4: No, sister, I have already little time to be back
on the job.
Speaker 1: Why you call me lunchtime?
Speaker 7: I can never find you evenings, you and your girls.
Speaker 4: Some nights I have to study, study football formations.
Speaker 3: Who to black? What sort black brush?
Speaker 7: All the takedown, Liz, I do not want to hear
it is that game you've gotten Stephan crazy about it.
Speaker 8: It is not for him.
Speaker 5: Why you should know?
Speaker 7: Stephan does not know his own strength. I'm afraid since
the moment he was born, he will grow up and kill.
Speaker 8: Someone in spite of himself.
Speaker 3: How could you know this about a baby?
Speaker 8: I see things even God himself should not allow me
to see.
Speaker 4: Are we going back to all this romany nonsense again?
Speaker 8: We go back to gypsy king?
Speaker 3: I hope not.
Speaker 4: I will be happy to settle for slav myself and
better still American.
Speaker 3: That cannot change.
Speaker 1: What I know. And what do you know?
Speaker 7: Stephan was born the wrong side of midnight?
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 8: There is death in his future unless he walks with
great care.
Speaker 7: The Taro cards tell me again and again. It is
so he is death that is not revealed, only that
it is he or someone close to him, and that
the death might be because of him.
Speaker 1: I never knew about that conversation till my mother died.
I was a senior in college on a football scholarship,
and by then she was resigned to it at last,
because it was getting me an education I couldn't have afforded. Otherwise,
she never would have told me about her fears for me.
I guess if it weren't for the pro offers that
were being dangled.
Speaker 3: In front of me.
Speaker 7: Oh, I am glad the football season is over, Stephan, Now.
Speaker 5: No more wars.
Speaker 1: I don't knock it too much, Mom. It opened a
lot of doors for me.
Speaker 7: Oh, that is what I'm proud and happy for. When
you'll get your degree, he'll be an engineer, a man
with a white color.
Speaker 1: Hey, you don't go kicking a blue collar worker around now.
Speaker 7: Times have changed times maybe, but be what the college
has trained you to be.
Speaker 1: Its pretty tough promise to ask for, ma'am. Why, Oh,
A lot of reasons.
Speaker 3: First of all, I love the game. I regually really do.
Speaker 1: Second time, I may have big muscles, but I got
no great brain to match up.
Speaker 3: I'm not so.
Speaker 1: Sure I could make it as a mechanical engineer. Last stuff,
there's an awful lot of dough in a football future
for me.
Speaker 3: I'd like us to have.
Speaker 5: Some for a change.
Speaker 3: I want to set you up in a house of
your own. No more work, no more worry.
Speaker 7: No Steve, And before you stop me, I'll give you
some first and last offs of my own. First, I
don't want to say this, but you've got to know
sometime I haven't got too much future left. Stephan, my son,
God is about ready to bring me home.
Speaker 3: I what is it, Stephan.
Speaker 8: Put in the kitchen, on the spice shelf, behind the
dill bottle, a little dark medicine bottle with small white pills.
Speaker 6: Bring them.
Speaker 3: I'll been right back, Bob.
Speaker 7: Oh, no, no, God, please not yet till I know
my boys is safe.
Speaker 1: That was the first information I had in my mother
was dying. She and Uncle John had kept the secret
from me completely till that moment. How mercifully quicken was
after the years of angina paines. Less than a week later,
I sat with my mother before she died. She told
me of the long ago conversation with Uncle Johan, and then.
Speaker 9: That is why I feel.
Speaker 7: If only you were away from all the violence and fighting,
I could see happiness and peace for.
Speaker 3: You, not not for my sake.
Speaker 7: Yours promise me no more football.
Speaker 1: So money isn't to buy something for you, Mom?
Speaker 3: What's it worth?
Speaker 5: I promise.
Speaker 1: I could have kept my promise to my mother, and
I have been for Pat. After Mom died, with the
funeral and all and my last turn to get through,
I took a job at a gas station part time.
Speaker 3: I could have worked as much as.
Speaker 1: I wanted, because the owners soon discovered I knew most
everything about a car, from.
Speaker 3: Front end to universal, but I was having a.
Speaker 1: Rough time making it with the books and getting ready
for finals, mostly weekends. It was a Saturday morning, the
sky as blue as a robin's egg, that she drove in.
She was driving a Maserati, which most time would have
had all my attention, but Pat could have sat in.
