Auto Light and its 98,000 dealers bring you Mr. Peter Lawford in tonight's presentation
of Suspense.
Tonight Auto Light presents a classic study of suspense, a new dramatization of one of
the most terrifying stories ever written.
Elkie Collins, a terribly strange bed, our star Mr. Peter Lawford.
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And now auto light presents Mr. Peter Lawford in Wilkie Collins' story, a terribly strange
bed, hoping once again to keep you in suspense.
Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be staying in Paris
with an English friend.
We were both young men and lived, I'm afraid, rather a wild life in the city of our sojourn.
And thus had probed the various refined pleasures suitable to our class and searched for others
less elegant.
Searched for them in the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, which lies covertly against
the dark river Seine.
And from each closed doorway, the small echoing of small promises.
That one Henry, that doorway there.
Oh, you're drunk, Gerald.
Pleasantly, exquisitely, modestly, delicately am I drunk.
And therefore.
Therefore what, Gerald?
The doorway I have suggested and the word Frascati painted on it.
Noble word, noble mysteries.
I've been there.
Oh, sly, sly, sly and traitorous friend.
You have been there and alone, slyly and without me.
And it has a ghastly kind of respectability.
Five franc respectability and it would not amuse me.
Come along, Gerald.
That's it, Gerald, you're coming along very nicely.
What I want, Gerald.
Oh, what you want, Henry.
Want and you shall find.
What I want is somewhere where we can see a little genuine blackguard, poverty stricken
gaming with no false gingerbread glitter thrown all over it.
No gingerbread for my friend, thank you very much.
A place not fashionable, not respectable.
A place of evil perhaps and of emotions I've never known.
Oh, Gerald, come along.
Gerald will not come along.
Gerald is content here.
Listen to me.
Gerald is content here to lean his weariness and his search against this doorway.
Against.
Gerald.
The door had flung open behind him and Gerald had fallen flat on his back and for a while
laughed then with my help got up and Gerald laughed no longer.
For the room, the gaming room was tragedy, mute, weird tragedy.
And the quiet in the room, horrible.
And the people of the room, a thin, haggard, long haired young man whose sunken eyes fiercely
watched the turning up of the cards and never spoke.
The flabby, fat faced, perspiring player who registered on a pasteboard how often black
won and how often red and never spoke.
The dirty, wrinkled old man with the vulture eyes and the darned great coat who had lost
his last sue and still looked on desperately and never spoke.
The voice of the croupier.
Red and black, make your bet.
The voice of the croupier, dull and thick in the atmosphere of the room.
We had entered on a laugh but the spectacle before us was something to weep over.
I'd found it.
The pleasure I searched.
I'd found it.
Henry.
Yes?
Your eyes.
The look in them.
Yes.
What you wanted, isn't it?
The place of evil and of emotions you would never.
I want to play.
What you do?
Come then.
Red and black, make your bets.
Red and black, your bets.
A thousand francs on black.
Black, black wins.
Leave it.
All of it, black.
Henry.
Wait.
Yes, this is a passion meal.
No, no, not a passion, idle amusement.
Yes, only amusement.
Wait.
Black.
All of it.
All of it red.
This time red.
Oh, not passion, then intoxication to happen.
Yes, intoxication, as I have never known it, intoxication.
Yes, yes, yes.
Which has become.
Red, red wins.
All of it red.
And ten thousand more.
Oh, which has become passion.
Which has become passion.
Red, red wins.
Now, the black coupier.
Black.
Oh, permit me, sir.
Permit me to restore to their proper place the two coins which were dropped.
There, in their proper place.
A thousand francs.
A tall man and quite fat, pinched into a frogged and braided serto.
A man of gobbling bloodshot eyes, mangy moustaches and a broken nose.
And the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw.
Yet in the mad excitement, his look, his hands held no repelling influence on me.
For now in the mad excitement, in the reckless triumph I was ready to accept even such as
he.
What wonderful luck is yours, sir.
I pledge you my word of honor as an old soldier.
In the course of my long experience in this sort of thing, never but never have I seen
such luck as yours.
Thank you.
Go on, sir.
Boldly, handsomely break the bank.
I assure you, sir, I have every intention.
Do it then, sir.
Go on, break the bank.
My gallant English comrade, boldly break the bank.
All of it, black.
And I did go on.
Went on at such a rate that in an hour...
Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for tonight.
In an hour, in an hour of a kind of ecstasy I'd never known.
And all the notes and all the gold in the bank now lay in a heap under my hands.
The whole floating capital of the gambling house under my hands, waiting to pour into
my pockets.
