 Good evening, friends of the inner sanctum. This is your host to welcome you through the squeaking door. Ah, our cast assembled here in a highly unique manner tonight. The angineau flew in the window. Did anyone whisper which window? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Another nimble member of the cast crawled out of the studio woodwork. This creep said that he simply loved popping up where least suspected. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, unforgettable character. Meet him once and they'll haunt you right to your grave. Ha, ha, ha. But seriously, every last one of them is really and truly wrapped up in his work. Like a, shall we say, ascorpion. Hmm. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Tonight's inner sanctum mystery, Hangman's Island, was written by John Robert and stars Mason Adams in the role of Regan, with else with Eric as Wilma. We're on an island somewhere off the Florida Key. Hangman's Island, a bleak ruin of marsh rubble and scotch pine trees. It is sometime between night and morning, cowering in the marsh crawling on all fours like a giant ant. It's a man, ragged, smeared with his own blood, as his life slowly ends away. He crawls like a hunted animal with the taunting voice of the hunter exploding in his brain. Regan! Are you dead yet? Regan! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Now you, Regan, I can hear you move, and I'm your servant. I know exactly where you are, and I watch you, and I take this island. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And the morning has come for you. Just one more hour, Regan, and it will be morning. One more hour... up there in the sky. I can see a gold ball, the sun... burning up the night. Ha, ha, ha, ha. A gold ball in the sky. A gold I'm gonna guess. It all began the day I got the feeling that Fats was about to dust me off part company. Fats had that little greedy gleam in his eye that spelled a secret bankroll. I could tell he didn't want me around to help him count it. I could use five. Who couldn't kid? Hey, you're not hinting you think I've got five. You've got that well fed look the last couple days, huh? Lobster dinner look. You're talking from hunger kid. I've been bumming coffee and just like you. Hand me that necktie, huh? Steppin' off? Yeah. Regan. Why? I've been thinking. We haven't done so good teamed up. Our luck's been all bad. So? So we ought to face up to it. And part company, huh? Yeah. I was thinking that starting in the morning one of us ought to shove off. You going alone? Sure. No hard feelings. Sure. No hard feelings. Fats had some swindle cooking and he wanted a hog. I followed right behind him to a shack on the wharf that furnished cheap piano music and heaping plate of fishing ships. I was right behind a paper thin partition and watching Fats and a blonde doll sitting over a lobster dinner. The doll had hair as golden as anything in the mid. He was the last aim in the world you'd expect to make a pitch for a roly-poly fatso crock. I didn't catch your name the other day, Goldilocks. Wilma. Your mind made up? I have. What's the other half of you holding out for? More on the line. How much more? The same slice in advance. You're expensive, friend. Down at the heel pan, Handler. You'll find another slice in this envelope. How about the rest of the instruction? You'll find them written on this. How long have I got? When you're finished, we'll meet again. Fats was cooking a fancy dish, all right? Early that night in the wormy room we shared, I waited till Fats was asleep. I had to find things out fast before daylight brushed me out of his life. I went through his pockets. Fats had a bankroll, all right? More dull than he'd ever seen outside of his dreams. A thousand dollars in yellow-backed gold notes, the kind of treasury he'd called in back in the 30s. And all soiled and damp like they'd been buried somewhere. In another pocket I found the note the girl had slipped. It was a map of an island drawn by hand, like a treasure map with arrows leading in from a beach and pointing to what looked like a cave somewhere in the middle of the island. A map read Hinckley's Island, a treasure map right out of a kid's storybook. There was a big star over the last arrow where the cave showed. A star that yelled pot of gold at me so loud my pulse jumping made enough noise to wake in Fats out of dreamland. What are you snooping around my clothes for? What's the gun for? Yo, double-crossing roll-up, lover. So you were thinking one of us ought to shove off in the morning. Who's joking, kid? One of us will shove off. Just one of us. Oh, kid, don't be fooled. You don't know what it's about. I can read maps too. And I can cut off gold back. Regan, it's not your kind of a pitch. This isn't petty larceny. It's something small-time. What's the pillow for? What are you going to do? Yes. Regan, don't. We'll go together. I'll split the roll with you. I'll go, Fats. I couldn't trust you alive anymore. So long, Fats. See you in the next world. I could feel the warrants blow out of him like escaping steam. And then he grew cold. He came out the back door then rode across Cracodile Creek into the Everglades. I dumped him. I didn't have to wait him down or worry that he might float to the mainland and be discovered. Not a chance. Not in Cracodile Creek. I read the map