Speaker 3: Some kid brothers beat up heap for all the notice.
You'd take other car all the way. Miss, I beg
your pardon.
Speaker 8: I mean filler up, Yes, premium, premium, that's right, the best.
Speaker 3: Well that's what you deserve. Nothing but only only what.
Speaker 1: She looks pretty new to me when here is she
seventy three?
Speaker 3: Well, then you want regularly?
Speaker 8: Tell me what I want.
Speaker 3: I guess you're a wagon baby. You want to burn
out your vowels of the ninety five rating? You got it?
Speaker 8: Oh wait a minute, what's the ninety five? Well?
Speaker 3: Excuse me? I was looking at your legs? What's the question?
Speaker 8: What's a ninety five rating?
Speaker 1: Gas octane eighty seven eighty eight?
Speaker 3: So all your need and you keep your engine clean
as a whistle?
Speaker 1: Will it be?
Speaker 8: Anybody as big as you doesn't have to be conceited
or so off? So maybe you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Make it regular? I'd like to what make it regular?
Or even once?
Speaker 8: I want you to check under the hood.
Speaker 3: I was hoping you'd ask me that why beautiful? Ge
be beautiful?
Speaker 8: Are we starting that again?
Speaker 3: Oh? I was talking about this piece of machinery.
Speaker 8: Oh well, well.
Speaker 3: Why do you want me to check.
Speaker 8: Well, whatever whatever you do battery oil and things.
Speaker 3: Sure, my name is Steve Jennis.
Speaker 8: I'm pot barred.
Speaker 3: What are you doing this evening?
Speaker 8: I have a date, of course, What could you do
about it? Anyway?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm closing early because I have to hit the books.
Speaker 3: I got a test coming up it. I don't know why.
Speaker 8: What time are you closing?
Speaker 3: Ten thirty?
Speaker 8: I'll pick you up at ten thirty and drive you home. Why,
I don't know.
Speaker 5: I must be out of my mind.
Speaker 3: That's like me. I mean, I've been that way since
the moment I first saw you. And that was the
beginning for Pat and me.
Speaker 1: Beginning has only seen to signal a great, great future.
Speaker 5: It hadn't been for a mother, or not.
Speaker 1: That I'd ever been smart enough to realize what a
trouble maker Pat's mother was, except for what happened later.
For beginnings, I thought she was a real nice woman.
I could see where all her daughter's beauty came from.
I mean, Pat and I guess the mother two in
her day could turn on the space.
Speaker 7: Good lord, you are one hunk of man, mister Stephen
americanus jonosmim Oh. I know your real name, but you
look more like mister America to me, Colling, Can you
isolate your stomach muscles?
Speaker 3: Bring upon?
Speaker 7: Never mind, just a trick anyway.
Speaker 9: So you want to.
Speaker 3: Marry my daughter?
Speaker 1: Huh, I'm going to marry your daughter.
Speaker 7: Oh not without my consent, buster and approval.
Speaker 3: I didn't mean to annoy you, but.
Speaker 7: Anyone who crosses me burns me up.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk some more?
Speaker 10: Let's go for swimming the pool first. You're a heck
of a swimmer, Missus Warfield.
Speaker 1: Well you're not. You're wallowing thresh about like a bear.
Speaker 3: It's just not my game. I know what your game is.
Speaker 1: I've watched you play a lot of years.
Speaker 5: Oh kid, no kidding.
Speaker 10: The penalty in my lifestyle, I.
Speaker 7: Watch a lot of games I don't enjoy even have
to participate.
Speaker 5: In some of them.
Speaker 7: Oh I do that because my two hundred and thirty
five pounds teddy bear. I like to live in the
style to which I've always been accustomed.
Speaker 3: I want the same for Pat. That's why I loosened the.
Speaker 8: Apron strings on you.
Speaker 5: Excuse me?
Speaker 1: What league are you going to sign with?
Speaker 3: Steve?
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's up to Uncle Jan.
Speaker 3: I like the NFL myself. But that's mostly because I
always ruined for the Browns.
Speaker 7: I must admit I wouldn't have minded being their den
mother myself. But you are going to play pro football, yes, ma'am,
I expect too, huh. And what kind of contract does
your uncle jan expect to negotiate for you?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's kind of crazy myself, but they're
talking about five hundred thousand, no cut, three year guaranteed.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 7: But just see your own protection. So wait, do we
get that contract signed?
Speaker 3: First?
