051- The Diamond as Big as the Ritz -William Conrad

Fed up with the everyday grind. Tired out from the summer heat. Wanna get away from it all? We offer you... escape! Escape! Designed for you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure!

You are prisoner in the magnificent mountain retreat of the richest man in the world. While haunting you, terrifying you, is the knowledge that the ultimate escape will be death. Tonight we escaped to an isolated Montana plateau and the strange secret of a stranger family.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald told it in his fantastic story, the diamond as big as the ritz. I've been going to St. Midas Prep School for a couple of years. This was my second summer vacation.

I met this fellow Percy Washington during the winter. You got to be pretty good friends with him. Only I didn't know about his family or where he came from or anything like that. Of course I knew he must be rich.

All the fellows at St. Midas came from wealthy families. So when he invited me to spend the summer at his home, out west someplace, it was okay by me. We'd been on the train overnight when he first mentioned it.

I don't even remember now what led up to it. We've been talking about the first one thing and then another. Percy, exactly where is your home? I mean, you bought the train ticket in Washington.

It's in Montana, sort of the little place. Oh yeah. Pretty wild country, isn't it? Some of it is. Now you take Hades, Missouri, where I come from. It's been settled for 150 years. One of the first towns on the Mississippi River.