Auto Light and its 96,000 dealers bring you Mr. Herbert Marshall in tonight's presentation
of Suspense.
Tonight, Auto Light presents an adaptation of Jeffrey Household's terrifying novel, Rogue
Mail, starring Mr. Herbert Marshall.
Oh, Harlow.
Yes, Hap.
What was that all about?
Well, I was just demonstrating the Auto Light electrical system, Hap.
You were?
Sure.
It goes to work every time you start your car, sound the horn, play the radio, or turn
on your lights or heater.
The electrical system does all that?
Sure, Hap.
The Auto Light coil, distributor, generator, and all the other units and thousands of component
parts.
They're all related by Auto Light engineering design and manufacturing skill and used as
original factory equipment on many leading makes of our finest cars.
A real team operation, eh, Harlow?
You said it, Hap, for the smoothest car performance money can buy.
So, friends, when your Auto Light equipped car needs replacement parts, insist on Auto
Light original factory part.
Be sure, because from bumper to tail light, you're always right with Auto Light.
And now with Rogue Mail and the transcribed performance of Mr. Herbert Marshall, Auto
Light hopes once again to keep you in suspense.
I had him in my sights, the biggest game on earth.
There was no mistaking him with his chaperone moustache and his mincing strut.
I spent a day checking all points commanding the terrorists and I timed the guards on their
beats.
Then I chose my spot on a grassy slope at the edge of a cliff.
I estimated the range of 550 yards, when the great man appeared, I got the three pointers
of my sights ready on the V of his waistcoat.
He was facing me, winding up his watch.
He would never have known what shattered him, that is, if I meant the fire.
Just then I felt a slight breeze on my cheek.
I'd have to allow for wind.
Stop!
Careful!
That's a hair trigger adjustment.
Dirty dog!
You don't understand, it was only a sporting stalk.
A session, you dirty dog!
Killer!
All fired.
All morning I felt his eyes watching me, I felt strange.
So I turned back seven minutes early when I reached the purchase.
He was going to kill our Fuhrer.
Your Excellency, sir, who helped you?
Nobody.
I was alone.
Were you acting for your government?
Of course not.
We are at peace.
So far, yes.
I'm a sportsman, a big game hunter.
With what we call a sporting stalk.
You expect us to believe that?
Only what you wish, it's true.
Corporal!
Take him inside.
We'll break him.
There are ways.
Heil Hitler!
Is he conscious?
No, sir.
He's not.
You mean the
man?
Yeah, I just thought so.
Corporal, bring his things. Gun, binoculars and papers.
Yes, sir.
I ought to banish myself a bit before I leave.
But you're not leaving. We can't release you.
Your appearance, that left eye, and your hands.
Oh, no, you'd certainly want to get even with us.
How would you explain the state of your fingernails?
I'm willing to call it even now.
Yes, I believe you really mean that.
It's no wonder we admire you, English.
No, we can't risk it, old man.
Too much criticism abroad of our methods.
I tell you, the story will die with me.
It will indeed, this very evening.
If you're concerned about world opinion, my murder most certainly...
Oh, but it won't be murder.
It will be an accident.
A sporting accident.
They drove me north 50 miles, took me to the edge of a cliff,
and put me over, all but my hands.
That was cunning.
Scrabbling at the rough rock would account for the state of my fingers
when I was found.
I did hang on, of course, until I had to drop.
But they'd bungled the job.
There was a terrifying instant of pain,
then I plopped into something soft.
I had crashed into a patch of swamp, small and deep.
When I moved, I found I was wrapped in mud.
It was dark, and I was quite numb.
I couldn't stand.
So I traveled on my belly, using my elbows for legs,
leaving a track like a wounded crocodile.
I had only one thought to hide myself.
A mile, two miles.
I came through a river and, crawling into the shadows,
I made my trail look as if I had taken to the stream.
Then I crawled back over my own track to a tree.
I caught at a low branch.
The muscles of my hands were still intact.
And went up the first ten feet in a single burst.