Speaker 1: Of course, I've gotta know I can support a wife.
Speaker 3: I got some pride, you know.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I was seeing my future mother in law clearly
for the first time. I wasn't a person to her,
just a commodity to buy or sell.
Speaker 3: Or accept as a gift.
Speaker 1: She didn't care about Steve Janus, only that he represented
a half a million bucks.
Speaker 5: On the hoof.
Speaker 1: I'd have cut out there and obeyed my promise to
my mother. Of it, I hadn't have been for Pat.
She was what I loved. She was the only one
important to me. Nothing could change that. I might want
to kill her mother, but I never could feel that
same way about Pat. I'm just not built that way.
I couldn't kill a fly, Steve.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Joe, you okay? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why we just passed and he'll pass those city a limit.
Say if I try to know, I saw you.
Speaker 4: Look like it was one hundred miles away.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about me. Even if I was high as
a kite. I could still haul freight.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, sure you got the touch. Yeah, I just
got the creeps. With all that talk about your planet,
that kid, your wife, I don't go for.
Speaker 3: That kind of kid, and so good. I wouldn't blame you, Joe,
because I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: And with that last statement from Steve, Joe returns to
his corner for good. He wants no part of this
personal vendetta, and yet Joe is going to find out
that he will turn up right square in the middle
of it, with no escape and no excuse and a
horrendous multiplication of what he thinks is terror. The whine
of the big tires on the wet highway has slowed
a little now that the big trailer truck is approaching
the city, but inside the cab they seem even louder.
In the silence between the two men, Joe sits hunched
over staring straight ahead through the half circle of clear glass.
Speaker 3: The windshield wiper keeps open against.
Speaker 1: The driving rain, sneaking a sidelong glance every so often
at Steve. But Steve is lost again in his own thoughts,
driving mechanically with his body reflexes while his mind courses
through the past. We were married a week after I graduated.
Today I signed my final contract with the Pumas.
Speaker 3: The headlines embarrassed.
Speaker 1: Me, but the pat of the mother really went for him.
Big star full back sign's own interference Steve Killer janas
Weed's former Patricia Bard and captioning one picture Beauty and
the Beast, the last one really got to pack.
Speaker 8: That's dirty pool. What this headline?
Speaker 11: Mother?
Speaker 7: Oh you can't deny it's true. Oh just look at
that beautiful animal you married. If you weren't my own
little girl, I'd be fitting an hour out to my
bow right now and.
Speaker 8: Off on the chase.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you did, I'd never stop running.
Speaker 7: Why am I so bad?
Speaker 3: Ah? You know I didn't mean it that way, missus.
Speaker 1: Bard just means you're kind of a bit much for
any guy to handle.
Speaker 7: Well, never you worry about me. You just take care
of my baby in the way to which he's accustomed.
God knows you're going to be rich enough.
Speaker 1: Mother.
Speaker 8: Oh Pat, don't go angenou on me. Money may not
buy happiness, but.
Speaker 7: It sure makes it a lot easier to find. And Keith,
h Now, off you go, you two.
Speaker 1: It's going to be as short enough honeymoon.
Speaker 8: As it is.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize how true that was at the time. Sure,
I had two weeks before training camp Agan.
Speaker 3: But there was more too.
Speaker 1: Than that, some dark shadow that moved.
Speaker 3: Like a warning somewhere in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: Even during the honeymoon on a lost island in the Bahamas,
every so often it would stir enough to make Pat notice.
Speaker 12: Oh, Steve, isn't it sheer unadulterated Heaven?
Speaker 1: Pat, standing like that with your hair streaming in the wind,
and those white drops of water gleaming like pearls against
your skin.
Speaker 3: You have the most beautiful, perfect thing God.
Speaker 5: That made me.
Speaker 12: You're pretty impressive yourself and they altogether.
Speaker 8: And I never thought of you as a poet.
Speaker 1: I'm no poison. I'm just a guy in love with
a goddess. How can I be sure you love me
the way I love you?
Speaker 8: Don't I show you.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't mean that. I mean, I mean, well, Oh,
I don't know.
Speaker 1: I get scared sometimes it's ah, you know, it's a
celebrity bit.
Speaker 12: Don't you think I like to be the wife of
Stephen Killer Janie.
Speaker 3: I don't say that. That's screwball nickname. They hung on me.
Speaker 8: You two mow them down, lover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's a game. It's a game. I don't
want to hurt anybody.