again. Hinkley's Island, four miles out in the ocean. Made my way to a boat landing. I wanted to go after the money at once. It had to be hidden treasure. What else? I wasn't beating my brains out, figuring what were the exact terms of Crocker's deal with the blonde. Or what else lay behind me? I was too hot-dubbed. The boat landing the ocean was acting up. I signed Red Peterson's boats for a higher day or week. I knocked for Peterson. Yes? I want to rent a motor boat. Tonight? Tonight. My skin, I'll cover the liability. Where are you figuring on that? Hinkley's Island. Hangman's Island? I said Hinkley's Island. What made you say Hangman's Island? Because that's its name as we know it. What would a young fella like yourself be wanting with Hinkley? Why, is he poison? They've got the brand of the devil, Hinkley. Now, you've got me interested. Exactly who is Hinkley? Hinkley used to be a public executioner, a hangman, somewhere in the islands. Five thousand in gold every time Hinkley threw the trap and sent a man swinging to eternity. How'd he come to settle on the island? He bought it and retired to it twenty years ago. Brought a young bride in the islands to settle there with him. Nobody's seen hide a hair of the bride ever since that first day, twenty years ago. Has anybody around here ever seen Hangman's Island? Not the easiest. It's worth your life to try. Hinkley's got barbed wire all around it. Nectric voltage, it'd burn you to a crisp if you touched it. Cracked by hermit, huh? You... You can have your money back. Land's drier and safer. I said I wanted to rent a boat. I picked a motorboat off Peterson's Wharf and headed for Hangman's Island. The seas were calmer and the lightning had quit as if someone had pulled a mast to switch. A midnight moon was peeping through. I covered the four miles to the island straight as an arrow and ran the motorboat up on a sandbar that opened into a short rocky beach. I had company on the sandbar. Another boat. I got the map out to figure my course when I sound like the death cry of an animal broke the air. It was a human cry, a man. I looked following the direction of the screen and then, in the distance, outlined high against the sky, a man was hanging from a tree with a crossbar that looked like a gallows. He was hanging by one foot face down. I started forward toward him before I could stop to see him. What an idea, friend. You're having a chance in the world of reaching him. Who are you? Burnside, Lieutenant Burnside of the Coast Guard. Is that a uniform? It's still Lieutenant Burnside of the Coast Guard. What do you mean I haven't got a chance of reaching him? The island is a big booby trap. You've got to get through electrified barbed wire to get anywhere. You've got to get through the barbed wire and you've still got to get by the late-action bomb that'll blow you to smithereens. And quick sands, cleverly covered over, and camouflage. And line bits that would eat you alive if you dropped into one. McEvoy there walked into one of the simpler devices. Steel-jawed animal trap. Swung him into mid-air, hanging by one heel. Who is McEvoy? He's my sidekick. I mean, was. You get stranded on that sandbar? Yeah, yeah, I lost my bearings and ran up on it. Well, that map you were reading a minute ago, let's see it. Maybe I can set you back on your course. How do you know it was a map? I guess. You're shaking your head. I'm doing more than shaking my head. I see. You mean to shoot that gun? If I don't get some straight talk, I'm fast. Okay, straight talk. That map you're carrying, what if I told you the map is the biggest booby trap of all? I'd laugh out loud. The girl palmed off a similar map on a couple of characters a month ago in Key West. They run at a boat in school for Hangman's Island and... And what? That's all. They never came back. You'll probably run into them in one of the line plates. Or under their quicksand, Tucker. Don't believe me, huh? Still shaking your head. I've got goldbacks, mister. A pocket full of them. This says you're just trying to scare me off. The goldbacks are the bait. The girl snitched them from Hinkley's savings. Why would she bother just to get them away? Some insanity of hers. Let's just say that the golden-haired siren baits men to their murder for reasons of their own. You, um... Still pushing ahead? I still want to know who you really are, Mr. Burnside. You're still Lieutenant Burnside of the Coast Guard. We've been watching the girl. We came here to arrest Hinkley for the murder of those two men who never returned a month ago. I'll let Hinkley identify me for it. We are no tricks, Burnside, or I'll show you. Adjust this rock. I'll hit one of those wires and start the bell ringing. How was it? Lieutenant Burnside. This is Hinkley. Your man hanked my ass down. Strangled by his own blood rushing to his head. Ha-ha-ha-ha. Your next Burnside. Believe me now? Sure. Crazy. I believe it. Then give it up and don't hamper me. I've got enough to do. I have to tangling with Hinkley. Put your gun down. No! I'm in it for the whole ride. How far can you get? Right to the star on that map. Okay, Burnside. Turn around. You're regretting. I might regret giving you a break. Better turn around. Burnside fell like a slaughtered ox. Somehow I didn't have the heart to drill him. It was one murder I wasn't up to. He'd be out