Menace in Wax: Suspense (November 17, 1942)

“Menace in Wax” is an episode of Suspense, the old-time radio show, first broadcast November 17, 1942. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

In London in March 1941, a reporter named Rogers from the Daily Record visits Madame Tussaud's wax works after a night watchman named Pearson phones his paper with suspicions. Rogers meets Pearson in the Chamber of Horrors, where a woman calling herself Susie Du Bois joins him, and the pair begin to suspect that a card game played by wax figures is a coded message. Rogers takes the message to Colonel Warrender at the War Office, who reads it as a warning about a secret factory. The episode, from the Suspense series, is broadcast on Columbia with a cast led by its narrator and actors of the period.

London and the surrounding English countryside in March 1941, during the Blitz, including Madame Tussaud's wax works, the War Office, and a forest near a secret factory

Characters: Rogers, Pearson, Susie Du Bois, Colonel Warrender, Captain McAllister, Captain Branson

Listen for: The moment Rogers decodes the message hidden in the wax figures' card game, and the trip into the forest to reach the factory

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.