And now, a tale well calculated to keep you in.
Suspense.
In a moment, act one of the lunatic hour, starring George Matthews,
and written especially for suspense by John Robert.
It's no good for a man who outlived his guilt.
No good. Who knows better than me, Tom Morley.
Crazy old Tom, they call me.
Coyote. There's more of them critters out on our prairie here
than there is people in San Ventura.
San Ventura, population 638.
Trains stop in San Ventura only when we signal them.
When I signal them, I'm station master here.
This time each year, you're haunted by trains.
By one in particular.
As crazy Tom Morley's haunted, all right,
because that's what grief and guilt will do to a man.
In fact, when I see a devil risen before me now,
hear him talking to me.
So I'm a conjuration, am I?
Answer me, Tom. You are only that.
I imagine you.
And my voice?
I'm only hearing myself.
You're in bad shape, Tom.
Put out your foot.
My foot?
So I can give you proof that you see what you see.
With all my weight.
Ow, ow, ow, ow, my foot.
Now, am I as real to you as the ache in your foot?
I can't stand anymore.
We've things to recall together, Tom Morley.
What things?
Things like you murdering me.
Have you forgotten me all 1155?
How could I ever forget it?
Say my name.
Say it.
Gully Reeves, engineer of the 1155.
You see, I do remember.
The rail was split at Jericho Bend,
but you didn't singled me to stop.
No.
They found Gully Reeves in the hollow of Jericho Bend
with his hand on the throttle still.
Still engineer of the train, dead as I was.
The Van Hal fell into the hollow.
The other cars stood hard on the tracks.
Every life spared.
It was bad, Gully Reeves, but not as bad as it could have been.
It was a lucky night for others, but a black night for me.
I died when no man should.
When no man should, Gully?
On the eve of the day I was to marry.
Oh, Jenny.
Yes, Jenny.
A man can't offer his corpse in marriage.
You cost me more than life, that black night, Tom.
What payment are you here to take from me?
Live through this week and see, old man.
Then you will know your punishment.
Only a devil's apparition can crush your foot.
Gully Reeves, whose death was on my hands.
Gully Reeves had come back from the earth,
and I had his promise now.
By the end of the week he'd square accounts with me.
I'd know my punishment.
I had the devil's own promise for that.
Live through the week and see.
Huh? Huh?
Pop, Pop, open up.
It was Will, my stepson, bringing me coffee like every night.
Why the locked door, Pop?
Against prowlers.
That's a joke.
The only prowlers around here are stray dogs and coyotes.
Have some coffee for you.
I'm going home to bed now.
Will, wait.
Help me off with my shoe.
The left shoe.
My foot's swelled up again.
Go easy.
I have the devil's own pain in my toes.
Okay.
Wow, it certainly is swollen.
Pop, take your sock off and let's see.
That foot didn't only puff up.
No.
The toes are blue.
Pop, that big one looks crushed.
A crate falling off?
It wasn't a crate.
What was it?
It was Gully Reeves.
Gully Reeve?
He spoke to me.
He spoke to you and invited you out of your mind.
Oh, son, I swear I saw him like I see you.
Don't call me son.
Not when you act and talk like an old fool.
I murdered him, he said, at a time when no man should die.
Pop.
He had a girl Jenny promised to him.
Pop?
There's a telegraph message coming in.
Well, Pop, if you're up to it.
Take it for me.
Take it for me, Wilhelm.
Okay.
It says the 1155 is due by...
in one minute now.
It's right on time.
Yeah, it's on the button.
Wait a minute.
Pop, move over.
Make room in the dark for a relative.
Make room?
There's more to the message.
The last half says...
I'll be riding the van again.
Signed...
Gully Reeves.
The 1155.
Gully rode the 1155 that night.
Shut up, Pop.
He found him in a hollow, sealed in his wrecked van,
with his hand dead on the throttle.
Pop!
It's gone.
You know something, Pop?
Yes, Wil?
If you're like something contagious,
stick close to you nights,
and I'll be just as crazy as you.
Sorry, son.
Just then, with the 1155 clearing the station,
you know what crazy thought flashed through my mind?
This is the anniversary week of the wreck of the old 1155.
It would really be one for the books if the...
ghost of Gully Reeves rode the 1155 into another wreck.
How about that, Pop?
I had the same thought.
It was impossible to sleep that night.
I took myself to the San Ventura Cemetery.
I held my lantern over a headstone.
Here lies Gully Reeves.
Only, Gully Reeves wasn't lying there.
He was risen from the dead.
There was every sign that he was risen from the dead.
An open grave, and an open corvin lid.
I could see by the shine of my lantern.
Gully wasn't in his corvin.
Then I could hear his ghost laughing.
You came to see with your own eyes whether I was in my corvin or not.
That's smart of you, Tom.
Gully?
On the path, playing in the light of your lantern.
See me?
Yes.
Live through the weak and see.
And since you're here to visit the dead,
why not take yourself over to Jenny?
To Jenny?