I couldn't rest my legs on the lower branches
without leaving a smear of blood.
I pulled myself higher.
When I reached the thick branches of the upper tree,
I wedged myself in.
Then I fainted.
The sound of their search woke me.
This afternoon, I peered down and saw the half-English major
with two uniformed men and three dogs.
His trail goes into the river.
He couldn't swim. His legs.
He had to be sure.
You, go downstream. I'll go up with the dog.
We must find his buddy.
I stayed in the tree all night.
Just before dawn, I came down.
I could walk after a passion, but I had to have different clothes,
a razor, and many things, or I might as well turn myself in.
Then a tall, stooping man with a fishing rod
came through the woods to the riverbank.
I crept closer to study him.
His face was melancholy, but there was courage in it.
I had to take that one chance.
Good morning. Any luck?
No, I... Who are you?
Don't be afraid. I need help. Look, look at my hands.
Do you know how that was done?
Yes. I mean, I've heard...
No, I don't know anything.
I have money, if you'll help me.
I don't want money.
I'm English.
It's better for you not to know my name or what I've done,
but I need clothes, food, gloves to hide these hands,
a razor to shave, things that can't be traced back.
Wait, don't go. Where are you going?
You need something to hide that eye, too.
Ah, a patch, I think. Yes, an eye patch would be best.
I'll put the things under that, sorry.
He was back for an hour,
but I waited till dark to pick up the bundle.
I changed, shaved, adjusted the eye patch,
and studied myself in the mirror.
It was a fair disguise.
That same night, I stole a punt and pushed off downriver.
It took me a week to reach the sea.
There was a large harbor there,
and walking along the wharves, I saw several English ships.
From two English sailors I met in a bar,
I learned that one freighter was sailing next morning for London.
Her first mate was named Mr. Vayner.
Yes, who is it?
Mr. Vayner. Who is it?
Oh, the police didn't catch you.
Didn't you know?
They've searched every ship in the harbor.
Found that punt you abandoned.
How did they place it to me?
They had reports of a man wearing a black eye patch,
seen on the river.
That's how I know who you are.
Can you help me?
I could hide you in the storeroom.
No, no, too risky.
No place in the hold.
I've got it. Come on.
Anyone see you come aboard?
I don't think so.
Everybody's ashore except me and the cook.
It's time to hide you.
It's all clear.
Come on, run.
Keep your head down.
Police might come back, spot you from the wharf.
What's this manhole cover for?
Empty fresh water tank.
I'll be in fast.
I'll bring you food and blankets.
Would you like some whiskey?
Very much. Thanks.
And Mr. Vayner, when we dock in the Thames,
will you keep a sharp lookout?
See if the ship's watched?
You'll be safe in England, sir.
Maybe, but I'm going to look before I leave.
We're docked.
You're right, sir.
There's a funny-looking chap watching the gates.
Could I row ashore?
I have the dinghy ready under the starboard quarter.
Fine.
I'll leave it at the Hurlingham East Wall so you can pick it up.
Have you friends, sir, who'll hide you?
I can't let them be involved.
I'll see my lawyer first thing in the morning,
then I'll disappear.
Oh, come in quickly.
You're taking a frightful risk coming here.
I know, Saul, that I have to.
There's no telling who saw you come into the building.
I noticed a man in a black hat
feeding the birds in the courtyard.
Oh, yes, he's been there all week.
And I just glimpsed a certain Major.
You mean you know him?
When he called on me and asked all those pointed questions about you,
I thought he was lying.
He said he was a friend and a neighbor,
called himself Major Keefe Smith.
He's no friend, Saul.
He's a half-English major in the German army.
How are you tangled up with the Germans?
Why, their ambassador's been asking about you, too.
I can't tell you, Saul.
I'm in a mess.
I can't go to the police or involve the government in any way.
I have to disappear, and I need 5,000 pounds in cash.
Hmm.
Then I'll send Sims out to cash a check.
But, uh, they'll follow you when you leave
Black Hat and the Major up?
They'll try.
