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The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective, brought to you by Wild Root Cream Oil Hair Tonic, the non-alcoholic hair tonic that contains lanolin.Wild Root Cream Oil, again and again, the choice of men who put good grooming first.
Sam Spade, Detective Agency.
It's only me from over the sea.
Oh, Sam.How was it at the beach?
Well, I was up to my neck from the first rumble.If you mean did I go in the water, I did.
I didn't notice.I was too busy landing a corpse.
Oh, Sam, what a coincidence!I was just reading my new library book, and it's all about a body in the water, pushed over a cliff, and there's a strangest girl in it with a strange mother, and she drinks, the girl, and runs away with a chauffeur.
They can't do that!They're stealing my material!
Oh, no, Sam, no!It's by Owen Fitzsteven.He's very well thought of.Mother always understands his plot.
Not tonight, she won't. There we are, Angel.I'll be right down to dictate my report on the critical author, Caber.
Daschle Hammett, America's leading detective fiction writer and creator of Sam Spade, The Hard-Boiled Private Eye, and William Spear, radio's outstanding producer-director of mystery and crime drama, join their talents to make your hair stand on end with the adventures of Sam Spade.
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And now, with Howard Duff starring as Spade, Wild Root brings to the air the greatest private detective of them all in the adventures of Sam Spade.
I'm looking over the... Oh, Sam.Yeah, come on in.Let's get this over with.
Can you wiggle?I finished this chapter.There's a page to go.The detective had just found this girl in a sordid rooming house.He had this fight with her boyfriend and boinged him.And now butter would melt in her mouth.But I don't trust her.
What's the name of the book?
Morgue Fruit.His last was The Spindly Stiff.That was about this neurotic nurse who was in love with her employer.
Effie, how long have you been reading this kind of trash?
It's not trash, Sam.Oh, you mean it makes his characters live. And I love his detective.He's real hard-boiled, like an ashel hammock.
Ashel hammock?Mark your place and come in.
Yes, sir.Oh, I can hardly wait.
That's the way I like you, eager.
To finish the chapter, I mean.
I wonder what she's up to.She's guilty, of course.
You can read it when I'm finished.Oh, my goodness, we've got a report to get out, and here we are, chattering about books. Date, August?
Uh, date?Fellow there.To, uh, Missing Persons Bureau, San Francisco Police.Attention, Sergeant Schwartz.From Samuel Spade, license number 1-2-7-5-9-6.Subject, Gabriel Leggett.
Dear Dave, I should have handed it over to you at the start, but you know me, I'm greedy.I cashed the check she'd sent me as a retainer without consulting my better judgment. Gave the money to Effie to pay bills, without batting an eye.
Borrowed a dime car fare from the corner newsboy, without collateral.And arrived in front of the Leggett mansion on Knob Hill without the foggiest notion of what I had been retained for.
I'm Gertrude Leggett, Mr. Spade.It's about my stepdaughter, Gabrielle.She's been missing since the funeral.
Whose funeral was that, Mrs. Leggett?
My husband, Gabrielle's father.That was nearly three weeks ago. She came to me afterwards and said she was going down to Kisada, to our country place, for a few days.That she wanted to be alone with her grief.
But I discovered that she never arrived at Kisada.Do I make myself clear, Mr. Spade?
Yeah, except for one thing.Why do you want her back?
First, she may do something to disgrace me.She'll undoubtedly try her best to do so.Secondly, unless I get her signature to some papers, in accordance with her father's will, I can't go on living in this house.
Furthermore... That's okay, you've convinced me. Now, when she left, what did she take with her?
Just one piece of light luggage, and her liquor case, of course.She drinks, you know.It's not my place to disapprove.I merely thought it might help you to know.
Well, we could case all the bars in town, but it'd take a lot of time and a lot of money, besides them on the wagon.
Well, you might talk to Eric, my chauffeur.He drove her to the station, or says he did.
Let's see.Ten o'clock.He'll be loitering down the hall, somewhere in the neighborhood of the linen closet. helping the upstairs maid fold the sheets.I'd knock first, if I were you, and avoid embarrassment.
