Suspense!
Auto Light and its 96,000 dealers present Miss Joan Bennett in Statement of Mary Blake,
a suspense play produced and edited by William Spear.
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Wow, what's this dancing dervish doing?
He's celebrating his release from camel watering. Just got a new stay full battery.
This is gonna kill me. Do Auto Light's stay full batteries do handstands too?
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Anything else, Wilcock?
Just one more thing. You're always right with Auto Light.
And now with statement of Mary Blake and the performance of Miss Joan Bennett,
Auto Light hopes once again to keep you in suspense.
I found myself at the far end of a long corridor.
The length of it stretching before me in a winding pattern.
The walls of it are thick and pregnantable cement.
There were no windows, only a small opening high on the wall to my right.
Through this a single shaft of light fell into a pattern which told me there were iron bars on that one small window.
At first it seemed that I was alone in this place.
I stood huddled and afraid, unable to move.
Somehow I had the feeling that soon I would not be alone.
Then faintly, from out of the darkness ahead of me, I heard him coming with slow shuffling footsteps.
The walk of a man who has not long been without his eyes.
I saw his cane first, a slim thread of white and the blackness before me.
I watched it tapping up and down in a nervous rhythm.
Tapping, coming closer, closer.
I felt the muscles in my throat tighten in an effort to scream.
But I made no sound at all, nor did I move.
I just stood there and waited and watched him come toward me.
Then in the next instant his face was caught in the shaft of light and I saw him very clearly.
The searing marks of pain were there and with them the lines borne of brooding and evil.
And I looked for a long time at that face and I found myself wondering,
if I could see behind those dark glasses, would I find in his sightless eyes any sign of repentance?
I remembered suddenly how Gregory Martin had looked the first time I saw him.
His tall form standing with casual poise in the doorway.
That handsome face creased by the broad smile had bid me welcome into his home.
Hello, Miss Blake. Come in, won't you?
Thank you.
Here, let me take your bag.
Thanks.
Mrs. Martin isn't here just now, so I'll show you your room.
Oh.
I think you'll find it very comfortable.
In fact, I hope you'll enjoy your life here and your work with me.
Oh, I'm sure I will.
I'm a little overwhelmed to find myself actually about to work with the Dr. Gregory Martin.
When you've gotten your things unpacked and had the chance to catch your breath a bit,
perhaps you'll join me for coffee.
Wonderful.
I'll show you through my laboratory.
I felt no fear at all that first day.
My room was luxurious and beautiful and the laboratory is beyond anything I'd ever imagined in its completeness.
I didn't meet Lorna Martin during that first day as a member of the household,
but in the evening her husband invited me to join the intimate group of friends
that were gathered in front of a glowing fire in their living room.
And how about you, Professor?
Yes.
Let me fill your glass.
I have my customary toast to make.
Yes, my boy, indeed.
I want to join you on that one.
Attention, everyone.
A toast.
The toast.
To the lovely Lorna.
A woman of such abundant charm that it's unfair, really, for one man only to call her his.
But three years ago she made her choice and I found that it was such a commendable one
that I, for one, think we should forgive her.
And so here's to the lovely Lorna, my wife.
I joined in Dr. Martin's toast to his wife and at the same time studied the faces of the people
who were gathered in a semicircle around the room.
There was a glint on the glass of one man's pânes nez that gave his face a weird, somewhat supernatural look.
He was smiling broadly in the direction of Mrs. Martin
and his teeth in the light of the fire seemed to be made entirely of gold.
I looked then at Lorna.
She was looking past the others at her husband
and although she was smiling I saw that there were tears in her brown eyes.
Beneath her polish and exquisite breeding she was insecure and afraid.
Late that night after the party I was thirsty so I put on my robe and went quietly down the carpeted stairs.
The big double door that led into the living room was closed
but I could see that a lamp was lit inside the room.
And then as I passed by I heard her.
She was sobbing softly.
I turned quickly to go back to my room.
