Sam Spade - The Critical Author Caper

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Sam Spade Detective Agents, it's all me from all of the sea.

Oh Sam, how was it at the beach?

Sam was always foggy.

Did you go in?

Well harder was up to my neck from the first rumble but if you made it I go in the water

I did.

Was it cold?

I didn't notice I was too busy landing at corpse.

Oh Sam what a coincidence.

I was just reading my new library book and it's all about a body in the water.

We're so over a cliff and there's a strangest girl in it with a, with a strange mother and

she drinks the girl and runs away with a choker that rich people.

They can't do that they're stealing my material.

Oh no Sam no it's by Owen Fitzseven he's very well thought of mother always understands

his plot.

Not tonight she will.

So there we are angel I'll be right down to dictate my report on the critical author

of the paper.

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Later in this program we'll have an important announcement, listen for it.

And now with Howard Duff starring as Spade, wildroot brings to the air the greatest private

detective of them all in the adventures of Sam Spade.

I'm looking over.

Oh Sam.

Yeah come on in let's get this over.

Anyway we've like finished this chapter with the page to go.

The detective had just found this girl in the slaughtered rooming house.

He had this fight with her boyfriend and buoying him.

And now butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

But I don't trust her.

What's the name of the boy?

Morg fruit.

His last was a spindly stiff.

That was about this neurotic nurse who was in love with her employees.

How long have you been reading this kind of trash?

What's not trash Sam?

Well you really make this character live.

And I love this detective.

He's real hard-boiled like a dachal hammer.

Actually damn it.

Mark your place and come in.

All right.

Oh dear dear.

Ready?

Yes Sam.

Oh I can hide it.

Wait.

Ah that's the way I like it.

Eager.

Tiffany's the chapter I mean.

Please.

I wonder what she's up to.

She's guilty of car.

Of course but what up?

You can read it when I'm finished.

Oh my goodness we've got a report to get out and here we are chattering about books.

Great August.

Hi.

We'll give the date.

Yes Sam.

Uh date?

Hello there.

Till missing person's bureau, Safesyska police.

Attention.

Sergeant Schwartz.

From Samuel's Bay.

License number one.

7596.

Subject.

Gabrielle Leggett.

Dear Dave.

I should have handed it over to you at the start.

But you know me.

I'm greedy.

I cast the check sheet.

Sent me as a retainer.

Without consulting my better judgment.

I gave the money to Effie to pay bills.

Without batting an eye.

I filed a dime car fare from the corner news boy.

Without collateral.

And arrived in front of the Leggett mansion on Navhill.

Without the foggy as notion of what I had been retained for.

I'm going to Leggett Mr. Spade.

It's about my step toward a Gabrielle.

She's been missing since the funeral.

Uh whose funeral was that?

Mrs. Leggett.

My husband Gabrielle's father.

That was nearly three weeks ago.

She came to me afterwards and said she was going down to Kessada to our country place for a few days.

That she wanted to be alone with her grief.

But I discovered that she never arrived at Kessada.

Do I make myself clear, Mr. Spade?

Yeah, except for one thing.

Why do you want her back?

First, she made do something to disgrace me.

She'll undoubtedly try her best to do so.

Secondly, unless I get her signature to some papers.

In accordance with her father's will, I can't go on living in this house.

That's okay.

You've convinced me.

Now when she left, what did you take with it?

Just one piece of light luggage.

And her liquor case, of course.

She drinks, you know.

That's not my place to disapprove.

I merely thought it might help you to know.

Well, we could case all the boys in town,

but it'd take a lot of time and a lot of money besides them on the wagon.

Well, you might talk to Eric, my chauffeur.

He drove it to the station, or says he did.

Where do I find him?

Let's see.

It's at a clock.

He'll be lightening down the hall,

somewhere in the neighborhood of the linen closet,

helping the upstairs made fold the sheets.

I'd knock first if I were you and avoid embarrassment.

Nice for the tip.

Oh, mine if I have a look at your step-daughter's room.

Eric would give you the key.

I'm not allowed one.

There he is.

Oh, Eric.

Oh, lady.

Oh, Eric.

Oh, lady.

Excuse me.

Thank you for your kind assistance.

Thank you for calling.

Okay, Mertle.

Any time.

Yes, sir.

You, Eric?

Collinson.

What can I do for you?

I'd like the key to Miss Gabrielle's room.

You the law?

Why?

You're expecting some?

No, the old lady's been threatened in a yelp cop.

