Now, the Roma Wine Company of Fresno, California presents...
Suspense!
Tonight, Roma Wines bring you Mr. Peter Laurie, a star of Nobody Loves Me,
a suspense play produced, edited and directed for Roma Wines by William Spear.
Suspense! Radio's outstanding theatre of thrills is presented for your enjoyment by Roma Wines.
That's R-O-M-A, Roma Wines. Those excellent California wines that can add so much pleasantness to the way you live,
to your happiness and entertaining guests, to your enjoyment of everyday meals.
Yes, right now a glass full would be very pleasant as Roma Wines bring you Peter Laurie in a remarkable tale of...
Suspense!
Hello. Are you guys in charge of this prison?
Well, hello, bright eyes.
Who's in charge here?
Just a minute. How did you get in?
I walked in. Who's the top man here?
This is the squad room, son. If you have a complaint, give it to the death sergeant.
No, I don't want to bother him. He's sleeping.
Jenkins sleeping? Boy, it'll like to...
You better sit down!
Hey, Costello, he's got a gun.
Yeah, I got a gun. Sit down.
Hey, son, you must be crazy.
Maybe, but I think I know what I'm doing.
You can't hold up a police station, mister.
No?
There's no dough here.
No, no, no, no. Look, son, look. Keep your hands up.
I didn't move.
Hey, you, shove that chair over for me.
Yeah, yeah. OK, mister.
Yeah, I have a lot to talk about, and I want to be comfortable.
Come to tell you cups a story.
Look, mister, this isn't funny.
Just tell your story and give your present. How's that?
Well, what do you mean, a present?
Why, I'm a regular Santa Claus.
Going to give you $10,000.
Now, now, look.
There is $10,000 reward for the kidnap of Peggy Stewart, am I right?
You did that?
Where is she? Where's the girl?
You forget this gun.
You also forget I said I was going to tell you a story first.
Sit down, Captain.
You mean you're confessing?
Yeah, story of my life.
You get plenty of thrills. You know why?
Now, look, son, look.
Plenty of thrills.
Because my name is Reese.
Joe... Joe Reese.
Then you... you killed her. You... you killed her.
Oh, so you have heard about me.
Yes.
Killer Reese.
Killer Reese, Captain.
Then you admit I got a story.
I'm going to tell it in my own way.
First things first, last things last.
And Peggy Stewart comes last.
Look, just tell us, sir.
Did you kill her, Joe?
I started at the beginning.
The beginning when I... when I was born.
And don't interrupt.
Okay. Okay, we won't interrupt.
Because, you see, I...
I think a lot about when I was born.
Hmm?
Maybe somebody loved me then.
Maybe when I... when I sucked in my first breath of air and let out a yell.
Maybe my mother loved me.
Maybe she wished I was dead.
She didn't live long enough for me to find out.
But after she died,
it was like I was just shoved clean out of the world.
Shoved off to an aunt and an uncle
who had the meanest, grime-iest, stinking-est little souls
even you fellows could hope to meet.
Yeah.
And Ella and Uncle Walter.
Oh, they were a pair.
Why, they even looked alike.
Faces like rotting cabbages
and their mean little mouths
yapping away in the middle of them.
Those two would have eaten the heart out of a saint.
But I was so little when I went there,
I didn't even know what I was missing.
Until one day when I was about nine,
I found a kitten.
A dirty, sick little kitten.
Joe, Joe Rees, what you got there?
Just a little cat.
How do you speak to me?
I mean, ma'am.
We found it down the alley, Mother, back at the fish store.
You get it out of here, Joe. You get it out quick.
I told you, Joe.
Please, ma'am, it...
You hear me?
It won't eat much. Please.
You hear me? You get it out of here.
Dirty thing.
If I see it again, Uncle Walt will beat the stuffing out of you.
Yes, ma'am.
Ought to kill it.
Would, too, but it'd turn my stomach.
Now get both of you.
Yes, Mother.
What you gonna do with it, Joe?
I don't know. Nothing.
We could have some fun, I bet.
Tie something to its tail.
No, I don't want to.
Might as well. We could have some fun.
No, I said...
Say, feel.
Yeah? What about it?
It's buzzing inside.
Like machinery.
Oh, that's purring.
Purring?
Sure. It has to do that when they're glad.
It's glad? About what?
Bet it thinks you're gonna feed it.
Oh, yes.
What do cats eat, Cousin Alex?
You ain't gonna keep it.
Sure I'm gonna keep it.
I'm gonna keep it somewhere she don't know.
You're crazy.
I'm not. I'm gonna keep it.
It likes me.
That's why.
Likes you? A cat?
Then why is it buzzing? Purring.
Sure it likes me.
Oh, it doesn't. It's hungry.
I'll stop it, purring.
Look.
