And now, Auto Light and its 60,000 dealers and service stations present...
Suspense!
Tonight, Auto Light brings you Mr. Robert Montgomery in...
The Thing in the Window, a suspense play produced and directed by Anton M. Lieder.
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You and your engine will be mighty happy that you did.
And now, Auto Light presents Robert Montgomery in a tale well calculated to keep you in...
Mary.
Yes, Mr. Raines.
Turn that vacuum cleaner off for a minute, will you, and come over here.
I want to show you something.
Yes, sir.
Right here, out this window.
Now look across the street, directly across the opposite apartment.
See that window, about three windows in from the left, with kind of blue draperies.
There's something sitting there in a chair.
Someone.
He hasn't moved all night.
I think he must be dead.
Dead?
Oh, Lord have mercy, Mr. Raines.
Take a good look at him and tell me what you think, Mary.
Okay, but I don't favor looking at no corpses, Mr. Raines.
It's unlucky.
Now, which window did you say sir'd one over?
I wish to have my glasses with me.
No, no, no, over there, over there, where my finger is pointing.
I'm afraid to don't see it yet, Mr. Raines.
Oh, no, no, look, look.
The window with the blue draperies, he's wearing a sort of gray suit.
The arm.
Can't you see the arm hanging down over the side of the chair?
No, but you've got good eyes, Mr. Raines.
If you see it, I'm not arguing with you.
What you gonna do about it, Mr. Raines?
Well, I don't know.
I just began to notice it last night.
I guess I first have to find out if the man is really dead.
Yeah?
Hello, I'm Martin Ames.
Are you the superintendent of this apartment house?
That's what it says on the door.
I've come to inquire about one of your tenants.
What is it you want to know?
Well, I live across the street and, well, I'll be frank with you, sir.
I've been looking out my window across to this building now for two and a half days,
and there seems to be someone dead in one of the windows.
Yeah?
Which window?
Well, it's on the 10th floor.
I've counted up from the street and it's 10 stories up.
There's the window with blue draperies about three windows in from the left, facing toward
me that is, and there's a man sitting there slumped down in a chair.
Just a minute.
I'll get out my chart.
10th floor up from the street.
That's the 9th floor.
The lobby counts one.
We got three apartments there along the front of the house.
It's in the front.
That's right.
Well, three windows in from the left, that'd be 9B, a four room now.
It couldn't be right.
9B is two ladies, and you say this is a man?
Yes, yes.
Young or old?
Well, I can't tell.
The face isn't clearly visible.
The head's slumped forward, but he's wearing a gray suit and he's sitting in a high winged
back chair.
Don't place him.
Well, maybe he doesn't belong in the house.
Maybe he was visiting somebody.
As I say, this is all conjecture, of course.
He may not be dead, but I've watched him a good deal.
I'm home a lot in the daytime.
My profession, the stage, you know, doesn't take up too much of my time and it looks mighty
suspicious.
Okay, I'll check it.
You mind if I stay around?
No, no, no, no, no.
Sit down.
I'll give 9B a ring first on the house phone.
Hello?
Miss Landis?
Yes, this is Miss Landis.
Who is this?
This is Mr. Anson, the super.
Everything all right up there, Miss Landis?
Everything all right?
Yes, yes, of course.
Okay, Miss Landis, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Well, that's that.
No surprise.
Well, that's that, no soap on 9B.
9A is in the country.
9C isn't home.
I just saw her go out.
I'll go up there a little later and take a look around.
Well, what about this 9A, the people in the country?
Well, maybe they're an old couple.
He could have come back and had a heart attack up there by himself.
Or maybe somebody else.
Some other person could have been using the apartment while they were away.
Maybe.
I'll take a look in anyway.
Only if I got the window straight, like you said, it ought to be 9B.
Oh, the two single ladies?
Yeah, only it couldn't be them.
They're real old maids.
Say, if they knew you thought there was a man in that apartment, the two of them would
just about jump out of their skins.
Well, I don't know what to say if you're sure it must be that apartment.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the place.
But you probably just made a little mistake.
You know how your eyes can play tricks on you?
After all, it is quite a wide street.
Oh, I don't think I made any mistake.
Hanson speaking.
Oh, hello, Mr. Hanson.
This is Mr. Ame.
Again?
It's not there.
But Mr. Hanson...
I checked up on the three apartments this morning.
No dead bodies in the whole place.
But I can see it.
It's still there.
OK.
Just where?
Just tell me where.
In that same window, the one you said was 9B.
Have you gone inside 9B?
No, but I asked them if anybody was sick or dead and they said no.