She decided to whisper instead.

Oh, private dick.

You catch on fast, lover boy.

Okay, I'll let you in her room.

Come on.

Mrs. Legged says she'd drove Gabrielle to the station.

She says that, does she?

Isn't that what you told her?

I'm not telling you what I told her anyone.

It's yourself.

After you.

Mm-hmm.

What's eating you?

Nothing at all.

Just went some privacy.

Oh, now wait a minute.

I'm responding.

Go help Mertle.

Give me those keys.

Oh, listen.

You can't.

Hey, let me in.

Don't have your life.

Her room was, shall we say, untidy.

A mirrored dressing table was chipped around the edges

and the rains held the scone across it

between two polo-pony bookends was a mess of books.

Three odd volumes of a Harvard five-foot shelf,

a horse breeders Gazette,

and a bunch of detective novels.

I picked one up and opened it to the title page.

It was called Morgfroth,

and it was by Owen Fitzsteven author

of the Corpulent cadaver,

the spindly stiff and the kisser.

It was autographed to the author's great and good friend,

the late Edgar Legged.

The signature looked familiar,

but it didn't look like a lead.

They did anything else in the room.

I started to unlock the door with a key on the ring.

I grabbed the way from Eric,

and the light caught the smooth side of a Christopher medal.

It was engraved for Eric forever, Gabby.

When forever Eric went off duty that night,

he went across town.

The trail ended at a crummy broken-down rooming house

out in the film.

He let himself in with a key and climbed the stairs.

I waited until he was out of sight.

In more time than it takes to tell,

the North cracked open and a nose

that could only belong to a land lady,

raise it out at me.

She was gumming a sense in.

What do you want?

They get settled in, all right?

They, nobody's settling in on me.

Never touched me.

You got me wrong, ma'am.

I meant the newlyweds.

Did they raise the rent money, all right?

Oh, then.

Raise it and spin it.

He's a dick smithered.

It's smithered.

Talk to the party,

and throw the dead soldier out the window.

And they call it honeymoon.

Who are you?

I'm her ex-husband, Bolly.

I came to pay her the back alimony, all right?

Well, give it to me.

I'll see if she gets...

Oh, no, you don't.

No, no.

Don't you come puttin' in here.

What?

After hours.

Don't lock collars in here after ten o'clock.

I'll throw.

Shut up.

Well, I don't...

What's their room, now?

Give it to me or I'll shake it out of your pocket.

Do 12.

12.

And if they look for these new offers,

I'll let you try it.

Oh, is that what close-up?

Yeah, thank you, Grant, that's just Marie.

Smart Alec?

No, only you can't hang on for a woman.

It's all right.

You throw over the drink.

I did not.

Alimony tells us for you.

You're the way person at her.

Who is it?

Western Union.

All right, let me...

Hey, I told you to stay away, now beat it.

Eric, what is it?

Ah, look, Eric.

I don't want any trouble, but I'm comin' in.

Over my dead body.

Eric?

Get back in the room, Gabby.

I'll look how you...

I don't want you to hurt her so much.

Now look.

Don't...

Don't make me do it.

I don't want you.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Eric!

Eric!

Eric!

What have you done to her?

Nothing you're fuckin' a cold water can't cure.

Sit on.

I want to talk to you.

Who are you?

Sam Spain.

I'm a private detective.

Your stuff might have hired me to find you.

Oh.

You know why she wants to find me?

Do you?

She wants to kill me.

To kill my father.

Now she'll kill me.

Can you prove that?

My father never had a day's illness in his life.

He could drink three quits of candy in any evening.

Do you believe a man like that could die a harker failure?

Frankly, I could.

Now she's dying to think I'd talk about me.

I want the real world to be an intern.

Do I seem crazy to you?

No.

A little nervous, maybe.

This idea you have about your father's death.

Talk some more, will you?

All right.

I'll tell you the whole thing.

And I got to have a drink first.

Hey.

I can't get the top off.

Give me a hand, will you?

Sure.

Now you need a corkscrew for this one.

Yeah.

I think there's one down there in the cupboard.

I don't see one.

Back in the corner.

No father.

There.

No, there's nothing.

Hey!

I dreamed I was a character in a detective story.

The title of the story was Morgan Fruit.

And the author, a man named Fitz Steven,

was trying to figure out a way to turn me into a red herring

before knocking off his number one suspect.

I tried to tell him it's against the rules

to make you detective a red herring.