Speaker 8: I know how gentle you can be. But I get
my kicks too watching you from the stands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's what worries me. So he's supposing it
all ended.
Speaker 1: I blew the ligaments in a knee, I picked up
a compound fracture in a woolence, don't.
Speaker 8: Talk about things like that.
Speaker 1: If a football player lives with injuries every time he
suits up supposing I really bought an injury that ends
my career, like.
Speaker 3: Tucker Frederick Center, someone.
Speaker 8: Who won't not my iron man.
Speaker 3: But if I did, Oh.
Speaker 8: I'd miss seeing you play the excitement at all, But
it wouldn't be that bad and we'd still have the money.
Speaker 3: The money.
Speaker 8: Well, if you're injured or something that doesn't cancel the contract,
does it?
Speaker 3: No? But if there wasn't that kind of money, Pat.
Speaker 1: I mean, would it make that.
Speaker 3: Much difference to you?
Speaker 9: Steep six?
Speaker 3: Steve?
Speaker 8: What is it a bad meaning or a honeymoon?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 8: Can we just change the subject. What's the matter with you? Anyway?
Speaker 1: I didn't actually know what was the matter with me
at that moment. There was something that had been building
up for a long time without me knowing it, maybe
without my wanting to face it. But back in training
camp I found out I was gonna have to. It
took me most of the summer to make up my mind,
but the third exhibition game did it for me. Before
I took final action, I talked it over with Uncle Jan.
Speaker 3: Well, why do you come to me stufferent he Lordy
said yeah the answer sure. But have I the right
to make that decision?
Speaker 4: No one else can make it for you. But about
that decision, yes, I will talk a little if.
Speaker 5: You want, And that's why I came to you.
Speaker 4: So you broke mcgosky's back on a block.
Speaker 5: Now, that is too bad.
Speaker 3: No one likes.
Speaker 1: Injuries, but that's the game game. It stopped being a
game a.
Speaker 3: Long time ago, Uncle Jan. But I bought me a
college education. It'll make me a rich man.
Speaker 4: In spite of all that, It's still a game, a
man's game, a challenge. Not many play only for the money.
No one can pay a man enough to take the
punishment he takes in the pros. You must pay yourself
on the inside, with the art and the mind to
balance out the agony you ask your body to accept
you no longer can.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to hit mcgousky that hard. Jones already
had him off the ball carrier. But that's what the
coach demands. He gave you the nickname. Originally, didn't he
kill her? Yes, and I was still in college. I
always hated it.
Speaker 3: I run the only way I know how.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hurt anyone when that whistle blows.
I don't see guys human beings anymore. I just want
to get out there and hit and hit and hit
till it hurts the other guy more than me. I
wanted to hurt mcgoorsky. He slipped a block on me
early in the game. I wanted to kill. This isn't
the beginning anymore, Uncle John, this is the end. It
isn't a game anymore, and it's making me unto my name.
Speaker 3: Then you quit just like that.
Speaker 1: I have a wife, become an expensive house and even
more expensive mother in law.
Speaker 3: How do I support him?
Speaker 1: If you're an engineer, I wouldn't be a good one.
Speaker 5: I'm mechanic.
Speaker 1: That's what I am. That's what I like to do.
Run my own shop cars, that's it.
Speaker 4: Then get the guys filien franchise a first.
Speaker 5: Let's getage.
Speaker 1: That takes money. And if I quit football, money's what
I ain't.
Speaker 3: Going to have.
Speaker 4: I've been saving all my life.
Speaker 1: I opened up the money.
Speaker 3: You run the.
Speaker 4: Front a better shop, Steffan Son, we'll go into partnership together.
Speaker 3: I want to load off my back.
Speaker 1: I couldn't wait to get home and tell Pat she'd
been complaining, what a bear.
Speaker 3: I went around the house, and now I could.
Speaker 1: Tell her why and we could get back to the
way our marriage had started off.
Speaker 3: I was as happy as a kid with a brand
new bike when I got home.
Speaker 1: Even Pat's mother being there did dampened or stopped me.
I broided it out for both of them in the kitchen.
Speaker 8: Quick football, What about your contract?
Speaker 3: There's no way they can make me play?
Speaker 8: Couldn't they sue for.
Speaker 1: The peanuts they paid me so far, they don't have
to do I'll pay it back.
Speaker 8: You couldn't play for any other team.
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna play football again.