I didn't want to be placed in the embarrassing position of hearing something I shouldn't.
But before I'd gotten out of earshot I heard her sobbing stop suddenly
with a noise that sounded like the flat of a palm hand hitting hard against a cheek.
Next morning I was working with Dr. Martin and loving every minute of it.
We worked silently swiftly with no regard for anything outside of the task immediately at hand.
That is, save for one little thing.
Dr. Martin seemed fascinated with a little vial of amber liquid which he kept on a desk.
Twice he abandoned his work to walk over to it.
Lift the glass container up to the window and study its contents.
His lips forming a strange half smile.
Why yes, yes that's it of course.
What I beg your pardon Dr. Martin were you speaking to me?
No, no Miss Blake.
Talking to myself I expect.
Scientists frequently do I understand.
Yes I've heard so.
My foreman Miss Blake, I just realized it's almost the color of her hair isn't it?
The lawners I mean.
My wife has very pretty hair don't you think?
I think Mrs. Martin is a beautiful woman in many ways.
That's a rather generous opinion to form in so short a time isn't it?
Do you always analyze people so quickly and so flatteringly?
How about me for instance?
I don't think you're being fair doctor but since you asked,
I'd say you're a man of great charm and certainly a scientist of remarkable ability.
I should be pleased I suppose.
However it sounds like generalities.
I think I'll have to see what I can do toward creating a more specific impression.
Yes.
Truly beautiful color isn't it?
I've never seen anything quite that shade of amber.
What is it doctor?
It's a mixture of my own.
I'll let you in on it some day, soon.
But meanwhile I'd advise you to keep clear of it.
I think I could safely claim it to be the fastest acting poison in existence.
A new experiment doctor?
The most exciting experiment to which a scientific mind can apply itself.
And I have every confidence that I'll be able to work it out to a successful conclusion.
Sounds challenging doctor. I hope I'll be allowed to work on it too.
I assure you my dear Miss Blake, I wouldn't attempt this particular experiment without you.
Neither of us made mention of his poison again.
And indeed it seemed that the doctor had quite forgotten it.
We were both working hard on the completion of his current project.
Lorna Martin worked with us part of the time.
It was only then that I learned she had previously always assisted her husband with his work.
It was in fact Lorna who suggested the final step that led him quickly to the result he had been striving for.
We worked from early morning until late at night.
And on the third day towards midnight the project was completed.
We had a late supper.
And after a glass of liqueur I left the doctor and his wife and went to my room.
Yes?
I'm sorry. Were you asleep?
Oh no. No I was just sitting here relaxing doctor. I'm still too excited to do any sleeping.
Well that's exactly how Lorna and I found ourselves feeling.
So we decided to sit up and talk a bit over another glass of liqueur.
We wanted if you'd join us.
After all this has been a three way victory Miss Blake.
We want you in on our triumphal toast.
That's a generous thought. I'm afraid I wasn't much more than a spectator in this instance.
Oh nonsense. Come along.
Well I am certainly eager to talk with Mrs. Martin.
I had no idea she was an active colleague of yours in the laboratory.
Oh yes. Lorna's been of tremendous help to me.
In the past I would say she's been quite indispensable.
Lorna's brilliant mind amazed me from the first moment I met her.
Here we are.
Lorna my dear. Miss Blake and I were just having a most engrossing conversation.
Wholly about you.
It seems Miss Blake has been greatly impressed by the work you've done on this idea of mine.
Oh Dr. Martin you're making it sound as if I had minimized your own work. I didn't mean...
Of course you didn't. I do understand.
And you needn't make apologies in my direction for your appreciation of my wife's talents.
Here now.
Liqueur for you Miss Blake.
Same as earlier?
Please.
There you are.
Thank you.
Lorna dear. How about you?
Your glass can stand a little replenishing I should imagine.
Let me see.
No.
Why you still have some that you haven't even touched.
In the few seconds that had passed since Dr. Martin and I had entered the room,
three distinctly sharp and clear thoughts had crossed my mind in sudden quick succession.