No.
No?
No, not in your pockets, sir.
For no breeches pockets, whatever sold could hold such heavy winnings.
Then how...
May I take your pocket handkerchief, sir?
Thank you.
Tie it up, sir.
Tie it up in your handkerchief, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the army.
Shuffle it in.
Now then, sir, two tight double knots each way with your mission.
And the money's safe.
Thank you.
Feel it, feel it, sir.
Hard and round, hard and round as a cannonball.
Feel it.
Ah, champagne, sir.
I will buy you champagne.
No, thank you.
I...
Well, for your friend then.
Henry's friend.
Amiable gracious Henry.
Champagne, champagne for the friend, the conqueror of the bank, and for me.
Come, sirs, to my table.
I am Fabian Nero, gallon sir, and you?
Henry Calder, and this is my friend, Gerald Tichter.
Henry, Gerald, Fabian.
Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Henry, Gerald.
Thank you.
Henry, Gerald, thank you.
Henry and Gerald, Fabian.
We are friends, aren't we?
I've touched your sleeves to have you seated here beside me.
This old soldier's heart will burst, my eyes will weep, my hands...
The champagne.
A toast, gentlemen, a toast to...
Not for me, please.
Of course not for you.
Gerald and I, then.
To when Gerald fed him.
A toast to the goddess fortune who embraced tonight our Henry and smiled secretly upon
him and nestled very close.
The goddess fortune, gentlemen, an English cheer.
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.
Fabian quickly enough.
Gerald, you were tipsy before, now you'll...
Henry, not to permit the golden blood of France to flow through the veins of this vivacious
Englishman and Gerald, your friend.
Oh, shame, Henry, shame.
Drink, Gerald.
A toast to France, to the present company, to the croupier.
And the croupier's wife.
And the croupier's daughter.
The croupier's daughter.
And to ladies elsewhere.
And to ladies...
I should like coffee, Fabian.
Coffee?
Coffee.
For me and for Gerald.
For our intoxication...
Well, coffee it shall be.
Coffee.
Coffee for the darling of fortune.
Coffee.
The word pronounced by Fabian Nero seemed to have a magical effect on the company present.
They suddenly had lost interest and all rose to depart.
Surely they had expected to profit by my intoxication, by the proffering of champagne.
The finding I would have none of it had now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly
on my winnings.
Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away in a body.
And the silence of before was now deeper than ever.
Then from a sort of vestibule at the far corner of the room, a woman appeared, bearing a tray
of coffee and glasses, and walked towards us, enveloped in silence.
Woman of emaciated face and burning bright eyes and wisps of colourless hair drifting
across her rouge cheeks.
Your coffee, sir.
Thank you.
You will find it strong and good.
Thank you.
Strong and good, handsome sir.
Here you are, sir.
Thank you.
For I am parched with thirst.
And it was kind of you and of Fabian and gracious and generous.
How wise you are, Henry, to drink this coffee of Millie's, the coffee of Millie Prud'homme.
Millie Prud'homme.
Divine Millie.
Beautiful Millie Prud'homme.
Oh, handsome sir.
Will you have coffee?
No.
Champagne, Millie.
To drink your coffee.
How wiser than your friend, Gerald, to drink coffee and rid yourself of your little amiable
exaltation of spirits before you think of going home.
And you must, my good and gracious friend, for with all that money.
Good and gracious friend.
With all that money to take home tonight, it is a sacred duty to yourself to have your
wits about you.
Drink Henry.
Drink your coffee.
You are known to be a winner to an enormous extent by several gentlemen present tonight
who are but mortal men, sir, and have their own amiable weaknesses.
Drink Henry, who would surely rob and murder if you were to...
Wait.
Oh, Mr. Henry.
I'm ill.
I'm very...
What?
He is ill.
I will weep.
Henry is ill and I am drunk.
Millie will sob.
Will you sob, Millie?
Ill.
A fit of giddiness.
The room whirls round and round.
Furiously.
Henry.
And your voice deafens me.
Furiously.
Oh, my dear friend, my dear friend.
Madness to go home in your state would be robbed, murdered.
You need a walking and then a sleep and not a murdering.
A walking and then sleep and in a safe place, Henry.
Yes.
Walk.
Sleep.
In a safe place.
The place of Millie Prud'homme.
A rooming house above the game room and the capital beds of Millie's rooming house.
I don't...
Madness to go to your own home.
Sleep at Millie Prud'homme and tomorrow, tomorrow...
Go home safely with your winnings.
Tomorrow, in full flow of life and in broad daylight.