Speaker 8: You're gonna be a mechanic, a cheap, dirty grease monkey.
Speaker 3: I'll wait a.
Speaker 8: Minute, But how can we keep this house? We won't
be able to afford.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, sure, we'll have to pull in our horns.
We'll have to get small apartment for a while, and
you could take.
Speaker 5: Care of honey.
Speaker 3: You remember I.
Speaker 1: Asked you once if the money made all that difference
between us.
Speaker 8: And maybe you remember I didn't answer.
Speaker 3: I should hope not.
Speaker 7: Look are you trying to tell me that just because
you suddenly you're getting a little squeamish about hurting your
fellow man.
Speaker 3: You're gonna reneg on what.
Speaker 8: You want with my daughter, but you expect to turn
her into some sort of middle class drudge or spends
your life at a washing machine cleaning your oily overalls.
Speaker 3: Why don't you stay out of this joy?
Speaker 8: Let me handle it.
Speaker 1: Mother.
Speaker 8: Honey, you're tired and you're hurt, and I know this
period of training is awful tough on you. Why don't
you have a little rest and then we can look.
Speaker 1: I didn't make up my mind two seconds ago. This
took a long time, and it's final.
Speaker 8: Come on upstairs, baby, and let's you and I work
it all out before you.
Speaker 3: I have already talked to management. I quit.
Speaker 1: It's too late without even asking Pat.
Speaker 3: Joy.
Speaker 1: If Pat loves me, she has to see that I
I have to quit, otherwise I'm turning into another person
in the euar of us knows.
Speaker 8: You can't give up all that money. Oh oh, honey,
I didn't mean that I and.
Speaker 1: I suddenly realized that yes you did.
Speaker 3: I want to get out of here for some fresh air.
Speaker 9: Where are you going?
Speaker 1: I'm going downstairs to the garage.
Speaker 3: You get the car.
Speaker 1: I'm going for a ride my lawyer and make damn
well sure I'm clean out from under.
Speaker 8: Baby, you're so tired and confused. Let Pat talk to you.
Speaker 1: A little and should get away from me.
Speaker 3: Pat, don't do that to me again.
Speaker 8: It's only for your own good.
Speaker 12: You kick your hands off.
Speaker 1: I only pushed her away in a moment of revulsion,
but as usual, I wasn't conscious of my own strength.
Fortunately Pat wasn't seriously hurt, but on the witness stand
in the court, and with the attorney's pictures to hand around,
and she looked as though I tried to beat her
to a pope, because that's what my loving wife and
mother in law did to me.
Speaker 3: They brought me to court for wife beating.
Speaker 1: Because my decision about the football contract was a river couple.
Speaker 3: They lied. I was given a year's sentence in jail.
Speaker 1: They let me out after eight months on parole.
Speaker 3: Big deal. I have approved myself for nothing.
Speaker 5: Well, when I find pad, I'm going.
Speaker 1: To approve on a lot of things. Steve.
Speaker 4: You know you're talking out loud.
Speaker 1: What was I saying, Joe, Well, just about your marriage?
Speaker 3: You know, you know I was in jail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you said that, and why yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But honestly.
Speaker 4: I believe you the way you said it. Well, the
only thing is, what's the point of holding a.
Speaker 3: Grudge as a matter of pride? Yeah? But well, I'm
I mean.
Speaker 1: To kill someone, i'd you expect to get away with it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter much if I do. I think you're
telling to extrain me.
Speaker 1: Whine well, Iles McGill about knocking off someone.
Speaker 4: I mean supposing I was to turn you into the
parole officer, oh or even the police.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't want to get mixed up in this, Joe,
would you?
Speaker 1: No? But if something did happen, I'd.
Speaker 5: Be the first one they question. I'd have to kill
a cops.
Speaker 3: I'll be over the border by then, Mexico.
Speaker 1: Ever since I got out of jail, I've been packing
it away a year, seventy five bucks.
Speaker 3: A week or more.
Speaker 1: You're putting in five thousand bucks right here.
Speaker 3: This money built goes whatever I go.
Speaker 1: Oh whind't you if I get it right or off?
It's just another dame, another dame.
Speaker 3: You haven't been in love.
Speaker 4: Joe well Away, I mean, boor of am I so much?
Speaker 3: I draw only the dogs all.
Speaker 1: But there is this girl at the Paradise restaurant.
Speaker 3: I've been telling you about it.
