Suspense!
Auto Light and its 96,000 dealers present Mr. Dan Daly in Six Feet Under, a suspense
play produced and edited by William Spear.
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And now with six feet under and the performance of Dan Daly, auto light hopes once again to
keep you in suspense.
You'll never know what it's like down there.
You're six feet under 10 hours a day without food or water with that light on your face
so the Yoko's can pay their dimes and stare down at you.
It's like being dead, only you know what's going on.
The pump that feeds the air down to you seems to be keeping time with your heartbeat and
you can't help thinking that if it ever stops, the heartbeat will stop with it.
You get a lot of time to think down there, to think of all the things that can happen.
And when the show closes for the night and they dig you up, you head for the nearest
bar to forget all the crazy things you've been thinking.
Double whiskey beer chaser.
You with the carnival?
Yeah.
Must be interesting.
What do you do?
Got a sideshow.
Fill this up with it.
Sure.
What's your trick?
Sword swallower?
Now I roll over and play dead.
Oh, you're the guy that's buried alive.
Yeah, I saw you this afternoon at the matinee.
Took the kids over.
Yeah.
What are you raising?
A couple of undertakers?
Oh, I didn't take them into your tent.
Seemed kind of a morbid thing for kids.
But not for you.
What do you mean?
Skip it.
I'm not hitting this glass again.
Okay.
Now that people see that act of yours, the tent was crowded.
I kind of thought it'd be different.
How different?
Well, paying a dime a head just to look down at you through that glass.
It's not a bad racket you got there.
Yeah, big, fat, happy racket.
Not tough like standing behind a bar and breathing and eating and moving whenever you want to.
Well, if you think it's a hot dig, you shove a hole and pull up a car for nobody stopping
you.
You want another drink, call me.
Just leave the bottle.
I'm still alive.
I can pour my own.
I can do it myself, friend.
They were all the same.
They paid a dime to look at you down there.
But if they saw you later above the ground, they acted like you were cheating them.
Like you owed it to them to stay buried or they won't get their money's worth.
I used to do another act.
A juggling act.
An act that took me years of sweat and practice to learn.
But nobody came to see that.
You had to learn a dog's trick to make a living.
You had to trust people.
People you wondered about.
Hello, Jack.
Good luck.
I'm looking for you.
Come on, get lost, Cliff.
Don't follow me around.
Miriam sent me out to find you.
She knows where I am ten hours a day.
That's more than most wives know.
Miriam was my wife.
I'd spend a little time with her.
You spend quite a little time with her as it is, Cliff.
Quite a little time.
You're talking through that bottle, Jack.
Miriam and I are old friends.
Yeah, I heard about it lots of times.
You were a stage door Johnny when she worked on Burlesque, weren't you?
I used to laugh about you.
That was before you came to work for us.
But now I don't laugh anymore, Cliff.
Now I wonder.
You're drunk.
Am I?
What's a guy like you doing around a carnival, Cliff?
You were a big shot accountant with a good business.
And all of a sudden you chuck everything to learn to be a barker for a pitch like mine.
And it digged me out of that hole every night.
I'm not complaining.
Why should you?
Because I figure you gotta have a reason, Cliff.
I figure that maybe some night you're gonna forget the dig.
Oh, you're being ridiculous, Jack.
Sure.
Only you still haven't told me why you joined the show, Cliff.
That's my business.
Never mind, I'll tell you.
Because you're in love with Miriam and it's killing you to see her married to me.
All right, Jack, that's part of it.
Sure I love Miriam, but that isn't what's killing me.
A bad heart is a thing that's killing me.
What do you mean?
I chucked my business and joined the show because I've only got about a year to live.
Miriam is the only thing in the world I care about.
I want her to be near her.
That's a very touching story, pal.
What am I supposed to do, break down and cry?
Jack, I'd do anything to see Miriam happy.
And if it meant killing you, I could do it without batting an eye.
Because I've got nothing to lose.
I want you to know that.
That's good, Cliff.
Now we understand each other.
Have a drink.
I don't want one.
Oh, well, this ain't just an ordinary drink, Cliff.
This is a toast.
To one of us.
To the guy who buries the other one.
For good.
It was a fool thing to do.
A mistake.
Because he'd play his cards closer now.
If I told him to pack up and get out, he might take Miriam with him.
And I was crazy about Miriam.
Something was wrong between us, but I was still crazy about her.
