SOUND Clock strikes 8 o'clock.
The announcer recaps the story up to this date. Jack, Doc and Reggie have been hired by millionaire David Greylin, to protect him from threatened death. A weird hymn, almost a death knell, has been haunting his house. Not helping manners is that Greylin’s secretary Parker and Tomlinson, the giant Cockney chauffeur, have been openly hostile to the detective trio. Greylin’s daughter, Lindy, is also acting strangely, using violence, denial and even feminine wiles to gain some mysterious advantage. Greylin himself came within an inch of taking Jack’s life. Later, Greylin insisted on the group of them going for an evening swim, despite Lindy’s furtive warning not to do so, that there was something dangerous about the pool! While the three were changing into bathing trunks, the lights went out, a shot suddenly rang out, and David Greylin’s body was found floating face down in the darkened swimming pool, with his daughter Lindy, the butler Wilkins, and Parker staring, seemingly frozen in place!
Doc pushes past the others, smoothly dives in, and turns Greylin’s immobile body over. Luckily, he’s still alive! Jack, Doc and Reggie finally retrieve Greylin from the pool, and haul him dripping over the side and onto the tiled deck. He’s unconscious, but after Jack does a fast survey, pronounces that Greylin’s going to live; he only has a bleeding graze along his left upper flank and chest.
Wilkins and Parker claim to have seen nothing; they had been inside the house at the time the lights went out and the shot fired, and they alibi each other. Useless for Jack’s purposes for the moment, he allows them to disappear along the path that leads back into the Greylin mansion.
Jack tries to force the bikini-clad Lindy to tell her what happened, but she appears too shaken for questioning at the moment. Instead, he sends her off with Doc (who has a firm grip on her upper arm) to go into the house and get some first aid supplies.
They return with the supplies, Lindy now wearing a terry-cloth robe. Jack tries to resume his questioning as he bandages David Greylin, but something has changed in Lindy. She is very evasive on questioning, adopts a sulky and sullen manner, and calls Jack a "copper" for all his efforts.
Greylin’s superficial wounds finally dressed, Jack instructs Reggie to have the unconscious man carried to his bedroom and to stand guard by him. The blonde Englishman readily agrees, and after easily lifting Greylin in his arms, heads into the house.
Not mentioning to the others at the time, Jack reveals to Doc that he had spotted a revolver sitting at the bottom of the pool. Already wet, Doc is sent to dive down and get it, and that’s when Lindy takes the opportunity to break free. She moves off a dozen feet, her arms crossed, and looking daggers at the others. Jack tells Doc to ignore her for the moment, and Doc dives in.
Doc suddenly splutters in alarm; he’s been ambushed in the pool!
DOC: Come a-runnin'...Jack...this here thing ain't human!JACK: Here I am! What is it?
DOC: I dunno! There! Can't you feel it?
JACK: Yes, I--here, wait...I can get a swing at it...
DOC: So can I! Wait! I'll hit it with the butt of the (grunts) gun!
SOUND (Explosion as rubber horse breaks)
DOC: What was that???
JACK: (Groans) Oh...you...POOR...FOOL!...OOOOH! YOU IDIOT!!!
Jack goes on at length, madder than a box of wet cats.
JACK: Come here! (pause) Look! (pause)
DOC: Was that what I was a-fightin'?
JACK: Yes. That's what you were fighting!
DOC: Oh (silly laugh). Funny, ain't it?
JACK: Scare the life out of a guy! Got yourself all steamed up because Lindy said the pool was dangerous...the lights go out...and you bumped into a silly rubber horse--go crazy--and put on a big fight with a silly...pump up...rubber horse!
Doc simply shrugs, and dives down again, groping along the bottom of the darkened swimming pool The gun is finally retrieved from the watery depths by Doc, who turns it over to Jack, who turns it over in his hand as Lindy looks on wide-eyed. It’s a pearl handled silver-plated revolver, with a name engraved on the barrel of it. Jack squints at the name, and reads the name engraved on it with astonishment:
JACK: Look! "DAVID GREYLIN"!!
LINDY: (Gasps) No---no!
DOC: Ketch her, Jack! Ketch her! She's fainted!
MUSIC (Organ, "Valse Triste.")
Episode 7: Friday August 16th, 1951
SOUND: Clock strikes Nine-o'clock.
At the identification of the owner of the revolver, her own father, Lindy had fainted dead away! Doc and Jack try to revive her, and the girl slowly emerges from her faint, mumbling to herself as she does so. Shamelessly, the two of them eavesdrop:
LINDY: They'll find out. They'll find out, I tell you...your eyes are (very softly) your eyes can be so...so kind (BIG) But now they are horrible! I-- (moans)DOC: Boy, gives you the creeps.