What you doing, Alex?
Watch it when I twist its tail.
No, don't. Hey!
Hey, now look what you've done.
Now it ain't purring.
Joe! Joe, what are you doing?
It clawed me.
It clawed me and now it's scared.
It clawed me.
Scared now. Scared.
You ever feel a kitten?
What it's really like?
Skinny little kitten?
Why it's nothing but fur.
Soft and...
...and a head.
And its back bone is...
...like a thin string of beads.
Curled just so.
When it's scared...
...its eyes stare.
All one collar.
And its neck is thin.
Thinner than a match.
Like a string of beads.
Just nothing between your fingers.
Just nothing.
The theater of thrills, suspense.
Between the acts of suspense...
...this is Truman Bradley for Roma Wines.
This holiday weekend...
...millions of Americans will return to the traditional way of observing Labor Day.
By having friends and for dinner.
That's why Elsa Maxwell makes the most appropriate suggestion.
She says,
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So make your holiday entertaining...
...really festive by enjoying good Roma wine.
At dinner, serve Roma California Burgundy Cool.
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Yet cost only pennies a glass.
Remember, because of uniformly fine quality at reasonable cost...
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R-O-M-A, Roma wines.
And now Roma wines bring back to our Hollywood soundstage...
...Peter Laurie in Nobody Loves Me.
A narrative well calculated to keep you in suspense.
It never turned my stomach.
So it was easy. Very easy.
Yes, but Joe, where did you leave the girl, Peggy?
Didn't I tell you not to interrupt?
I am telling you what I have to tell cats first and girls last.
I sat in the backyard holding the dead kitten...
...and it was soft for a long time.
The next day it was stiff and hard on its fur.
Funnier, a kid nine years old even knew about killing, but...
...what I knew, cause when I was more than four...
...I saw Uncle Walter kill a chicken.
I saw his mean, stringy shoulders jump when he brought the axe down.
You know, that's how I knew because watching Uncle Walter...
...I could tell he liked to kill.
Liked it way down inside of him.
And I hated him.
So whenever I killed anything or anybody...
...after that I was killing Uncle Walter and everybody liked him.
I hated him. I hated him till he died.
Joe, come here.
Your poor Uncle Walt is passing on and I want you to see him before he goes.
Joe.
Yes, ma'am.
Don't say a word unless he speaks to you.
I won't.
Go stand on the other side of the bed.
Listen to the blessed man fighting for his life. Just listen to him.
Yes, I listen.
Oh, did I listen.
And I only wished he knew he was dying.
I wanted to tell him.
I wanted to say, you are dying, Uncle Walter.
And I'm wishing you dead.
That's why I'm strangling the wind out of your turkey neck.
I'm burying a knife in your filthy heart.
I am doing it.
Me, Joe.
Look at him.
I think he's going to speak.
Oh, no, no.
No, he's not.
Oh, he's dead.
He's gone.
Yeah, he's gone.
Oh, that blessed saintly man.
Joe, you'll never know how much he did for you.
You'll never be able to thank him.
He's in heaven now.
Yeah, I bet.
Don't you understand, Joe?
You're Uncle Walter's dead.
Sure, I understand.
Then can't you say something?
Sure.
Uncle Walter's dead.
15 years.
Too late for me.
One day after that, I mashed a toad under a rock.
And there was a white dog I caught in a fence,
and it was torn and threw stones at it, dozens of stones.
Each day I killed one thing,
and some things died quick and some died slow.
But I, I always felt the same.
I felt good.
I found there was room in the world for a bright young fellow like me.
There was work to spare for a man who didn't mind killing.
Sometimes a box a job I could get, sometimes more.
Hey, pick up that pencil, fatty.
Yeah, you, Sergeant.
I'll give you a list.
Well, there was the Bresco brothers, all three of them.
A guy named Lyons who was two-timing somebody's wife.
Oh, and that chorus babe, Daisy, me, Marks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She got her fingers in a wrong pie.
Izzy Turnbull, the weasel.
An old codger named Haskett.
They call him...
Yeah, yeah, that's enough of them, Joe.
Now, please, where'd you leave the girl?
I'll get her around to her.
Where'd you kill her, Joe?
I am telling this. It's my story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, Joe.
Because it all happened different with Peggy Stewart.
See, I wasn't supposed to kill her.
The boy sent me around to Case to Stewart House for the kidnapping.
It was all I was supposed to do,
but the girl who was out, who was in the house,
and when the girl was alone, it was a big job.
Why, with her father owning half the state
and holding a mortgage on the rest,
we expected it to pay off plenty.
Yes, sir?
I'm looking for work.
There's nothing here.
Oh, I thought maybe raking the yard, or I can drive.
No, there isn't anything.
Is there anyone else here I could ask?
