And now, another tale well calculated to keep you in...
...suspense.
Martin Storm's great story, A Shipment of Mute Fate.
I stopped on the wharf at La Guaira,
and I looked up the gangplank toward the line of Chanse,
standing there quietly at her moorings.
The day was warm under a bright, then as a wailing sun,
and the harbor beyond the ship lay drowsy and silent.
But all at once, in the midst of those peaceful surroundings,
a cold chill gripped me, and I shivered with sudden dread.
Dread of the thing I was about to do.
But too much had happened to turn back now.
I'd gone too far to stop.
I set the box down on the edge of the wharf,
placed it carefully so as to be in plain sight
and within gunshot of the captain's bridge.
Then I turned and started up the gangplank.
I knew what I was going to do,
but I couldn't forget that a certain pair of beady eyes
were watching every move I made.
Eyes that never blinked and never closed,
just watched and waited.
And I...oh!
Excuse me, sir, I didn't see...
It's Mr. Warner.
Well, hello, Mother Willis,
and how's the best-looking stewardess on the seventh seat?
Why, I'm fine, Mr. Warner. It's nice seeing you again.
Wait a minute, that's a fine greeting after two months.
Well, I have a great deal to do aboard.
I don't believe a word of it. Sailing day's tomorrow.
You're simply avoiding me, that's all.
Oh, no, really, I'm not.
And on the trip down from New York, you said I was your favorite passenger.
And so you were.
Now, if you'll excuse me...
Oh, here, wait a minute, what are you carrying there?
Oh, nothing, just supplies.
Supplies? Let's have a look.
No, please!
Well, come on. Hey, it's a cat.
It's Clara, Mr. Warner.
Mr. Bowman said I had to leave her ashore. I just couldn't.
And who's Mr. Bowman?
The new chief steward, he's fussy.
Clara's been aboard with me for two years.
I just can't leave her here in a foreign country,
especially with her condition so delicate and all.
Oh, yes, oh, I see.
Well, I hope you get away with it.
You won't tell anyone.
Not a soul. As a matter of fact, if things don't work out right,
we may both end up smuggling.
I was most happy to have you aboard on the trip down two months ago, Christopher.
I'm very glad you're coming along with us on the run back to New York.
Well, thanks, Captain Wood. There is one thing, though.
I'm having a little trouble with a customs man here.
I wondered if you could...
I can't do it, Christopher. I just cabled your father this morning,
told him I'd have done it for you if I possibly could.
And he sent a request from New York, you know.
Yes, I thought he would. I wired him from upriver last week.
I hated to refuse, but it's absolutely out of the question.
Captain Wood, I'm afraid I don't follow you.
Responsibility to the passengers, son.
We'll have women and children aboard, and on the line of the safety of the passengers
comes ahead of anything else.
Yes, but with proper precaution.
Something might happen. I don't know what, but something might.
You've carried worse things.
There isn't anything worse. And any skipper afloat will bear me out.
No, Christopher, I simply can't take the chance, and that's final.
Final? It was not final if I could do anything about it.
I hadn't come down here to spend two months in that stinking back country
and then be stopped on the edge of the wharf.
Two months of it. Heat, rain, insects, malaria.
I'd gone clear in past the headwaters of the Orinoco.
Or I'd travel through country where every step along the jungle trail
might be the last one.
Los Angeles!
Sí, señor Bono.
You better start looking for a place to camp.
Be dark in a little while.
Sí, señor. Very soon we'll turn to river.
Camp on the rocks by water. This is very bad country.
For all the luck we've had so far, it might as well be Central Park.
Central Park? No comprendo.
Never mind.
Sanchez, what's the matter? What's wrong?
Hey, Sanchez, what is it?
There, in the path. See? Bushmaster.
Bushmaster. The deadliest snake in the world.
Bushmaster. His Latin name was Lecasis mutus.
Mute fate.
It lay there in the center of the path.
A ten foot length of silent death.
Coiled loosely in an undulant loop.
Ready to strike violently at the least movement.
Here was the one snake that would go after any animal that walked.
Or any man.
It lay there and watched us.
Not moving. Not afraid.
Ready for anything.
The splotch of its color stood out like some horribly gaudy floor mat...
...lying there on the brown background of the jungle.
Just waiting for someone to step on it.
Here was what I'd come 2,000 miles for.
A Bushmaster.
Good morning, Captain Wood.
The man at the hotel said you wanted to see me.
That's right, Christopher. Sit down.
Thank you.
Seems you weren't willing to let matters stand the way we left them yesterday.
Oh. Well, look, Captain, I'm sorry to go over your head.
But I just had to.
The museum sent me all the way down here for it.
I'm not going to be stopped by red tape.
Why, this will be the only live Bushmaster ever brought to the United States.
If I had my way...
Well, orders are orders.
I got a cable from the head office this morning.
All right, suppose we talk about precautions.
I'll handle it any way you say.
It's got to have a stronger box. That crate's too flimsy.
It's stronger than it looks.
And that wire screen on top would hold a wildcat.
But anyway, I bought a heavy sea chest this morning...
and we'll put the crate inside of that.
