Now, the Roma Wine Company of Fresno, California presents...
Suspense.
Tonight, Roma Wines bring you Mr. Lee Jacob as star of The Bet,
a suspense play produced, edited and directed for Roma Wines by William Spear.
Suspense. Radio's outstanding theater of thrills 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,
to your happiness and entertaining guests, to your enjoyment of everyday meals.
Yes, right now a glass full would be very pleasant as Roma Wines bring you Mr. Lee Jacob in a remarkable tale of...
Suspense.
Haunted? Yes, I'm haunted. It's a year now and I can't erase the memory of that precipice I very nearly stepped from.
That darkness into which I almost plunged. Or maybe I took the plunge and I'm in it now, in the dark.
It doesn't usually happen in my business, but what's the use of talking about it? You'd only say I'm too susceptible.
And I'd say, you're right, I am susceptible. To faces and places, to women's faces. One woman's face.
And to lost, dark places on what I call the rim of the world. Places like Sierra Leone, Saigon, Balsau. Places like Trinidad.
But you won't get it from reading atlases and maps. If you read, for instance, that the seasons of Trinidad are regular, wet from May to January,
dry from the end of January to May, the average annual rainfall 63 inches, you won't understand how I saw it when I landed at Port of Spain in April, the dry season.
I remember it was a day so clear and bright that it was a world under glass. And I liked it. I liked the harbour, cathedrals, the old streets, the dry, spiced air.
And that little shop I wandered into to get away from the blaze of the sun. I'd heard she went there. Siam Brahmachari shop of Hindu antiquities.
Hello? Anybody here?
Certainly. Good afternoon. I am Siam Brahmachari.
Oh, it's dark. I didn't see.
Yes, I live here like a mole. And when the clock rings, it brings me customers. Every time. What can I show you?
Well, I thought I'd look around.
It's a pleasure. Look as you wish. You're a stranger in Port of Spain.
I landed today.
And you're an artist.
Well, how did you?
That's a sketch pad you carry.
Oh, yes. Yes, I paint.
You'll find Trinidad charming to paint until the rains come, Mr.
Scott Turner.
Mr. Scott Turner, yes. It's lovely until next month, then the green rain until the first of the year.
Well, that sounds paintable. The rain.
By the way, I believe you know a Mrs.
The rain? Oh, no. It comes down so there's no...
Pardon, please. Mrs. Barton. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Siam. Did my Shiva get here?
Yesterday, Mrs. Barton, I took him out of his straw nest yesterday. A beautiful white jade Shiva. I'll bring him in.
Thank you.
Oh, but first, first, this is Mr. Turner, a newcomer and an artist.
Oh, how do you do?
How do you do?
I can talk to him till I return, Mrs. Barton. I want him to see our Shiva, too.
Well, we have our orders, Mr. Turner.
Yes. What is it, a statue?
A small one. It's my hobby. I collect Hindu gods. Do you know about them?
Oh, little. I've been to India.
This is one I've wanted a long time. A statuette of Shiva from the dead city of Angkor Wat. It was buried for 3,000 years.
Ah, you see? He's small, Mrs. Barton, but he's perfect. Look, not a blemish.
Siam, he's beautiful. Isn't he beautiful, Mr. Turner?
A great god, Shiva. Yes, he's quite the boy. Two hundred million people believe he controls lightning, thunder, their very lives. Shiva, beloved of women.
Yes, he is, isn't he? And beloved by you, Mrs. Barton.
Oh, no. No. I have my own reason for being attracted to Shiva.
Yeah? What's your reason?
Don't you remember what Shiva is, first of all? He's the god of destruction, Mr. Turner. And I like that. Destruction. That's the kind of woman I am.
She liked destruction. Of course, I knew that already about Ada Barton.
She must have loved Trinidad, a place where a casual conversation turns suddenly intense, suddenly dangerous.