Morris? Morris, who are you talking to?
Mrs. Peggy, looking for work.
Oh, what kind of work?
Anything, ma'am, anything at all.
You see, I'm going to college,
and I just want some work for the summer,
and I have a bad back, so I can't do anything heavy.
Oh, I see.
Well, maybe we have something. I'll ask my father.
Miss Peggy!
Father isn't home right now, but if you want to wait.
Oh, sure, sure, I'll wait.
You can come inside, Mr. uh...
Sanders, Joe Sanders.
Well, come in, Joe.
Morris was about to give me my lunch.
Maybe you'd like to eat with me.
So for more than an hour, I was on the inside,
looking out, just for once.
It did things to me.
That room, all sunshiney where we eat,
blue dishes, the food cooked in little dabs,
and so good, I was just boiling with heat.
I couldn't look at her, at the girl, or talk.
She didn't seem to notice what was happening to me,
but that's what really got me.
She didn't once look scared.
Hey, you, you ever see Miss Peggy?
She's little, all curved and little and bright and soft.
Even her voice is soft.
I'd never known anybody like her,
except people in books I read in a modern library, you know.
I couldn't take it.
I want to make her like the other girls I'd known,
make her get that look in her eyes.
You're not eating, Joe.
Huh? Oh, I've been thinking.
Oh?
Aren't you scared?
Scared?
Being alone like this with a fellow you don't even know.
Scared of you?
Lots of girls, huh?
Why? Are you dangerous?
I don't know.
Lots of girls think I am.
There must be something in it.
You mean you're a wolf.
No, no, I don't mean it that way.
Well, if you are, I think you're a nice wolf,
the nicest I know.
It's not what I mean.
Anyway, you just don't know me.
It's funny. I feel like I do.
I feel I've known you for a long time.
What's the matter, Joe?
Nothing. Nothing is the matter.
I guess I'd better be going.
Aren't you going to wait for Father?
He'll be here soon.
No, I guess I'd better not wait.
But you said you...
You see, I just remembered I got to be someplace at 2 o'clock.
Oh, well, if you come back tomorrow...
That's it. Yes, I'll come back tomorrow.
Maybe that'll be even better.
I can talk to Father tonight about you.
Then I'm sure he'll give you a job.
Sure, you do that. That'll be swell.
But you will come back. Promise?
Oh, sure, sure. I'll come back.
I couldn't figure it out how a girl like her could be with me
and not be scared.
And after I practically warned her, too,
you can see how I tried to warn her, but she...
She just looked at me, at my eyes.
My eyes!
And hers stayed just the same, blue and soft,
like she was looking at anyone.
Hey, there is killing in my eyes.
Lots of killing.
Anyone can see that.
But then...
Then it hit me.
I had to make her scared.
I had to get her to look at me in a beautiful, naked way
from back deep in her head.
Her blue eyes, all glazed, all over.
Oh, one color.
Well, I got my car out and drove back to her house.
It was night already, and there were lights on,
and windows were open, and this time I went right to the front door.
I'll go follow.
What... What, Joe?
Hello, Miss Peggy.
Did you come to see Father tonight? I haven't talked to him yet.
No, I... I came to see you.
Well, that's nice, Joe. I... I...
I came to get you.
Get me?
Sure, don't you remember?
I came back, like you said.
Going to take you away.
Like I said.
Yeah, see?
Now you're getting that look.
Now you're beginning to look at me the right way.
Don't, Joe.
You're hurting me.
No, no, I'm not hurting you, Peggy.
Not much yet.
Just enough so you'll look up at me like something in a trap.
You won't hurt much more when I kill you.
When you...
Joe, Joe, please!
That's what I said when I kill you.
Oh, no!
Papa! Help!
Papa!
I dumped her in the front seat,
and after I got the car in her, she didn't move anymore.
She sat there with her big eyes staring at the road.
I didn't talk anymore.
I thought fast, and I drove fast.
I thought how it was going to be, killing her.
And I was still thinking when we got to the hideout.
Huh?
Where it is?
Oh, it's up in the mountains, and I like it there.
It's nothing but a shed, but someone had a house there once,
and there are still lilac bushes, and roses,
lots of roses.
When I lifted her out of the car to carry her into the shed,
I could smell the lilacs,
and there was just enough moon to see her face.
You don't have to carry me.
I can walk.
Just the same, I carry you.
That's part of the fun for me.
You don't want to spoil my fun.
Where are we?
What difference does it make?
No difference.
Then don't ask so many questions.
You won't see much of it anyway.
Okay.
Inside.
Walk straight ahead and stand still.
It's dark.
I got a candle.
There.
Now get over there and sit down.
On the floor?
Yes, on the floor.
What do you want?
All the comforts of home?
Of your beautiful, clean, bright, wonderful home?
