015- Casting the Runes

Had a hard day at the office. Back ache from bending over a hot stove all day. Wanna get away from it all? We offer you... ...Escape! It is midnight, and you are alone. Suddenly the room is plunged into darkness.

You sit frozen with terror. Because something is there behind you. Something you feared would come. Something from which you must escape. Escape produced and directed by William N. Robeson and carefully plotted to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure.

Tonight we escaped to London and a world made strange and terrifying by the workings of an ancient barbaric curse. As Montague R. James tells it in his weird story, casting the runes is Edward Dutting.

I'm a scientist. I'm used to dealing with facts, not fairy tales. I'm regarded as Britain's leading authority on medieval life, and as such I've studied much of the ancient fears and barbaric superstitions of those times. I should have been the first to scoff at any suggestion with the ancient powers of evil. The black magic of Teutonic days could be believed and practiced in the 20th century.

A few weeks ago I should have laughed had you told me that a curse, a hex could kill a man. Today I cannot laugh. It has happened to a man I know of. And now it's happening to me.

My first presentment of danger came on that day a few weeks ago when I dropped into Sea Alfred Smythe, Secretary of the National Science Association, and found him in a state of irritation. He lasted all downing.

I almost wish you hadn't been so brutally honest in your report on that Carswell paper. Why? What's the trouble? He's such a frightful fellow. He's raising a terrible row. You mean Carswell himself? Yes, it's bad enough a vicious charlatan like that calling himself a scientist.