 Auto-Lite and its 96,000 dealers present, the spend. Tonight, Auto-Lite brings you Mr. Dennis O'Keefe in Very Much Like a Nightmare, a suspense play produced and edited by William Spears. Hello! Yeah? What spectacular event heralds the opposed to summer. Why, getting an Auto-Lite safe full battery, the battery that has three times as much liquid reserve above the plates as batteries without safe full features. The battery that needs water only three times a year in normal car use. Come on now, Wilcox. I mean for fun, for pleasure, for excitement. Well, so do I have. What could be more fun than driving a car that has an Auto-Lite safe full battery to give you extra starting dependability? What can give you greater pleasure than the knowledge that your Auto-Lite safe full battery needs water only three times a year in normal car use? And what excitement when you find out that SAE Lifecycle Standard Test shows that Auto-Lite safe full batteries give 70% longer average life than batteries without safe full features. The circus is what I had in mind, Harlow. You should have seen the monetary. Every kind of animal. Camel? Naturally, wouldn't be a circus without camel. Well, no camel can keep total water like the Auto-Lite safe full battery that needs water only three times a year in normal car use. Just remember, friends, you're always right with Auto-Lite. And now, with very much like a nightmare and the performance of Dennis O'Keefe, Auto-Lite hopes once again to keep you in the family. It sounded out like nothing more than a small, freaky accident. The kind of thing you could tell a little sheepishly with a joke on yourself. By the time it was over, it was very much like a nightmare. A dream you wake up from drenched in cold sweat shaking all over with a clock pointing at 3 a.m. and the covers on the floor. It was only my second day back on the job after a short bout with the flu germ and I'd been up practically all night working on a job. My boss, old hard rock Gilman, had been kind enough to save, especially for me. As I walked into the lobby of the Nugent building, my biggest worry was simply whether the little pills my pharmacist, May Hermey, had given me would keep me alive and jumping through a rather long day. Eddie, the hot-faced kid around the elevator, was just about to take it up as I came in. Hold it, Eddie. Oh, hi, Mr. McLean. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Pray. Didn't see you. Good morning. Oh, good morning, Mr. Pray. How are you? Anybody for three? Down to God, you knew around, right, Mr. McLean? No, half of him playing hooky. Lucky you. Far, Eddie. Have I ever let you off in the other place? Mr. Pray, though not precisely, my type was one of the rare-plus qualities to be discovered in the Nugent building. She was one of the few girls I'd seen around office buildings who actually looked as though they belonged in somebody's penthouse apartment. She usually tagged along with Faris, a cocky-looking character who also worked at Circassian Brothers in Portage, up on fire. My love, watch yourself. Thank you, Eddie. Uh, Mr. Pray. Yes? Is everything all right? What? Oh, yes, I think so, Eddie. But maybe you'd better check with Mr. Pray. You may want to send out your sandwich around 11? Okay. Seven, Mr. McLean. Watch your step. Thank you, Eddie. The morning went slowly, even with Hermes' pills to help. At its noon, I resumed a pleasant custom which had been temporarily interrupted by my illness. Out of having lunch with Ms. Catherine Warren, a delightful young lady, and whose future I had very definite is, uh, not especially dark design. Now for the gruesome lecture. What time did you go to bed last night, boss? Who, me? Last night? Well... All right, then. It was this morning. It was this morning, wasn't it? Such a charming girl to be so snoopy. Would you like to hear about a very interesting conversation I had going down on the bus this morning with a young man named Hermes? Hermes? How a guy like that can run a prescription shop, beats me? What would the doctors do if they knew he went around blabbing professional secrets? It's you, not Hermes, I'm concerned about. And I'd like to know what makes you think it smart to start taking dope? Dope? Oh, that Hermes and his melodrama. All he gave me was something to... Something to keep you from getting the sleep you ought to be getting. At this rate, you'll be back in bed again before you know it. Ah, they're just little white pills. Perfectly harmless if you don't try to swallow the whole box. What Hermes