Five graves from mine.
Count five graves from here.
Go on.
Ask Jenny to tell you how she died.
I can't even.
I counted five graves from Gully's
and stood there with my mind in the dark and my eyes to the ground.
An open grave, this one too.
But the lid of the corvin was closed.
Closed but opening before my eyes.
I watched a specter in white rise up.
Tom Morley?
Are you Tom Morley?
I am.
Gully sent you to me?
Yes, to ask how you died.
He said, how did you die?
In my wedding gown.
I was fitting it to wear for Gully
when the news came that night.
It was a tragic hour.
A black tragic hour.
See my gown, Tom?
Your gown?
My bridal gown.
I wore it to my grave for Gully to admire.
Isn't it beautiful?
First Gully, then the girl.
Jenny herself back from the grave.
My neglect buried Jenny.
I sent her to doom instead of her wedding.
In a gown she was proud of, even in death.
And Gully, well he kept his promise as I knew he do.
Rode the 1155 for the anniversary week.
Always with a message for me at 1154.
Just one minute before.
I'll ride the van of the 1155, Tom Morley.
Look to the rail at Jericho Bend.
Look to the rail.
Gully meant to ride the 1155 to his death again.
Stop! Stop the train!
Stop! Stop!
Operator.
Operator, this is Tom Morley.
Station master at San Ventura.
Operator, terrible thing.
The 1155.
Operator.
Operator!
Will!
I've got you going now.
Will, you telephone for me.
I can't make myself understood.
Okay, give me the phone.
What am I to say?
Say?
Outside, what you saw.
The 1155 wrecked.
Oh, come off it, Pop.
Now who'd be interested in hearing that?
Who'd be interested?
Will, do you know what you're saying?
Pop, you're a maniac.
You worked hard at becoming one and you finally made it.
What's all this malarkey about the 1155?
What are you direct?
Gully Reeves, a ghost engineer on a ghost train.
Sure, Pop, sure.
Look, the wall clock's behind you.
You see what time it says?
1154?
It's only 1154.
Right.
Here's the 1155 now.
Right on time.
Your 1155, Pop, crashed in your head.
A saner mind than mine.
I needed a saner mind than mine to take me in hand,
to show me what was real and what was imagined.
Mr. McHale, the town supervisor.
I pleaded with him and he came.
Back to San Ventura Cemetery.
This hallucination of harm, the engineer Gully Reeves risen from the grave,
and the late Jenny Ives standing up in her coffin.
How long has all that been bothering you?
Ten years, Mr. McHale.
Since the day Gully was killed.
And the spirit visitations?
Oh, only these few nights.
This week, this anniversary week.
Anniversary?
The wreck was ten years ago this week.
Oh, I see.
Which of the two graves?
Over here is Gully Reeves.
This grave.
This grave?
It says Gully Reeves on the gravestone.
I'll hold a lantern to it.
Do we see different things, Mr. McHale?
Well, I see an open grave.
An open grave and an open coffin.
Jenny is five graves from this, Mr. McHale.
Count five graves.
Five.
I've counted five.
I'm an old man and I've lost my reason.
But not you, Mr. McHale.
You're the slickest mine in San Ventura.
The town supervisor.
Hallucinations, yes.
I'm sick with them.
Sick with grief and guilt.
But not you.
Tell me we see different things.
Maybe, maybe not, Tom.
Maybe we see the same things.
This grave now, Mr. McHale, it's right and proper.
Like a grave must be so a soul can rest.
No, Tom, I can't say the least.
You can't?
What do you see?
A grave as unnatural as the first.
And you have hallucinations too.
The grave is open and the coffin empty.
Like the first.
Tom Morley.
Is it Jenny calling to you, Tom?
You hear it too?
Yes.
I stood in my bridal gown and didn't move.
My heart swelled up and then it stopped.
I stopped it so I could be with Gully Reed.
It was a bad time to die.
Such a bad time when living could be so good.
Mr. McHale.
Yes, Tom.
You heard what she said.
Every word, every uncanny word.
Did you also see her?
Yes, like a white mist.
And long flowing hair.
And no flesh that I could see.
I do have your hallucinations, Tom.
I'm distressed to hear that.
You the best mind in San Ventura.
I say only what I saw.
What was it that Gully promised you?
Another wreck of the 1155.
I could once more ride the van into the hollow of Jericho Bend.
In the morning Mr. McHale put his hallucinations to rest.
McHale was such a man.
Things had to make sense to him.
I ordered an arrest, Tom.
The arrest of your stepson, Will.
You arrested Will?
I'm sure he's behind this and others in with him.
Looting graves and dressing up to masquerade as ghosts.
Why would Will go against me?
To drive you into the madhouse.
Even to drive you to your death.
I can't believe it.
I know it's a great shock to you, but the boy hates you, Tom.
Why does he?
Unbalanced as you've been these ten years.
An unsteady, brooding man.
Will's mother died to shut her eyes to you, Tom.
She couldn't stand any more of a life with you.