Where you never know the whirlpool under your feet until you're in it. I was in that whirlpool in a second, and I'm still where. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I had no difficulty meeting Ada Barton again. You know how colonial cities are. The teeming population that belongs, and the handful of English, American, French, administrators, speculators, painters, planters, who huddle together socially because, well, they're afraid.
And even so, ungrigary as the man as Paul Barton wasn't above inviting a visiting American to his home. But no matter how we'd met, he and I were bound to disagree.
So you're an artist, Mr. Turner. Well, I envy you. It must be pleasant not to have to work for your living.
Well, naturally, I don't look at it that way.
Paul, for heaven's sake.
Oh, but Ada, my dear, surely neither you nor Mr. Turner contend painting is labor, not productive labor.
But that's not the point.
I think it's a point, and I think painting is productive, although I must confess that painting seldom produces for the painter comfort such as you have here. I wish it did.
More coffee, Scott.
Please, Miss Barton.
Well, naturally, millions buy my sugar because it's a necessity. A picture on the wall isn't.
It is for me, Paul.
It is for the millions who buy your sugar, Mr. Barton. At least it's necessary for me to believe it's a necessity to them, a necessity for which they're starved.
But I think your difference with me is more personal, Mr. Barton.
Oh, now, now, now, wait a minute.
You see, I think you envy me.
Ha ha! I envy you?
Because you're a romantic who never found whatever you came here for. This is a beautiful island, Mr. Barton.
In the dry season, yes.
You've built a beautiful house, and you're married to an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
Thank you, Mr. Turner.
But because you've pegged your dream to what the morning stock market has to say on the price of sugar, it's all ashes to you.
So you resent me, the itinerant artist, symbol of the freedom you lost.
Ashes? I love it. I'm a man who likes organization utility, and there's plenty of romance in sugar.
As much as there is in a Portuguese sloop, Java-bound, or in the ruined streets of Palmyra, gulls flashing in the sun over Sicily, or in the port of Spain tonight.
With its smell of fast-growing things, to a man like me who can claim the whole world because no part of it claims him.
You are very persuasive, Mr. Turner.
You know what I think? I think you're irresponsible, Mr. Turner, because you haven't the necessary courage to take responsibility.
Paul, you're insulting.
Maybe, but I put years of hard work into developing this business.
And you don't think I've worked?
No. No, I don't think you have, and I don't think you can.
Why, I'd bet $30,000 that you couldn't stick to a useful routine job for two years.
What you call a useful routine job?
Yes, yes. I'll put up $50,000 that you couldn't stick it out to, say, here. Here, where you think it's so beautiful, working for me.
Paul, don't be ridiculous. You can't buy everything with your money. I have an idea that Mr. Turner isn't the sort of man...
I don't know. Maybe he can. What kind of work, Mr. Barton?
You can't be serious, Scott.
Oh, it would be work that you can do, say, in my laboratory. I've got some things going on, tropical diseases, in addition to the necessary laboratory work for the sugar, soil tests, things like that.
Well, I'm not a technician.
Oh, I'd make it easy for you. I am the technician. All you'd have to do is keep routine records for two years.
For $50,000?
That's right, $50,000. Or if you quit, nothing.
It's a bet, Mr. Barton. It's a bet.
What's that?
What?
That.
Rain, Mr. Turner. Rain for nine months. Endless, remorseless oceans of romantic rain.
It'll make it easier for you to stay indoors. Endless, remorseless rain. I liked it at first because it blurred the passage of time.
And somehow my job wasn't easy. In the fields around the laboratory, the cane grew up, was cut, grew and was cut. But inside the laboratory where I lived, day and night, all sound and life came wrapped in the silk and deadly, hypnotic drumming and hissing of rain.
The first two months, only one thing bothered me. The petty needling of poor Barton. We spent our mornings together, he making his tests while I wrote them up for the files. Scarcely a day went by when he didn't say something sharp or bitter.