Well, that sounds all right. You got a lock on it?
Heavy padlock. It's fixed so the lid can be propped open a crack...
without unlocking it. Snake's got to have some air.
But in dirty weather, that lid stays shut. I'll take no chances.
All right, all right, Captain.
Well, keep the thing in my cabin.
Can't have it in the baggage room.
And nobody on board to know about it.
Whatever you say, Captain, but we won't have any trouble.
After all, it's only a snake. It doesn't have any magical powers.
I saw a bushmaster in the zoo at Caracas once...
had it in a glass cage with double walls.
It had never moved. Just lay there, look at you...
as long as you were in sight.
He gave a man the creeps.
I didn't know they had a bushmaster at the Caracas zoo.
They don't now.
They found the glass broken one morning and the snake gone.
The night watchman was dead.
They never found out what happened.
Well, the watchman must have broken the glass by accident.
The way they figured it, the glass was broken from the inside.
We sail in four hours.
Well, she's running quite a swell out there, Mr. Bowman, eh?
Yeah, it's a little heavy, all right, Mr. Warner.
I guess a storm passed through to the west of us yesterday...
when the glass dropped.
Great gee, Hussifat, we're gonna take it on the port bow.
Hang on!
I was a freak if I ever saw one.
Why, there's not another wave that size in sight.
Well, you see them like that sometimes, even in a calm sea.
I gotta get below, Mr. Warner.
That water probably did some damage on the officer's deck.
Yes, I suppose it.
What did you say?
The wheelhouse companionway was open on the port side.
Bridge cabins must have taken a pretty bad smashing.
They're right below the...
Is something wrong, Mr. Warner?
No, no, nothing at all, Mr. Bowman.
At least, I hope not.
Of course, I knew it was only one chance in a thousand.
But the chances of that freak wave were one in a thousand, too.
I stumbled down the companionway...
and along the passage to the captain's cabin.
Oh, Mr. Warner!
Mother Woolies!
Isn't this cabin a mess?
I'm trying to get some of these things out to dry.
Yeah, yeah, well, look, I just wanted to check...
where's that box that was under the captain's bunk?
Oh, that. I just threw it out on deck.
Your what?
Well, the desk over there slid into it. It was all smashed.
But the small box inside of it, what happened to it?
Well, they were both splintered, Mr. Warner.
Broke wide open.
Oh, no.
Well, Mr. Warner, you're quite as a sheep.
Mother Woolies, will you go find Captain Wood...
and tell him to come down here immediately?
Well, I've got a great deal to do.
Please, go get him at once.
Very well. I suppose I can finish up here later.
I pulled open the top drawer of the bureau beside me...
and I took out the captain's flashlight.
I worked around the room...
throwing the light into the dark corners...
back of the desk, under the bunk.
And wherever I turned, I could feel those cold...
and blinking eyes at my back, just watching and waiting.
I pushed open the closet door through the light inside.
Carefully, I poked at the boxes and junk on the floor.
But the snake was not in the closet.
Inch by inch, I covered the entire cabin.
And only then, a horrible realization began to dawn...
on me. Captain Wood?
Mother Woolies just told me.
Well, Christopher, so it's happened.
Yes, that's right. It's happened.
Well, we'd better start searching the cabin here.
Captain Wood, I just finished searching it.
The...
Women and kids and that thing loose on board.
A thousand places for it to hide.
God help us, Christopher.
There's no use starting to blame anybody now, gentlemen.
I didn't call you in here to pass judgment.
The thing's done and that's that.
All right there, Captain.
What we have got to do is make up our minds...
how we're going to handle it.
It'll be easier if we didn't have to tell the passengers and crew.
I've seen panics aboard liners before.
Yes, I agree with you, Mr. Bowman, but I don't quite see how we can avoid it.
They've got a right to know.
As long as that snake's loose, everybody on board is in the same danger...
and they all ought to know about it.
Captain Wood, now that thing is 12 feet long.
It can't simply crawl into a crack.
Why don't we make a quick search of the whole ship...
before we spread any alarm?
Yes, I've thought of that, Christopher.
Well, as far as I can see, the only place it couldn't be...
is in the boilers or on the top of the galley stove.
It might have crawled overboard.
We can't count on that. We've got to assume it's on the ship somewhere.
Yeah, and that could be anywhere...
in a coil of rope or in a pile of clothes.
Yes, or under some woman's berth or a baby's crib.
All right. I think the best idea is to follow Mr. Warner's suggestion.
Make a quick search first. You agree to that?
Yes, sir.
And then if we don't find it, we'll have to warn the passengers.
We've got to find it.
But not one of us could find that deadly shape...
coiled in some dark corner or outstretched along a window seat.
Not one of us caught a glimpse of that horrid head...
with its beady, black, watchful eyes.
That thing lay waiting out there somewhere along the decks...
shaded in the gathering dusk. But where? We didn't know.
The slow nightmare that followed grew worse by the hour.
The second night passed, and morning came around.
A gray and rainy day the drag passed.
And then night came down again. Third night of the terror.
Again every light burned, and the whole ship seethed...
and the throes of incipient revoked.