I had to know, I had to wait and find out if he could take her from me.
And that meant I had to keep him around.
And every day he'd have me helpless down there in that hole like a baby.
I didn't want to drink anymore.
I went back to the tent and tried to sleep, but I kept having that same dream over and over again.
Not a picture dream, but a dream in sound.
The sound of that air pump that kept me alive down there.
It got slower and slower.
And then it stopped.
And I woke up choked, jumped out of bed.
Jack, Jack, is that you?
Yeah, yeah, Miriam.
You go back to sleep.
Is something wrong, dear?
Oh, I had a dream, that's all.
Go back to sleep.
Oh, well, maybe if I may just...
I don't want any hot milk.
I'm going out for a while.
Jack, I hope you're not...
Where would I get it this time of night?
I'm not going to drink to save the lecture.
Well, you don't have to snap at me like that.
That's all you've been doing lately.
Have I?
Well, nobody's died from it so far.
I don't get you at all.
Don't you?
Well, maybe you're not trying hard enough.
I'm going for a walk.
Jack, Jack!
I walked around the grounds.
The moon was doing trick things with the shadows around the tents
and the pitch signs along the midway.
I loved it.
A cheap two-bit carnival, but I loved it.
When Miriam and I were first married, I used to dream about owning the work some day.
Yeah, I was going to do big things.
Clean up with a juggling act, then write to Becker Brothers
and offer to buy them a home.
The Ferris wheel that rides the whole show.
I was going to own the world,
but instead I wound up with six feet of it.
They could dig me up out of that hole every night,
but I couldn't dig my dreams up anymore.
Finally, I went back to my own tent and slept until showtime.
Miriam was gone when I woke up, so I walked over to our pitch.
I was going to pull the flap and go in,
but then I heard her talk on the cliff, so I listened.
I hate it when he's like that. I can't stand it much longer.
You won't have to stand it after tomorrow night.
You'll be away from here. Things will be different.
You sure you want to do this for me, Cliff?
I want you to be happy.
He suspects something. I know it. If he finds out...
He won't find out. Not until tomorrow night.
And when he does, it'll be too late.
He won't be able to do anything about it.
You love your wife and you stand outside a tent
and hear her planning to murder you.
It wasn't only Cliff. It was her, too.
And I knew right then what I had to do.
I had to kill them.
I had to kill the both of them.
And tonight, right away.
Auto Light is bringing you Dan Daly in Six Feet Under.
Tonight's production in radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Suspense.
Say, Hap, who knows more about law than a lawyer?
You sure got me this time, Harlow.
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And now auto light brings back to our Hollywood sound stage
our star Dan Daly in Six Feet Under,
a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Now I know.
It wasn't only Cliff it was Miriam too.
It was like getting hit in the stomach when you didn't expect it.
You love your wife and you stand outside a tent
and hear her planning to murder you.
I walked around the grounds in a daze.
I tried to tell myself that I was wrong, but your own ears can't lie to you.
Jack! Hey, Jack!
Oh, hello, Bonnie.
I've been screaming my head off at you.
You hypnotized or something?
Sorry, Bonnie, I was thinking.
Oh, call for Cliff on the phone in the office wagon.
You want to take it for him?
All right.
Hello?
This is Morton at Trans Country Airlines.
I have your reservations confirmed.
Oh, oh, good.
Two seats on the midnight plane to Chicago tomorrow night.
Thanks a lot.
I know you said you'd come in to pick up the tickets this afternoon,
but I wanted to call and let you know it was confirmed.
I'm glad you did. You'll never know how glad.
It's just part of our service there.
I'll hold the tickets for you.
Now, are you going to enough trouble? You can cancel the tickets.
But I thought you...
I'm changing somebody's mind.
Nobody's going to Chicago tomorrow night. Nobody.
When you see something coming and you know it's too late to stop it, you get calm.
You'll watch it like it was happening to somebody else.
I had to kill them. I had to kill the both of them.
Tonight after the show. After they brought me up.
I'd have ten hours down there to think of a way.
I went into the tent and watched Cliff getting the whole ready for me.
I wanted to laugh.
Is this all right now?
Yeah, that's deep enough.
Cliff, I want that speaking tube hooked up today.
What's the matter? Getting lonesome down there?
I thought you didn't like to talk to the customers.
Today I feel sociable.
I had a glimpse into the bright and cheery future. Hook it up.