says, here. Well, let's take a look for yourself. Oh, that's it. It's the wrong box. What do you mean wrong box? All right, so I'm a fugitive from a drug counter. These are the... What are the other ones? The other ones. Well, let's thank this darling. At first I was as leery about these stay-away things as you are. And I started worrying. Suppose I stopped for slow-wiring offer. Suppose I developed insomnia or something like that. Now, Hermes said he doubted that that would happen, but just to make sure, he fixed me up with these sleeping pills. More dope. Oh, look, honey, it's not Gilman I'm doing this for. You know that, it's us. I wouldn't have tried to come to work with him. No, I know, but I'm sorry. Forget it. Shall I call you tonight before I take myself in? If you don't, I'll come over and toss tear gas through your window. I made my way back towards the Nuget Building. Wedge is very apropyl in the narrow, dead-end street. About halfway down the block, I heard footsteps behind me and then a voice, familiar enough. It's Ferris. Marie de Pris, boyfriend. Hi, McLean. Haven't seen you around lately. Been out of town? Had to stay in for a few days. How's it with the Christian brothers? Never better, never better. And with you? No complaints. Say something was said in the elevator this morning. You know, Eddie, it's about him picking up a sandwich for you around 11. I was wondering if that's just an arrangement with the people. I don't get it, Mr. McLean. Eddie's never picked up any sandwiches from me. Somebody's kidding. Oh, here we are. Oh, yeah. Hi, Mr. Ferris. Mr. McLean? Eddie, what's this about some sandwich service you get? And holding out on me? Well, I, uh... Well, Eddie, I just thought I overheard you and Mr. Prey say something about standing out for a sandwich. Oh, no, no, that was... No, you got us wrong. I never said that. I told Mr. McLean, Eddie, that it was probably some kind of kidding you and Mr. Prey were carrying on. I chose to tell you, you should never get on the job. That's a good motto for Eddie, huh, Mr. McLean? Never get on the job. The three of us stood silently in the rising elevator. It seemed to me that Ferris had pushed the sandwich topic a little farther than necessary. Eddie was pretty upset. Well, why would he? Oh, well, well, it wasn't any of my affairs. I went back into my cubby hole and waited till three o'clock the hour for which Gilman had called the conference as Fisher of Barton and Fisher. Our big account. And I was in this conference that the sleep I hadn't got started creeping up on me. Out of a greasy fog, I suddenly heard Gilman barking at me. McLean! Huh? It would take what's the matter with you. You didn't get out of bed too soon, did you? Oh, no, no, I'm all right, Mr. Gilman. Oh, good. I'd appreciate you getting Mr. Fisher's brief finished up for me. I hate to ask you this, but I wonder if you mind getting it done before you go. He's an apology and stood up, man. My eyes burning and my neck muscles seem to be dragging my head down if I went back to my office. It had been 10, maybe 12 hours since I had taken the last couple of stay-awake pills. If I could borrow enough energy for the next 45 minutes, I told myself I could clean up this last job and a whole blessed night would be mine for sleeping. This time, I'd cut the dose in half, only take a single pill. I shook one of the pills out of the little box and followed it with a glass of water. Then I cut down at my desk and unclipped the sheets that Gilman had given me. It was that I noticed that the words had started running together. I looked at the papers and it was like carrying through water. The fellow was banging somewhere far off in the distance and I seemed to be lying across a bed. Slowly I forced over my eyes and blinked while reality swam into focus for a moment. I really didn't know where I was and it was just silence and the lost feeling of being in the wrong place. Suddenly I realized the bed I had seemed to be lying across was my office desk. I couldn't quite get it clear. What was I doing here? The outer office was nothing but darkness. Stiff and cramped I stood up. I looked at my watch. It was 215. 