Well, how's the romantic, Mr. Turner, today? Can you read any poetry into the smell of aniline dyes?
Two years, Scott, two years. You see what you're heading for? A laboratory stoop. And this rain will grow mole in your curly otter slob. I guarantee it.
Yes, my wife Ada fancies art too, Scott. She buys little things, paintings, statues. But she buys them with money from sugar cane, Scott. Or had you forgotten that?
I hadn't forgotten that. I hadn't forgotten Ada, a dangerous woman. And I knew how dangerous. I knew things about her he didn't know.
That she liked destruction. And every time he lashed out at me, I knew more. That for her own destructive purposes, she was feeding him this hate of me, nurturing it with intention and care.
Well, in the tropics, things grow fast. And Ada Barton's purposes grew fast. Through full flower. In the afternoons, when Paul was out in the cane fields, she began to visit me in the laboratory.
He's right. You are getting a squint.
Close the door.
And a squint. It definitely doesn't become you, Scott.
I thought you were going into Port of Spain today. Did I say that? Oh, I heard something to that effect. And so did Paul.
The road's a swamp. And besides, something's wrong with the car. One of the wires.
You wouldn't know which wire. I don't know what it's for. But if it's broken, the car won't run. I know that.
Must you keep working? It isn't very polite of you. This isn't a salon, Ada. And these sculptures have to be put away.
You know, Scott, this whole business of your bet with Paul shocks me a little. I'm sorry.
I mean, it shocks me to see what he's doing to you. I'm shocked to see what you're doing to him, Ada.
Don't change the subjects. Why did you put up with it? Why do you stay here?
Isn't $50,000 an understandable motive to you? Not for a man like you. You must have another motive.
Believe me, I haven't. I'm just that crass. Not even me, Scott.
You might have been a motive at first. Now I don't compete with Java, the gulls of Sicily.
Look, Ada, why don't you give him a break? You don't mind taking his money. Why don't you take his terms, too? He doesn't ask much.
Why don't you kiss me, Scott?
Ada. Yes? Whose destruction, Ada? Destruction.
Yes. Which of us have you marked to destroy? Paul or me?
For Suspense, Roma Wines are bringing you as star Mr. Lee J. Cobb, In the Bet, by Donald S. Ryerson.
Roma Wines presentation tonight in radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Suspense.
Between the acts of Suspense, this is Truman Bradley for Roma Wines.
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And now Roma Wines bring back to our Hollywood sound stage, Lee J. Cobb as Scott Turner in The Bet.
A play well calculated to keep you in suspense.
The Bet
I knew, if I wouldn't face it then, I knew who she'd marked for destruction.
Because I knew a lot about what kind of woman she was.
And it wasn't more than six months before she'd laid her cards on the table.
Five hundred thousand dollars, Scott. Half a million. And I'm his beneficiary.
But if you'll wait, Ada, let me finish the two years.
More than eighteen months to go. I won't wait.
But we'll have our money then.
What? Fifty thousand dollars.
Anyway, it can't be done. We wouldn't get away with it.
You haven't even let me tell you how we can.
When a man's insured for so much, his death is sure to be investigated. I know.
I know too.
And an insurance investigator is thorough. He won't accept your brief, no matter how well you can act.
And he won't accept my being here. He'll find out who and why.
He'll find out nothing that isn't on the death certificate. Listen to me.
Darling, don't force me into this.
Listen. Besides malaria, there are two diseases in Trinidad that kill hundreds every year.
Typhoid and amoeba histolytica.
My dear, please, all our lives we...
Calls healthy, so he might recover from either one alone.
But if he has both, together...
No, Ada. No matter how simple you make it, I won't...
Now, you go to the hospital at least once a week for laboratory supplies?
You must have seen where they keep specimens, typhoid, microbes, amoebas?
No, Lady. The risk...
You won't gamble for these stakes. You'll be rich. You'll be with me.
Scott, do you know where they keep the specimens?
