Now, Roma Wines presents...
Suspense!
Tonight, the most dangerous game starring Joseph Cotton with J. Carroll Nash.
Suspense is presented for your enjoyment by Roma Wines. That's R-O-M-A. Roma Wines.
Those excellent California wines that can add so much pleasantness to the way you live.
A most interesting woman who extracts all the simple pleasure and happiness possible from living is
Elsa Maxwell, International Authority on Hospitality. She offers you some friendly counsel.
I am always telling people to take it easy, as they say, to be moderate and natural and at ease.
And so obviously I suggest the enjoyment of a glass of Roma California Port after dinner or during the evening.
It is also very smart to serve when friends drop in, for this is one of the most glorious of all wines.
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Moderate pleasure that helps you feel calmly at ease and so happier.
Don't bother about special glasses. Just use whatever glasses are convenient and enjoy your wine.
You really should act on Miss Maxwell's suggestion.
Roma Port, as all Roma wines, is the best that California's magnificent sun-rifened grapes can provide.
In glorious flavor, color, and aroma is unvaryingly good, always enjoyable.
Protected for you by the ancient skill of the noted Roma wineries located in the choicest vineyard areas of California.
Yet all this delight costs you only pennies a glass.
Remember, more Americans enjoy Roma than any other wine.
Roma, R-O-M-A, Roma wines.
Yes, right now a glass full would be very pleasant as Roma wines bring you Mr. Joseph Cotton as Sang Aranford,
with J. Carroll Nash as General Zoroff in the greatest manhunt story written in our time,
the most dangerous game, a supreme adventure in suspense.
I haven't much time. Any moment now I may come in, and when he does, I'm going to kill him.
It's him or me, and I'm going to do my best to make it him.
Maybe it sounds crazy to you, I guess it does.
It would have sounded crazy to me a few days ago when I was laughing and joking with Whitney on the yacht.
I was on a pleasure trip.
A pleasure trip.
How could I or anyone realize then the horror and torment I was to go through?
How was I to know of Ivan and the death swamp and the hounds?
How was I to know of Zoroff?
Think of it.
It was only four nights ago that the ship went down.
We'd been talking about the island, Ship Trap Island, Whitney said it was called on the charts.
He was sleepy and started on down below to turn in.
I was mixing myself a nightcap when I looked up and saw it.
A tremendous reef racing at us out of the fog.
It screamed out a warning, but it was too late.
We were right up on it.
The ship exploded right on top of Whitney and the members of the crew.
The force of the explosion hurled me into the blood-warm waters.
Terrified of the suddenness, surprised, my stomach weak and thick at the thought of the others.
The sea was eddying furiously around, thinking rampant for the ship and a certain coolheadedness.
It came to me making me swim desperately away or I might not have lived to go through the horror which was soon to come.
I struck out to the right in the direction of the island Whitney had been telling me about.
I have no recollection of how long I swam, but all at once I heard the muttering and growling of the sea breaking on a rocky shore.
With my remaining strength, I dragged myself from the swirling waters.
Jagged crags appeared to jet up endlessly into the night.
All in, gasping, my hands raw.
I at last reached a flat place at the top.
Plung myself down at the jungle edge.
Tumbled headlong into the deepest sleep of my life.
When I awoke, I was in a strange place, having no idea how I got there.
Our friend seems to be awakening.
Hmm? What?
Who? Where is this?
Where am I? Where's Whitney?
Oh, do not be alarmed, my friend.
My man, Ivan, found you on the cliff.
He brought you here to be taken care of.
Oh, that's life on this island. I hardly believed.
Well, few people do.
Yes, you are quite safe here in my castle. Mr. uh...
Rainsford. I'm Sanger Rainsford of New York. My yard...
Oh, ho! Sanger Rainsford.
Well, it is indeed a very great pleasure and an honor to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.
You know me?
By reputation only. I've read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet.
Oh.
You see, my name is General Zaroff.
Well, I can't tell you how happy I am to meet you, General.
And I cannot tell you how happy I am to meet you, Mr. Rainsford.