Thanks for the tip.Oh, mind if I have a look at your stepdaughter's room?
Eric will give you the key.I'm not a loud one.
Let me tell you a great big secret.
Excuse me, sir.Thank you for your kind assistance, Mr. Collinson.
Okay, Myrtle.Anytime.Yes, sir.
You Eric?Collinson.What can I do for you?I'd like the key to Miss Gabrielle's room.You the law?Why?You were expecting some?The old lady's been threatening to yell cop.She decided to whisper instead.
You catch on fast, lover boy.Okay, I'll let you in her room.Come on. Mrs. Leggett says you drove Gabrielle to the station.
Isn't that what you told her?
I'm not telling you what I told anyone.
Search yourself.After you.Mm-mm.What's eating you?Nothing at all.Just want some privacy.Oh, now, wait a minute.
Go help Myrtle.Give me those keys.Oh, listen, you keep... Hello.
Hi.Let me in.Do I have your license?
Her room was, shall we say, untidy. The mirrored dressing table was chipped around the edges and arranged helter-skelter across it between two polo pony bookends was a mess of books.
Three odd volumes of the Harvard five-foot shelf, a horse breeders' gazette, and a bunch of detective novels.I picked one up and opened it to the title page.
It was called Mordfruit, and it was by Owen FitzSteven, author of The Corpulent Cadaver, The Spindly Stiff, and The Kiss-Off.It was autographed to the author's great and good friend, the late Edgar Leggett.
The signature looked familiar, but it didn't look like a lead.Neither did anything else in the room.I started to unlock the door with the key on the ring I'd grabbed away from Eric, and the light caught the smooth side of a Christopher medal.
It was engraved, for Eric, forever, Gabby.When Forever Eric went off duty that night, he went across town.The trail ended at a crummy, broken-down rooming house out in the Fillmore.He let himself in with the key and climbed the stairs.
I waited until he was out of sight. In, uh, more time than it takes to tell, the door cracked open and a nose that could only belong to a landlady raised it out at me.She was, uh, gumming a sen-sen.
They, uh, get settled in all right?
They ain't nobody settling in on me.
Never touched me. You got me wrong, Mom.I meant the newlyweds.Did they raise the rent money all right?
Oh, them.Raised it and spent it.She's a dicksmither.
Stocks it up all day and throws the dead soldiers out the window.And they call it a honeymoon.
Who are you?I'm her ex-husband, darling.I came to pay her the back alimony I owe her.
Well, give it to me.I'll see she gets it.
Oh, now, don't you come pushing in here.Quiet.It's after hours.Don't allow callers in here after 10 o'clock.House rules.
What's their room number?Now, give it to me or I'll shake it out of you, darling.
212.And if you want for these new uppers, at least you try it.
Oh, is that what those are?Thank you, Grand Duchess Marie.
Smart aleck.No wonder you can't hang on to a woman.
I did not. Who is it?Western Union.
All right, let me... Hey, I told you to stay away, and I'll beat it.
Look, Eric, I don't want any trouble, but I'm coming in.
Get back in the room, Gabby.Now, look, I won't let you hurt her, so... Now, look, Collinson, don't make me do it.
I don't want to.Okay, I'm sorry.
Eric.Eric.What have you done to her?
Nothing a bucket of cold water can't cure.Sit down.I want to talk to you.
Sam Spade.I'm a private detective.Your stepmother hired me to find you.
Oh?You know why she wants to find me?
She wants to kill me.She killed my father, now she'll kill me.
My father never had a day's illness in his life.He could drink three quarts of brandy in any evening.Do you believe a man like that could die of heart failure?
Now she's starting to think I need to talk about me.She wants to railroad me to the insane asylum. Do I seem crazy to you?
No.A little nervous, maybe.This idea you have about your father's death.Talk some more, will you?
All right.I'll tell you the whole thing.But I gotta have a drink first.Hey, I can't get the top off.Give me a hand, will you?
Sure.You need a corkscrew for this one.
Yeah, I think there's one down there in the cupboard.
Back in the corner. A little farther.
