Death of a Doll

Good evening, friend. This is your host to welcome you through the creaking door into the inner sanctum. Slither in, won't you? Sorry, the place is such a mess. I'll sweep it up later. Those are just tips off the old blocks.

Been doing my boneward. Oh, did I tell you? Sure, I'm going back to school this year. All good in ours. Let it do, string along with us for a while. After all, this is a newspaper story.

If you feel a little cold as we go on, it's only because we have a story to tell you. Ah! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Tonight's inner sanctum mystery, death of a doll, was written by Fred Maethold and stars Mason Adams in a role of Will with Ted Osborne as Beau Cotten.

This is the story of Willie Harper and the Devil. And how will he, on his first assignment for the morning blade, finds himself at two in the morning, sweating nervously in the murky shadows of a riverfront street.

Willie had a gun in his pocket and a doll that belongs to a dead girl tucked under his arm. A block away, leaning against the one's streetlight, impassive grotesque ape-like, is the devil waiting for women.

I keep saying this is 1948. And I keep saying this has been happened. And I keep saying whether you believe in the devil or not, you don't meet him till you're dead. But believe me, that's the devil over there under that lamp.

At three o'clock he's coming for me. Sure, you've got a right to think I'm crazy, standing around waiting to be killed with a doll under my arm. It's all started ten days ago, around five in the afternoon at the city morgue.