Why don't you tell me what you want?
Joe, what's the matter?
What did I do to you?
Nothing.
You did nothing to me.
Then why are you...
Why, Joe?
Go on, say it.
Why am I going to kill you?
Yes.
It's a very foolish question.
I got to kill you.
But why?
I got to talk to you,
watch your eyes, and tell you a lot of things.
I got to hold you.
Please, Joe.
I got to know how you feel before you die.
Hold you like this.
Do you love me, Peggy?
Do you?
Love you?
Sure.
That's what I asked.
Of course not.
Of course I don't love you.
You see?
Nobody loves me.
Nobody ever loved me.
Maybe a cat once.
Everyone hates me, Peggy.
But I don't hate you either.
See?
That's funny.
I just thought of something.
You know what?
Joe, how can you...
No, this is important.
Listen.
It's this way.
I used to live here in a shack, week sometimes,
and I'd read books.
Oh, good books.
Modern library.
Do you know about them?
Yes, I know.
Wow, you.
You can get any book, and it's only a buck.
It's less than a buck, the best, see?
Yes.
So I read something by a man we used called Oscar Wilde.
He says,
each man kills the thing he loves.
It's in a modern library.
Each man kills the thing he loves.
Maybe that's what I am doing.
No, Joe.
You don't love me.
You don't get it.
Like I said, nobody loves me, but I get love anyway.
I get something like love because
when I start to kill you, Peggy,
there won't be anyone else in the world for you.
But me.
No one else will matter.
And then, then your eyes, they'll get shiny.
Oh, so shiny.
And they'll blaze, and they'll bloom,
and they'll spread out.
That's why I'm going to kill you, Peggy.
Oh, it'll be, it'll be so easy.
There won't be anything in them but me.
All I've got to do is, is take your neck in my hands, like this.
Hey, Peggy, I'm going to kill you.
You heard me say it.
I'm going to kill you now.
Why don't your eyes?
Poor Joe.
What?
What did you say?
You've been hurt.
You've been terribly hurt.
Poor Joe.
I'm sorry.
Oh, well, that's it.
But where did you leave the body, Joe?
What are you talking about?
After you killed her.
Who said I killed her?
Why, you said that you...
You, bonehead, that's what it's all about.
That's why I came in here, to give myself up.
See, see, nobody ever loved me except, except that cat.
And when he got scared, it clawed me, and I had to kill it.
But Miss Peggy, she, she wasn't scared.
I don't get it.
Miss Peggy looked at me, and, and into me, and through me,
and she knew what I was, rotten.
But she said, poor Joe, to me, Joe Reese.
I figured that it was as close as I'd ever get to love her.
Well, I figured it was enough.
Go ahead, answer it, Sergeant.
I guess that's her father saying she's home.
And then you can lock me up, Captain.
I need sleep.
I am dead for sleep.
Roma Wines have brought you Peter Lorre, a star of Nobody Loves Me.
Tonight's study in Suspense.
This is Truman Bradley for Roma Wines, the sponsor of Suspense.
Visiting friends in the family car is once again a popular American custom.
And as Elsa Maxwell said just last week,
be prepared when people drop in unexpectedly.
A smart way to entertain, a sure way to cool off and delight your guests,
is to serve refreshing Roma wine and soda,
a frosty cold iced drink that really quenches thirst.
Yes, and Roma wine and soda,
made with distinguished Roma California burgundy or sautern,
is quick and easy to make.
Just half fill tall glasses with good Roma burgundy or sautern.
Add ice cubes, sparkling water, and a bit of sugar.
And for a decorative touch, garnish with cherries or fruit.
Here's another delightfully different taste treat.
Try Roma Sweet Vermouth, well chilled.
A delicious aperitif.
Zestful, full flavored Roma Vermouth is blended and developed
with all the traditional winemaking skill of Roma wineries.
It's made and bottled in the heart of California's famous vineyards.
Yet surprisingly low priced.
Try Roma Vermouth soon, won't you?
This is Peter Lorre.
I want to remind you to be sure not to miss next Thursday's suspense show.
It will be a repeat performance by popular demand.
Sorry, wrong number.
That's the famous radio play about the woman on the telephone,
in which Miss Agnes Moorhead gives such an overwhelming performance.
Peter Lorre appeared through the courtesy of Warner Brothers
and will soon be seen in our production, Three Strangers.
A word from our government.
Despite the lifting of some restrictions,
the level is still tight in many parts of the country
and over many railroads used by the armed forces.
Play safe by staying off crowded trains during the coming Labor Day holiday.
Next Thursday you will hear Agnes Moorhead as star of...
Suspense, radio's outstanding theater of thrill.
Presented by Roma Wines, R-O-M-A.
Made in California, for enjoyment throughout the world.
And by CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.