But come, we shouldn't be chatting here. We can talk later. You must be hungry.
I am, Ruffer.
Uh...
What?
Well, Ivan, he thought you would like a robe. He's drying your clothes for you.
Oh, thank you.
Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow, but you must not mind his look.
His ears were cut off in battle and he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb.
He is sensitive about his appearance.
A simple fellow, really, but I'm afraid a bit savage.
Oh?
He has been in our family for years.
Uh...
Follow Ivan if you please, Mr. Rainsford. I was about to have lunch just before you woke, but we can have it together now.
Uh... does the robe fit you all right?
Oh, yes, yes. Perfectly. Thanks.
Hmm.
You have quite a collection of heads here. Lions, tigers, elephants, moose, bears.
I don't believe I've ever seen more perfect specimens.
They are nice. I take great pride in them.
You have good cards.
Well, coming from you, Mr. Rainsford, that is a great compliment.
Well, here we are. If you will sit over there, please.
Oh, thank you.
All right, Ivan.
Oh.
Well.
This soup looks delicious.
Thank you.
Perhaps you were surprised that I recognized your name, Mr. Rainsford.
Well, you see, I read all books on hunting.
I have but one passion in my life, and it is the hunt.
Your head's a really remarkable, General. That Cape Buffalo is the largest I've ever seen.
You know, I've always thought the Cape Buffalo the most dangerous of all games.
No, you are wrong, sir. The Cape Buffalo is not the most dangerous game.
He runs. He runs.
How does he understand you?
He reads my lips.
I think you will like the champagne, Mr. Rainsford. Ivan chills it expertly.
No, the Cape Buffalo is not the most dangerous game.
Here in my preserve on this island, I hunt more dangerous games.
Is there a big game on this island?
The biggest.
Really?
Oh, it isn't here naturally. Of course, I have to start the island.
Oh, well, what have you imported, General? Jaguars?
No, hunting jaguars ceased to interest me some years ago.
I exhausted their possibilities, you see.
Oh, may I pour you another glass of champagne, Mr. Rainsford?
Thank you, General.
Hmm. Well, that's good.
You know, God makes some men poets, some he makes kings, some beggars.
Me, he made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger my father once said.
My whole life has been one prolonged hunt.
I have hunted every kind of game in every land.
Grizzlies in the Iraqis, crocodiles in the Ganges, rhinoceros in East Africa.
Ha! Jaguars.
In the Amazon, I hunted jaguars.
I heard they were unusually cunning.
Ah, they weren't.
They were no much at all for a hunter with his wits about him and a high-powered rifle.
I was bitterly disappointed.
I was lying in my tent with a splitting headache one night
when a terrible thought pushed its way into my mind.
Hunting was beginning to bore me, and hunting, remember, had been my life.
Well, this was a tragic moment, was it not, Mr. Rainsford?
It must have been indeed, General Zara.
Fortunately, that never happened to me.
Ah, but you are much younger than I am, Mr. Rainsford, and you have not hunted much.
But you perhaps can guess why the hunt no longer fascinated me.
You'll have to tell me, General.
Well, hunting had ceased to be what you call a sporting proposition.
It had become too easy. I always got my quarry, always.
No animal had a chance with me anymore.
The animal had nothing but his legs and his instinct.
Instinct is no match for reason.
I see.
It came to me as an inspiration, what I must do.
And that was?
Well, I had to invent a new animal to hunt.
A new animal? Are you kidding?
Not at all.
I never joke about hunting.
I needed a new animal. I found one, so I bought this island and built this castle.
And here I do my hunting.
The island is perfect for my purposes.
There are jungles with mazes of prails in them hills, swamps.
But the animal, General Zara...
Well, I wanted the ideal animal to hunt.
So I said, what are the attributes of an ideal quarry?
And the answer was, of course.
It must have courage, cunning, and above all, it must be able to reason.
But no animal can reason.
My dear fellow, there is one that can.
One?
One.
You can't mean...
And why not?