You asked them?
Why don't you search the apartment?
Me?
You mean break in?
No, no, no.
Just ring the bell and walk in and do it.
Yeah?
Not without a search warrant from the police.
These apartments, you know, don't belong to me.
I just take care of the building for the company.
Well, then let's call the police.
Not me, mister.
I didn't see no dead body up there.
Then I will.
After all, somebody's got to do something.
I still maintain office of these two sisters.
They're as refined ladies as you could find anywhere.
High class church going ladies.
They used to teach school up here at P.S. 13.
Yeah, yeah, they don't mean a thing.
And they got a dog in there.
Now, will you tell me one dog that would stay for almost a week in a flat with a dead person?
I am not telling you nothing.
All I know this gentleman, Mr. Ames, reported a stiff over here.
And if he says there is one, there is.
Until it's proved different.
Right, Mr. Ames?
Well, I keep seeing the thing day in and day out.
I'm not working at the moment and being home so much.
None of the other neighbors have complained.
Dead bodies ain't exactly...
Okay.
Right this way, please.
I hope they're home.
Well, if they ain't home, you got a passkey, haven't you?
Yeah, but we're not supposed to use it, though, unless for an emergency.
This is an emergency.
Will the dog bite?
Sometimes.
Quiet, baby, quiet.
Yes?
Who is it?
I...
I'm awful sorry, Miss Landis, but there's been some kind of a mix-up.
These two gentlemen want to look over your apartment.
But why?
It's not for rent.
I know.
Come on, come on.
Cut out the blabber.
Look, lady, a dead body's been reported sitting in one of your windows.
What?
Yeah, yeah.
This guy lives across the street and he's been seeing it over here for a week.
So come on now, open up.
Dead body?
But that's impossible.
My sister and I live here all alone.
Yeah, yeah, we know all about it.
Excuse me a minute.
I'll call my sister.
Vivian!
Vivian!
Come on!
Vivian!
It's the police!
Look, lady, I'm not standing here all day.
Hanson, give me the passkey.
It won't do no good.
They got a chain on the door from the inside.
Open up in the name of the law!
How do you do?
I'm Vivian Landis.
May I ask what this is all about, please?
Certainly, lady, I got a search warrant here and complained to this gentleman.
He says you got a dead body in there.
A dead body?
Why that's perfectly ridiculous.
Yeah, isn't it?
But it's been reported and kindly take that door off the chain and let us through.
Of course.
But first, may I ask, how did this peeping Tom see into our apartment?
I thought, Mr. Hanson, that we were quite private.
He lives across the street on the same level.
Oh, well, then we shall have to keep our shades down in the future.
Although one would think a grown man would have something better to do.
But do come in, gentlemen.
Make yourselves right at home.
Thanks.
Is he coming in here, too, Mr. Busybody?
No, he doesn't have to if you don't want him to.
Well, I most definitely don't.
OK, Mr. Ames, you better stay outside.
Yes, but, officer...
Oh, he does want to poke around in our private rooms.
Is that it?
Maybe he had some ulterior motive in worming his way in.
Maybe he's come to get the lay of the land so he can break in someday to rob us.
OK, OK, he's not coming in.
Now, let's take a look at your window, lady.
Ames.
Yes, officer?
What's the big idea?
You didn't find it?
No.
That's very strange.
Yeah?
The only thing strange about it is your eyesight.
You ought to get your glasses changed.
There wasn't anything in 9B?
No.
I don't understand it.
How could I have seen it so distinctly and it not there?
But perhaps it... perhaps it isn't in the window now.
Perhaps they hid it while we were waiting outside that door.
Hid it?
Now, where does one hide a dead body in a four-room flat?
I looked in all the clothes closets, under the sofas, in the chest.
Well, perhaps they got it out with some help.
What about that fellow Anson?
He acted so nervous and subservient.
Maybe, but I doubt it.
Anson's been running this house a long time and he's a family man.
It'd be taking an awful chance.
I see.
Well, you probably think that... you know, it's so terrible to keep seeing it and seeing
it, feeling that it's slowly decaying in there in secret.
Why the thing could be there for weeks.
It's so high above the street and it only seems to be visible from my apartment.
Do you think if you investigated those two women...
Investigated them?
How?
I searched their flat.
I mean, their whereabouts for the last couple of weeks, their backgrounds.
Perhaps if you had them followed...
By what right?
On the grounds that you say you saw a dead man in the window?
There ain't no legal corpus delicti.
And don't you think so, my friend?
I know, I know.
That's the awful part of it for me.