But he said it was a new kind of murder yarn

and it didn't matter anyway

because there wasn't even a victim.

That's what he thought.

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And now back to the critical author, Caper.

Tonight's adventure with Sam Spade.

When I came too and had came the dawn,

and I was still a character with a detective story,

and I felt more like a red herring than I had in my dream.

I had dragged myself across my own trail and wound up no place.

My quarry had fled, leaving nothing behind,

but empty bottles with fingerprints on them.

I lifted the fuel and hustled over to the Bureau of Identification.

Half an hour later, I got the report.

They were mined.

All mined.

I wondered what at the time,

they were mined.

All mined.

I wondered what a detective novelist would make of that.

I decided to find out.

I had met Owen Fitzsteven several years back in Seattle

when I was digging dirt on a chain of fake mediums.

He was plowing the same field for literary material

and we pooled forces.

I got more out of the combination than he did

since he knew the spook ragged inside out.

I cleaned up my job in a couple of weeks

and we parted friends.

His San Francisco apartment was on the sixth floor of the St. Mark.

It was standing in its door, holding out a lean hand to greet me when I got there.

Wow, they're looking fit, Sam.

Little red in the face.

That's the red herring I ate last night.

How's the literary grip go?

You haven't been reading me?

No, why'd you get that funny idea?

Oh, there was something in your tone as in the voice of one who was bottom author

over a couple of dollars.

I suppose you're still hounding the unfortunate people who do it.

Yeah, that's how I am to look.

Yep, you autographed the book for Edgar Leggett.

Oh, yeah, it's Morgfruits,

distressingly prophetic.

What do you know about that family?

Oh, what have they been up to now?

Oh, well, you know the girl, Gabrielle.

Quite well, since she's a duplicate of her father.

She has brains, but there's something black in her.

Something she doesn't want to think about but can't forget.

She's a neurotic who keeps her body sensitive and ready.

I don't know what for.

Well, she drugs her mind with drink and lunatic notions.

And she's cold and she's sane.

I had something I wanted to forget.

I'd anesthetize my mind directly.

My body stays strong and ready.

I hope you don't think any of this stuff means anything to me.

Oh, yes.

I remember you now.

You were always like that.

Tell me what's up while I try to find one syllable words for you.

You know the fellow that drives for him?

Eric.

Well, he was released from Folsom and Leggett's custody when he was 18 years old.

Murdered his father.

Nice kid. What about him?

Mrs. Leggett hired me to find Gabrielle.

I found her with Eric in a rooming house out in the film one.

She begged me to save her from her stepmother's murderous schemes.

Then she knocked me cold.

Well, it's trivial.

Though I've been thinking of the Leggett family in terms of Dumon,

you bring me a piece of Jim Crackerie out of all hindrings.

Well, I was writing this.

Gabrielle would kill her stepmother or dupedic into doing it for her.

Or, no, that won't do.

Not sufficient motive.

Murder has to have a motive, you know.

Why, she's insane, isn't she?

I wonder.

Are you saying that carelessly?

Or do you really think she's off?

Well, I don't know. She's got a kind of a wild look about her.

I shift from green to brown and back without ever settling on one color.

How much of you turned up on her and you're snooping around on?

Are you who make your living snooping, snooping at my curiosity about people

and my attempts to satisfy her?

No, we're different on.

I do mine with the object of putting people in jail and I get paid for it.

I do mine with the object of putting people in books and I get paid for it.

Though not as much as I should.

Yeah, but what good is that, though?

Well, what good is putting them in jail, dude?

I relives congestion.

You put enough people in jail and cities wouldn't have any traffic.

No, problems, that's fine.

Well, then all you have to do is wait till one of them kills the other and put the survivor in jail.

That's simple.

Yeah, but who's going to kill who?

Perhaps they both have plans.

Both Gabrielle and her stepmother.

Look, if you have to guard both of them.

I think I'll settle for my client.

As far as Gabrielle is concerned, her husband ought to be able to watch out for her.

Hey.

What?

Husband?

She and Eric got married.

Well, there you are.

You didn't tell me anything about that.

Lord knows how much else there is.

You haven't told me.

Five minutes.

Don't go away.

Telegram, start here.

Thank you.

There you are.

Thank you, sir.

Now, I wonder what...

Good Lord, this is positively corny.

Listen to this, babe.

I appeal to you as a friend of my dead husband.

Come immediately, sunset hotel, quesada, trouble, danger.

