 Tunel Broadcasting Company presents the Adventures of Sam Spade Detective. Thee, sweetheart. Marry 29th of December. You too, Sam. Did you take the little boy home? Yep. Straight home? Well, not exactly. F had to make a couple of emergency stops, but we got there. What do you mean, Sam? Well, I got my weekly knot on the head, for one thing. Sam, just taking the little boy home? Like I said, F, we were derailed. There was a dash of poison, for instance. A couple of pounds of thousand-bucked notes. Oh! And an infernal machine that nearly blew up half the Mission District. But other than that, we had a peaceful ride home. Why, Sam, this sounds like a keeper. Which is just what it is, Angel. Get out our special holiday bottle of Napa Valley wine, and we'll get in our premature regards to the new year, following dictation of a report entitled, The Prodigal of... Prodigal, Sam? Are you sure that's the right word? Certainly, I'm sure. The wonderer will return to the roost. You and your big, fat roost. With our last bedtime story for 1950. Namely, the Prodigal Panda Caper. For NBC, William Spear, radio's outstanding producer, director of mystery and crime drama, brings you the greatest private detective of them all, in the adventures of Sam Spade. Mary, Sam, you've fallen into the trap. Again? Prodigal. Here, now, see? Prodigal, given to reckless extravagance. It doesn't mean wandering at all, see? People think just because the Prodigal some wander, that you... What are we talking about? The Prodigal Panda Caper. How can a panda be given to reckless extravagance? Let me see. Oh, here. Definition three, Prodigal. Yielding abundantly, luxuriant. A panda? Right, right. See note below, it says. You ready for the note below? Where's my pencil? Oh, all right, Sam, I'll take it. Fill in it. Two... Dozier, 2318 Delaney Street, city. From Samuel Spade, license number 137596. Subject, the Prodigal Panda Caper. Right. Dear Roby, I'd spent a relatively pleasant day running down a case of slow pay in North Beach and flushed with success, had returned to my office for a final check of the files. Oh, Underwood Helen. Not sure Roderick. Pardon, Dolly. Where the... Oh, Spirit's Holliday. I sat down, put my head and my feet on the desk and was loosening my collar when I noticed just to the right of my off ankle one large bag of jelly beans. Sighting past it, I saw in the corner chair an open copy of a magazine featuring on the cover a blonde in a low-cut dress, taking a 38 slug from a slack-jawed bug in the background under big red letters spelling out thrilling crime comics. And behind all this, sound asleep, was you. Hey, hey, Sonny. Sonny. Hey. Hey, wake up, will ya? Come on, Reveley's blowing. Huh? Oh. Hi, hi. How long you been here? A long time, I guess. What's your name? Roby. Short for Robuck. Well, what can I do for you, Roby? I've been to the police. They wouldn't do anything. They said I should come to you. You mean you got a job for me? Yeah. Dangerous? Yeah. A hoist. You mean a heist? What was it? My panda bear. Oh, someone stole it? Yeah. It's not mine, really. I bought it for my little brother, Barney. He's five, and he's always wanted one. So when I got the junk money, I went... Junk money? Oh, bottles and papers and stuff. Oh. I collected it from the neighbors and earned six stars and 15 cents. And Barney wanted the panda bear, so I bought it at Lacey's department store today, and they stole it. Who stole it? Well, there was this man in the checkered coat and the lady in the red silk dress. Just like the store in the comic here. Oh. The man looked like that, but the lady looked different. She had black hair and a red dress. And her eyebrows went up this way instead of sideways. Bravo. I was walking down the street with my panda bear, and the lady called me over to a car she was sitting in and started to talk to me. And right away, the man in the checkered coat ran up and grabbed at my panda bear, and they chased me up a fire escape. And the man pulled out a big black gun and said if I didn't come down and give him the panda, he'd shoot me and Barney and Mom. So I came down and gave him the panda. Wow. That's quite a month. Oh. Excuse me, Robbie. Hello. Sam. Yeah, Dundee. This is Dundee. Oh. Sam is a little fella