And each of them struck at my insides like the painful puncture of a thin sharp blade.
One that Dr. Martin professionally was insanely jealous of his wife.
Two that it was totally unlike Lorna Martin not to speak to us as we entered the room.
And three that Dr. Martin had just gone over to his wife to make absolutely certain that she was dead.
AutoLite is bringing you Miss Joan Bennett in statement of Mary Blake.
Tonight's production in radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Suspense.
Say Harlow, can I get a pair of those AutoLite stay full battery suspenders?
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70% longer life in fact than batteries without stay full features.
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Doesn't anyone but you have a pair of those wonderful, wonderful suspenders?
No, no, these suspenders were made for me by a happy car owner who recently bought an AutoLite stay full battery.
The battery that needs water only three times a year in normal car use.
Said he couldn't thank me enough for telling him about it.
So friends, see your AutoLite battery dealer tomorrow.
And remember, you're always right with AutoLite.
And now AutoLite brings back to our Hollywood sound stage our star, Miss Joan Bennett in statement of Mary Blake.
A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
I stood there unable to speak.
Dr. Martin looked at me. He was amused, amused at my reaction to his wife's murder.
I rather think I could read your mind quite accurately at this moment, Miss Blake.
Why? Why?
Why? Why does one do anything?
What motivates any action of man?
There is a need, a desire, a want behind every action.
I wanted to kill my wife.
It's as simple as that.
The poison.
Yes. Come into the laboratory.
The poison.
We'll look for it.
It isn't on your desk.
You did kill her with it, but I don't see it.
And why have you made it a point to have a witness?
I remember now.
You talked of this as an experiment and you told me I would work with you on it.
Just what, what you...
Patience, my dear girl, patience.
And what is the next step, Doctor? To call whom? The police? And tell them what?
When one discovers that one's wife has been murdered, one naturally calls in the authorities.
Oh, yes, Sergeant. Listen carefully, please.
This is Dr. Gregory Martin.
My address is 12448 Pilgrim Drive.
Would you send some men over immediately, please?
My wife has just been murdered.
The complete realization of what he had done seemed to come upon me all at once.
A sudden delayed shock that hit me with the impact of a hammer blow.
I looked at him and he seemed a total stranger.
A maniac whose next move I could not predict.
I was laughing and while he laughed I reached desperately behind me.
Closing my fingers tightly around the glass container I felt in.
And I prayed that it contained something that would serve as an effective weapon against the murder.
With one quick move I could have killed him.
And I watched it eat away his skin like a sheet of tissue paper in a soaring flame.
When the police arrived they found Lorna Martin seated erect and beautiful in the chair in the sitting room.
While her husband was in the chair, she was sitting on the floor.
When the police arrived they found Lorna Martin seated erect and beautiful in the chair in the sitting room.
While her husband writhed in pain on the floor of his laboratory.
I was at Dr. Martin's desk, they said.
I remember lifting my eyes to follow mutely the movements of the men who streamed into the room.
Through the door I could see them bending over the body of Lorna Martin.
And I watched with a strange detached curiosity.
As two interns administered temporary treatment to Dr. Martin's injuries.
Then they took us away. The three of us.
I don't remember much about it.
Do you want to talk now?
Come now, Miss Blake, we realize that you've been under a great strain.
We want to find out exactly what happened and we must know exactly what part you played.
You know, in view of what has happened to Dr. Martin and his wife, a man so revered and well known.
We will be subjected to a great deal of pressure to bring someone to justice for this thing.
Justice? How can Lorna Martin ever know justice?
Let's hear your story, Miss Blake, from the beginning.
There were three people alone in that house when this happened.
And of them, only you were able to speak. Now let's hear what you have to say.
How about it?
All right. You'll talk on the stand.
Will the witness please take the stand?
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God.
He was like a dream still. The setting now is a court of justice.
And I sat numbly among strange faces and gesturing hands and questioning voices.
