And now, another tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense.
We take you to the 21st floor of a metropolitan office building and Out the Window by William N. Robeson.
Commissioner Walczek got up from his desk. Behind him was an open window. In front of him, quite close to him, were two hard-eyed men.
Granite, small, shifty, quick in his movements. Bruisy, huge, slow, somewhat stupid. Granite, the brains. Bruisy, the muscle.
Commissioner Walczek faced them, defied them. His back to a window, 21 floors above the street.
No.
What did you say, Commissioner?
I said no. No more graft. No more civic corruption. No more pigs at the public trough.
You sound like one of your campaign speeches.
Only this time I mean it.
How come, Commissioner?
Let's just say I can't stand the face I have to shave every morning.
You could cut its throat.
I've thought of that, but I guess I haven't the guts.
We have, Commissioner. We've got plenty of guts. We put you in this job, Walczek. We expect you to do your duty by us and the party.
If you don't feel like it anymore, that's okay. You can get out. Out the window.
You can't frighten me.
I wouldn't think of it. Walczek, I'm not a very emotional person. Neither is Bruisy. We're practical. Very practical.
There won't be a sign of us left here. The Commissioner fell from the window of his office on the 21st floor.
The papers will say ill health. Worry over threatened scandals in his administration.
And there will be scandals, Commissioner. We'll see to that.
Your reputation will outlive you and it will be difficult for your wife to live with it.
Why must she suffer my honesty?
I can't say since she can continue to enjoy the fruits of your dishonesty as long as you are willing.
I will not. I cannot continue like this.
That is your final word?
That is.
You're an idiot. Go ahead, Bruisy. Push him out the window.
No, wait. Isn't there another way? I leave town, leave the country, disappear. You can have it. The administration, the party.
We don't want it. We only want to run it.
Is there no getting away from you?
No. Change your mind?
No.
And you've only got one out. Out to the window.
You'll have to do it.
Go ahead, Bruisy.
Yes. Come on, Bruisy. One good shove.
That's all it takes, Mr. One.
Ah, yes.
Get out of here, you. Sure about that?
No, no.
Oh, no. Walshchek, no.
You know, old friend Granite, learned it in the Army.
One of the few things you didn't know about me.
Oh, no.
Would you have been so shaken, I wonder, if it were me hurtling through space out there?
No, I suppose not.
You're quite helpless without your bruiser, Bruisy, aren't you, friend Granite?
Another thing you didn't know about this gun.
I've kept it here for years.
I've often wondered why.
Now I know.
Walshchek, you don't think I meant all those things?
Oh, don't I?
I was just testing you.
Well, you got your answer.
We can go on, you and I, just as we always have.
No, we can't, little man.
You've gone as far as you're going.
Your last act will be to furnish brief bafflement to the police.
When they come looking for the window poor Bruisy fell from,
they'll find you lying here on the floor.
No, no.
And for a brief while they'll think you pushed Bruisy out the window.
And they'll send it away with yourself.
And they'll wonder how you got into an office locked from the outside.
No.
Walshchek, for the love of...
You going down, Commissioner?
Yes, please.
A terrible, terrible thing just happened.
What's that?
A man just fell out of a window.
Does it know which one?
Must have been pretty high.
He was badly broken up.
Identified?
Isn't enough left of him.
Must have been high.
You know, a funny thing, though.
What?
Nobody's reported it to many of the officers.
If nobody saw him go and nobody's missing,
it'll take all day to check all the officers in the building.
Is that a fact?
Oh, sure.
Figure it out for yourself.
I already had.
Perhaps not all day.
But hours.
More hours than I needed.
Certainly they wouldn't head for my office first thing.
The elevator operator would tell them that I'd left my office shortly after the unfortunate accident.
I was totally ignorant of it.
Out in front of the building, the crowd sics deep around the thing on the sidewalk.
Cab driver on the edge, peering.