about eight years old on his way over there. No, he's here now, Lieutenant. What's the deal? He gave us quite a story. Well, how'd it go? Now, we took it down. I got it right here somewhere. Go ahead. Let me see. I got a man in a checkered coat and a lady in a red silk dress. Oh, here it is. Quote. I was walking down the street with my panda bear and the lady called me over to her car. Okay, Dundee. He hasn't changed at any. Yeah, we got hold of his mother. Runs an elevator in the Russ building. Good. She says he reads too many comic books. You better send him home. Okay, Lieutenant. Thanks. Come on, Robbie. You're going to send me home? Lieutenant Dundee called your mother, old man. You don't believe me either. Oh, it's not that, Robbie. I can't go home without the panda bear. What do I tell Barney? I promised him, my own brother. Oh, he's home now, waiting? Yeah. Well, tell you what I'll do, Robbie. You let me put you in a taxi and send you home and I'll take the case. You'll get my panda bear? It wouldn't be at all surprised. So if Barney's face hits the floor, just tell him Samuel Spade, Incorporated, is working on it. Only one thing. Huh? I haven't any money left. Oh, you've got jelly beans, haven't you? OK, you can pay me off in jelly beans. Come on now, let's find a taxi. Which we did, Robbie. Like the psychology books said, I didn't discourage the child imagination, but I did try to tout you off thrilling crime comics and onto Alice in Wonderland. This I could see would take some doing. It was almost closing time when I got to Lacy's, but I talked my way past the man at the door and hustled up to the sixth floor and the toy department. The clerks were doing whatever clerks do with 5.30, but I found a handy floor walker. Do you hear me, Mr. Spade? I just don't know. I just don't know. You mean you counted your cash and everything, but you can't... Oh, it's not that, Mr. Spade. I am perfectly willing to stretch a point to please the little fellow. We like to think we're human here, you know. Oh, that's nice. You like to think so, I mean. But you see, something very strange happened this afternoon. I'll come over this way, sir, by the escalator. We had the giant pandas at this counter here. 25 of the large size. I assume that's what you're interested in. I guess so. Then what then? Well, for Christmas, they didn't do anything. Just sat here, huh? Yes. But would you believe it, sir? This afternoon, all 25 were sold. Well, how do you count for that? New Year's Gayety? Well, if you want my personal opinion, it's Miss Greenbrier, the new girl who came to work yesterday. She is endowed with... I know just what it takes to sell pandas. Well, how about the junior model? A medium. Yes. Now, let me see. Where are a few under the counter here? Good. Where? What? I was wrong. Here is a big one. Well, lucky me. How much? $5.79 plus tax. I'll make the slip out, and you can get your change over to me. An impressive panda bear, Ruby, was hard to figure out how you could lose anything that big and harder still to figure out how I'd explain this kind of thing to people who stopped me on Market Street. Be that as it may, my floor walker friend took my cash, tore off the sales slip, and I was about to set sail with my panda when I heard him make the kind of a noise floor workers make when they see what he was looking at. Miss Greenbrier! Miss Greenbrier! She pointed weakly, turned pale even by floor walker standards and sagged to the deck. I turned in time to see Miss Greenbrier collapse at the top of the escalator and watched her come down, draped across three steps like the cover of one of your books of bedtime stories, Ruby. She was the last passenger of the day, or so I thought. When I looked closer, I saw she wasn't a passenger. She was freight. At the lamp counter on the floor above, busily adding up receipts as if nothing had happened, was a dark title built along dragon-lady lines. I'm very sorry, sir, but we closed. I want to know about the girl who just went down the escalator. Miss Greenbrier? Yeah, notice anything strange about her? Why is she ill? Yeah, did she look ill? I thought there must have been something wrong. I said hello to her, and she didn't pay any attention to me. There's only a second to go. Where'd she come from? Around the corner. I think she'd been at the wrapping desk. She had. It was a 10-size sheet of heavy brown paper, a batch of metered postage tape, and a shipping label address to Master Frankie Carson. 