The boy thinks this.
You're saying that Will blames me for Margaret?
For his mother's passing?
Yes, and there's your house and land.
If you're gone, it'll pass to him.
There's a prophet in hate for Will.
I've reasoned it out.
Now, let's see what the ghosts will do.
There was a message that night.
That last anniversary night.
Ten years to the day of the old wreck.
It said, look to the rail at Jericho Bend.
This time I would.
There would be no negligence this time.
I saw what I hadn't seen ten years before.
The rails.
The rails were split.
Once again, the rails were split.
Stop the train.
I had to stop the train.
This time I knew to stop the train.
My signal entered.
I waved it.
Waved it high in the air so Gully could see it.
High, high.
Stop!
Stop in the name of mercy!
I've won this time.
I've stopped the train.
I've won!
I awoke from a long sleep in the outdoors.
But someone's standing over me.
Mr. McHale.
Yes, it's me.
Did I faint?
Died, I thought these last ten minutes, Tom.
Hardly a pulse to you.
Hardly a breath.
Like your heart had stopped.
Stopped?
The 1155, Mr. McHale.
The 1155.
The 1155 came and went.
Came and went?
You signaled it to stop, and it stopped.
It's gone now.
The train can't wait on an elucidating old man.
The rail at Jericho bend, it was split.
I saw that with my own eyes.
The train took the bend with nothing wrong.
But I saw it.
Come, I'll show you.
Here at the bend, come see.
I'm here, Tom, waiting to be shown.
No, the rail is fine now.
What I saw I didn't see.
Except in your mind.
Yes, in my mind.
And what I see now only I see.
No?
Now what?
Even now I see things the devil directs me to see.
I see things invisible to you.
What do you think you see now?
And the ground there in the hallow, if you have eyes for the dark, Mr. McHale, I see a body.
A lonely body in the night.
But you don't see the dead, Mr. McHale.
It's only for me to see.
No, we see the same things again, Tom.
A dead man.
You see a dead man too?
A dead man, yes.
It's Gully Reeves, dead where he died before.
No, Tom, not Gully.
We have a strange corpse in this one.
A man who died tonight.
Tonight?
Blood soaked in his clothes and in the dirt.
See?
And still bleeding.
The old dead don't bleed, Tom.
And the old dead don't wear police handcuffs.
Police handcuffs, you say?
See, on his wrists and a bullet hole in his head.
See?
This one we're chopped to death.
I'll telephone the car and have it come for the murdered man.
Oh, operator.
Mr. McHale, wait.
Wait with the telephone.
It's Gully on the wireless again.
Oh, Gully, is it?
Let's not go through that again.
I'll take the message, Tom.
What is the message, Mr. McHale?
An awakening.
I'm beginning to understand things.
I owe your stepson Will an apology.
An apology to Will?
Yes, the looting of the graves and all that dressing up to make you see ghosts.
It wasn't Will's doing, his scheme against you, as I've reasoned.
Will had nothing to do with it.
I was wrong, they had dead wrong.
The message told you that?
No, but I know that now.
I put it all together.
It was a message from a detective who was on the 1155 tonight.
He lost a prisoner he was escorting to the state penitentiary, Chip Stavego, a convicted man.
The message says we're to look for a short man bald, wearing a dark suit and handcuffs.
Handcuffs, that's the murdered man out there.
Now listen carefully, Tom.
This pair, Floyd Maxson and his girl Sally, they had worked up a scheme to board the 1155
and seize a prisoner being taken to the state pen.
One Chip Stavego.
They were out to seize Stavego from under the nose of the detective accompanying him.
Seize Stavego and murder him.
Which they did.
How is it clear so far?
Clear.
All right, San Ventura was the place they picked to stop the 1155, climb aboard and snatch Stavego.
You were to stop the train for them, Tom.
That's how your hallucinations came about.
The killers, Maxson and his girl Sally, were the source of your hallucinations.
They obviously knew about you.
How you felt about that wreck of ten years ago.
How it preyed on your mind.
Your sense of personal guilt about it.
They worked on you all this anniversary week when you were most susceptible.
They played on your imagination.
Made you hear voices, see ghosts.
All to get you to stop that train tonight.
Mr. McHale.
Yes, Tom?
That story you were telling me about people scheming against my sanity.
I'm asking you to tell it to me again.
Sure, but not tonight, Tom.
Your mind's been burdened enough for one night.
Tomorrow, when the anniversary week is over and Kelly Reeves isn't in your thoughts.
Tomorrow, Tom, we'll go over the whole thing again tomorrow.
Suspense.
You've been listening to the Lunatic Hour starring George Matthews.
And written especially for suspense by John Robert.
Suspense is produced and directed by Fred Hendrickson.
Music supervision by Ethel Hubert.
Heard in tonight's story were Les Damon, Donald Bucca, Rosemary Rice, and Dick Keefe.
Listen again next week when we bring you With Murder in Mind written by Erwin Lewis.
Another tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense.