Suspense and the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master of mystery
and adventure, William N. Robeson.
Among the great classics of radio drama, none is more memorable than Three Skeleton Key,
although few who have heard it would remember it by that title.
To them it is simply that story about the rats, and that it is an unforgettable experience
in horror.
We repeat it now because we can't help ourselves.
We like to scare as well as you like to be scared.
Listen, listen then as Vincent Price stars in Three Skeleton Key, which begins in just
a moment.
But now, Three Skeleton Key starring Vincent Price, a tale well calculated to keep you
in suspense.
Try and picture this place, a gray tapering cylinder welded by iron rods and concrete
to the key itself, a bare black rock 150 feet long, maybe 40 wide.
That's at low tide.
At high tide, just the light rising 110 feet straight up out of the ocean.
And all about it, the churning water, gray, green, scum dappled, warm as soup, and swarming
with gigantic bat-like devil fish, great violet scoops, a Portuguese man o' war, and yes,
sharks, the big ones, 15 footers.
And as if this wasn't enough, there was a hot, dank, rotten smelling wind that came
at us day and night off the jungle swamps of the mainland, a wind that smelled like
death.
Set in the base of the light is a watertight bronze door.
And in you go and up and up, round and round.
Over the light store room is the food store room, and over the food store room is the
bunk room where the three of us slept.
And over the bunk room is the living and cooking room, and over the living and cooking room
is the light.
She was a beauty, balanced like a balladina on the glistening steel axle of her rotary
mechanism.
My companions in the light were an odd and opposite pair.
Big Louie, the head man who hardly ever talked, and Auguste, who never stopped.
But it wasn't a bad life, especially at night when the others were snoring in their sacks
two levels down.
Usually there was nothing to see across the starlit water.
For most ships knew better than to come close to the three-skeleton key.
But one night, gazing out across the phosphorescent comas, I noticed something show for a second
in the revolving light.
Something far off.
A three master, a big one, about half a mile off and coming down out of the north-northwest,
coming straight for us.
I went over to the gowry door and yelled, Louie!
Louie!
I'm in a ship heading for the reef.
I'll be right around.
I had the glasses out now.
I couldn't read her name, but I could see her quite plainly, all sails set, the foam
creaming away under her bow, her beautiful lines.
But why didn't she turn?
Every time our light turned, it hit her with the glare of day.
A ship?
Where?
North, north-west.
The light will touch her in a moment.
Can't they see?
Look at her.
She just keeps coming on.
Oh, the square heads.
What is it?
Watch north-northwest, August.
Ah!
I know, I know what it is.
The Dutchman, the flying Dutchman.
She is Gerritlecht, that's it.
Gerritlecht?
Abandoned.
Cruel laughter for some reason or other, but instead of sinking, she's gone on, running
before every wind.
She'll not run long, not with these reefs to break her up.
Beautiful ship.
Now, why would men leave a beautiful ship like that?
It's impossible.
Absolutely impossible.
What?
Here, take my glasses, they're stronger than yours.
All right.
What is it you're...
Rose in my throat.
The decks were swarming with a dark brown carpet that looked like a gigantic fungus,
but undulating, and on the masts and yards were hundreds, no thousands, no me...
I don't know an inestimable number of tremendous rats.
We stood there, the three of us frozen in terror, peering through our binoculars as
the rat-covered ship gracefully, relentlessly bore down upon the quay, until at last, with
a horrible certainty, splintering and grinding upon the rocks, she ran aground.
Look, the rats on the water, like a carpet.
They're swimming.
Sure, they're swimming.
Those are ship's rats.
But they're swimming for the rocks.
The door below, it's open.
Come on.
And down we went, racing down the stone stairs, taking them three and four at a time.
Scared?
You bet we were scared.
Of course you get the windows, Mary, they can climb, we don't know.
All right, Chief, but hurry, hurry.
You see them?
No.
Yes, I do.
Up at the other end of the rock.