I tap him on the shoulder.
He turns, wearing the face of Bruzy.
What do you want?
Careful, careful.
Don't let this throw you.
Cab, are you free?
I'm in a hurry.
Get in.
This you hadn't counted on.
A cab driver looking like Bruzy.
Bruzy was lying there on the sidewalk, where you were at the end.
Bruzy isn't driving the cab.
The driver doesn't look like him, really.
It's you who's giving Bruzy's face.
You kill the imagination.
Give him what?
Bruzy would have pushed you out the window had you not flipped him.
Because you're him.
What a mess a man makes when his skin isn't holding him in.
You're Bruzy, that's all.
Survival of the fit.
Law of the jungle.
A place for guilt here.
No reason.
For this you hadn't counted on.
Treachery of your imagination.
The guard at the bank.
He's not the regular one standing by the door smiling at the customers.
They've changed him.
This one's new.
This one's Granite.
He looks like Granite.
But he can't be Granite.
Granite's dead up there in that locked office.
Steady steady.
This is the hallucination of a guilty conscience.
Your conscience isn't guilty.
It isn't. It isn't.
Hey, hey now.
The girl who opens your safe deposit box for you.
She doesn't look like Bruzy.
Not Granite.
Not even like their sister.
And you silently thank her for not looking like either of them.
Then, she's gone with a smile.
Leaving you two alone.
To stuff your pockets with the price of your escape.
All this beautiful money so prudently put away.
Leaving you alone to walk as bravely as you may.
Past the guard that looks like Granite.
To the waiting cab.
Whose driver looks like Bruzy.
Walter Walczek.
Until a few moments ago, Commissioner Walczek.
Commissioner Walczek,
Embezzler Walczek now melds into Walczek the Lover.
Complete with golden key.
Wally, is that you?
Yes, kid.
You scared me.
Didn't expect me, eh?
Well, not exactly, Lover Man.
Who did you expect?
No, honey boy. I mean in the middle of the afternoon.
No one, Big Daddy.
There's no one but you in the whole, whole world.
You've got the key, Lover. Only you.
Yeah.
Number one, man, huh?
Number one, Daddy-o.
That's good.
Good.
Only how come you're so early in the day?
I'm through.
What you should have called, Lover.
There wasn't time. It happened so fast.
What, Lover?
Never mind. I'm through. I'm finished. I'm getting out.
When?
Now.
Where are we going?
Well...
You're taking me with you, aren't you?
Well, yes, sure.
Where are we going?
Away, somewhere. I don't know. Mexico, maybe.
Mexico? I want to go to Europe. Rome, Paris, all the places you promised.
I don't want to go to Mexico.
Mexico first. You're the places afterward. Mexico first.
We don't need passports for Mexico.
You promised.
I know, I know.
Well, I'll get ready. I'll pack.
Not too much. We won't need much.
We can get what we want when we get there.
Only first...
What first, Lover?
Let me put my hand on your shoulders.
You said we were in a hurry.
There's time for that.
Let me rest a minute.
Let me feel safe again, kitten.
So soft and warm and safe.
This encircling arm.
Safe home where no one can harm you.
No one can find you.
Safe from the cop on the beat, the kids on the block.
Safe from Stern disapproving Daddy.
Safe in Mummy's arms.
Good grief, hon. We can't stay around here all day.
We got to get going.
But it isn't Mummy at all.
It's this ridiculous little blonde you call kitten.
She's as loyal to you as any cat would be.
So long as you feed it and stroke it regularly.
No one can make you safe but yourself.
No one can make you secure.
No one can guard you.
There's no one who cares.
No one can protect you.
No one can protect you.
No one can protect you.
There's no one who cares but you.
This piece of fluff.
You owe her the rest of your life.
You owe her anything.
She's got as much as she gave.
Where are you going? I thought you wanted to...
I got to go.
Where?
Well, I got to get tickets for the airplane.