You're the boss.
Where's Miriam?
Getting a new roll of tickets from the wagon.
When there's a crowd out there on the Midway, Cliff,
Calliope going on the merry-go-round and all, can she hear my buzzer?
Why wouldn't she?
It's hooked up right from the box to the ticket cage.
But you never use it, so what difference does it make?
It could make a big difference if nobody was in the tent
and the air shut off on me. A big difference.
Let's check it.
All right, there's a button in the box. Press it.
The counter's just outside the flap. We can hear it from here.
Are you pressing it?
You see me, don't you, Cliff?
I don't hear anything out there.
Neither do I.
There must be a loose wire or something.
No, Cliff, it's the batteries.
Because I checked while you were digging and the batteries are gone.
Oh, that's right. I forgot.
When we were moving from the last town, my flashlight went dead.
I borrowed the buzzer battery.
But you forgot to put them back.
Oh, I'm sorry, Jack. It slipped my mind.
You never use a buzzer, so I didn't think of it.
You thought of it when we needed the batteries.
Jack, I tell you it was a mistake. That's all.
Look, the midway's opening up. There's no time to start an argument.
Yeah. Yeah, there'll be time for that later tonight.
We can talk it over tonight, Cliff.
That suits me.
Come on. Let's lower the box.
I'll go get a new set of batteries.
You might as well climb down, slide into the box.
I'll cover you when I get back.
I lit a cigarette. My hands were wet and shaking.
Suppose he didn't wait until tomorrow night.
Suppose this was it.
I couldn't tip my hand by refusing to get down,
but I had to make sure I'd come up again, just this once.
He'd be gone a couple of minutes, long enough.
I ducked out of the tent and across the midway
to the pitch of Ol' Anna, the fortunate one.
I was going to get up, but I couldn't.
Why are you so jumpy about, Annie?
You act like you've been seeing ghosts.
I was communing with other world.
Say that for the suckers.
I want you to do something for me.
I want you to promise and I don't want you to forget.
Is it evil thing?
No, no, Anna, it isn't evil.
When we shut down at night,
I want you to come over to the tent, that's all.
I want you to hang around there until Cliff digs me up, understand?
Beware of lower world, Jack.
Evil things lurk there.
Promise me, Anna.
I promise.
But let me read you fortune in the cards.
It only takes a minute.
There's no time, besides you read them for me in the train the other night.
Was there something there you didn't tell me?
Are you trying to frighten me with a sucker pitch?
There was evil.
The death cards were around you.
They were all around you.
Shut up, you old fool.
Just come over to the tent tonight.
That's all I want from you.
That's all.
I had to grab a hold of myself.
A crazy old woman with a deck of greasy cards.
I've been with tent shows too long to let a thing like that get me.
I went back to the tent, got down into the hole and slid into the box.
Cliff lowered the narrow view shaft that the customers looked through.
I fastened it to the hole just above my face.
Then he started to shovel the dirt in on top of me.
I could hear it hitting the box.
There isn't another sound like it in the whole world.
Then it was all done.
Cliff looked down at me through the glass and the smile on his face made me cold.
Then he was gone and I was alone with the sound of the air pump.
In a few minutes the customers started to come in and it wasn't so bad.
If anything went wrong they'd be able to hear me through the speaking tool.
Just as I could hear them.
Come on mother, come on look at him.
Oh you look it, give me the creeping whizzle, whizzle.
Well you're the one who wanted to come in, come on it can't hurt you.
Look you can talk to him right through this here hoop nanny.
Well, can you hear me down there?
Yeah I can hear you.
Is it, well, are you all right?
Yeah, yeah I'm all right.
See, just like I told you there's nothing to it.
That's all we see for our money?
Sure, the whole darn thing's a jib.
Well so long down there.
We'll all join you some day, sooner or later.
Oh, oh, sad what a day this day.
I think they'd give you a little more for your money though.
That's the way it was.
Hour after hour, face after face until all the faces blurred and ran together.
Their voices came down with the same questions and the same disappointed wisecracks.
But they kept paying and they kept coming.
It was getting on the late afternoon because the crowd was beginning to thin out.
Everybody would be headed home for dinner by 5.30 and the gang working on the midway would knock off and go to the commissary tent to chow.
At 6.30 the crowd would drift back again.
The big crowd with the men home from work.
And by the time they were gone old Anna the fortune teller, my insurance policy, would be standing by and Cliff would have to dig me out whether he wanted to or not.