Speaker 4: Hey, look, why don't we garage this heap and you
and me go over there and have some laughs like that?
But like well maybe like you yeah, no, sale, I
couldn't look at anyone since Pat Pat There was a
name hat Bob oh once he look like this, I mean,
I bet she was some looker for old cabin buddy.
Speaker 3: Why should I sat here? He asked for it? So here,
work for yourself.
Speaker 1: That's her your path my sometime white.
Speaker 4: Well, she she's something to what we stopped.
Speaker 1: For parole officers just down the street.
Speaker 3: I might as well check you. You all a rig
and garage it. Look, I'll buy you a dinner. Huh, meet
you later at that paradise restaurant.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, look, Steve, No, I forget it. You
don't have to on a kind of me.
Speaker 3: Oh I want to.
Speaker 1: I got the word that Pat's working as a waitress
at some joint.
Speaker 3: That's one I haven't checked out.
Speaker 1: Huh, don't worry, Joe, b I find it.
Speaker 3: You won't be involved. Check.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jack, just keep your nose out of this.
Speaker 3: And stay clean.
Speaker 4: And if you only know Steve, it just doesn't happen
to be that easy, buddy.
Speaker 1: A mumble comment to himself on which we can eavesdrop,
But that Steve doesn't hear him, What does it mean?
How can Joe, who is no part of Steve's past,
have any relation to his presence or his future? If
you have a suspicion by now that Joe is not
telling Steve everything he could, you might be right.
Speaker 3: But this is an.
Speaker 1: Evening for evasion in general and suspicion, because as Steve
faces his parole officer. He obviously conceals his intentions towards
his wife if and when he finds her.
Speaker 11: And I'm saying it again, Jenoes, I'm not so happy
about this arrangement. I'm only doing it as a favorite
of Sam Brooks, your own parole officer up in Houston.
Speaker 3: But mister Keith, for what do you object to my
getting a job.
Speaker 11: You're a graduated engineer and a top mechanic. I don't
like the shuttling between cities. What for Sam, you couldn't
hold a job like you. Yes, sir, mister Brooks has
been real nice to me. You have a half of
your wife, No, sir, except the one time she's sent
me the divorce. Yeah, she's no idea where she is now.
Speaker 3: No, No, don't you care?
Speaker 1: Well after what happened, as far as I'm concerned, to Keith,
her my wife is dead.
Speaker 11: Well, I'm not trying to rub your nose in it.
I just want to point out that your years almost
up and then you'll have us off your back. So
don't get in any trouble in my backyard. I'll throw
the whole book at you if you do.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how I.
Speaker 11: Called you Sam your favorite parole, Steve Jenno.
Speaker 3: So just in.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what a big football fan
you are.
Speaker 3: Me it's the Ponies. What's on my mind?
Speaker 11: I don't know, but Cleveland police just sent me down
a picture of that wife of his and huh oh,
she's not marked up in what I'm looking at. Sensational
looking door, too good to just pass up. What I
want to know is, how are you coming on that
trace you've had.
Speaker 3: Out on her?
Speaker 11: Yeah, well, the moment anything turns up, you get on
the pipe. Even tonight, I'll be here late. I wouldn't
want to know that you're a boy and this girl
were in the same town.
Speaker 3: I could be begging for trouble.
Speaker 8: The manager said, you had some trouble with the other waitress.
Can I help?
Speaker 3: Steve? Hi, pat fancy meeting you here?
Speaker 8: How did you find me?
Speaker 3: When I got out of jail, I.
Speaker 1: Discovered your mother had died, You sold a house and moved.
Somebody told me you're going to work as a waitress.
I started out combing every restaurant in Cleveland.
Speaker 5: I came so yeah.
Speaker 1: When I got my copy of the divorce papers, they
were postmarked. They'll postle I got a job pulling freight
down here.
Speaker 3: I've been looking for you ever since.
Speaker 8: What four?
Speaker 3: We gotta talk? Pat? You me?
Speaker 8: I can't I work here?
Speaker 3: What is this? This mass Karaine? You working as a waitress.
I have to before to earn a living. I don't
believe you.
Speaker 8: What difference does it make? Went through?
Speaker 3: No, I have to talk to you.
Speaker 11: All right.
Speaker 8: They're calling me from another table. I should be through
in half an.
Speaker 9: Hour or so.
Speaker 3: I'll be back.