Legally, my hands are tied until the actual body is found, but perhaps it'll never be
found.
Perhaps it's already being destroyed.
Well then, if it's gone, what have you got to worry about?
You won't have to sit and look at it no more.
No.
No, I hope it is.
I...
I tell you, it's really getting me down.
I haven't slept for nights keeping vigil.
I'm in a nervous state and I haven't been this nervous in years.
Yeah, I can see that.
Well, why don't you try forgetting it for a while?
Try not to look over into that window or go away for a change.
You've done what you could, Mr. Ames.
If there is a stiff over there, well, that's my business, ain't it?
And if there isn't...
You mean... you think I'm...
I may be...
I am not saying nothing, Mr. Ames, but if I was you, I'd try catching up on my night's
sleep.
Hello?
Miss Landis, I'm sorry to disturb you at this time of night, but I really...
I'm desperate.
I haven't anywhere else to turn.
What?
Who is this?
Mr. Ames, Martin Ames, your neighbor, the one across the street.
Oh.
Now, please don't think me a pest, Miss Landis.
I didn't mean to annoy you.
It was only because I was so desperate that I initiated this search.
It's quite all right.
Goodbye.
No, no, no, no, no.
Now, please don't hang up because it's worse now than it ever was.
Miss Landis, I've been sitting here opposite your apartment, staring into your windows,
and I'm only asking you to help me, Miss Landis.
Help me just a little.
Help you?
It's still there, Miss Landis.
It is.
What is still there?
The dead body in your window.
But there isn't.
How dare you, when the police...
I know, I know, I know.
Now it hasn't anything to do with you.
But would you do me just one favor, Miss Landis?
Would you go into your living room and check just once more?
I won't.
I'll do nothing of the kind.
You're out of your mind.
Perhaps I am, Miss Landis.
That's what I'm trying to find out.
And anyway, I don't see how you can see, and I pulled the shades down in there yesterday
morning.
They're all down still.
And how can you see?
I can't.
At least not the actual body.
It's just the silhouette.
I'm not maligning you or your sister, Miss Landis.
If there's someone dead in there, it's not you who are doing it, but think of me.
If you could just be here and look over and see the shadow of those quiet fingers and
that shoulder and that head.
Oh, please, stop it.
Stop it.
It's not here.
It isn't.
Tell me just one thing, Miss Landis.
There is a chair by that window, though, isn't there?
Yes, yes, there's a chair.
A high-backed winged chair.
Yes.
And have you anything on it?
Anything piled up, I mean, like curtains or cushions or a dressmaker's dummy?
Oh, of course not.
Then would you do me just one more favor, Miss Landis, please?
As an experiment, would you just go into the living room and move that chair away from
that window?
If I do it, will you stop pestering us?
Will you let us alone forever?
Yes, yes, if it works.
If it...
What do you mean?
Do you mean that...
I can't tell you, Miss Landis, until you move the chair.
Oh, all right.
I moved it away from the window.
It's at the other end of the room and there's nothing in it.
It's empty.
I see.
Well, thank you very much, Miss Landis.
I know what I have to do now.
You mean...
Yes, Miss Landis.
It's still there.
Course of the world is taught by hyung saeng when we even are announced at last.
Yes.
For suspense, Auto Light is bringing you Mr. Robert Montgomery in Radio's outstanding
theater of thrills, Suspense.
Say, Hap, what have these stars around here got that I haven't got?
Well, let's see, Harlow, a fan mail?
Well, by Cornelius, I got you there.
I've got fan mail, too.
Least wise, Auto Light Resistor spark plugs has.
And by happy coincidence, you just happened to have a letter here.
Right, you are.
One from Mr. Neil Miller of Longmont, Colorado, who says in his letter, Dear Harlow, that's
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And let me tell you, they more than live up to the peerless, punchy, power-packed Wilcox
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That guy's got the facts down.
He sure has.
And the letter goes on, since I switched to wide-gap Auto Light Resistor spark plugs,
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And now, Auto Light brings back to our Hollywood soundstage, Mr. Robert Montgomery as Martin
Ames in Lucille Fletcher's story, The Thing in the Window.
A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
When you can plainly see a corpse in the window of an apartment across the street, a corpse
that no one else can see, not even the police you send to investigate, what are you to think?
And what are the tenants of that other apartment to think?
Oh, Miss Landis.
Where is it?
I want to see it at once.
Yes, Miss Landis, come in.
I do hope you'll excuse my appearance.
I've just passed another sleepless night.
So has my sister, and so have I.
What do you mean by all this business, Mr. Ames?