JACK: Shut up!
LINDY: I'll have to do it. I'll have to if you don't...don't (coming out of it) Oh...Oh...I remember now...
Lindy suddenly arouses from her stupor, and clams up, after realizing what she has been saying. Despite Jack’s urging to speak, she is silent as she stands up shakily on the patio.
Doc finally has a chance to towel off, and being ravenous, moves over to the spread of food. Picking over the goodies, and talking out loud about bringing some food back inside for Reggie, Doc suddenly hears a peculiar noise coming from the direction of the house.
It is a strange, musical sound, and Doc instantly recognizes it; it’s the same weird hypnotic hymn they had first heard in the Library—Greylin’s death knell! Doc drops the platter of food in his hand in surprise, saving only a sausage for himself. He grabs Jack, and the two rush along the path towards the house, with Lindy racing along close behind them.
They are about to enter the French doors that lead into the house, when Jack stops suddenly. In a whisper, he tells the others he sees something; a man crouched in the shadows next to a window!
As Jack and Doc move in, Lindy screams, and the mysterious figure streaks off away from the house, and back towards the swimming pool. Jack yells to Doc to intercept, and the red-headed Texan rushes back up the path to cut the man off. Doc moves in to conk the mysterious figure with the weapon in his hand.
His blow has a surprising response; despite Doc hitting the man on the head with all his might, the man shrugs off the blow, pushes Doc across some of the patio furniture, and races away out of sight. Panting, Jack and Lindy arrive just as Doc untangled himself from the jumble of tables and chairs he had been caught up in, and Doc tells his story of his encounter with this seemingly invincible and invisible enemy. Jack is suspicious and mistrustful. He tells Doc to repeat his story again, eyeing him closely as he does so.
DOC: Yeh, I jest...hey, what is this?JACK: Your gun's in your left ha--LET ME SEE THAT OTHER HAND...
DOC: Well, I'll be a --
JACK: (Wild) You long legged Texas fool! You got excited--
DOC: Yeah...
JACK: (Yells) We got the thing captured--
DOC: Yeah...
JACK: And what do you do...you leave your gun in your left and and...
DOC: Uh huh...
JACK: AND HIT THE THING OVER THE HEAD WITH THAT BLASTED SAUSAGE!!!
MUSIC (Organ, "Valse Triste.")
Episode 8: August 20th, 1951
SOUND Clock strikes 10 o'clock.
The announcer recaps the story up to this date. Jack, Doc and Reggie have arrived that very afternoon at the house of millionaire motion-picture producer David Greylin, to protect him from threatened death. As part of this threat, a weird hymn, almost a death knell, has been haunting Greylin. The very afternoon the three had arrived, Greylin himself was shot in the breast and fell into his swimming pool later that evening. Greylin was rescued by Doc, the wound dressed by Jack, and then put to bed with Reggie standing guard. Later the gun was found that had shot Greylin, one discovered to have belonged to Greylin himself. And just half an hour ago, Doc pulled the boner of his life! He had been carrying a sausage for Reggie, and in the excitement of encountering a prowler, he hit the thing on the head with it, and not the butt of his revolver!
JACK: (fading in) In all my life I've never seen such a fat-headed, muddle-brained, stupid, dopey half-witted idiot!DOC: (subdued) Is that the truth.
JACK: We trail that---that thing for fifteen minutes...we wait and wait for a chance to get our hands on it...we finally get our big chance..AND WHAT DO YOU DO???
DOC: (Meek, simply) I hit it with a sausage.
During Doc’s verbal shellacquing by Jack, Lindy has been trembling like a leaf, terrified. First the weird death knell hymn, and later the encounter with the mysterious prowler. Seeing her terror, Jack stops his harangue. Doc is subdued, and not his normal happy-go-lucky self. Jack eventually has to cajole him to move along and join him for another idea Jack has for them, to check in on Lindy’s father.
They head over to Lindy’s father’s room, but along the way, Doc accidentally trips Jack, who goes wild again on our poor Texas red-head, who becomes even more subdued and withdrawn. They finally arrive and knock at the door to Greylin’s bedroom, but hear no answer. Were Reggie and Greylin alright? They are about to break down the door, when suddenly Reggie comes up behind them then, and tells the others to follow him-- immediately, on the run! He explains as he goes that Greylin is somewhere down-stairs, calling for help!