I can't believe you're serious, General Zara, if you're just joking.
Joking? I'm quite serious.
I'm speaking about hunting.
Hunting? You're speaking of murder.
You may not know the words, but I think I can show you that your scruples are quite ill-founded.
I doubt that.
I hunt the scum of the earth.
Sailors from tramp ships, laskas, mongrels.
But they are men.
Precisely.
That is why I use them.
They can reason after refraction.
Oh, they are dangerous.
But where do you get them?
Well, we will visit my training school. It is in the cellar.
I have about a hundred of them.
I have about a dozen of them.
They are from the Spanish bar, Sanlacal.
They are very lucky to go on the rocks out there.
A very inferior lot, I regret to say.
Another glass? No.
You see, it is a game.
I suggest to one of them that we go hunting.
I give him a supply of food and an excellent hunting knife.
I give him two hours to start.
If my quarry loses me for three whole days, he wins the game.
If I find him...
Who will he lose to?
Suppose he refused to be hunted.
Well, I give him his choice, of course.
He need not play that game if he does not wish to.
If he does not wish to hunt, I turn him over to Ivan.
Ivan used to be official knouter to my old king.
And he has his own ideas of sport.
Invariably, Mr. Rensford, invariably they choose to hunt.
And if they win?
Well, to date, I have not lost.
Oh, I do not wish to think me a brag of Mr. Rensford.
Many of them for only the most elementary sort of problem.
Occasionally, I strike a tartar.
One almost did win.
I eventually had to use the hound.
The hound?
This way, please. Come, I will show you.
See, wait a minute. I will open the window.
Ah, nice boy.
Hello, boy.
They are a rather good lot, I think.
They are let out at seven every night.
If anyone should try to get into my castle or out of it...
Something extremely regrettable would occur to him.
But enough of this. Come.
I want to show you a collection of heads I am quite sure you have never seen before.
Will you join me in the laboratory for a moment?
Look here, General Zoroff.
I appreciate your hospitality and your rescuing me more than I can say, but I...
Well, I am not bored with hunting.
Oh, good, good, excellent.
Tonight we will hunt, then, eh, Rensford?
General, I wish to leave this island at once.
Tonight, I wish to leave this island at once.
Tonight, we will hunt, you and I.
You are wrong, General. I won't hunt. I won't murder.
Oh, that is too bad.
Well, as you wish, my friend.
The choice rests entirely with you.
But may I not venture to suggest to you that you will find my idea of sport more
more fun than you want?
Now, wait a minute.
My dear fellow.
You don't... you... you don't mean you plan to hunt me.
My dear fellow, I will not let you go.
My dear fellow, have I not told you I always mean what I say about hunting?
This is really an inspiration.
I drink to a form and worthy of my steel at last.
I simply can't believe this must be some sort of a dream.
Your brain against mine, your woodcraft against mine, your strength, your stamina against mine,
outdoor chess, and the steak is not without value, eh?
And if I win?
Oh, then I will cheerfully acknowledge myself defeated, and if I do not find you by midnight
of the third day, my sloop will place you on the mainland near the town.
Oh, you can trust me.
I will give you my word as a gentleman and a sportsman.
Of course, you in turn must agree to say nothing of your visit here.
I'll agree to nothing of the kind.
Oh.
Well, in that case...
Well, but why discuss that now?
Three days hence, we can discuss it, unless...
Well, what is your choice, Mr. Raines Walsh?
I'm a hunter. You know my choice.
Good.
Ivan Hero will supply you with hunting clothes, food, and knives.
I suggest you wear markers since they leave a poor trail.
I suggest too that you avoid the big swamp in the northeast corner of the island.
We call it Death Swamp.
There's quicksand there.
Well, I must beg you to excuse me now.
I always take siesta after lunch.
You will want to start, no doubt.
Well, au revoir, Mr. Raines Walsh.
Look here. Isn't there any way I can...
I had fought my way through the bush for two hours,
repeating to myself over and over again,
I must keep my nerve, I must keep my nerve.