Please tell the court not to sit here. How long and how well you have known Dr. Gregory Martin, please.
Dr. Martin has been my close friend and associate for over a dozen years.
His fine character cannot be questioned. He and his wife were an unusually devoted couple.
This thing that has happened is shocking.
You were a frequent visitor in the Martin home for many years, Dr. Lee.
Yes.
Can you relate to the court any scenes you witnessed in the Martin household,
which might have an important bearing on this case?
I attended a gathering at the Martin home on the very night that Miss Blake first came there.
She sat with us in the living room and throughout the evening I was aware of her studying, Dr. Martin, with a peculiar intensity.
It was extremely odd.
As the medical examiner on this case, will you please tell the court your findings, which revealed the cause of Lorna Martin's death?
Mrs. Martin was poisoned. The poison was in liquid form, taken internally.
It was obviously expertly prepared by someone well acquainted with scientific formulas,
someone who had access to an excellently equipped laparot.
Can you please tell the court whose fingerprints were found on the liquor glass from which Lorna Martin drank the poison that killed her?
We found on the glass the prints of Mrs. Martin and those of Mary Blake.
And no others?
No, sir. No others.
Did you discover any more of the poison like that which was used to kill Mrs. Martin?
There were several drops of it left in the glass from which Mrs. Martin drank.
Later, during our investigational search of the entire house, more of the poison was found.
And will you please tell the court where the remainder of that poison was found?
Yes, sir. In a perfume bottle on the dressing table in the room of Mary Blake.
The voices floated in and out and around the room.
And some of the words hit against the walls and echoed back at me.
Then I rode on them to the front of the room and the voices were loud and strange and my senses seemed blocked by them.
And by a hand that pointed towards me and a face that swung down at me like an inflated comic balloon.
I almost laughed. Perhaps I did.
Can you, Mary Blake, in any way account for the fact that only Mrs. Martin's and your own fingerprints were found on the liquor glass?
Can you give the court any explanation for the perfume bottle containing the remainder of the poison being found in your room?
Mary Blake, can you in any way explain the testimony we have heard repeatedly during this trial of your unusually strong personal interest in Dr. Martin?
The words were strung like beads on a string and wound round and round until I felt them so tight it that I could not even breathe.
Then suddenly the voices strangling me with the words came through to me clearer and louder than ever before.
And this time the words were built in a big stick and it was carefully aimed and swung straight towards me.
The prosecution at this time is able to bring forth its most important witness.
We ask, however, that due consideration be given him by all those present in this courtroom as his condition is still very serious.
He has suffered from extreme shock and as a result of the injury he is now in a state of shock.
He has suffered from extreme shock and as a result of the injuries he recently sustained he is and will forever remain totally blind.
Now, clerk, will you please inform the nurse outside that she may now bring the doctor into the courtroom?
The prosecution calls to the stand Dr. Gregory Martin.
He came in seated in a wheelchair. His hands and almost all of his face save an open slit across his mouth, swathed in thick white bandages.
There was something about seeing so handsome and powerful a figure so completely incapacitated.
An involuntary gasp escaped from my own lips as well as from those of every person in the crowded courtroom.
Without a word being spoken the prosecution had easily scored its most effective point.
And after Dr. Martin had finished his spoken testimony the big stick of words came down upon me with full force.
Mr. Foreman, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how do you find the defendant?
We find the defendant guilty as charged.
Then more words. Words coming at me with final, slashing blows.
This court hereby sentences you to the Women's State Penitentiary for a period of not less than 99 years.
I found myself at the far end of a long corridor, the length of it stretching before me in a winding pattern.
The walls of it are thick and pregnantable cement.
There were no windows, save for a small opening high on the wall to my right.
Through this a single shaft of light fell into a pattern which told me that there were iron bars on that one small window.
At first it seemed that I was alone in this place. I stood huddled and afraid, unable to move.
Somehow I had the feeling that soon I would not be alone.