I thought I'd get the plane tickets while you get ready.
I won't be a minute.
Neither will I. Here.
What's this for?
A hundred dollars last minute stuff. I don't know.
Pay the landlady or something.
You're not coming back, are you?
What makes you say that?
I know it. I feel it. You're not, are you?
I must go.
You've got lots of money. Your pockets are bulging with money.
Let me go.
Give it to me. Give me money. Give me more money.
Let go!
I said let go!
Kitten.
Soft like a kitten.
Fragile like a kitten.
Dead in a heap like a dead kitten.
At a time like this, one must think straight.
Pays one.
There are things yet to be done.
Important things.
What then are they?
They're on the list.
Check list.
Things to do today.
Choke kitten.
Walk don't run to nearest dispenser of escape.
Buy a ticket to anywhere, cause you're nowhere, man.
Announcing the arrival of a just departed jet from here to there and back.
Now offloading on ramp seven.
Passengers incoming from offloading can claim baggage sooner than later.
Yes, sir. What can I do for you, sir, in this jet-paced age of shrinking horizons?
Name your destination and we'll put you there.
You sound like kitten.
The subjects travel at supersonic speed. Don't change it.
You look like kitten.
How many and where to?
Two.
To where?
You don't kitten.
I'm not kitten. State your business and make it brief.
Our clientele consists of men of decision, men of action. Others need not apply.
Where to does you two wish to go?
Mexico.
Too easy. No further?
No further. Not now.
Very well.
With us, the customer is King, Your Majesty.
Thank you.
Two tickets for Mr. King and wife?
Yes. Yes, of course. And wife.
Wife.
The last refuge of the scoundrel.
She who for better or worse in sickness and health till death do us part did we take to wild.
She who has grown old in the service of this benevolent tyrant.
Who has a better right to the spoils of life than she whose life is spoiled.
The little woman, the better half, the ball and chain, the old lady.
Chippy's name is kitten. You can buy anywhere for a handful of what glitters is not.
But a wife, you got a lot of investment in a wife.
She's yours.
All yours.
All yours. All in pain.
In just a moment, we will return for the concluding act of...
Suspense.
On page 663 of volume 10 of the Encyclopedia Britannica, it says, quote,
Few physical phenomena are roughly as well known to everybody as gravitation, end quote.
Which is to say, and the encyclopedia goes on for the next 18 pages of fine print to say that
everything that goes up must come down.
Commissioner Wolchek, former Commissioner Wolchek is a new man, a family man.
Purged of sin and delivered of temptation, shoulder squared, chest out.
See him as he strides down the avenue, homeward bound.
Walter Wolchek, husband.
St. George is on his way to the Dragon's Lair.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon. I need some roses, American beauty roses.
The long stand.
The longest and armful. All you've got.
They're quite expensive.
Money at a time like this is no object.
How nice.
Does anyone ever tell you you looked like my wife when she was your age?
Not that I can recall.
Well, you do.
Of course, this girl doesn't really look like Nellie when she was young.
It's just that she is young.
And it's a good thing to remember Nellie when she was young and pretty.
To remember her soft brown hair and her laughing dark eyes.
To remember her as she was before life pounced on her demanding to be lived.
Is that you, Walter?
Yes, Nellie, I'm home.
Early, aren't you?
Little.
Here. For you.
Roses, how nice. Why?
Must there be a reason?
I suppose not really, but there usually is.
Birthday, anniversary, guilty conscience.
Can't a man bring his wife roses just because he loves her?
After all these years of silent sufferance?
I was never a very demonstrative person.
That you weren't.
But I shall change. You'll see.
It's not too late.
What do you say, how about a little kiss, sweetie?
Perhaps you'd better not try to change so suddenly.
I bought you something else.
What?
Tickets. Airplane tickets.
We gotta go away.
Where?
Mexico. First. Later, further. I don't know.
Why?