My whole idea at first was to put distance between myself and General Zorov,
and to this end I had plunged along through the thicket,
spurred on by the sharp growls of something very much like panic.
Now, I had got a grip on myself, it stopped,
and was taking stock of the situation.
I saw that straight flight was futile.
Inevitably, it would bring me face to face with the sea.
I'll give him a trail to follow, I muttered,
and I struck off from the rude path I had been following
and into the trackless wilderness.
I made a series of intricate loops.
I doubled on my trail again and again,
recalling all the lore of the fox hunt and all the dodges of the fox.
Night found me exhausted, my hands and face lashed by the branches
on a thickly wooded ridge.
My need for rest was imperative, and I thought,
I played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable.
The big tree with a thick trunk that outspread branches was nearby,
and taking care to leave not the slightest mark,
I climbed up and stretched out on one of the broad limbs.
Rest brought me new confidence and almost a feeling of security,
even so expert a hunter as General Sotov could not trace me here,
I assured myself.
An apprehensive night crawled slowly by,
my mind keenly alert for any sound, any warning,
and towards the dawn, an instinct I never knew existed,
like an animal must possess,
impel me to look far in the distance and a-west of the direction.
Sure enough, following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound,
came General Sotov.
Nothing escaped those searching black eyes,
no crushed blade of grass, no bent twig, no mark,
no matter how faint, in the moss.
My heart pounding curiously, I slid down quickly from the tree
and struck off again in the woods.
I knew I had to do something desperate,
I knew I had little time in which to do it.
Three hundred yards from my hiding place,
I stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously
on a smaller living one.
Throwing off my sack of food, I took my knife from the sheep
and began to walk with all my energy.
The job was finished at last,
and I threw myself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away.
I did not have to wait long.
Terrible Dyar!
What?
Get him, get him.
What?
Hey, Rainesborn, if you are with the sound of my voice,
as I suppose you are, let me congratulate you.
Not many men know how to make a Malay mancatcher.
Luckily for me, I too have hunted in Malacca.
You are proving interesting, Mr. Rainesborn.
You are proving interesting.
The tree brushed my shoulder as I jumped back.
I am going to have the wound rest, it is only slight.
But I shall be back, Mr. Rainesborn.
I shall be back.
It was flight now.
A desperate, hopeless flight that carried me on for hours.
I don't know where I got the strength.
I kept telling myself over and over again that I must keep my nerve.
That I was competing with a monster, a super huntsman.
Dust came, then darkness.
And still I managed to press on.
The ground grew softer under my moxibustions.
The vegetation grew rancor, denser.
Insects bit at me savagely.
I was a man of my word.
The insects bit at me savagely.
Suddenly as I stepped forward, my foot back into the ooze.
I'd wrench it back.
The mud sucked viciously at my foot like a giant leech.
With a vile of effort, I tore my foot loose.
I knew where I was then.
Death swarmed in its quicksand.
But the softness of the earth had given me an idea.
I stepped back from the quicksand a dozen feet,
so I began to dig.
When the pit was above my shoulders, I climbed out.
And from some hard saplings,
cut stakes and sharpened them to a fine point.
These stakes I planted in the bottom of the pit,
with a point sticking up as fast as I could.
I wore the rough carpet of weeds and branches,
and with it covered the mouth of the pit.
Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness,
I crouched behind this stump of a lightning-charred tree.
A new zaraf was coming.
I could hear the paddling sound of feet on the soft earth.
He was not feeling his way along foot by foot.
He was coming and coming fast.
Crouching there, I couldn't see him nor the pit.
I lived a year and a minute.
Frozen, every muscle tensed.
Excellent, Rainford.
Yes, excellent.
You have done well.
Your burmese tiger pit has climbed one of my finest hounds.
Again you scored.
I think, Mr. Rainford,
I will see what you can do against my whole pack.
I am going back to get them now.
Thank you for a most amusing evening.
At daybreak, lying near the swamp,
I was awakened by a sound that made me know
that I had new things to learn about fear.
It was a distant sound, faint and wavering, but I knew it.