I was glad to see the crowd go for a while.
It gave me the next hour alone to think and plan things out.
Then it hit me.
The next hour alone.
I'd forgotten that part of it.
I looked up.
There were no faces in the viewing glass.
I fell around with my hand and I found the buzzer button and the ticket keys.
I pressed it again and again but Miriam didn't come.
Sure.
This was it.
They were up there now getting ready to do whatever they were going to do.
Then they'd walk away over to the commissary tent.
They'd eat and laugh.
Nobody'd suspect them.
It'd be an accident.
I tried to think of something else.
They wouldn't have the nerve to be through with it.
And then I knew I was wrong.
Because all of a sudden there was complete silence.
Somebody had cut off the air pump.
I twisted and turned and I pushed against the lid of the box like a madman.
But it didn't budge. There was more than a ton of earth on top of me.
The pressure on my chest increased and I couldn't breathe.
Flashes of red and blue color were whirling around in my head.
I looked up gasping for air.
And there was a face staring down at me.
A child's face.
See my baby turtle, mister?
What are you doing down there, mister?
Kid.
Kid, get somebody quick.
Go outside and get some help. I'm smothering.
Don't just stare at me. Call somebody.
You hear me? Stop looking at me.
Get somebody.
He kept staring at me, his eyes wide and frightened.
He moved his mouth once.
But he was frozen with fear.
And all of a sudden his face was gone.
He was gone.
I made one last hopeless try at the lid and then suddenly I didn't care anymore.
I relaxed.
All the colors in the world exploded in my head.
Then they all ran together.
There was a roaring sound.
Everything went black.
I came out of it slowly.
The pump was going again.
The beat of it keeping time with a throbbing in my head.
And they were digging for me.
I could hear the sounds of the shovels in the earth.
And then finally against the wooden top of the box.
There we are. Give me your hand.
Are you all right, Jack?
Yeah, I'm okay.
Come on, pull it up there.
It's all right.
Jack, come over to my tent and sit down.
There is evil here.
I don't want to sit down. Where's Miriam? Where's Cliff?
Somebody went for them to the commissary.
They will be here soon.
But it wouldn't have been soon enough.
He's been sneaking in the shows.
He saw the air pump motor out and turned it off.
You think that's the way it happened?
What's the matter here?
Jack, what are you on top for?
Take a guess, Miriam.
There was an accident. Some kid shot off the motor to the air pump.
See, Miriam, that's all it was.
Just an accident. Nobody to blame.
Jack, I should have been here.
Yeah, maybe you should have. You could have kept that kid out of the tent.
It would have worked out better. Where's Cliff?
Around, I don't know.
You could have been killed down there.
I could have been, but I wasn't.
Don't worry about it, baby.
It won't happen again.
It won't happen to me again.
It was my game now.
I was up walking and breathing.
It was my game.
I played the tender husband.
I wasn't going to show him my cards now.
That came later.
When she calmed down, I kissed her.
Then I went looking for my last answer.
The kid who had turned off the motor.
There were kids all over the place,
all looking the same the way kids do.
But I'd remember his face.
You're bound to remember a face when it might have been the last one you'd ever see.
Then I spotted him going into the house of fun.
I nodded to the ticket taker and went in after him.
I caught him in the room with the tilled floors and grabbed him.
Ow! Mister!
Let me go!
Take it easy, kid. You won't get hurt.
Why'd you turn that motor off?
I was just fooling with it and it stopped, that's all.
I didn't know what it was.
Who told you to turn it off?
Nobody! Let me go!
Stop kicking! Tell me the truth or I'll...
And I'll give you a buck.
I am telling the truth.
Tell me! Tell me who told you!
Stop biting me and tell me!
I'll tell my pop. He'll fix you.
Let me go!
I'll let you go when you answer me.
What do you want me to say, mister?
A man told you to turn that motor off, didn't he?
No! No!
Let me get him!
All right, kid. All right.
Here's your dollar.
I don't want no dollar! I want to go home!
I went into town and drank until the show closed down.
Until I was sure they'd all be asleep.
Then I went to the first aid wagon and nosed around until I found what I wanted.
A can of ether.
Cliff was bigger than I. Much bigger.
And I had to be sure.
I soaked a handkerchief in the stuff and then I left myself in the cliff tent.
He was lying there.
Quietly.
