The Heat Wave

It was hot and still, an August night in the middle of April. But that didn't matter to the strip tease dancer in the golden mask, because murder made her blood run cold the night the heat wave struck.

From the pen of Raymond Chandler, outstanding author of Crime Fiction comes his most famous character in... The Adventures of Philip Marlow. Now with Gerald Moore, starred as Philip Marlow, we bring you tonight's exciting story.

The Heat Wave. Only three weeks old, but the sun wore down on Los Angeles with the middle of the summer vengeance. At noon it was 102 in the shade and by 330 the doors, windows and shirt color all open as far as they would go.

I still swatted in the kind of heat that wilts both your clothes and your character. As I tried to make sense from the crisp words of a telegram I just received from one Karen Driscoll Jr. no less, of Nob Hill, San Francisco.

Francisco. It told me to go to the palace theater of Burlesque house on Main Street, watch the performance of the featured dancer get backstage and take a close look at her face, then meet the seven o'clock plane from San Francisco and report what I'd seen to Mr. Schuyl, Jr.

It was a strange request coming from Knob Hill, but the enclosed $50 money order wasn't kidding so I perspired my way down to the palace theater. There instead of the usual 30 beautiful Girl's 30 sign over the marquee was a 50-foot gold banner that screamed the heat wave, who is she?

And the showcase cars that led to the box office were all a circle of question marks that sent it a woman wearing a strange gold mask and little else. I bought a ticket and went inside and time for the tail end of the matinee.