It was the baying of a pack of hounds.
I could do one of two things.
I could stay where I was and wait, if that was suicide.
I could flee, if that was postponing the inevitable.
I put my every last hope into that tiger pit.
For the moment I stood there thinking,
all at once an idea that held a wild chance came to me
and, tightening my pulse, I headed away from the swamp.
The baying of the hounds grew nearer.
It would be on me any minute now.
My mind worked frantically.
I thought of a native trick I had learned in Gandhi.
I caught hold of a springy young sapling
and to it fastened my hunting knife,
with a blade pointing down the trail.
With a bit of wild grapevine, I tied back the sapling.
When I ran for my life, the hounds raised their terrifying voices
as if they hit the fresh set.
I knew then how an animal at bay feels.
Last, I had to stop to keep my breath,
but baying of the hounds stopped just as subtly.
And with it, my heart stopped too.
They must have reached the knife.
Excitedly, I shined it up a tree and looked back.
My pursuers had stopped all right.
But the hope that had been in my brain when I climbed, died.
For in the shallow valley,
I saw that General Zoroff was still on his feet.
But Ivan was not.
Apparently, he had come along to hold the hounds.
The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree,
had splintered through his chest.
I hardly tumbled to the ground when the pack took up the cry again.
Nerve, nerve, nerve, I patted as I dashed along.
A blue gap showed between the trees, dead ahead.
The hounds were almost on top of me.
I forced myself toward the gap. I reached it.
It was the shore of the sea.
Across the cove, I could see the gloomy gray stone of Zoroff's castle.
Twenty feet below me, the sea rumbled and hissed.
I hesitated.
I heard the hounds.
I heard the hounds. And I leaped far out into the sea.
Oh, the sea was good to me.
And I am here safe in the General's bedroom, waiting for him.
The three days are up and I have eluded him.
But now I know I must go further.
In a moment, we will meet, he and I.
Only one of us is going to live.
You understand that now.
General.
How on earth did you get here?
Swam. I found it easier and quicker than walking through your jungle.
Where?
Well, I congratulate you.
I am glad you are here.
Well, I congratulate you. You have won the game.
No, no, General. I am still the beast at bay.
Here.
Get ready, General Zaraf.
Four?
Yes, two of them.
Oh, well, I see, splendid.
One of us then is to furnish a repast for the hounds.
The other will sleep in this very excellent bed.
En garde, Rainforest.
General.
En garde, Rainforest.
Ah, General.
It's just as my late host said it would be.
A very excellent bed.
And so closes the most dangerous game by Richard Connell, starring Joseph Cotton as Rainsford
with J. Carroll Nash as General Zoroff.
Tonight's study in suspense.
Suspense is produced, edited, and directed by William Spear.
Probably no woman alive has been hostess to so many famous and distinguished people as
Miss Elsa Maxwell.
This is what she says about Roma wine.
When you entertain friends, you do everything you can think of to add to their enjoyment.
And that is why I say when you serve your guests Roma wine, you not only delight them,
you also smartly and genuinely flatter them.
These delicious wines add so much to hospitality and to enjoyment of everyday meals.
Yet it's such a simple, easy addition to the joy of living, so wholesomely moderate and
so inexpensive.
Miss Maxwell gives you good advice.
Enjoy Roma wine regularly.
It's California's finest.
It's good, unburyingly fine in flavor and quality.
Remember, more Americans enjoy Roma than any other wine.
Roma, R-O-M-A, Roma wines.
Joseph Cotton appeared through the courtesy of David O. Selznick and is currently being
seen in the Selznick production since you went away.
J. Carol Nash is soon to be seen in the Paramount picture, a medal for Benny.
Our thanks also to RKO, who began production today on the most dangerous game and through
whose cooperation this story was presented tonight on Suspense.
Ladies and gentlemen, next week you will hear Claire Trevor and Nancy Kelly as co-stars
of Suspense.
Presented by Roma Wines, R-O-M-A, made in California for enjoyment throughout the world.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.