Do not communicate. Gabrielle must not know.

Sign.

Go to blanket.

This babe.

Yeah?

Did you have this wire sent to me as a prank?

I was just going to ask you if you sent it to yourself as a prank.

Hmm.

I have it.

Hmm?

The key to the whole thing.

It's a red herring.

I didn't think that Steven would be able to hold out very long,

I guess, his professional curiosity, and I didn't imagine he thought I would.

I caught the next bus for quesada.

Quesada is a one hotel town,

pasted on a rocky side of a young mountain,

that slopes into the Pacific Ocean some 80 miles from San Francisco.

I got there at 11 something that night,

stepped down from the bus and crossed the street to the sunset hotel.

All right, all right, keep your shut up.

Mrs. Leggett, right? Is it here?

What's your name?

Owen Fitz-Steven.

Oh, she left the message for you.

Said for you to wait right here and don't leave till she gets back.

Yeah, she said where she was going.

Oh, it's probably over visiting with her daughter and new son,

new over through the cold.

How do you get there?

Well, you never be able to find it at night,

unless you went all the way around by the east road.

Yeah.

Not then, I'm sure, unless you knew the country.

Well, how do you get there on the daytime?

Well, you go down this street,

you take the fork on the ocean side,

then follow that up along the cliff,

easily enough found in the daytime,

but you never, never in the world.

Yeah, okay, okay.

I heard you the first time.

So I waited until morning, stupid me.

I found the road out at the point,

but it never really been a road.

The sign of the ledge became steeper and steeper

until the path was simply a narrow shelf

on the face of the cliff.

The cliff that sheared off 150 feet of mortar

rabbled out into the ocean.

A breeze from the gentle direction of China

was pushing fog over the top of the cliff,

making a noisy ladder of sea water at the bottom.

Rounding a corner where the cliff was steeper,

so I chucked my cigarette out of the edge

and watched it spin downwards.

And that's when I saw it.

I had to go waist deep into the Pacific to lift the body.

I got my hands out of the arm,

then found solid ground for my feet,

and dragged it up beyond the high tide line.

It was good, you would like it.

Somebody came straggling down the beach to meet us.

She did?

Yeah, Gabrielle, she's dead.

Poor, poor, the witches, dead.

They take me back to China with you.

I'm a drinker.

Sit down there. Sit down.

What's the big idea?

Don't you know I'm sick?

So I don't think you're that sick.

I think you could make some sense.

Sense?

That's a laugh.

You don't know me.

I've never been able to think clearly

the way other people do.

No matter what I try to think about,

there's a fog you're trying to get between me and it.

You understand how horrible I can become?

Going through life like this?

No, nobody thinks clearly.

No matter what they pretend.

Thinking's a dizzy business.

No matter how catching as many of those foggy glenches

as you can and fending them together the best you can.

Probably you wish you've been enjoying your misery.

You've been so busy trying to prove that you're nuts.

It's a wonder you haven't really driven yourself nuts.

How do you know I haven't?

Because you're too anxious to admit it.

All right, I'm saying if you want it that way.

I'm just evil.

There's something black inside me.

What was that again?

Something black.

Everybody knows that about my family.

My father too.

Who told you that?

I always knew it.

They say my real mother killed herself.

But I know better.

I know how to open the door where she keeps the gun.

Every day, Gertrude lies on mother's bed

and we play killing the witch.

And she comes in in the night and bends over my crap.

And she's changed herself.

So she looks like mother instead of the witch.

But I know better.

And I hold up the gun with both hands.

It's very hard to pull with both hands.

It's very hard to pull the trigger.

But I must do it or the witch will eat me up.

And then there's a big noise and red all over.

And I can't get out.

Now listen to me.

You were beginning to make some sense.

I don't run away from it.

Gertrude was lying on your mother's bed.

That's your stepmother?

Yeah.

She was my nurse.

She married father.

That's the fast.

How old were you when your mother died?

Four.

Four and a half.

Did your father know about the game of the gun?

No, I don't think so.

Did anybody?

Gertrude said I must never tell anyone.

Because it sent me away.

I never did.

Not till I grew up.

I was with Owen Fitzsteven.

I had a lot to drink.

I told him after that he began seeing Gertrude.

And finally my father died.

But it didn't do her any good.

Because Owen really loved me.

And I'll watch you.

Now let's get this straight.

You'll have to straighten it out again later on with a doctor to help you.

This is to help me.