Reggie’s story unfolds. Reggie had carried Greylin to his room, laid him down on the bed, and then sat down by his side to wait. Greylin had then partly roused, and said some peculiar things while unconscious. Lindy, upset that Reggie had tried to listen in on her father’s unconscious and seemingly delirious mumbling, tries to interrupt, only to be silenced with a word from Jack. Reggie goes on to say that when he bent over Greylin, he at first only heard mumbling, but then distinctly heard the words, "I’ll fix them all—every one!"
Greylin surprised Reggie then by suddenly sitting bolt upright in his bed. Seemingly okay that point, but very upset and suspicious that Reggie was part of the treacherous plot to kill him, he demanded Reggie to leave the room, thinking that our blonde Englishman was one of the Enemy! Reggie tried to calm him down, but Greylin only became more and more agitated and paranoid, telling Reggie that the only way that Reggie could prove his good intentions would be to step out and leave him alone. Reluctantly, Reggie did step out of the room, but stood guard by his door. After five minutes of silence, he opened the bedroom door, and found Greylin had gone! He had vanished into thin air!
As Reggie stood in the bedroom, thinking about what he would do, he suddenly heard a frantic cry for help from downstairs—from Greylin! He rushed downstairs, and heard the voice calling again from another part of the house. He’s been spending the last few minutes chasing Greylin through the house, but never catching sight of him. The last time he had clearly heard him was in the cellar of the mansion. That’s when Reggie thought he’d go back to the bedroom, where he found Jack, and the others.
Down in the gloomy cellar, they hear Greylin’s voice again, nearby! As they cast about, and hear his frantic voice again, this time seeming to come from behind a very thick wooden door. The door has the fixtures for a sliding bar (the bar is however not in place, instead just sitting beside the door), but the door itself is securely locked.
LINDY: (Fast, tense) Now listen to me! You've got to listen to me! That door...right there...that he (Doc) is trying to open...it's forbidden! Do you hear me? Forbidden!JACK: I hear you, but it doesn't make sense.
LINDY: Please! Ever since I was a little girl I've been warned about that door. There are...things...in there! Horrible things! I didn't say anything before because I hoped you wouldn't find it...now DON'T open it...it might mean Death. Tell him to stop!
Jack ignores her, and the locked door is eventually opened. Through it, they see a dark hallway, and a figure is seen dimly at the other end of it, one with the glint of a gun in his hand!
Jack demands the figure to drop the gun, and put up his hands, but the figure ignores him! Jack repeats his warning challenge in a grim voice:
JACK: ...are you going to drop that gun? No? All right...I'll count to three and we shoot! One...two...three!!!SOUND (Revolver shooting four times fast, and each time, hitting glass)
LINDY: (Screams)
DOC: Jack! Are you hurt? JACK!
JACK: No. I'm not hurt...but I guess I had to get him.
Doc lopes down the hallway towards the mysterious figure, and then makes a surprising discovery. He calls out towards the others, with a sudden lift to his voice:
DOC: Well I'm a bow-legged bull pup's uncle! Our Jack! Stood right there an' emptied his gun into a lookin' glass! Shot at his own image in a mirror! Talking to himself an' TELLIN' HISSELF TO PUT UP HIS HANDS! Well, I'll be!
JACK: (Feeling silly) Guess I did, all right, guess I did.
DOC: Yeah. IN ALL MY LIFE I AIN'T NEVER SEEN SUCH A FAT-HEADED, MUDDLE BRAINED, STUPID (fading out) DOPEY HALF-WITTED IDIOT!!!
MUSIC (Organ, "Valse Triste.")
Episode 9: August 21st, 1951
SOUND Clock strikes 11 o'clock.
DOC: (Fading in) Yes sir, Jack...that jest beat all! Jack Packard, soldier of fortune, adventurer, hero of a hundred battles...a-shootin' at hisself in a lookin' glass! Boy, that's wonderful!
REGGIE: Oh, look here, Doc...aren't you making more of it than you need to? This passageway is dark...hardly see a thing.
JACK: Never mind, Reggie. I have it coming. I've been riding him all evening...
Yes, the worm has turned, and Doc is back to his fiery self, all self doubt from that evening having vanished! Oblivious to this sub-text, Lindy tries to convince all of them that her father simply isn’t here. Furthermore, everyone (that is, everyone but her father!) has warned her away from here, telling her it was a dangerous place to be…
Absently listening to her, Jack is examining the glass he has just shattered with his bullet. He suddenly realizes, as he turns over some of the shards, that this used to be a two-way mirror, and shares this discovery with the others. Pointedly, he ask Reggie, "See what that means," and while Reggie nods in agreement, Doc, curious and puzzled, interrupts:
DOC: Well, not quite.