Speaker 8: Not here. Don't make any trouble for me. I'll meet
you at my place where I live, right down the street,
right off the dock by the river, the last cabin
out on the jetti. I'll meet you there after i'm through.
Speaker 3: How do I know you won't run out on me?
Speaker 8: I promise you.
Speaker 9: I look, here's my key.
Speaker 8: You can wait in my cabin for me. Now, I've
got to take care of my customers.
Speaker 1: I looked around for Joe, but I guess he decided
he didn't want to part of me after what I
had told him. I realized now, since the Paradise was
his favorite joint, he must have recognized Pat from the
picture I'd shown him. I can only hope he hadn't
hollered Copper, but at least he hadn't tried one patent.
Speaker 3: In the back of the restaurant was the jetty Pat
had mentioned on me.
Speaker 1: It was more of a stringeas bridging out to a
small island with some summer cabins on it. The others
were lighted, one dark.
Speaker 5: That would be Pat's.
Speaker 3: I would do it here.
Speaker 1: My hands on a throat was strong enough to snap
it rather than strangler.
Speaker 3: And then a body into the river.
Speaker 11: I started to wait, Oh, hell, Sam, who Patricia bar?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, that's right. That was a maiden name. You're
located at how through the waitresses union.
Speaker 11: I didn't know she was working where the paradise restaurant?
Speaker 5: Right here now past.
Speaker 11: I had a sneak and hunt you boy, I had
a good reason for working this job. He's been hunting
for her. Now he's founding yayay. It could be natural enough,
and maybe he just wants to kindle an old flame
with me.
Speaker 3: I'm a cynic.
Speaker 11: Maybe nothing's going to happen, but I'm getting my tail
over there as fast as I can to make sure
Enoughing does.
Speaker 3: Who's that Steve?
Speaker 8: Why didn't you wait in the cabin.
Speaker 3: I wanted to make sure you were alone.
Speaker 8: Who would I have with me?
Speaker 3: Crops? Maybe?
Speaker 8: Why would you think that.
Speaker 3: You did the last time you came for me. Who
have you been?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 9: Have to hold me so tightly. I'm not gonna run,
That's what I decided.
Speaker 8: You see, when you carry something inside you, this no
point in running away. It goes wherever you go. I
can't leave it behind.
Speaker 4: What my.
Speaker 8: Shame, shame at what I did to.
Speaker 3: You, Steve.
Speaker 8: Please, let's go inside. I want to talk to you.
Speaker 3: No, you and me, we don't go anywhere together ever again?
Speaker 8: Is that all you came to tell me?
Speaker 3: You came to get back at you for what you
did to me.
Speaker 8: I've been paid back for that already. Look at how
I ended up a cheap little waitress and even cheaper
little joints.
Speaker 1: Eight lousy, stinking monks in the tank with drunks and
dead beats and junkies.
Speaker 8: Steve, please give me another chance. Let's go in the
cabin before. Maybe we can still make things right after
what's happened. There can't be nothing left for.
Speaker 1: Us, that's all. There is nothing except even the score.
Speaker 8: All right, If that's the way you want it, Why
don't you do what you came back to do? Why
don't you kill me?
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 8: Isn't that what you came to do?
Speaker 1: Yes, I sent in that cell, and the shame of
why I was there ate at my guts, hate festering
inside me till a day I could find you and
pay you back for what you did to me. And now, yes, now,
now I know why I searched so long.
Speaker 3: It wasn't hate. It's because I still love you. I
want you. I hate myself for that worse than ever.
Speaker 1: Why because you don't want me?
Speaker 3: You never did. I want to come crawling.
Speaker 9: You wouldn't have to crawl, Steve, Oh it's too late.
Speaker 3: How could I ever trust you again?
Speaker 8: You can trust me if only I knew I could, Steve.
Speaker 3: Yes, If you want the.
Speaker 8: Real reason I was late tonight because I knew what
you planned to do.
Speaker 9: I knew you were planning to kill me.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 8: The little man that rides the truck with him, Joe,
he's been in the restaurant before and after you went out.
He came in and warned me, said he recognized me
from a picture you showed him. That's why I started
to run.
Speaker 1: Then why'd you come back, because one.
Speaker 8: Of the things I learned in the past year is
that I really love you too. Without you, there's nothing
I might as well be dead. You took a chance
that I was willing to gamble on.
Speaker 3: You would Would you take a chance on me again?
Speaker 8: Do you still have my key?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 9: And let's go in and I'll prove it to you.