But I'll shake them somehow.
When I started for the Hoban Underground Station,
the man in the black hat was close behind me.
Then I saw, before I dived into the station,
that he'd stopped at the newsstand.
That puzzled me.
Until I looked further back and spotted the Major
moving toward me fast through the crowd.
Our eyes met and clashed in recognition,
and suddenly I saw their plan.
Black Hat would stay behind to guard the exit.
The Major would keep on my heels.
I ran to the escalator and went down to the third level,
and I raced across the platform to a southbound train.
I jumped aboard and worked my way forward, peering out.
The Major was delayed on the jam platform,
and he barely hurled himself through the same door I'd entered,
while I stepped off the train through another door.
The door slid shut.
The train hauled the Major off toward Piccalilly.
I started back toward the escalator,
then stopped in panic.
Black Hat was there on the platform.
He'd been there all along, not at the newsstand.
I plunged into that platform like a frightened rabbit.
Black Hat and I were alone.
He moved toward me, his hand poised over the pocket.
I was sure he held a gun.
I jumped off the platform and ran,
keeping well away from the third rail.
His footsteps pounded behind me.
The tunnel curved into blackness.
Just beyond the curve, I flattened myself against the tunnel wall.
You might as well come out.
The Major wants to talk to you.
Just come along. Talk.
You need a gun in your hand to talk?
Autolite is bringing you Mr. Herbert Marshall in Rogue Mail.
Tonight's production in radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Suspense.
Well, Hap, how's the team?
You mean our basketball team, Harlow?
No, I mean the autolite team in your autolite-equipped car.
That team of autolite electrical system units,
including the coil, distributor, generator, starting motor,
and all their thousands of component parts.
Why, they're all related by autolite engineering design
and manufacturing skill to give your car the smoothest performance money can buy.
The autolite electrical system does a big job, eh, Harlow?
You said it, Hap, and it vitally does.
It's the smooth and efficient operation of your autolite-equipped car.
And I'm off to treat my car to a periodic checkup
at my nearest authorized autolite service station, Harlow.
Right, Hap, and friends, it will pay you to do the same.
Visit your car dealers or nearest authorized autolite service station.
You'll find the authorized autolite service station nearest to you
listed in the classified section of your telephone directory.
Or call Western Union by number and ask for a call.
Or call Western Union by number and ask for operator 25.
And remember, from bumper to tail light, you're always right with autolite.
And now, autolite brings back to our Hollywood soundstage
Mr. Herbert Marshall in Elliot Lewis' production of Rogue Male,
a tale well calculated to keep you in...
suspense.
I can still hear his scream when he fell on the fair rail.
It echoed along the tunnel,
a queer place for a soul to find itself adrift.
I had to leave London, hide somewhere in the country.
At a series of shops, I bought camping equipment,
a primer stove, pans, a sleeping bag,
a heavy slingshot, and a hunting knife.
I couldn't buy a gun without having it registered.
Finally, I bought a bicycle, and by evening, I was pedaling southwest
toward Dorset, looking, I hope, like a carefree man on a rambling holiday.
I picked my hiding place above Marshwood Vale between two lonely farms.
It's not on any map. Choke with dead wood, blocked at both ends by tangled thorn.
Nobody would ever find it except a curious child,
which is why I knew of it.
For in love, one becomes a child again.
That bit of road had been our discovery, hers and mine,
during the brief two weeks which were to begin our life together.
Two weeks which were instead our last, our only time.
The next days, I slept and watched. Nights, I worked.
I tunneled back ten feet into the soft stand,
totaled a bank, hollowing out a low room and a hut.
My chimney went straight up into a blackberry bush.
Over the entrance, I fitted a heavy door,
camouflaged with sandstone dust and dead twigs and vines.
If anyone should blunder into that piece of road,
you'd see no sign of my hiding place.
I would be warm, dry, reasonably well fed,
troubled only by my memories and my loneliness.
Then one morning, down my chimney, came a thin, black, powerful tomcat,
who seemed to think me the trespasser.