Ada, you remind me of something.
Why don't you answer me?
A spider spins a web.
Scott!
A male spider comes courting her. But before she'll have him, he has to catch a blue fly and bring it to her, wrapped in his cell, so that she can eat it alive.
Scott!
Then she accepts her mate.
But the next day, she eats him alive.
That's a horrible story. You don't really think that I'm...
No. I don't suppose I do.
You'll get the microbes then, won't you? Won't you, Scott?
Ada, let me think about it a little while. Let me at least pretend I'm a man with a conscience.
Scott?
Oh, Paul, I wasn't expecting you this afternoon.
Yes, I know. I know. You weren't expecting Ada.
Well, she's here too.
Hello, Scott.
Hello. I just stopped by for a moment to tell you I have to go to Tobago.
Tobago?
Yes. I have a grinding plant there and we're installing a new engine. I'll be gone in about two days.
I told Paul that Tobago in this weather...
Oh, yes, you're taking chances, Paul.
I take enough adibrin to keep one the right side of malaria. Don't worry, I'll be all right.
Yes, but there are other things, typhoid...
I've never known you to be so concerned before, Ada.
Oh, Paul.
Oh, if it weren't for certain other factors, my dear, I'd be touched, believe me.
What other factors?
I don't want to be sordid, Ada. Surely I don't have to describe a situation you and Scott know better?
What do you mean?
All right. All right, we'll maintain the cultivated surface if you wish.
By the way, Scott, how do you feel now about our bet?
The same as before, that I'll win it.
Yeah? Well, perhaps. Lately I thought the whole thing was a mistake, at least on my part.
Want to call it off?
I didn't say that exactly.
I'll tell you, we'll talk about it when I get back, the three of us.
I may have a counter proposal.
Paul, you wouldn't dare...
All right, we'll talk about it. Fine, fine. I'll be looking forward to it.
Well, Ada?
I think I'll sit here a while, Paul. It's so peaceful now that the rain stopped.
Oh, it has stopped. I didn't notice. I choose.
A false peace. It'll begin soon again.
Well, goodbye then.
Goodbye, Paul. Take care.
You heard? You heard what he said?
He's a little excited, Ada. It didn't mean anything.
Don't be a fool. It means you haven't any choice now.
There's always a choice.
Well, yes, yes. Now you can choose me with half a million dollars or nothing.
Not one red cent.
But he didn't say he wouldn't pay.
That's what he means. He hates us, both of us.
His only weapon is his money.
What a triumph for him to hoax you into slaving here for eight months and then throw you out.
Oh, no, he wouldn't dare.
Don't you think I know him? You have to do what I say.
How will you give it to him? The microbes?
In his food. It'll only take a drop.
Say in caviar. He's a pig for it, like he is about everything else.
Caviar highly seasoned with sauce.
You've really planned this?
Somebody has to plan. Do you want to?
No, no.
He'll be home day after tomorrow. He'll ask you to come to the house for tea.
I'll give it to him then, so it will look like he caught them in Tobago.
Ada, I'm not sure that I can... I'm not...
I am sure. It's the only thing we can do.
If you love me, Scott, will you get the specimens from the hospital? Will you?
If anyone had told me that I... that I could do...
Will you get the specimen, Scott?
All right. I'll get them this afternoon.
That afternoon, the rains had stopped. It was no false peace.
The season was over, two weeks early.
I drove into Port of Spain through a crawling chalk white mist,
through the strong, heady smell of decaying jungle.
And the cessation of sound was enormous in my ears.
It was as though the rain had stopped on a shout.
I got the specimens, two tiny tubes of dynamically living death.
When I stored them away in the laboratory refrigerator,
I riveted my mind on Ada's face and her incomparable voice.
We can do so much together, Scott. You're as savage like me.
Remember how you looked at Shiva that first day?
I could tell we're alike. No little stifling moralities.