You frighten my poor sister nearly to death, seeing things that aren't there when you know
they're not.
I know they're not.
I wish they weren't.
I wish to heaven I'd never looked out that window.
I wish these walls were solid stone, and your walls too.
You're a sick man, Mr. Ames.
Oh, am I?
I wish I were.
But I'm perfectly sane and well.
I went to a psychiatrist yesterday, and guess what he told me?
There's nothing wrong with me, nothing.
I can't believe that.
To you, I suppose it's a form of madness to persist and persist in seeing this hideous
image.
But not to me, Miss Landis.
I've finally come to an entirely different conclusion.
And what is that?
The supernatural.
The supernatural?
A ghost?
What nonsense, Mr. Ames.
Yes, yes, I suppose it is nonsense to you, isn't it?
You've been a schoolteacher.
You believe in logic, common sense, the things that give a pretense of solidity to this frail
little life of ours.
But I'm an artist.
I've always had a feeling for the thing beyond, the intangible, the shadowy.
And sometimes out of the shadows we glimpse the yawning fangs of the eternal.
You put things rather oddly, Mr. Ames.
Just exactly what do you mean?
Simply this.
I checked on that building with the real estate agents yesterday afternoon after I'd left
my psychiatrist, and there was a murder.
In our apartment?
The report didn't say.
You know how they try to hush these things up, but it was a man, a young man, the lover
of one of the tenants, a Miss Sweetser.
Sweetser?
Why, that's the name of the people who lived there before us.
But they were an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Sweetser.
I never saw any Miss Sweetser.
She died.
She was the daughter.
She killed herself afterwards by jumping out one of the windows.
Oh, how perfectly awful.
It's rather a ghastly coincidence, isn't it?
Was it out of our window?
Who knows?
She must have been a very neurotic person, though, this Miss Sweetser.
Half crazed almost with love or jealousy.
I checked on the details in an old newspaper.
She cut his throat, nearly decapitated him, and it said that when they lifted his body
out of the chair later...
Oh, excuse me, Mr. Ames.
I'd rather not hear.
I still can't believe... if there is something, if there could possibly be something.
Why haven't we seen it, too?
Why should you?
Haven't you seen it, Miss Landis?
No.
You're sure?
Never?
Perhaps in the middle of the night, getting up and passing that room, seeing that chair
outlined against the window.
Just in passing, perhaps?
You've never had a glimpse?
No.
I really must be going.
No, no, no, no.
Please stay and look at it.
I want you to see it out of my window.
My sister Elaine, she's so nervous.
I just can't leave her alone so long.
But then how will I know, Miss Landis?
I thought you came here especially.
It'll only take a minute.
It's right here in this bedroom.
I just have to let up the Venetian blind.
Miss Landis!
Miss Landis.
Hello.
Sergeant, this is Ames, Martin Ames.
I just called to let you know that I think you're right about that good night's sleep.
Yes, yes, I'm going away tomorrow for a long rest, shutting up my apartment.
Yes, I'm all tied up in knots.
I don't know what to think.
Oh, oh, they did.
Yes, I saw the moving van in front of the house, but I didn't know it was those sisters.
Couldn't take it, eh?
Well, I can't take it much longer myself.
Well, Marty, bravo, bravissimo, old boy.
Not so loud.
Why all the mystery?
The superintendent here doesn't like me.
I should think he would not like you grabbing this beautiful apartment right from under
his nose.
He probably had a promise to a friend.
But you've got it now, Ronald, just as I said.
So I have a voice, so I have.
And it's beautiful.
I'm crazy about it.
You've outdone yourself.
You've been more than generous.
Nothing of it, Ronald.
I'm glad to do it for such a distinguished colleague.
It certainly was nice of you.
And I wish I could do something in return, Marty.
I really do.
Perhaps that play I'm doing next season, there's a part in it, a very small part, but very
necessary.
I'm doing pretty well just now, Ronald.
Do you like the place, Ronald?
Like it?
Look at that living room, those gorgeous casement windows.
It's like a stage.
And what a place for parties.
I don't know how you found it, Marty, in this housing shortage.
You must have a sweetheart in the real estate business.
Oh, I manage.
Why, when your call came, I wouldn't trust this to anyone but myself.
I left the whole cast just standing there on the stage while I came over.
Tell me, how did you do it?
Oh, it's rather a long story.
Let's sit down, shall we?
Here, in the living room.
No, no, no, no, no.
You take the chair.
I guess they must have left it when they moved out.
Well, to be frank, Ronald, I got this apartment by a ruse.
A ruse?
What kind of a ruse?