Hello there. Here, here.
Share a biscuit?
Not with your civil old man.
Would you rather have some bully beef?
Here, here you are.
I bet that's the first cook meeting beaten.
What do you live on mostly? Mice? Peasants?
Look at your ribs. You haven't had good hunting of late.
Ha-ha! The bully beef brings out your better nature.
Maybe you'll let me scratch your ear.
Why, you're a veritable asmodious, demon of hatred and malignity.
Now, easy. I'm not going to hurt you.
That's right. I won't tell anyone.
Stick around and keep me from being lonely.
I won't tell a soul that old asmodious is a sentimental fool.
But in the end, my loneliness seemed more acute.
In the long nights of that silent fulcide, I was haunted by a memory of her violet eyes.
By a futile wish that I'd followed my premonition, forced her to stay with me in England.
Strange, when I first heard that she was dead, I'd suffered very little.
But at night, in that cave, remembering, I felt such pain.
The next afternoon, lying hidden in the top of an oak tree, I saw a car drive into the yard of the farm to the east.
A man climbed out, carrying a gun case and bag.
The car drove away and the man went into the farmhouse.
I stayed in the tree and in the evening saw the farmer and his visitor emerge with guns under their arms, probably going out to hunt wood pigeons.
After a while, they came out from a thicket to my left.
The farmer's visitor was Major Keeve Smith.
We haven't much luck for your first evening shooting, sir.
That's all right. I have two weeks holiday.
What's behind that growth of porthorn over there?
Nothing, but dead wood and more horse horn.
I ought to find pigeons nesting in there.
Most likely, because of the cat.
What cat?
Perishing black cat. Can't shoot him, can't tame him, neither.
Right there, there he goes now, that black devil, where?
Oh, yes, into the hedge.
He's very fat for a stray, isn't he?
I was underground nine days, watching daylight and starlight through my chimney.
Then as Modius disappeared.
That night I heard noises.
There were two men.
They were moving something heavy.
Then I heard a thud against a door when I knew with terror that my door was barred.
I was trapped underground.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Wonder how I found you?
It was a cat.
I was sure that somebody was feeding him.
How sentimental you English are about animals.
Can't you give me a cleaner death than this?
My dear fellow, I don't want you to die at all.
Put your signature on a document I have here and I'll release you immediately.
A document? Which says what?
Well, I'll read you the most important sentence.
On April the 5th I attempted to assassinate the leader of the German people
and did so with the knowledge of the British government.
See it? A very simple, straightforward statement.
It's a pack of lies.
Oh, come now, no heroics.
Truth is relative.
You think about it overnight, old fellow.
I'll be back at seven in the morning.
Oh? Who do you have on night duty?
The paid hand. Swiss fellow.
You must have realized it took two of us to lift the log of firing your door.
But by the way, why did you try to assassinate our leader?
I told you. I wanted to see if it was possible.
And then I didn't think his death would be any loss.
Ah, then you did mean to shoot.
I'm glad you finally admit it.
Why, yes.
I did mean to shoot.
I'd given myself away, not to him, to myself.
It had not been a game.
I had rarely meant to kill the head of a state.
I must have been mad.
And indeed I was driven mad by rage and grief so great I didn't let myself know what I was thinking.
I am a man who was loved only once and didn't know it until she was dead.
They killed her.
He, that leader, killed her.
She was so swift, so sensitive, so generous of spirit.
She made the cause of all oppressed, unhappy people her own.
And so they caught her and killed her.
For reasons of state.
And so I had declared war on them.
One man at war with a nation.
And I would have destroyed their leader.
If the wind hadn't shifted.
I slipped and was awakened by the sound of a shot.
And then something was stuffed down my chimney, shutting off my only source of fresh air.
Hours passed.
The air grew foul and I banged on the door.
Keith Smith paid no attention.
Finally I reached up the chimney to see what he'd stuffed it.
And pulled poor Asmodeus down into my cave.
He'd been shot at close quarters.
I was choking with sorrow and rage.