281, Evanita Ruiz, Havana, Cuba. Downstairs, I found my floor walker friend had come around and was bending over Miss Greenbrier with an impressive-looking jimp with gray at the temples. Good heavens, it can't be. It just cannot be. That's all. I'm afraid she is, though. In laces, it's unheard of. Why should she be... Good heavens, in my department, too. Excuse me, floor walker. Oh, hey, hey, this is Mr. Spade. He was with me when it... Oh, dear. I'm Dr. Kempthorne. I was exchanging some Christmas gifts when... Any idea what killed her? Well, it's pretty hard to tell without an examination, and I don't have my things with me. Heart, possibly. Natural causes? Well, of course. Why do you have... There are more natural places to dive than at the top of an escalator. And in my department, at Laces, too. Good heavens. Well, who can say? Have to look up the girl's history. If she had a heart condition, well... Sure, sure. Meanwhile, I'll call homicide. They've nothing better to do. For a minute, I thought I'd been reading too many comic books, Robey, but things settled down. When they pulled out the records and found Miss Greenbrier had had a heart condition of long-standing, and the medical examiner wrote it off as natural causes. So, hoping you would consider a jelly bean bonus for promptness, I picked up my panda and went. Outside, I'd gone about ten steps when... Hi, I'm free. It was Larry Healy in a couple of times for Lieutenant Dundee sitting in a patrol car. Oh, you and Bogard. Who's it for? A little kid in the mission. How come? What do you mean, how come? I'm buying a panda bear for a little kid in the mission and I'm buying a panda bear. Does that have to be explained? Okay, Sam, okay, okay. It just hit me the bear ain't turned out quite right. He needs a necktie. Oh? I just happened to have one here. My brother-in-law got me for Christmas. Here, give me. Now, let's see. Larry, how long has there been bad blood between you and your brother-in-law? Bad blood. Listen, even when we were friends, he gave me ties like this. There you are. On your way, Sam. Thanks, thanks. Taxi! Taxi! The cab let me out near the end of Delaney and I started walking up the row of dingy pre-earthquake flats towards your house, Roby, at the end of the street. Park to the curb was a discordant note in this hard-pressed neighborhood, a sleek, custom-built red convertible, one of the kind that looks like it can go 90 miles an hour standing still. The same can be said for the day minute, also a discordant note. You see, San Francisco is a very big, large city. You just don't run into a dame at the Lamp Counter in Lacy's and a half hour later in a dumpy neighborhood in the Mission, unless she wants it that way. Well, hello. Hello, Dragon Lady. Oh, the sillers. You, uh, you must sell a pass in the Lamps. The car? Mm-hmm. But, uh, don't try and explain that now. Just tell me why you followed my cab. Follow you? Why, Mr. Steward? Come on, come on, what is it? You're embarrassing me. I know, since that moment at the Lamp Counter, you can't get me out of your mind. Well, that's a perfectly normal reaction. No, no, it's not that. Oh, dear. The panda bear. You want it in the worst way. You're kind of attractive as men go, Mr. Spade. Could you give me a light, please? Sure. Holding the match up to her cigarette, three things hit me. The black hair, the red dress, and eyebrows that went up instead of sideways. At that point, the sleeve of a checkered overcoat with a big arm inside it came around under my chin from the rear, and the fourth thing hit me. How long I had dwelled in panda land, I don't know, but it was real nice while it lasted. I was a panda, too, I remember. I was going somewhere with a big, over-stuffed private detective under my arm when a lady panda batted her big brown eyes at me and began pulling my nose. She seemed to have a very, very high voice. Wake up, Mr. Spade. Reveille is blowing. If I call Lieutenant Dundee, Mr. Spade, son is way lucky. Sam, what happened? Well, well, it was this