Tomorrow.
Gerald.
Babin's writing.
If anyone needs sleep, you surely need it.
Come then.
Quickly.
Come then, quickly.
I will help you.
Put your arm about me.
That's the dear boy.
Millie?
Millie.
Yes, Gerald.
Come.
In here, Henry.
Here.
The choicest room of Millie Prud'homme.
The capital bed there and the tasteful furnishing and the deep sleep to be had and the safe one.
Till tomorrow, Henry.
I don't know how to thank you.
You have thanked me enough already with the exaltation of your splendid company and that
I could have been of some small service to your small malady.
Oh, Millie.
Oh, let me go, Gerald.
Oh, handsome, sir.
Oh, come, Millie.
Henry wants his sleep.
Oh, the vibe, Millie.
The vibe.
Oh, Henry, sit.
Oh, my dear.
Oh, Henry.
Millie Prud'homme, you see.
Gerald passed into his particular oblivion in the middle of a sentence.
I walked over and locked the door.
Then I took my money, my winnings wrapped in a handkerchief and placed beneath the pillow
of my bed.
I lay down.
My senses still swam and I looked up at the heavily brocaded canopy and it seemed to move.
Somehow to move.
But for an instant I thought this was a terribly strange bed.
Auto Light is bringing you Mr. Peter Lawford in Wilkie Collins, a terribly strange bed.
Tonight's presentation in radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Suspense.
Well Harlow, vacation time's nearly here.
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You'll be glad you did because from bumper to tail light, you're always right with Auto
Light.
And now, Auto Light brings back to our Hollywood sound stage, Mr. Peter Lawford, in Elliot
Lewis's production of A Terribly Strange Bed, a tale well calculated to keep you in
suspense.
I could not sleep.
Restlessness took me over and I got out of bed.
There was the dim, quiet flicker of a single candle, and next to it, a wash stand.
I plunged my face into the water.
There was a single chair and I sat down and tried to compose myself.
Slowly, slowly, the giddiness left me.
A shutter and a window.
Shutter attached by a single hinge and flapping against the side of the house.
And no lock on the window.
No way of locking the window.
Henry?
Gerald.
Gerald, are you up?
Where?
In a room, over the gaming place.
It's all right.
I've locked the door, but the window, it's...
Window.
And there's a window.
Listen.
Did you hear?
I was wide awake and every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened.
You know, on a song I had never heard, and then behind it, the laughter.
Wide awake, yet somehow the effects of whatever drug I had drunk seemed suddenly to arise
again.
And for an instant, toy with my perception so that I reached for the wall to steady myself
as I fall down.
Leaned against the wall for support.
The jollity of the evening children and the youth from England.
Dear Millie, dear Millie, dear Millie.
So it is.
And I was so happy to see you.
My
dear dear.
Yes
Are you there in them?
The moment their voices waver and flap to kind of Melancholy sees me, I walked over to
the window and looked out. Looked out upon blackness, a swarm of blackness, no shapes
definable could be made out through the gloom, except a lighter grayness of a sort, as if
an abutment of some kind, I supposed. Directly across the window and somewhat below it, but
how far across and to what length below I could not determine. For all purposes then,
I knew only that we were above the street level and some three stories, and having felt
the walls directly adjacent the window, I found them to be sheer. No one could enter
there. I walked over to the bed and took a pillow and placed it beneath Gerald's head.
The bed again and I lay down. This bed that now I was lying upon, I must again describe to you.
A four-post bed with a regular top line with chintz. The regular fringe valence all around.
It was ridiculous now that I tried to sleep, I couldn't even close my eyes.
I resolved then to beguile the tedium of my wakefulness by making inventory of every article
of furniture I could see. Window, washstand, chest, chair, dressing table, picture. Upon the
wall opposite the bed, a picture. A fellow in a high Spanish hat crowned with a plume of tiring
feathers. A swarthy sinister ruffian looking upward. It might be at some tall gallows on
which he was going to be hanged. Such was the picture. Another chair, candlestick, picture.
It seemed to be moving. The hat had been pulled over the eyes and there, the hat itself was gone.
The hat was gone, the plumes, the... Was the bed moving? No. No, it was a brief and terrible dream.
How could the top of a bed move? Brief and terrible dream. Trick of the eye and the mind's going down
for a moment into sleep. Yet, yet I let my mind say it. The top of the bed had moved.
Gerald, Gerald, wake up. Open your eyes. Now what? Quietly. Keep your voice in a quiet tone.
Why, why, what? Listen. Above you, directly above you. Look, there's a picture. Do you see it?