We're beyond such things, you and me, beyond pity or shame.
Yes, quite beyond shame... or pity.
Be very careful, my darling.
Eat only the caviar without the sauce.
We'll leave all the rest for him.
The afternoon Paul Barton came back,
I walked to the house he was so proud of.
There was a mist, still on the ground, but thinning fast.
The dry season had begun.
The only sound beside my footsteps was the last rainfall
dripping from the giant trees,
and the hushed, mysterious voice of the jungle itself.
Ada met me at the door.
You can't possibly understand about her face.
Vitality isn't the word, there is no word.
Her face was the indestructible essence of life.
When I saw her, there were no more doubts.
She took me into the room where she kept the Hindu gods,
where Paul was already sitting over his tea.
Oh, hello, Scott. Come in.
Well, you did invite me, of course, but you surprised me again.
You're punctual as well as tenacious.
Help yourself to tea, Scott. I'll get the caviar.
Thanks, Ada.
I'm sorry I disappoint you so often, Paul.
Disappoint me?
By not conforming to your preconceived portrait of an artist.
Oh, that's not where I misjudged.
I had a preconceived portrait of the kind of man my wife thinks she wants.
She wants a fool and a weakling.
Well, I won't sit here and discuss...
Here's the caviar, with sauce and without,
and some new crackers over from England.
Native pastry for you, Scott. You like sweets.
Pull out that little table.
I'll do it.
Thanks, dear.
You're right, Scott. You're right. We won't discuss that.
That's beside the point.
We were going to discuss my counterproposal.
Oh, Paul, let's not have unpleasantness right away.
You assume it's unpleasant? Not for me.
I just want to say I'm closing the laboratory.
Push the crackers over, Ada.
I'd like to hear your reason.
The research is no longer necessary, and I want you to leave Trinidad.
You're worried about Ada, aren't you?
Oh, we're dropping the cultivated surface, aren't we?
Well, yes.
Ah, caviar and sauce.
My wife prepares this very well, Scott.
Yes. I wonder how well you know her.
I know her pretty well.
Now you're thinking of the 50,000, of course.
Oh, really, Scott, try this. Ada puts everything in it.
Did, uh... did I say something?
Put it down. What?
Put the caviar down, Paul. It's deadly.
Scott, you fool.
Yes, there's everything in it, including death, typhoid, amoebas.
She prepared it very well.
Ada. Ada, is this...?
I'm going to kill you, Scott.
I hadn't intended to just yet.
I know. Oh, of course you'd have a gun.
How many men have you killed, Ada?
How many helpless, hypnotised men have helped you to kill
and then have themselves died?
How many husbands? Lovers?
How did you know?
I'm not such a romantic figurator.
I came here with some previous knowledge of you.
You see, I was sent here for a purpose.
I didn't meet you by accident.
But I didn't know what you'd be like.
How much of a spell you and the rain could cast.
But it's over. The rains and everything.
Yes, I was sent to investigate because of all the insurance.
And insurance, man, how dismal.
You don't deserve even the...
You... you killed her.
You killed her.
Yes.
I killed her.
Yes, I'm haunted.
I keep away from rain because she flourishes if it rains too long.
She comes back like a dank, strong jungle vine,
flowered and perfumed.
But tough to the core, she winds herself around me.
She tries to drag me once more to that precipice above that darkness,
an existence beyond shame or pity or morality.
Roma wines have brought you Lee J. Cobb as star of the bet.
Tonight's study in Suspense.
This is Truman Bradley for Roma Wines, the sponsor of Suspense.
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Lee J. Cobb appears through the courtesy of 20th Century Fox,
and will soon be seen in his first role since leaving the service,
Anna and the King of Siam.
Next Thursday, Roma wines bring you Mr. Zachary Scott in...
Suspense, radio's outstanding theater of thrills.
Presented by Roma Wines, R-O-M-A.
Made in California for enjoyment throughout the world.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.