JACK: Simply that this mirror was placed at the end of the hall so that anyone entering the hall would be seen by anyone standing behind the mirror...it's just an elaborate peep-hole
Lindy, visibly relieved that no one's behind the mirror that was smashed by Jack’s bullet, again tries to convince them again that there’s no one and nothing of interest down the corridor. Furthermore, that there is no secret passage or door, and that they are wasting their time down here, and that they should be looking upstairs. Jack, fed up with her obstructionist actions, tells her to be quiet; only if she wants to help should she speak up, but not before.
Moving down the corridor, past the shattered two-way mirror, with the reluctant Lindy in tow, they find it ends in a blind cul-de-sac. Tapping about on the smooth walls, they find one area that seems hollow. After a nod from Jack, Reggie slams his burley shoulder into the panel, forcibly splintering it. A darkened hole is revealed, and after Reggie pulls out some loosened bits of wood and plaster, they realize that they have discovered a secret room!
Again, Lindy tries to warn the three off, but to no avail. Desperate by now, and realizing that Jack is intending to enter the secret room, Lindy pulls a gun on the three of them!
The gun a cannon in her small hands, she tremulously threatens to shoot them if they do attempt to enter the room!
With a glance at the others, Jack distracts her, contemptuously saying:
JACK: Her father's daughter, all right...LINDY: (Wild) What...was...that? If you mean what I think you mean, there no use you coming out into the hall...I'll drop you right where you are!
JACK: Rehearsing, Lindy? Trying to act? You're saying the right words...but they don't ring true.
Her attention diverted, Doc suddenly slaps at Lindy’s gun-hand, knocking the weapon to the floor. Simultaneously, Reggie smoothly glides over and grabs Lindy from behind, holding her firmly in place. The three start to discuss their next step, when they have another unhappy surprise.
The door at the end of the corridor, the one past the broken mirror, suddenly closes with a bang, and they hear the sound the door being locked! They rush down the hallway, and as they try to open the door, they hear the sound of a board being slid into place, barricading them in! Adding insult to injury, they hear the rattle of a chain, and hear the sound of a pad-lock snicking forcibly shut, locking them definitely in.
Despite all efforts, the barred door remains shut. Locked in, and knowing they can only go forward, Jack votes that they move onward and enter the secret room; perhaps there will be an exit from there they could leave by?
Lindy, nearly hysterical by this point, warns them again and again not to enter the secret room. So ferocious and insistent are her claims of danger, that she even manages to partly convince Reggie and Doc. The two argue with Jack, that since Lindy seemed so terrified and scared; perhaps there was a good reason to listen to her advice and not to go on?
Jack, however, goes against both of them, tersely saying:
JACK: Well...here's something you both understand. I'm the head of this outfit...I seldom go against your combined wishes...but right now, get this! Doc...stand right there...against that hole in the wall that leads into this other room.DOC: Okay, Jack.
JACK: Reggie...over here...
REGGIE: Here, you mean?
JACK: Lindy, I'm sorry.
LINDY: (Terror) You're MAD. You mustn't. Don't go in there! You mustn't!
JACK: Reggie...you and Doc back me up. We're going into that room NOW!
MUSIC (Organ, "Valse Triste")
Episode 10: August 22nd, 1951
SOUND Clock strikes 12 o'clock.
DOC: Why should we push that button?
LINDY: Please, Mr. Packard. Don't. I mean it. It means death for all of us. Death...I mean it!
For once, Jack is inclined to believe Lindy. He skips over the "Death Button", and firmly presses a more nondescript switch.
What happens next is astounding. The weird, hymn-like song that Greylin called his death knell, the one they had all heard in the soundproof library, and later caused Doc to drop the platter of cold-cuts, is heard in the secret room! Flicking the switch off silenced the song immediately, and flicking it again caused the weird hymn to be heard again!
In a fever, they try other switches on this elaborate "sound effects" control panel. One caused gun shots to be heard distantly, the one next to it caused a closer sounding fusillade of shots. Other buttons causes the sound of shattering glass, sudden hysterical laughter, and so on in different rooms of the house. On switch even recreates the sound of David Greylin's voice, frantically calling for help!
Absorbed with the panel of remote control sound trickery up to this point, they turn to Lindy to see if she has an explanation for their discovery. They suddenly realize at that moment that Lindy is gone; vanished from the doorless room!
Reggie peers down the hallway through the smashed panel; she isn't there, either. Where on earth did she go?
DOC: Hey, looky, I got a swell idea!
JACK: It better be good.
DOC: It's a honey. Maybe this house is haunted and Lindy's a spook!
JACK: Reggie, strangle him where he stands!
MUSIC (Organ, "Valse Triste.")