Look at them, me.
And they smell us.
Here they come.
Close the door.
I can't, it's stuck up here.
Let me.
Oh, move, you move.
I made it.
That was close.
One got in.
What?
Look, there.
Get him.
Watch it, he's dead.
Kick him.
Proof.
Proof?
He was as big as a tomcat.
Bigger.
And he's a big cat.
And his eyes were wild and red and long and sharp and yellow.
He went for a starving ravenous and we fought him.
Fought that one rat all over the room.
It was, oh, believe me, I do not exaggerate.
It was like fighting a panther.
I got him.
Got him.
We ran up the winding staircase.
We passed the tiny windows of the various levels.
And every one was covered with a thick, wriggling, screaming curtain of brown fur.
The air of the gallery was thick and fetid with the stink of them.
The light was dim, brown, filtered through the crawling mass that swarmed over the glass
all about us.
We could not see the sky in nothing.
Nothing but them.
Their red eyes, their claws, their wriggling, hairy snouts and their teeth.
What can we do?
What can we do, Chief?
Take it easy, August.
Take it easy.
I can't.
I just can't.
They won't do any good.
Won't do any good to stand here and shake.
Go away.
Do you hear me?
Go away.
They won't go away.
Not until...
Finish it, Chief.
Not until what?
Not until they've been fed.
All day long we sat there in silent horror, watching the writhing mass trying to reach
us through the glass.
And then at last it began to get dark.
One side of the room was littered soft, filtered red.
One set through the rats.
Very pretty.
I set the wicks, checked my fuel and then lit the lamp.
It caught them, lit them in their gigantic, wriggling web of pale, hairless bellies, twitching
red tails, bright eyes.
And then I started the rotary motor.
The light drove them mad.
She swung slowly and smoothly about.
She blinded them in the fierce stabbing bar of light, moving continually about, ever turning,
ever touching, ever moving around and around.
And they twitching and shuddering, eyes flaming when they were struck by the light, blinking
and twinkling like the stars of hell.
You must make the most of any situation to endure it.
And we found a way to entertain ourselves by teasing the rats.
Sounds crazy, horrible.
It was fun.
We would get right up against the glass and make faces at them.
It drove them crazy.
They would scratch away, trying to get at our eyes.
Louis was even cuter about it.
He'd pull a piece of bread out of his pocket and press it against the glass.
The rats would scramble into a solid ball, biting each other, clustering like grapes.
From time to time, a whole lot of them would slip and fall 110 feet to the surface below.
Look!
Look at the sharks.
They're eating them.
The sharks are our friends.
Oh, here, here.
I'll get another bunch together.
Here.
Here, little beauties.
Yeah, that's it.
Pile up.
Kill each other.
Yeah, ha, ha, ha, there they go.
Goose joined in, too.
Very ingenious, Oh Goose!
He learned that if he spread-eagled himself against the glass, they'd bunch and bundle
against this figure.
Then he'd leap back.
Look!
My portrait is rats.
I went off watch about midnight.
And I was just falling asleep and thinking, I want to see my cats and I'm playful.
My cats are the best.
My rats are the best.
Oh, they're very cute.
They're cute.
midnight and I was just falling asleep when I became conscious of a new sound.
I couldn't figure it at first. So I got up, lit the lamp and went to the window.
Even as I looked at it, I saw one of the panes begin to sag in. They were eating
the wood away. Louis, Louis come quick! They found a way in. I held the glass with my
hand and now they were all going crazy and assured of the success of this
maneuver they were nibbling away at the frame. Louis ran below and then returned
with a large sheet of tin. We spread it against the window and hammered it in
their face. Even as we did so, we felt the heavy bodies thudding against the other
side as the window gave way. That on a whole? If it doesn't, we're done for. Rats
can't eat tin. No. What was that? I don't know. Well that came from below. It's the door from the window. They're in!
They're swarming up the stairs! Drop the trap door! Right. Two of them got in. Go after them!