There.No, there's nothing... Hey!I dreamed I was a character in a detective story.
The title of the story was Morgfruit, and the author, a man named Fitz Stephen, was trying to figure out a way to turn me into a red herring before knocking off his number one suspect.
I tried to tell him it's against the rules to make your detective a red herring, but he said it was a new kind of murder yarn and it didn't matter anyway because there wasn't even a victim. That's what he thought.
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Tonight's adventure with Sam Spade.
When I came to and it came to dawn and I was still a character in a detective story and I felt more like a red herring than I had in my dream.I had dragged myself across my own trail and wound up no place.
My quarry had fled, leaving nothing behind but empty bottles with fingerprints on them.I lifted the few and hustled over to the Bureau of Identification.Half an hour later, I got the report.They were mine.All mine.
I wondered what a detective novelist would make of that.I decided to find out. I had met Owen Fitzsteven several years back in Seattle when I was digging dirt on a chain of fake mediums.
He was plowing the same field for literary material and we pooled forces.I got more out of the combination than he did since he knew the spook racket inside out.I cleaned up my job in a couple of weeks and we parted friends.
His San Francisco apartment was on the sixth floor of the St.Mark. It was standing at its door, holding out a lean hand to greet me when I got there.
Well, you're looking fit, Sam.Little red in the face.
Yes, the red herring I ate last night.How's the literary grip go?You haven't been reading me?No, where'd you get that funny idea?
Oh, it was something in your tone, as in the voice of one who has bought an author for a couple of dollars.I suppose you're still hounding the unfortunate evil juror.Yeah, that's how I happened to look you up.
You autographed a book for Edgar Leggett.Oh, yes, yes.Morgue Fruit.Distressingly prophetic.What do you know about that family?Oh, what have they been up to now?How well do you know the girl, Gabrielle?
Quite well, since she's a duplicate of her father.She has brains, but there's something black in her.Something she doesn't want to think about, but can't forget.She's a neurotic who keeps her body sensitive and ready.I don't know what for.
While she drugs her mind with drink and lunatic notions. Yet she's cold and she's sane.If I had something I wanted to forget, I'd anesthetize my mind directly, leave my body stay strong and ready.
I hope you don't think any of this stuff means anything to me.Oh, yes.I remember you now.You were always like that.Tell me what's up while I try to find one-syllable words for you.You know the fellow that drives for him?Eric?
Well, he was released from Fulton and Leggett's custody when he was 18 years old.Murdered his father.Nice kid.
What about it? Mrs. Leggett hired me to find Gabrielle.I found her with Eric in a rooming house out in the Fillmore.She begged me to save her from her stepmother's murderous schemes, then she knocked me cold.Hmm, that's trivial.Dull.
I've been thinking of the Leggett family in terms of Dumas, and you bring me a piece of Jim Crackery out of O'Henry.If I were writing this, Gabrielle would kill her stepmother.Or dupe Eric into doing it for her.Or... No, that won't do.
Not sufficient motive.Murder has to have a motive, you know.Why, she's insane, isn't she? I wonder, are you saying that carelessly or do you really think she's off?
Well, I don't know.She's got a kind of a wild look about her.Her eyes shift from green to brown and back without ever settling on one color.How much have you turned up on her in your snooping around, Owen?
Are you who make your living snooping, sneering at my curiosity about people and my attempts to satisfy it?
No, we're different, Owen.I do mine with the object of putting people in jail, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should.
Well, I do mine with the object of putting people in books, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should.
Yeah, but what good does that do?Well, what good does putting them in jail do?Well, it relieves congestion.You put enough people in jail, and cities wouldn't have any traffic problems.Isn't that smart?
Well, then all you have to do is to wait till one of them kills the other and put the survivor in jail.
It's simple.Yeah, but who's gonna kill who?
Perhaps they both have plans, both Gabrielle and her stepmother.Looks as if you'd have to guard both of them.
I think I'll settle for my client.As far as Gabrielle's concerned, her husband ought to be able to watch out for her.Her what?Husband.She and Eric got married.