He was sleeping. He wasn't making a sound.
I crept over to him and pushed the handkerchief over his mouth and nose.
I held it there.
Held his face right into it.
He didn't even murmur.
And when I let go after a while his head dropped back.
He was out.
I picked him up and carried him to the pitch tent.
I put him down in a box.
And then I shoveled a dirt in on top of him.
I left the air pump running.
I wanted Miriam to see him down there.
Him instead of me.
Then I could stop it waiting up for me when I was back together.
Well, it's about time you got back.
I've been worried sick about you.
Worried about me, baby?
That's silly. I can take care of myself.
That accident this afternoon.
I'm still shaky.
Yeah, I can see why you would be.
Jack, there's been something wrong with us.
Maybe it's my fault. I want to straighten it out.
Everything will be straightened out all right.
Real soon.
Come on. Let's go for a little walk.
But it's after midnight.
I know, but I got a surprise for you.
Something I want you to see.
What is it?
Over at the pitch tent. Come on.
She came.
I had to hand it to her.
She was playing the act of the hilt.
Just like nothing was wrong.
I took her arm and held it tight.
Good and tight.
So she couldn't turn and run.
And we went into the pitch tent.
Well, what's the surprise?
It's dark in here.
There's enough light down in the box.
Go ahead. Take a look.
The hole.
It's filled in.
The show has a new star.
For a one night stand.
Go ahead. Look.
Jack, what...
No!
Yeah, baby.
How do you like it now?
That's the way I was today when that motor cut off.
Get him out!
I hope you'll be able to fix it this time.
Don't you pray.
Sure. I just ripped these wires out and he gets what I almost got.
What are you killing him for? Why?
I knew what you were up to.
You'll never take that midnight play tomorrow.
You'll never run away with him now.
I wasn't running away with him. The tickets were for us.
You hear me? For you and me.
Well, there you forgot to tell me about it, baby.
I couldn't. Cliff was lending us the money to buy the show.
He said he'd be mine and he'd out some day.
I wanted to do it for you because I loved you.
Because I hated what's been happening to you down there.
Why didn't you help me?
Because he loved me, that's why.
And he knew you were all I care about.
He sent the money for the show to Becker Brothers yesterday
and we were supposed to fly off tomorrow night to sign the papers in Chicago.
You're lying.
You're lying. You're lying to get a toll on me.
Would you believe me? Would you believe anybody?
Do something! Do something!
The shovels. The shovels, Miriam. Where are they?
Quick. Quick. Help me.
Miriam, dig. Dig.
Dig. Dig.
And that's it, Sheriff.
You'll never know what it's like down there.
You have nothing to do but thinking.
Well, you get to thinking crazy things.
That's why it happened.
When we got to him, he was dead.
I see.
If you want to have that, then you have to.
If you want to have that typed up as a confession, I'll sign it.
There's much good that'd do.
That deputy that came in a while ago
gave me a copy of the coroner's report
cause of death, coronary thrombosis.
His heart, no strangulation.
He was already dead when you stopped that air pump.
He was dead even before that, before you gave him ether.
You mean Jack didn't kill him?
Not according to the coroner. Death from natural causes.
Then you're not going to charge me with murder?
You can't murder a dead man, mister.
Just like you can't lock a man up for being a fool.
Oh, Jack. Jack.
It's all right, baby.
You hurt him.
You hurt him. They can't do anything to me for being a fool.
Suspense.
Presented by Auto Light. Tonight's star, Dan Daly.
Hey, Harlow, here's a poem for you.
All right.
Winter, spring or fall, Harlow doesn't change at all.
Be it day or be it night, Wilcox thinks of Auto Light.
Well, you're right there, Hap.
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Next Thursday for Suspense, our star will be Ray Milan.
The play is called Pearls Are A Nuisance and it is, as we say...
A tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense!
Tonight's Suspense play was produced and edited by William Spear
and directed by Norman MacDonald.
Music for Suspense is composed by Lucian Morrowek
and conducted by Lud Bluskin.
Six Feet Under is an original play written for radio by Joel Murcott.
Dan Daly will soon be seen with Ann Baxter
in the 20th Century Fox Technicolor production, Ticket to Tomahawk.
You can buy world famous Auto Light resistor or regular spark plugs,
Auto Light staple batteries, Auto Light electrical parts
at your neighborhood Auto Light dealers.
Switch to Auto Light. Good night.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.