cold, stay put until I worked my way to the cave on the map. Luck. Lady Luck couldn't give me the horselab, not after what I'd done chasing her. She couldn't. She stayed with me as if I was somebody special. I'd pass an arrowed marker on the map an inch closer to the cave and a landmine would blow a shower of sand and rock into the air. Just 20 yards away, maybe 30, but I stayed alive and unhurt. I was brushed live wise and started bells ringing in a jangling chorus, but I pushed on like a foot soldier crossing no man's land. Inch, inch, yard. Seemed ours, but I made it. I made it on my hands and knees. I made the cave. Only it wasn't a cave, really. It had a heavy door with polished brass fittings tooled into an opening. An eerie yellow light shone from a square little window. It looked like a, like a mausoleum where the dead were put to rest. I went in with my gun drawn. It was a mausoleum casket in awe. Sitting solemnly in mourning clothes like a high priestess of the black arts. With the golden girl, Wilma. You. Where is he? The fat one. I'm reek and set to do them for him. Any objection? Not if you have the steel at me. I have the steel. I'm here in the cave with all the booby trucks. I'm right here. Yes, you have the steel for the job. Job? What do you mean job? You don't know. Not exactly. I guessed that Hinkley has a fortune hidden. A gold horde maybe. And you're betting he loses it to whoever has the steel to take it from. You made that kind of a deal with me. It's a joke. Your guess is so funny. Who has no gold horde? Come again? I said there's no gold, no fortune. All you'll get is what I pay you. Look, sister, don't play Captain Moss with me. I killed a man. I crawled here in my hands and my knees. I'm covered with blood and sweat. I followed that map. I died with every arrow. Now I'm here at the end of the rainbow. Don't kid. I can't help what you imagined. I imagined a pot of gold. I looked at that map. I imagined a pot of gold in my brain radio back shore. You can go to it, boy. Where is it? Where's the gold? You're hurting me. Try lying on your losing arm. Where does the loony hermit keep you? That's the gold you... Casket. The gold's right here in this cave, just like the star in the map shows it. It's not casket, is it? Why not see for yourself? Sure. Sure, I'll see for myself. What do you see? You. You're in there. Lying with your arms, folding on your chest. Dead. Is it me? Sure. The exact image. Face. Figure. Size. Beautiful. And the hair, Regan. Golden. Like yours. As golden as anything in the mint. There's your gold, Regan. Just that. No more. What kind of crazy... Who is she? She was my mother. She's not a day-old, isn't she? Just carefully preserved. She died at exactly my age now. The idea wasn't preserving like that. Hinkley. She's his... Hagan got it. He pretends she's alive. Agents. But she never really died. And you... You're Hinkley's daughter. And you... You hate him. Yes, I hate him. Coast guard man on the beach said you were a siren luring men to their death here. Wrong. I lure men here to kill Hinkley. You'll have to kill Hinkley now. He knows you're here. He's overheard our whole talk. This cave is wired and Hinkley listens. So if you want to live, if you want to hang men's island alive, you'll have to kill Hinkley. Where are you going? Wilma, come back! You can't go! Wilma, come back! Right under my nose she disappeared as if she'd floated through the walls. I'd have to kill Hinkley, she'd say. I didn't have any choice. If I wanted to escape, I'd have to kill Hinkley. Hagan. You know exactly where you dared open the casket for that you will die. I was in the devil's backyard. All right, my old Peter's in a sad. I tried to crawl back to the beach infantry style of my hands and knees. Not the lady luck was small. She couldn't desert me now, not now. The bullet? Not me right in the stomach. A rifle shot from somewhere. I couldn't fight back. The bullet got you. I'm freaking out. I can't crawl in. Inch. Inch. It seemed hours. I passed a hat sitting on the edge of a lime pit. Just a hat. Whoever owned it had tumbled in. There must be some place to escape, some place to die. The landline went off my 30 yards away. The whirling dust caked my clothes. Chips of flying rock hit me in the face. In the morning I'll come for you, Hagan. Just one more hour. One more hour. Something had happened to Hinckley. Two shots in the scream. A death cry like Maccaboy scream when the trap swung him into the tree that looked like a gallows. I looked up over the island. There was an old man. Hinckley. He had to be Hinckley. Hanged by a hill faced downward. It was Hinckley. Caught in his own movie. It was Burnside's Hinckley. Just lost control of the situation. One hour. Don't bother coming. The last poor Regan. Out cold and no gold. What a story. A crazy hermit, booby trapped. The gallows quicksand. A mausoleum, a blonde witch. An informant tells me that Dracula was scheduled to appear on page 25. But the author fell into a lime pit on page 24. Moral? There's some jittery Joe out a homely hint of how to keep from going cold. Ha ha ha. Okay, friend. When bitten by the gold bug, don't yell Eureka. Be cautious. Play safe. Y'all help. Goodbye. Pleasant dream. Intersanctum came to you through the United States Armed Forces Radio Service. The voice of information and education.