We didn't have to go after them. They came at us. I leaped to one side and grabbed them
on spikes, swung and smashed one in midair. I was able to see Louis with the other. It
had ripped his hand open and the blood was pouring all over the place. He held his
hand aloft and kicked at the snarl. I stepped right in and swung and got him! My hand! He got my hand!
It's both of them, Louis. I'll get you something to dry that up. I'm bleeding. Look at it. My blood. I'm bleeding. Don't worry about it, Louis. Now look, look, look. I'll wind this curse up about it. You'll be okay.
Now it's not bad, just the flesh. Then I became conscious of a new sound. They were gnawing their way through the wooden trap door.
I watched the planks, fascinated, and even as I did it began to give way. A bristling,
whiskery snout slowed through the gallery. The trap door in the gallery, it's steel. Good. Come on.
We made it. We lay across the trap, exhausted, while below us the rats took over the entire tower.
I could hear them howling and fighting over our food supply, our water, our leather, and all about us.
The others screamed and glared in us, swaying in a tangled mass, hypnotized by the ever-turning light.
By morning, the air in the little room was horrible.
Until now, we've been getting air from the tower below. Now that was sealed off. And so was all our food and water.
We lay exhausted, panting, waiting, waiting. The hours crawled on. I was almost dozing from fatigue when I
heard something that brought me to my feet. Would you like to come in, my beauty? Would you?
I hold the powers of life and death, and I can let you in, you know. August was standing by the glass,
and in one hand he held a big wrench. He was tapping the glass gently, not quite hard enough to break it.
I eased myself to my feet and slowly, very slowly, tipped over toward it.
All I have to do is tap just a little harder, and I...
So there I was, a little taken, a coward for company, and all about watching our little drama, the rats.
The following day we lay, thirst tormented, starving, waiting, waiting. And the following night I again
tended the light, but the small supply of spare wicking we kept in the gallery had become exhausted,
and quite suddenly, at about, about midnight, the light went out.
There was nothing I could do. Wicks were stored three levels below. Nothing I could do, nothing.
From time to time I'd strike a match to see the clock, and when I did it lit up the million red eyes about us.
All about us, watching, waiting. Below it had grown quiet, they'd cleaned us out, and now they too were waiting.
All waiting. And then the rats, quite suddenly, were standing there, waiting for me.
The lights suddenly were silent. And then I heard it.
And then I saw the sky, and the stars, the rats were gone. I went to the glass.
Out there on the water, a small freighter, a banana boat, came softly and innocently at us.
The light was out. They didn't know. I wanted to open the windows, to call out to them, to warn them somehow,
but I was afraid. What if the rats were hiding from me, tricking me? And so I waited.
She grounded very softly on a reef not two hundred yards from the quay.
Grounded so gently that the man playing the cornet, was he a passenger, a crewman, off watch, didn't even stop playing.
Tried washing her back off. I could have told them to save their fuel. The tide was rising. Would have floated her free.
And I waited.
That's all. That's the story. The sun came up and there wasn't a rat on the whole quay.
Every last one of that terrible army had deserted us, gone back to sea on their new ship.
August, insane asylum. He never recovered. And Louis, they took him into Cayenne, where he died of blood poisoning from his bite.
Life on three skeleton quay isn't bad these days, but sometimes when I see a strange vessel approaching, I get a little nervous.
Can you blame me? Somewhere on the seas there's a little banana boat without a crew.
That is, without a human crew.
Suspense. In which Vincent Price starred in William M. Robeson's production of Three Skeleton Quay, written by George Tudus and adapted for suspense by James Poe.
In just a moment, the names of the supporting players and a word about next week's story of suspense.
Supporting Vincent Price and Three Skeleton Quay were Ben Wright and Lawrence Dobkin. Sound patterns by Tom Hanley and Bill James.
Listen. Listen again next week when we return with another tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
America listens most to the CBS radio network.