Faced by a horror they'd never met on a sea before...
crew and officers alike were on the verge of panic.
The passengers sat huddled in a trance-like stupor...
ready to scream at the slightest unknown sound.
At seven bells I made my way forward to the chart room...
and found Captain Wood bent over a desk.
Oh, hello, Christopher. Come on in, sit down.
Captain, it's got to be somewhere. It's got to be.
I don't know. You could search this ship for six months...
and never cover all the places aboard.
We can only hold out for two more days, we'll be in.
What does your home office say?
Here's the latest wireless from them.
Keep quiet and keep coming.
What else can we do? Want a cigarette?
Yeah, thanks.
How is it below?
Pretty bad. Anything could happen.
Yeah. That's why I took the guns away from the men.
One pistol shot, we'd have a riot on our hands.
The whole thing's my fault, Captain Wood. That's what I can't forget.
Well, take it easy, lad. If there was only some way I could...
pay for it myself, myself alone...
No, no, no. I know how you feel, but it's no more your fault than mine...
or the man who asked you to bring that snake back alive.
Nobody planned this.
Well, go to the galley, get yourself some coffee...
then you'd better try to get a little sleep.
The light was on in the stewards' galley...
and the coffee pot was standing on the stove.
It was still warm, so I didn't even bother to heat it.
I poured out a cup, carried it over...
and set it on the porcelain table top in the center of the room.
I started to light a cigarette.
The door over the pan covered beneath the sink...
was standing slightly ajar.
And I happened to glance toward it.
I dropped the cigarette...
and moved slowly backward.
I'd found the Bushmaster.
As I moved, the snake slid out of the cupboard in a single, sinuous slide...
and drew back into a loose coil on the galley floor...
never taking his eyes off me.
I moved slowly back...
waiting any moment for that deadly, slithering strike.
Ten million years of evolution to produce this moment.
Homo sapiens versus lacases mutus.
A man against mute fate.
And all the odds were on fate.
I knew then...
I was going to die.
I could feel the sweat run down between the wall...
and the palms of my hands pressing against it.
My skin crawled and twitched...
and the pit of my stomach was as cold as ice.
There was no sound but the rush of blood in my ears.
The snake shifted again...
drawing into a tighter coil, always tighter.
Why the devil didn't he get it over with?
Then, for an instant, his head veered away.
Something moved over by the stove.
I didn't dare turn to look at it.
Slowly it moved into my line of vision.
It was a cat.
That scrawny cat that Mother Willis had sneaked aboard in LaGuaira.
Its back was arched...
and every hair stood on end.
It moved stiff-legged now...
walking in a half circle around the snake.
The bushmaster moved slowly and kept watching the cat.
He tightened.
He was going to strike at any second.
He struck and missed.
The cat was barely out of reach.
Now, she was walking back and forth again.
Oh, she was asking to die.
Missed again...
missed again by a fraction of an inch.
He was striking now without even going to a full coil.
Missed!
Again and again, always missing by the tiniest margin.
Each time the cat sat barely out of reach...
and each time she counted with one precise spat of a dainty paw...
bracing her skinny frame on three stiff legs.
And then suddenly I realized what she was doing.
The bushmaster was tiring...
and one strike was just an instant slow.
But in that split second...
sharp claws raked across the evil head...
and ripped out both the lidless eyes.
The cat had deliberately blinded that snake.
He didn't bother to coil now...
but slid after her in a fury striking wildly but always missing.
And every strike was a little slower than the last one until finally...
As the snake-snake stretched out at the end of a strike...
the cat made one leap and sank her razor-sharp teeth just back at the ugly head.
Sank them until they crunched bone.
With tooth and claw she clung as the monstrous snake flailed and lashed on the floor...
striving to get those hideous coils around her...
trying to break her hold and shake off that slow and certain paralyzing death...
that gradually crept over him.
And at last...
stilled his struggles forever.
Oh, I took a deep breath.
The first in minutes...
the cat lay on her side on the floor panting...
resting from the fight just over.
Oh, she had a right to rest.
That brave, beautiful alley cat...
it just saved my life.
And maybe others as well.
But as I turned toward the stove...
I suddenly became very humble.
And I knew all at once...
what a small thing a human being really is.
I and others aboard were still alive...
only by the merest accident.
You see, there were three reasons...
why that cat had fought and killed the world's deadliest snake.
And those three reasons came tottering out from under the stove on shaky little legs.
Three kittens with their eyes bright with wonder...
and their tails stiff as pokers.
And up on the decks...
hundreds of passengers were waiting for the news that terror was ended.
Well, they could wait a little longer.
I pulled open the doors of the cabinet...
found a can of milk and a saucer.
Then I dropped down on my knees.
Suspense.
You've been listening to A Shipment of Mute Fate...
written for suspense by Martin Storm.
Heard in tonight's story were Bernard Grant as Chris...
and Inge Swensen as Mother Willis.
Others included in the cast were Ralph Bell, Bob Dryden...
Frank Thomas Jr. and Frank Milano.
Listen again next week when we return with...
Two Horse Parley by Walter Black.
Another tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense.
Get the complete news first on the CBS Radio Network.
See you next week.