I killed some people this afternoon.
Who?
Granite and that bruiser of his, Bruzy, to name two.
It's about time. I never did like them.
Either one of them.
Me neither.
I tossed Bruzy out the window. I shot Granite.
With this gun.
Had that thing in the top drawer of my desk for the last ten years.
Thought it might come in handy someday.
Did.
Didn't I give that to you on our tenth wedding anniversary?
Yeah, come to think of it, you did.
You sure got respectable when you still had enemies.
And I was afraid for you.
You were, weren't you?
I guess you did love me at that.
I guess so.
But that was a long time ago.
I've been busy, Nellie, these past years.
Yes.
But I'll make it up to you now.
We'll go wait tonight.
I can't tonight. I got a dentist appointment tomorrow morning.
There are dentists in Mexico.
Not this dentist. You ought to give me some warning.
It was unpermeditated murder. I didn't have any advance notice myself.
Bad. Impulsive.
You might almost call it a crime of passion.
No passion.
I was pretty cold-blooded.
But you just said it was unpermeditated.
As to time and place.
But I've been planning the removal of those two for a long, long time.
And when I accomplished it, as you see, the rest of the plan followed.
The safe deposit box emptied and our plane reservations waiting for us.
And the roses. They were part of the plan.
No, I guess you could call them an impulsive gesture.
Bad, Walter. Very bad impulsive. Not thought out. Really.
Believe me, if I were planning a murder, I would be more thorough.
Suppose, for instance, I wanted to murder you.
Why me?
Why not you? Haven't you given me sufficient reason?
For 20 years, I've played the empty role of your wife while you husbanded one floozy after another.
Well, now, Nellie...
There's no room for argument. I don't want to discuss it. It's true. We both know it.
True.
And it's grounds for murder, isn't it, Walter?
But murder would get me nothing just any day of any week, would it?
So I would have to plan carefully and wait patiently if I wanted to murder you.
I would need the money, all that lovely cash money you've hoarded in that safe deposit box for years.
Yes, I should want all of that.
And you do have it all on you, don't you, Walter?
Look, Nellie, we're going to miss that plane if you don't...
Oh, yes, and I'd need a plane ticket to make my getaway.
Two would be even better, since who knows, there might be someone who'd want to go with me.
And you've been good enough to bring two plane tickets.
Please, Nellie, pull yourself together and...
And then I'd need a murder weapon, and you've provided that with unaccustomed thoughtfulness, Walter.
Your own gun. The gun with which you killed Granite. A gun covered with your fingerprints.
Notice I wrap my hand in a handkerchief before I pick it up.
So if I were to shoot you and leave the gun by your side, it would look like suicide.
Nellie, this joke has gone far enough.
Joke? I see nothing funny about it, Walter.
But there remains one thing lacking in my premeditated murder of you, my dear husband, and that's motive.
Immediate motive, that is. Say, proof of infidelity, sufficiently humiliating to make me want to murder you now.
Nellie!
And this, too, you've provided. The roses to cover the guilt.
But they didn't wipe away the lipstick from your collar, Walter.
They weren't strong enough to overpower the cheap perfume of your little kitten, Walter.
Nellie, for God's sake, put that gun down!
Down!
A man's body falling from a great height and striking an unyielding surface such as concrete
will often make sound exactly like a revolver shot.
Commissioner Walczek's body did.
Suspense.
You've been listening to Out the Window, written for suspense by William N. Robeson.
In a moment, the names of our players and a word about next week's story of suspense.
Heard in tonight's story were Santos Ortega as Walczek, Jane Hussack as Kitten, and Ginger Jones as Nellie.
Others in the cast included Roger DeKoven, George Matthews, Sam Raskin, and Marilyn Cole.
Listen again next week when we return with The Perfect Plan by Peter Fernandez.
Another tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
News analysis next, followed by the latest CBS News and Have Gun Will Travel on CBS Radio.