Welcome home, Steve.
Speaker 3: Oh Pat, I love you, sord.
Speaker 8: Did you kill him?
Speaker 5: Joe?
Speaker 3: No? No, I just sapped him.
Speaker 1: I see he's out cold.
Speaker 3: And where you been? First?
Speaker 8: I got held up at the restaurant. Then he was
waiting for me on the walk outside. Well, what are
you waiting for?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 8: Get the money?
Speaker 3: Just a minute? What am I getting into?
Speaker 8: You're already in, Joe? Come on, I got my car waiting.
We can be across the border in less than an hour,
and in Mexico with five thousand bucks, we can.
Speaker 5: Live like royalty.
Speaker 1: Yeah you really mean ice, baby.
Speaker 8: I know you go for me the way you always
came to the restaurant, and I go for you too.
Speaker 3: You on the level.
Speaker 9: Just try me. That's a downtainment, all right.
Speaker 8: Now, Let's get that money belt off him and roll
them in the river.
Speaker 5: Oh, wait a minute, Wait a minute, I ain't got
for murder.
Speaker 1: You all had her?
Speaker 8: Joe, who are you?
Speaker 3: Not exactly a real cop? Lady?
Speaker 11: But the gun is reasal, you know, it's funny. All
I was looking for was a possible parole violetder And
now look at the can of worms I opened up.
Speaker 3: Okay, Joe, turn around and put your hands behind you.
Speaker 1: Oh officer, you don't know the old lady.
Speaker 11: I get nervous when both my hands are busy.
Speaker 8: You don't know what I've been through. The man on
the floor was my former husband. We were going to
have a reconciliation, and then this man came from nowhere
and hit my husband with something and knocked him out.
He was going to steal my husband's money and force me.
Speaker 11: All right, Sarah, burnout, turn it off.
Speaker 3: It won't work. Cute little ladem isn't she? Joe?
Speaker 11: How long do you think you' the lasted? She did
you the first stop for gas?
Speaker 5: Aren't you going to take her in two?
Speaker 3: Now that's a question.
Speaker 1: She's a good looker.
Speaker 3: She might just beat the rap with.
Speaker 11: Only my word against hers. Of course, Now, if I
had a witness.
Speaker 4: If I had a hand free I felt her one
like Steve auto of in the first place. Okay, okay, officer,
you've got your witnesses.
Speaker 8: But Officer, you don't understand.
Speaker 11: You're right, I don't I need all kinds. Most of
the worst got some good in them. But I sure
don't understand anyone like you.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you like myself.
Speaker 1: When I first heard it, were as surprised at the
outcome as I was. I thought, for once we had
a love story with a happy ending.
Speaker 11: Ah.
Speaker 1: Mean, life is full of little disappointments. Thinking it over,
it occurs to me that it all did have a
happy ending. Joe and Pat were convicted of aggravated assault
and battery and drew sentences of.
Speaker 3: Four to five years.
Speaker 1: It was a little rough on Steve at first, but
the shock was enough to clear Pat Bard out of
his mind for good, and he and his uncle Jan
finally opened.
Speaker 3: Their service station in Houston.
Speaker 1: Of course, he still flies more and more often to
El Paso. It seems that Officer Keefer has a very
cute kid's sister, but that, of course, is another story
they'll have to complete. Our cast included Tony Roberts, ROBERTA Maxwell, Leon,
Janny Briana Raeburn and Ian Martin. The entire production was
under the direction of Hyman Brown.
Speaker 3: All a preview of our next tale.
Speaker 6: It was just trying the whole world. Well, it's not
good for the world. It's last unless there is a
new thirty six men take my place. You must do
it quickly, quickly as well. I don't know if you're not,
don't try to get a Please say yes, Harry, say yes.
And suddenly there's.
Speaker 3: An end of thunder and lightning, the wind.
Speaker 6: Suddenly every cloud will disappear. Right, sun will shine in
a peaceful heaven.
Speaker 3: Shast rest not try to say yes.
Speaker 8: Only you can save the world.
Speaker 6: Say yes me, me save the world.
Speaker 3: Yes, you owe me, you can save the world.
Speaker 6: Eric Harry, Say yes, Harry, Yes.
Speaker 5: Yes, all right, Yes.
Speaker 3: This is E. G.
Speaker 1: Marshall inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for another.
Speaker 3: Adventure the macabre.
Speaker 1: Until next time, Pleasants Dreams