way, Dundee. I was walking down the street with my panda bear, and the lady called me over to the car she was sitting in and started to talk to me. Right away, the man in the checkered coat-ups were listening to the weekly adventure of radio's most famous detective, Sam Spade. Sam Heflin stars this Sunday in State Fair, another outstanding 60-minute production by Theatre Guild on the air. Co-starring in this exciting broadcast is one of the leading families in show business, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart, and daughter, June. It's a gala New Year's Eve broadcast when Theatre Guild presents State Fair. Sunday over most of these NBC stations also means another hour and a half with Tallulah Bankhead in radio's greatest spectacle, The Big Show. Among Tallulah's guests will be Ken Murray, Gloria Swanson, Margaret O'Brien, Jose Ferrer, and many more. Now back to the prodigal panda caper, tonight's adventure with Sam Spade. It was a humiliating experience for a way of riding back to headquarters in Black Defeat, but dear, good Lieutenant Dundee, however, was the soul of patience and understanding. What do you take me for, Spade, an idiot? Look, Dundee, all I want you to understand is that this dame in the hopped-up configuration... I have three rides on that merry-go-round now, and I'm sick of it. The dame in the red dress and the guy in the checkered coat. They take your wallet? No. Your watch? Other valuables? No, just my panda. Now, Sam, are you trying to tell me there's a hot panda racket going on? Dundee boy, look closely now as I take off my hat. What? See? Now, as you know, my head ordinarily does not come to a point, but this protuberance was made by a gun butt, not by imagination. Oh, someone slugged you. I believe that, Sam, but this panda bear thingy... Dundee. Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah. You were saying something about my panda bear, Dundee. Maybe I ought to take it back. That dame at the store this afternoon, the one who sold him? Miss Greenbride. Yeah. I just finished the post mortem. No heart attack. She was poisoned. It's a strange thing, Mr. Spade. Very strange. I leave my business thoughts at the store. Floorwalker, just try and remember the dragonlady's name, huh? My good gracious, I... I can't remember my own name. I'm so upset. Oh, now concentrate now. Look. Dark hair, up-tilted eyebrows, red silk dress, works in lamp department on seventh floor. I can picture her so plainly. Dark hair, Floorwalker. Dark hair. Upshot eyebrows. Eyebrows of the red dress, red, red, red. Scarlet. Scarlet. Scarlet, that's it. Easy now. I've got a list of employees right here. What? Scarlet Townsend? Scarlet Townsend, that's the deem. Floorwalker. Landlady? Crystal McCall. It's just now that I was cleaned in the room. Picture of Crystal McCall. Now ain't that a swell way to have your picture taken? Her name rang a bell and so did the picture. Crystal herself and they all together. When I got around to the place I made a startling discovery. Crystal was also the late Miss Greenbrier. Well, don't look at it all day, young man. When did you see this girl last, Landlady? This morning. She and a fella in a checkered coat come round to pick up Scarlet in a big red, open car. Know the fella? Nope, never saw him before. But I sure know that car. Oh, you ought to see it. You're not telling me a thing, Landlady. I have. In Los Angeles, I'd have been dead, but San Francisco is not a convertible town. I found a free phone and began calling the dealers, figuring a bright red custom-built convertible is something you remember, whether you see it or sell it. An hour of this got me nowhere and I'd begun to wonder if the car had been smuggled up from the unmentionable side of the Tahatchovie when the wind changed. So will the yellow one a while back. Thanks, but near misses don't count, friend. But the buyer had it painted red. Special job. Well, you're improving. Who's the buyer? Kim Thorne? Dr. Kim Thorne? Right, Dr. Jules Kim Thorne. Lives on Motley Drive and Bulling Game. That's the only red one I know. Great. That's the only red one I need. Mr. Spade, this is utterly unbelievable. And I certainly don't intend to stand here all night discussing the pros and cons of panda