What happens
Magician Barastro arrives in William Spier's office claiming he has come to murder a rival, Rico Santoni, a magician he calls the most evil man in the world. Barastro tells his story: years earlier, while traveling with a small carnival in Europe, he met a blind girl named Anna, whose future he read and whose grandfather later asked him to tell her fortune. Barastro married her, and the arrival of the charming Santoni troubles the couple. Orson Welles plays the leading roles in this Suspense episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast on April 13, 1944, adapted from a story by Ben Hecht.
A magician's story told in a Hollywood office, recounting a traveling carnival in southeastern Europe and a village in Russia.
Characters: Barastro, Anna, Rico Santoni, William Spier, Anna's grandfather
Listen for: Barastro's account of his marriage to Anna and the unsettling arrival of Rico Santoni.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.