Then faintly, from out of the darkness ahead of me, I heard him coming with slow, shuffling footsteps.
The walk of a man who has not long been without his eyes.
I saw his cane first, a slim thread of white in the blackness before me.
I watched it tapping up and down in a nervous rhythm, tapping, coming closer, closer.
I felt the muscles in my throat tighten in an effort to scream, but I made no sound at all, nor did I move.
I just stood there and waited and watched him come toward me.
Then in the next instant his face caught in the shaft of light and I saw him very clearly.
Mary, Mary, please wake up. Come on now, get hold before you rouse the whole block. Come on now.
We can't have this every night.
Oh, how's that dream? I can't stop dreaming. It isn't fair, it isn't fair. I don't belong here. I didn't do anything, but I'm here.
He still won't leave me alone, not even in my sleep.
There you see, Warden. That's the way it is every night. We can't seem to do anything.
That's enough, Matron. We're releasing Mary Blake.
What did you say?
You're free, Miss Blake. The nightmare is over. Come with me and I'll tell you what has happened.
Miss Blake, the state has no way of returning these weeks of freedom it wrongly took from you
or of erasing the shock and heartbreak you've been forced to suffer.
We can only hope that it has not too deeply embittered you and hasn't totally destroyed your faith in the justice one customarily finds in our courtrooms.
There seems to be a limit to bitterness, Warden. I find that what I feel now is not a release from injustice, but a release from fear.
I know that he can never reach me again, even in my dreams. How can I be so sure of that?
Well, it's another of the things that can't be accounted for rationally about this case.
It leads one to wonder if some metaphysical force wasn't put to work in place of the erring machinery of justice.
Miss Blake, when you blinded Dr. Martin, you limited his vision to mental images.
And over the period of time that has lapsed since the day you received sentence,
it seems the doctor's mind would not free him from one particular visual experience.
He too suffered from a recurring dream, which, due to his impairment, was inflicted upon his waking as well as sleeping hours.
The dream, did he describe it?
Oh, he did, in detail. It seems that there was...
Slow, groping steps. I entered a narrow corridor.
With my hands, I felt that the walls were of a thick, impregnable cement.
The tap of my cane produced an echo that told me the corridor was one of interminable winding lengths.
I did not want to enter nor walk through it, yet it seemed that I was forced to.
And the walking, walking, seemed endless. I wanted to cry out, but could find no voice.
I wanted to see a single light from a window or an open door to know that there was somewhere an end to the blackness.
But there was no light and no end.
I wanted to turn back, but there was no turning back and no end to my walking.
And although I had the feeling of being alone in this place, I knew that I was not alone and never would be.
And it was worse than being alone.
For though I could not see her, and though she did not touch nor speak to me, I knew she was there.
And for me, she would always be there.
Mary Blake, my accuser.
For she is the innocent and I am the guilty.
And for the innocent, there is always a freedom.
And for the guilty, there is never an escape.
Suspense presented by Auto Light. Tonight's star, Miss Joan Bennett.
Hello, I just ran out and bought a Nolo Light stay full battery. Now do I get a pair of those wonderful suspenders?
Well, Hap, you sway me. But let me sway, I mean say a word about the more than 400 products made by Auto Light for cars, trucks, planes and boats in 28 plants coast to coast.
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Remember from bumper to tail light, you're always right with Auto Light.
Next Thursday for suspense, our star will be Mr. John Lund. The play is called The Man in the Room. And it is, as we say, a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
That 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.
Statement of Mary Blake is an original play written for radio by Shirley Gordon.
Miss Joan Bennett will soon be seen in the MGM production, Father of the Bride.
In the coming weeks, you will hear such stars as Claire Trevor and Charles Boyer.
Don't forget, next Thursday same time, Auto Light will present Suspense starring John Lund.
You can buy Auto Light staple batteries, Auto Light resistor or regular spark plugs, Auto Light electrical parts at your neighborhood Auto Light dealers. Switch to Auto Light. Good night.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.