bears. All right, Kim Thorne, let's slide over into your field. Meaning what? The sweet young thing at the store. It turned out dirty. The heart attack? The poison attack. Wow. Suicide, you suppose? What do you suppose? Well, I'm sure I don't know. Look, why don't we hold hands and tell the truth, huh? You'd better run along, Spade. I've had about all of this that I intended. Look, the dead dame was Crystal McCall. Does that mean anything to you? No. The same. Crystal McCall was running around with her hood named Frankie Cassella, formerly of New York, now of Havana by Department of Justice Request. This is all very interesting. What has it to do with me? She was riding around in your red convertible this morning for one thing. That's a hot car, you know. I took a close look at it two hours ago and got slugged. I don't know how you score these things, Kim Thorne, but in my book, this calls for a couple of answers. You're right. You're right, it does. Where's the car? It's gone. Who has it? My chauffeur. This is the last straw. I guess there's no point in covering up for him any longer. Who is it? Lenny Fleagle. Oh, an ex-con, isn't he? Yes. I thought I could straighten him out. He's been missing for two days this time. He just took the car and left. I knew he had something to do with that girl in the toy department at Lacey's, so I went there today. I guess I was too late. You think Fleagle killed her? I don't know. I don't know. Where, uh, where did you see the car? Near the end of Delaney Street. What's the license number? 49-H-822. Oh. I'd better report stolen. Please feel free to call. That I will, Dr. Kempthorne. Bye. What I had in mind, of course, was to call Lieutenant Dundee and have him slap a 24-hour tail on the good doctor, but something intervened. Halfway down the walk to the street, my eye fell on a round plastic object about the size of a nickel lying in the grass. Clearly, the eye of a giant panda. Since two other eyes were obviously watching me through Dr. Kempthorne's front curtains, I continued gaily onto my cab, drove up a half-block, got out and walked back, just in time to see Kempthorne pull away from the curb in his other car heading towards El Camino and points north. Well, this left me free to prowl at will, and four matched books later, I had found two more eyes, a pocket full of panda skin, and a goodly scoop of panda upholstery. The trail led to the garage. There was no wonder his car was stolen. You must have had to leave it on the street all night because there was no room for it in the garage, which had been turned into a kind of panda abattoir, crammed to the rafters with panda bears, all the giant size, two in various stages of disabil. Legs, arms, eyes, and innards. A sight to chill the heart of any but the sturdiest private detective, Ruby. But I braced myself and carried on. Dundee. This is Sam, Dundee. Sam, where are you calling from? Phone booth in a drive-in on El Camino. Listen, the license number on the red custom job is 49-H8222. And the guy driving it is Lonnie Fleagle, an ex-consult. Don't talk to me about that car. Larry Healy picked it up tonight, going 90 on the base shore. Great. Lousy. Why? What happened? Next time I see one of them panda bears, I'm gonna spit right in its eye. So Larry pulls the guy down, and the first thing he sees is the panda bear with a necktie. What about the dragon lady? She came second. All Larry can think of is the hot panda bear, figures they stole it, so he takes it back to the patrol car to return it to the kit. No. Yeah. By the time he got the exhaust smoke out of his eyes, they were gone. Oh, what's that license number again? 