When you were a little child, Gertrude taught you that killing the witch game

to use you as a murder weapon against your mother.

Then she filled you full of ideas of guilt and fears so you'd keep quiet about it.

When you told the story to Owen, he blackmailed your stepmother

and then knocking off your father.

That made you feel responsible for his death too, so you ran away.

Gertrude said I killed her too.

You might, but I got it.

Now try and remember.

Was Owen up here tonight?

I thought I heard his voice.

But I hear voices sometimes.

I'm hearing it again.

Listen.

Do you hear anything?

I didn't hear anything but the wind and the beat of the circuit first.

But when I did hear the voice, I sent Gabby for a doctor before I investigated.

He was pretty badly mangled in the rocks.

He'd fallen nearly as far as he'd pushed Gertrude, but was still alive.

And then I was comfortable as I couldn't.

Finally he opened his eyes.

Oh, son.

You'll mess yourself up good.

Yeah, no more rocks for me.

Not unless you make Alcatraz.

You know, I had half an idea when you came to see me in San Francisco

that you were secretly nursing some exceptional idiotic.

Thanks, Owen, but I never had any theory.

Oh, fine. Dropped into my lap for now.

I'll be too sure of that.

On the standard present, I admit nothing.

Later on, if I'm forced to, the very number of night crimes will be to my advantage.

Or the theory that nobody but an unetic could have committed so many.

Well, there's not so many only.

Gertrude, your co-author of the murder of the late Edgar Leggett?

Nonsense.

Crimes and crimes dating from the cradle.

Even literature should help me.

Not your own books.

Why not?

Didn't the critics agree that the spindly stiffboard

all the marks of authorial degeneracy?

The evidence on to say my sweet neck.

And I shall wave my mangled body at them.

A ruin whose crimes and high heaven have surely brought sufficient punishment to Bobby.

Yeah, you'll probably make a go of it.

Legally, you're entitled to beat the gentleman that anybody was, didn't you?

Legally.

You mean insane?

Tell me the truth, Sam.

Where am I?

I think that's what they'll say.

What's that spoils?

Everything.

It's no fun if I'm really cracked.

No fun at all.

Carry it on a report.

Wow, it just goes to show, doesn't it?

I don't know, you go again, Abby.

I mean, if anything like that happened in real life, you wouldn't believe it.

You mean if anything like that happened in fiction?

No, the author is never the guilty body.

Well, this author was.

But that's not fair.

The author is never supposed to be guilty of any...

You're right.

You're right, Abby.

You shouldn't be even a suspect.

Maybe a red herring, but...

Type that up, Abby.

Oh, art, Sam.

Anything else, Sam?

Yeah, fall in the drugstore and order some red herring.

I mean some aspirin.

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Come on in, Trichletos.

Well, here you get, Sam.

And I like it even better than more fruit.

You did.

I mean, it's not so realistic.

I like a romantic type story, myself.

You do.

Of atmosphere and psychology and those.

Oh, you've got to have those.

You really should be a writer, Sam.

Of course, detective stories don't pay much.

But if you write enough of them and look at all the material you've got.

No good.

I'll do it for fiction.

But Sam is already that radio series.

The adventures of you know who, Sunday night.

That's what I made.

I don't make a penny out of it.

Well, it's your own fault.

Sam, I don't want to seem critical, but if you played your cards right,

you could have owned the piece of that show.

What?

And follow Blondie?

Go home, Matthew.

I think I will, Sam.

Just curl up with a good book.

All right.

I wonder who killed who?

Well, when you find out, don't let me know.

Oh, you know you can't wait.

No, I can't.

Good night, Sam.

You're a nice sweetheart.

The adventures of Sam's Fade,

National Hammits Famous Private Detective, are produced and directed by William Speer.

Sam's Fade is played by Howard Duff,

Lerian Tuttle is efey.

The adventure of Sam's Fade,

National Hammits Famous Private Detective,

are produced and directed by William Spear.

Sam's Fade is played by Howard Duff.

Lerian Tuttle is efey.

Tuttle is F.E.

The adventures of Sam Spade are written for radio by Bob Tallman and Gill Down.

Musical direction is by Ludgluskin, with score composed by Rene Garrigan.

Join us again next Sunday, when author, Dashel Hammett, and producer William Sphere join

forces for another adventure with Sam Spade, brought to you by Wild Root Creme Oil.

Again and again, the choice of men who put good grooming first.

This is Dick Joy reminding you to...

This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.