You didn't tell me anything about that.Lord knows how much else there is you haven't told me.Pardon me.Don't go away.Telegram, sign here.Oh, thank you. There you are.Thank you, sir.Now, I wonder what... Good Lord, this is positively corny.
Listen to this, Spade.I appeal to you as a friend of my dead husband.Come immediately, Sunset Hotel, Quesada.Trouble.Danger.Do not communicate.Gabrielle must not know.Signed, Gertrude Leggett.Spade.Yeah? Did you have this wire sent to me as a prank?
I was just gonna ask you if you sent it to yourself as a prank.
I have it!The key to the whole thing!It's a red herring!
I didn't think FitzSteven would be able to hold out very long against his professional curiosity, and I didn't imagine he thought I would.I caught the next bus for Kiss Island.
Quesada is a one-hotel town pasted on a rocky side of a young mountain that slopes into the Pacific Ocean some 80 miles from San Francisco.I got there at 11-something that night, stepped down from the bus and crossed the street to the Sunset Hotel.
All right, all right, keep your shirt on.
Uh, Mrs. Leggett registered here?
Oh, she left a message for you, said, uh, for you to wait right here and don't leave till she gets back.
Yeah, she say where she was going?
Oh, it's probably over visiting with her daughter and new son-in-law, new over to the cove.
Well, you'll never be able to find it at night, uh, unless you, you went all the way around by the East Road.Yeah, yeah.Not then, I'm sure, unless you knew the country.
Well, how do you get there in the daytime?
Well, uh, you go down this street, you take the fork on the ocean side, and follow that up along the cliff. It's easily enough found in the daytime, but you're never in the world.
Yeah, okay, okay.Heard you the first time.So I waited until morning.Stupid me.I found the road out to the point that had never really been a road.
The side of the ledge became steeper and steeper until the path was simply a narrow shelf on the face of the cliff. A cliff that sheared off 150 feet or more to ravel out into the ocean.
A breeze from the general direction of China was pushing fog over the top of the cliff, making a noisy lather of seawater at the bottom.
Rounding a corner where the cliff was steepest, I chucked my cigarette over the edge and watched it spin downwards.And that's when I saw it.I had to go way steep into the Pacific to lift the body.
I got my hands under the armpits, found solid ground for my feet, and dragged it up beyond the high tide mark.It was Gertrude Leggett.Somebody came staggering down the beach to meet us.
Yeah, Gabrielle, she's dead.
Oh, the witch is dead.Hey, take me back to town, will you?Buy me a drink, huh?
What's the big idea? Don't you know I'm sick?
Somehow I don't think you're that sick.I think you could make some sense.
Sense?That's a laugh.You don't know me.I've never been able to think clearly the way other people do.No matter what I try to think about, there's a fog that tries to get between me and it.
You understand how horrible I can become, going through life like that?Nuts.
Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend.Thinking's a dizzy business. A matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can.Trouble with you is you've been enjoying your misery.
You've been so busy trying to prove that you're nuts, it's a wonder you haven't really driven yourself nuts.
How do you know I haven't?
Because you're too anxious to admit it.
All right, I'm sane if you want it that way.I'm just evil.There's something black inside me.
Something black.Everybody knows that about my family. My father too.
I always knew it.They say my real mother killed herself.But I know better.I know how to open the drawer where she keeps the gun.Every day Gertrude lies on Mother's bed and we play killing the witch.Yeah.
And she comes in in the night and bends over my crib.And she's changed herself. So she looks like mother instead of a witch.But I know better.And I hold up the gun with both hands.Very hard to pull with both hands.It's very hard to pull the trigger.
But I must do it or the witch will eat me up.And then there's a big noise.
And red all over.And I can't get out.I can't get out.
Now, listen to me.We were beginning to make some sense.Now, don't run away from it.Gertrude was lying on your mother's bed.That's your stepmother?
Yeah.She was my nurse.She married Father.
Not so fast.How old were you when your mother died?
Did your father know about the game with the gun?
Gertrude said I must never tell anyone, because they'd send me away.And I never did. Not till I grew up.I was with Owen Fitzsteven.I had a lot to drink.I told him.After that, he began seeing Gertrude.And finally, my father died.