49-H8222. You sure? Positive. I'm looking right at it. I... Oh, Dundee. Yeah? We're all at Anderson's drive-in on El Camino. Put it on the air. Just shows you how slow I can think, Roby. The red job was staring at me with its big chrome eyes outside the plate glass window. Fliegel and the dragon lady, bless them, were having a Saturday night blue plate displayed attractively on the tray racks hung from the car doors. I sidled out of the phone booth and threw the kitchen, thereby coming up on the car from behind. More coffee, honey? No, we better get going. Ah, plenty of time. Mind if I join you, Fliegel? Huh? Oh, I... He reached and I pushed, and instead of his gun, he came up with half a hamburger. It was too harsh a light for the dragon lady to operate effectively, and by the time Larry Healy and the foul car pulled up, they decided to do it the easy way. Complete back there. Lovely, Larry. Fliegel? Uh... Dragon lady? Shut up. What about the red job? What are you going to do with it? Larry? Oh, I'm pounded till the lawyers are through talking. Sam, you want to go by way at Delaney Street? Yeah. Okay. Why Delaney Street? Larry delivered the panda. Huh? Sure, to the kid, Roby Dozier. We'll have to go and pick it up. Lenny? Yeah. What's it worth, Fliegel? 50,000? 100? A little kid's got it? Yeah. Oh, Marcel will be disappointed, Fliegel, with the tax boys watching both him and Crystal. It looked like a safe way to get some of his dough out of the country to him. It wasn't my idea. I hated him. I did eight years for him to spate. I could have killed him. Shut up, Lenny. I don't care anymore the heck with it. Look, it wasn't me. The guy who's running things for him here is Dr. Kimthorn, but Crystal had the dough. He killed her. He took her to lunch today and... Lenny! Go ahead, Lenny, so he poisoned her. Then what? She'd fixed up one of the pandas. He didn't know which. The bill's 80, 100,000. I don't know. Anyway, you'll find a money in a red car under the back seat. Under the seat? What are you talking about? It's in the panda. The kid's got it. Look, why do you think I'm telling you this? You stupid flat foot. I fixed that thing for Marcel and myself after we took the dough out. What kid? It's got a bomb in it. I don't remember much about the ride from then on, Robbie. All I could see was a white line unwinding in their headlights, but somehow we got to the end of the Lenny Street and around that corner again. Robbie! Robbie! Robbie, are you hurt? No. Where's the panda? Well, I'm through with pandas and so is Barney. Next junk money, I'm gonna buy him an elephant. What happened? A policeman brought it. Yeah? I started home with it when a car drove up and a man with gray hair got out. Ken Thorne. What then? The same thing. He grabbed it and got in his car and drove off. He's around the corner there playing with it. Go ask him. I don't care anymore. Around the corner, you may need... End of report. Hi! A highly inconsiderate thing to do to a panda, but I'll give him one thing. What thing? He had the good grace to park in front of a vacant lot before starting to tear it apart. And, of course, the coin of praise he saved the people some money. And now, if you're a good, efficient girl and run that through your infernal machine, who knows what I'll have in store for you when you're through? No jelly beans, the work is done. Now, scoop! Scoop! Scoop! Three chimes mean good times on NBC. Friday means another visit to that entertaining eat establishment, Duffy's Tavern. Archie, the manager and his whimsical friends have cooked up another fresh half-hour of laughs and typical Duffy's Tavern madness. And you're all invited. There's also another delightful adventure with Chester A. Reilly played by William Bendix tonight on The Life of Reilly. Keep your dial set to NBC for the very best in radio entertainment. All official? Yeah. I like the black. I like the black ones. Play off, play off. When you're not favorite all the black ones, they're my favorites, too. Master Robot Dozier. Tell you as well. Sam? Yeah? I hope Roby appreciates you. You're only just a kid. How can he appreciate me? I appreciate you, Sam. Oh, I appreciate you, too, sweetheart. You're so pretty and so efficient. Am I, Sam? I'm so good about not hitting me all the time for your back salary. Yep! When I stop and think of you, I go, all choked up. Me, too. It's all yours, dear. The rest of the jelly beans. Happy New Year. Good night, Sam. Good night, sweetheart. The Adventures of Sam Spade are produced, edited, and directed by William Spear. Sam Spade was played by Stephen Dunn. The reentuttle is Effie. Script for tonight's adventure by Harold Swanton. Musical scoring by Ludgluston, conducted by Robert Armbruster. Join us again next week, same time for another adventure with Sam Spade. Enjoy the magnificent Montague, then Duffy's Tavern on NBC.