It wasn't an easy shot, old man.
Very difficult and sporty.
That's a lie. He trusted you because he'd learned to trust me.
Oh? Well, perhaps you're right.
The Anglo-Saxon love of animals is a weakness I'm happy to be without.
And so, with the death of Asmodeus,
the Major condemned himself to death.
All my plans were directed to that end.
I had no gun, no access to my victim except through the chimney hole.
No weapon but the slingshot.
There was only one way to kill him.
To shoot a lethal missile through that opening.
After some hours I hit on an iron spit with my weapon.
To be fired by the slingshot.
Then I set about luring the Major to the hole.
Ah? Want to talk?
Yes, I've been thinking.
You'd only use that document in case of a war, is that right?
Exactly.
So it doesn't matter if I sign it or not, since there isn't going to be a war.
You're perfectly right. The mere formality.
Then hand it down.
And give me a pen and a flashlight.
Right away.
I'm glad you decided to be sensible.
You're a cut above the average Englishman.
There it is. Got it?
Yes.
Here's the pen.
Where are you? I can't see...
There was a look of surprise in his eyes.
But he was already dead.
The iron spit took him square about the nose.
Then he toppled backward.
Immediately I had to wait at the end of the chimney until it was large enough to receive my body.
Then I burst out into the blackberry bush.
The Major was lying on his back with the spit projecting through the back of his skull.
I searched him through this revolver, burned that scandalous document he'd meant me to sign.
And sat down to wait.
It was dark when I heard the Swiss agent coming.
When he was a few paces away, I flashed the light on him.
Put your hands up.
Now walk over here slowly.
What do you want?
Your gun. Turn around.
Oh, you killed the Major.
Oh, please, sir.
Don't turn me in. They will hang me.
They will hang me for treason.
Now we are at war.
At war?
Oh, yes, sir. It came over the wireless.
Germany has marched into Poland.
England has declared war.
And so my private war merged with the greater cause.
And I had no need to worry further about the ethics of my revenge.
They were the same as the ethics of war.
True.
It had not been as I had claimed a sporting stop.
But you can't call me unsporting.
After all, if I'd pulled the trigger,
I would have achieved one of the two or three most difficult shots in the world.
This is Harlow Wilcock speaking for Auto Light,
the world's largest independent manufacturer of automotive electrical equipment.
Auto Light is proud to serve the greatest names in the industry.
That is why during the early months of 1952,
the Auto Light family will join together in saluting the leading car manufacturers
who install Auto Light products as original equipment right on their assembly line.
The Auto Light family is made up of the nearly 30,000 men and women
in 28 great Auto Light plants from coast to coast,
as well as more than 18,000 Auto Light stockholders,
97,000 Auto Light distributors and dealers in the United States,
and thousands more in Canada and throughout the world.
The Auto Light family will salute the Packard Motor Car Company
in the next Auto Light Suspense Television Program.
So if you live in a television area, check the day and time of suspense on television
so that you won't miss this program.
And remember, from bumper to tail light, you're always right with Auto Light.
Next week on Suspense, our star will be Mr. Jeff Chandler in a story taken from life,
a factual document concerning the San Francisco Tongue Wars,
which we call the Case Against Lou Dock.
In weeks to come, we shall also present Ms. Agnes Moorhead, Mr. Charles Boyer,
and Mr. J. Carroll Nash, all on Suspense.
Suspense is transcribed and directed by Elliot Lewis
with music composed by Lucian Morawieckin, conducted by Lud Bluskin.
Rogue Mail was adapted for Suspense by Sylvia Richards from the novel by Jeffrey Household.
In tonight's story, best read by the author,
the novel by Jeffrey Household.
In tonight's story, Ben Wright was heard as the major.
Featured in the cast were Larry Dobkin, Ramsey Hill, Harry Brartell,
Peter Owen, Joseph Kearns, William Johnstone, and Earl Keen.
Herbert Marshall may be heard each week on his own radio program, The Man Called X.
This is the CBS Radio Network.