Oh, it was a nasty one, all right.
I frightened the last tenants away.
I told them I saw a dead man sitting here in this window.
Oh, no, not really.
How clever of you.
But of course, there was.
No, no, of course not.
I made him up out of whole cloth.
You see, I live across the street, directly across, in that apartment with the striped
curtains.
Oh.
They were very scary women.
I used to watch them from my own place, always going to bed early, always pulling down the
shades at night.
I know the talk.
Then there was this chair by the window, that very one that you're sitting in now.
Really?
One night, just sitting there late, I got an amusing thought.
There was a kind of shadow across the chair that night, reminded me a little bit of a
corpse.
It came to me that it might be fun to create a part, a character, a corpse that wasn't
there.
I don't follow you quite.
Some actors need a play, Ronald, to create a role.
Others, the great ones, work out their own dramas.
I proceeded to invent a part for myself.
I was the eyewitness, the innocent bystander across the street who saw the corpse in here.
I kept seeing it and seeing it, and finally, by the power of suggestion, it became real
enough to frighten them away.
It's very clever, but rather drastic.
Not at all.
Prove my point, didn't it?
Oh, yes.
And it got you the apartment.
Well, really, that was very kind.
I've always hoped we'd be neighbors, Ronald.
As a matter of fact, the whole idea for this thing came to me on that day last May when
you turned me down for that part outside of Sardis.
Do you remember?
You said you were looking for a place then.
Did I?
Oh, yes.
It was then that I first thought how nice it would be to see you, right across the street,
sitting in this window.
I simply had to bring it about.
That was the night I went to work on the thing in earnest.
No, no, no, Ronald.
Don't get up.
I'm not through.
Oh, really, old boy?
I'm afraid the gang is at the theater.
They don't even know I'm here.
They'll wait.
People always wait for you, don't they, Ronald?
I could call them for you, of course, but the phone's been disconnected.
I'm afraid.
Which way is the door, old boy?
Really, Marty, it's been very kind of you.
What's the matter?
Don't you like the apartment?
Aren't you going to take it after all my work?
Oh, yes, yes.
I like it very much.
I...
The door's locked.
Yes, Ronald.
I'm afraid you'll have to find your way out.
That'll keep you quieter.
Silence always became you better than all that ranting and glibness and charm, Ronald.
And now I've got the part for you, a part to end all parts.
You play it, of course, entirely in a chair.
There isn't much action, not a line to say.
You just sit, Ronald.
You sit in this chair by the window.
It'll be the greatest performance of your career.
You like to hog all the fattest roles for yourself, didn't you?
Well, this is a part that's been talked about up and down this street for weeks.
You'll play the part of a ghost, of a corpse that never was, and hallucination in my brain.
And who'll be your audience?
I will.
I, the insignificant outmoded ham who wasn't fit to appear in your precious plays, but
good enough to put you here.
Who's the better actor now, Ronald?
Goodbye, Ronald.
No one will see me go out, but I'll see you across the street.
Okay, Miss Landis, I got the passkey right here.
That's so kind of you, Mr. Anson.
Personally, I begged her to leave the old thing here and had you throw it out, but Elaine
listened.
It's Mr. Ames.
Ames.
Yes, yes, I was just going.
I couldn't resist coming up and making one final check just for myself.
The door seemed to be open and I, anyway, the illusions quite vanished.
Quite.
There's nothing there.
Really, Mr. Ames?
That's good.
All right, Mr. Anson, will you ask the moving men to go in there now and take away the chair?
Thank you, Robert Montgomery, for a splendid performance.
Say a half before we hear from Robert Montgomery again.
Did I ever tell you that thousands of car and truck owners from coast to coast have
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The lifeline of your car.
And now here again is Mr. Robert Montgomery.
It has been a great pleasure to return to suspense.
And I wish to thank the splendid cast which Tony Leader assembled for tonight's performance.
Two, I want to call your attention to the very unusual program planned for next week.
And radio's outstanding theater of thrills will bring you Jim and Marion Jordan, Fibber
McGee and Molly, and a special story called Backseat Driver, another gripping story in
suspense.
Robert Montgomery may currently be seen in the Warner Brothers picture, June Bride.
Tonight's suspense play was written by Lucille Fletcher.
Music was composed by Lucien Morrowek and conducted by Lud Bluskin.
The entire production was under the direction of Anton M. Leader.
Every Thursday, hear Fibber McGee and Molly in Backseat Driver.
This is the auto light suspense show.
Remember you're right with auto light.
So switch to auto light.
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Join the march of dimes today.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.