But it didn't do her any good.Because Owen really loved me.
Now watch it.Now, let's get this straight.You'll have to straighten it out again later on with a doctor to help you.This is to help me.
When you were a little child, Gertrude taught you that killing the witch game to use you as a murder weapon against your mother. Then she filled you full of ideas of guilt and fear so you'd keep quiet about it.
When you told the story to Owen, he blackmailed your stepmother into knocking off your father.That made you feel responsible to his death, too, so you ran away.
No, Gertrude said I killed her, too.
You might, but I doubt it.Now, try and remember.Was Owen up here tonight?
I thought I heard his voice, but I hear voices sometimes.I'm hearing it again.
Listen, do you hear anything?
No.I didn't hear anything but the wind and the beat of the surf at first.But when I did hear the voice, I sent Gabby for a doctor before I investigated.He was pretty badly mangled in the rocks.
He'd fallen nearly as far as he'd pushed Gertrude, but was still alive.I made him as comfortable as I could, and finally he opened his eyes.Hello, Sam. You messed yourself up good.Yeah, no more rocks for me.Not unless you make Alcatraz.
You know, I had half an idea when you came to see me in San Francisco that you were secretly nursing some exceptional idiotic theory.Thanks, Owen, but I never had any theory.The whole thing dropped into my lap.Don't be too sure of that.
Understand, at present, I admit nothing. Later on, if I'm forced to, the very number of my crimes will be to my advantage.On the theory that nobody but a lunatic could have committed so many.
Well, there's not so many.Only Gertrude, your co-author of the murder of the late Edgar Leggett.
Nonsense.Crimes and crimes dating from the cradle.Even literature shall help me.Not your own books.Why not? Didn't the critics agree that the spindly stiff bore all the marks of authorial degeneracy?The evidence, son, to save my sweet neck.
And I shall wave my mangled body at them.A ruin whose crimes and high heaven have surely brought sufficient punishment upon him.
Yeah, you'll probably make a go of it.Legally, you're entitled to beat the jump, if ever anybody was.Legally?
You mean insane? Tell me the truth, Sam.Am I?
I think that's what they'll say.
But that spoils everything.It's no fun if I'm really cracked.No fun at all.
Just goes to show, doesn't it?
Now, there you go again, Effie.
I mean, if anything like that happened in real life, you wouldn't believe it.
You mean, if anything like that happened in fiction?
Oh, no, the author is never the guilty party.
But that's not fair.The author is never supposed to be guilty of any... You're right.
He shouldn't be even a suspect.Maybe a red herring, but... Type that up, Effie.Oh, all right, Sam.Anything else, Sam?
Yeah, phone the drugstore and order some red herring.I mean, some aspirin.
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Well, here it is, Sam.And I like it even better than morgue fruit.You did.I mean, it's not so realistic.I like a romantic type story myself.You do.Lots of atmosphere and psychology in those.
Oh, you've got to have those.
You really should be a writer, Sam.
Of course, detective stories don't pay much.No, that's true.But if you write enough of them, and look at all the material you've got.
No good.Never do it for fiction.
But Sam, there's already that radio series, The Adventures of You-Know-Who, Sunday Night.
That's what I mean.I don't make a penny out of it.
Well, it's your own fault. Sam, I don't want to seem critical, but if you played your cards right, you could have owned a piece of that show.
What?And follow Blondie?Go home, Effie.
I think I will, Sam.Just curl up with a good book.
Well, when you find out, don't let me know.
Oh, you know you can't wait.
No, I can't.Good night, sweetheart.
The Adventures of Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's famous private detective, are produced and directed by William Spear.Sam Spade is played by Howard Duff.Lorene Tuttle is Effie.
The Adventures of Sam Spade are written for radio by Bob Tallman and Gil Dowd. Musical direction is by Lud Gluskin, with score composed by Rene Garigant.
Join us again next Sunday when author Dashiell Hammett and producer William Spear join forces for another adventure with Sam Spade, brought to you by Wild Root Cream Oil.Again and again, the choice of men who put good grooming first.
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