Black Museum-10-The Champagne Glass

This is Orson Welles, speaking from London. The Black Museum. A repository of death. Yes, here in the Grimstone structure on the Thames, which I was a Scotland Yard, is a warehouse of homicide. Where everyday objects, a man's necktie, a woman's glove, a boy's school cap, all, are touched by murder.

Now here's a champagne glass. That's a familiar object, long stem, delicate curve, shining crystal. This fragile object belongs to New Year's Eve, to weddings and anniversaries. Funny about things like this, Sergeant? Funny, sir. I'd say that one was loaded.

I meant funny in a philosophical sense, Sergeant. Funny how human beings can take an article meant for happiness and use it for tragedy. Where that chantanguine can be found today in the Black Museum. From the annals of the Criminal Investigation Department of the London Police, we bring you the dramatic stories of the crimes recorded by the objects in Scotland Yard's Gallery of Death.

The Black Museum. This museum of murder, this place echoes with violent death. Voices are hollow here, whether the hollowness is caused by the high-voted ceilings or by the reaction of the human mind or the atmosphere of this room.

The effect is the same. Everybody who comes here, it's a fear. Natural because here lies death, unnecessary revenge for a greedy. Still a kind of death brought by one man, one woman or another. This is a record to be studied, not merely by criminologists, but by every student of man's inhumanity to man.

Here's an iron skillet, it's heavy in your hands, and utensil your grandmother used, well-balanced, quite suitable for frying eggs or veal chops, or for bashing a skull, perhaps. These little doubters used which brought this particular skillet here.