Radio Digest (Jan-Oct 1926)

February 27, 1926 RADIO DIGES T— Illustrated TAIRS Radio Dramatization by FRED SMITH, Managing Director, U. S. Radio Society Illustrations by HILMER C. OLSON ^Robert J. Casey "That's Ardwyn, the lawyer," he whispered to. h§r as they pushed back their chairs to a point at the end of the room where they could survey the entire company. "He's the sallow looking man with the wallet. The one there at the end of the table. He seems to be running the show." "Just what are we all here for?" inquired Mary. "Search me. It's a weird crew they've cast us with. I don't think I ever saw any of them before, although I suppose they're all related to Old Peleg one way or another." "I was introduced to that man with the beard at dinner — the one next to the lawyer. He gives me the shivers to look at him. He reminds me of a pirate." "Maybe he is. A little thing like piracy wouldn't bother a grand jury that ever started to look into the history of this family. I'd trust a good pirate farther than that self-elected saint over there beyond the hearth. She has a murderous eye and a tongue that's all honey and arsenic . . . Our Aunt Helen, they tell me. That's our Cousin William she's talking to — the scared rabbit in the undertaker's costume . . . Listen to her talk ..." THERE was a vibrant quality in the voice of Helen Holmes that lifted it above the low hum of conversation' throughout the room. She did not seem to be aware of its carrying powers. She was talking earnestly with Cousin William on a topic that seemed to be of the greatest importance — herself. "I have tried to live down the reputation of the Turners," she was telling him. "My poor dear husband — dead and gone these twenty years — he always used to say to me, 'Nellie, you're an angel on earth. Nobody'd ever suspect the tribe of hellions you came from.' That's what he used to say to me — an' Heaven knows I tried to be worthy of him." "Oh, but I guess you were," came the Ardwyn, the lawyer, took command of the situation, by rising in his place at the end of the table. "Don't allow yourselves to become overwrought, ladies and gentlemen," he suggested. "The hour is still earlier than I had counted upon when I set the time of the dinner at nine o'clock. I wished to give you all a chance to become acquainted with one another. That's what Mr. Turner wished when he asked me to call you all together here." "Turner," gasped Henry Graves. "Why he's dead." and I ask that you pay close attention. "I have felt the malign influence of this old house since I inherited it from my father, the elder Peleg Turner, twenty H ' E WAS not always dead," replied the lawyer unemotionally. "But unlike so many of us born to a few brief days in this ephemeral world he foresaw that one day he must die . . . He foresaw it quite definitely after the tragic death of his brother and so he wrote out for me the documents which directed me to summon you here. I need not read to you the instructions he gave me as his lawyer. I have already summarized them. But this other paper is a message to you — to all of you — a word from Peleg Turner whom some of you helped to carry out through the front door on his last journey . . " Clearing his throat, Ardwyn adjusted his glasses, and held a sheet of foolcap toward the candle light. The great beams of teak were lost in the shadows that gave the height of a cathedral to the ceiling. . . . About the room the strangers sat in isolated groups and talked in whispers as they appraised one another without pretext or shame. five years ago. It is because I have felt that influence that I have lived in it so little. I knew when my brother Jeremiah was killed in this room and John Carton, my dead sister's boy whom I had brought up as a son, disappeared so mysteriously, that I, too, must look forward to satisfying the fates of this house. That Frederick Ardwyn is reading this message to you is proof enough that my intuitions were well founded. I have passed on — and some of you must follow me before many days are out. "It is my one consolation in leaving those I have loved that in death I shall know the solution of the mysteries that have brought such sorrows to my house. T MIDNIGHT tonight, therefore, I shall attempt to communicate with you by the only instrument that gives a voice to the great unfathomable ether — the Radio. I shall speak to those assembled here and I shall tell them what I have learned of the secrets of this> cursed house. The lights must be turned out and the guests whom I have caused to be gathered here will si.t quietly before the Radio receiver, the dials of which have been set to the markings hereinafter designated." softer voice of Cousin William in dutiful echo. "I guess you must have been. Yes, yes." "Well I'd like to see the man as says I wasn't. Here were these Turners marryin' heathen wimmin in foreign parts an' piling up gold — the curse of the world if I do say it. And I knew somethin' would happen to them. Which it certainly has . . . Just like I said it would." "Quite right. It certainly has . . . Right there where your foot is they found Jeremiah Turner with his face in the ashes. He was shot right between the eyes. And they say the look in his face was that of a man peerin' plumb into Hell. That's what they say — yes!" Cousin William's voice had carried farther than he was aware and a sudden silence fell over . the guests. White faces stared wide eyed into the candlelight. "For God's sake keep quiet," commanded Henry Graves with unmistakable evidence of rasped nerves. And then "When you, my relatives, the last of our clan, hear this message I shall be dead," continued the lawyer. "Frederick Ardwyn, my old friend and adviser. will be speaking for me. But more than that I shall be speaking through his lips The lawyer stopped. There was a moment of silence, then a babel of hysterical comment. "This is poppycock!" declared Henry Graves with a tone of conviction that his nervousness belied. "Don't say that," advised Mary Williams. "You don't know . . . Perhaps Uncle Peh-g knew. Perhaps he . . . " (Continued on page 26)