Yes. A minute ago, the man was wearing a hat. He was wearing a hat. Now he is not. My friend,
you're very drunk. I'm very proud of you. You fool. Listen to me. All right, Henry. Where there was a
hat is now a peephole and we are being watched. All right, Henry. Now stay where you are, but be alert.
All right, Henry. Henry. Yes. What are you going to do? Make sure of a thing. What thing? The bed.
What? Keep your eye on the canopy. I'm going to lie in the bed now, Gerald, and make sure that
they're not trying to murder us. How? By feigning sleep. What? By feigning sleep, Gerald. Just that.
Now quiet. Yes. Now I am constitution, anything but timid. I have been on more than one occasion in
peril of my life, and I have not lost my self-possession for an instant. But when the
conviction settled on my mind that the bed top was actually moving, it loosed a feeling within me,
foreign, laced through with terror. So I lay there, motionless, speechless, breathless. The candle
spent went out, but the moonlight still brightened the room. I lay there. It descended. The whole
canopy came down, closed down. Henry. I lay there, literally spellbound by what was happening. Out of
bed. At once I could not tell whether reality was here or my imagination was taking hold.
Quickly before they... Closer, closer. Henry. Gerald's voice shattered this warm sea of fascination
that bound me, and I leapt from the bed. Look, look, Henry. Yes. There, the middle of the bed
top, the huge wooden screw. Like a press to smother me and relieve me of my winnings and then
kill you. Young sir, Mr. Calder, open. Unlock the door. Open. The light of the morning, Gerald,
look. It comes up and through the window, across the narrow shaft, another building. We can leap it.
Not I. What? No, not I. My legs are still unsteady. If I should stand upon that still,
I'd fall into space. Then wait. And hurry. Yes. Hurry. Hurry.
The rest of my story is soon told. From the building next door, I reached the ground and sought
police. With them I returned. Mr. Fabian was seized, as was Mrs. Prud'homme. The police
congratulated me on my good fortune and Gerald's on his, and told us that they would probably never
know how many people had been smothered in this diabolical bed. So tightly was the canopy pressed
to the bed that I could not retrieve my money. The mechanism had to be released from the room above.
The police made us go and finding ourselves walking homeward, Gerald said to me, I know a place
where gambling is carried on at such a fever pitch that you'll be carried to the heights of excitement.
Needless to imagine, I refused to go along with Gerald. My adventure cured me of ever again trying
rouge en noir as an amusement. The sight of a green cloth with packs of cards and heaps of
money on it will henceforth be associated in my mind with the sight of a bed canopy
descending to suffocate me in the silence and the darkness of the night.
Suspense presented by Autolight, tonight's star Mr. Peter Lawford. Here are the results of the
great $100,000 Autolight Family Charity Drawing. Over 5,200,000 entries were received for this
event. Last week the final drawing was held in New York under the supervision of a distinguished
committee. Here are the names in the order of their selection. $50,000 will be distributed
to the charity or charities designated by Desi L. Irish of Vallejo, California. $20,000 will go to
the charity or charities designated by Lucille Fossey of Miami, Florida. $5,000 to the charity
designated by Vincent W. Sissler of Howe, Indiana. $3,000 to the charity designated by Stuart Smith
of Ogdenburg, New York. And $2,000 to the charity designated by L. G. Bridgewater of Kennewick,
Washington. These people and 20 others who will each designate $1,000 to their favorite
charities have all been notified. And now this is Harlow Wilcox wishing you a summer of safe
driving with the reminder that wherever you travel from bumper to tail light, you're always right
with Autolight. Next Tuesday night, June 15th, we will continue with a new series of suspense
programs. At that time and through the summer, we hope that you will join us and that we will
be able each Tuesday night to keep you in suspense. Suspense is produced and directed by Elliot Lewis
with music composed by Lucian Morawick and conducted by Lud Bluskin. A terribly strange
bed was adapted for suspense by Morton Fine and David Friedkin from the story by Wilkie Collins.
In tonight's story, Ben Wright was heard as Gerald, Paula Winslow as Mildred,
Joseph Kearns as Fabian, and Vic Perrin as the croupier. Peter Lawford may currently be seen
co-starring in the Columbia picture, It Should Happen to You. And remember, suspense continues
on Tuesday night beginning next week, at which time we will present The Earth is Made of Glass.
You can buy Autolight standard or resistor type spark plugs, Autolight stay full batteries,
and Autolight original service parts at your neighborhood Autolight dealers. Switch to Autolight.
Good night. This is the CBS Radio Network.