215? That's impossible. Only a few minutes ago I looked at my watch and it was, oh no, it couldn't have been a few minutes ago when Gilman was here then and Miss Tyler and the others, it can't be two in the morning. Oh, bright boy, and hermied pills. For the second time I'd made a stupid mistake about the pills. When I went into the washroom I'd taken the wrong pills with me. The sleeping pills. The others were still in my top coat. That's again, but this time I didn't like the sound so much. Somehow it seemed too hollow and then suddenly standing there in the middle of the floor seven stories up in an empty office building that darkness moved in. I didn't know all of this. I had something worse to contend with. Like in Blind Man's Buff when you're a kid and you shrink back and hold your breath while the hand fumbles past you in the darkness. Weird as it seemed all of a sudden it was like being on the island again with the Japanese somewhere near you and not daring to light a match and holding your breath for the darkness that picket choked you. Holding your breath because that over loud breath might be your last. Very much like a nightmare. Night production in radio's outstanding theater of thrills. Suspended. One of the circus men told me that elephants drink ten gallons of water a day. Ten gallons a day? Wow. An auto light, safe, full battery needs water only three times a year in normal car use. It's the super battery that has three times as much liquid reserve as batteries without safe features. Yes, but the elephant is a mighty powerful rider, Wilcox. I'll talk about power, man, the auto light, safe, full battery is amazing. You see, there's a fiber glass retaining mat at every positive plate to hold the power producing material in place. That gives you advantages like extra long life, extra starting dependability. You know, Wilcox, the elephant lives a phenomenally long life. Yes, but have think of the lifespan of the auto light, safe, full battery. According to SAE Life Cycle Standard Test it gives seventy percent longer average life than batteries without safe features. And the auto light, safe, full battery needs water only three times a year in normal car use. So friends, see your friendly auto light battery dealer. Remember, you're always right with auto light. And now auto light brings back to our Hollywood down stage our star, Dennis O'Keefe. In very much like a nightmare, a tale well calculated to keep you in a spend. I felt my way out into the darkness beyond the door. The hall stretched out like a cave to the stairs in the faint red door of the exit light. The angle of the stairs at the landing there was a window and I pressed my face against the cool of the glass. I had to wake up. And suddenly a light stand out over the loading platform down below. Somebody must have opened the door down there. I saw a truck in three or four men dwarfed by the distance. Lights from the door was going, but I still was having beans from a couple of flashlights. I was working there at this hour. Why? And then I heard the whistling. Eddie, Eddie, the elevator boy was doing here at this weird hour. Two o'clock in the morning in an empty building with no passengers. Led footed I moved down one flight and waited there on the sixth floor straining every cell to hear the whistling again, but I didn't. Then I had something from the fifth floor that I thought my way down toward it. Because I know Marie and I know that with a truck like this she's not going to have what she's saying. And then we've been drinking. I haven't been drinking that much. We've seen him after getting the answer for it. Line it up so that all you've got to do is walk in. And even before the cell is out of the place, he's better than she that's out of what he's talking about. Marie! So we get to letting her go get mixed up with you. Now I tell you something, Mr. Dupre. You don't know your fooling with me. I start calling names and you're going to get hurt worse. Loss worse. Yeah, yeah, I hate you and let it all. You're thinking you don't get enough for what you do. You're thinking you're being cheated out of your cock, but I tell you something now. You open your mouth the wrong way I handle you myself. No way, Joe. You think we're so scared of you we'll stand for anything, don't you? Well if I get nothing, you get nothing too. Open my mouth! Hold on to my mouth over! Marie! Marie! Let me go! Let me go! I told you to keep your mouth shut! This nightmare I'd stumbled into if I hadn't been groggy and I looked down on the platform from 7 it would have been tipped off by the flashlight. Sir Kissian would never have had his workman stumbling around in that sketchy light with stuff costing a small fortune. The elevator. Eddie was in on a 2. Handling something a little hotter now than sandwiches. But after the doors opened I noticed that the whistling stopped like being caught in 2 by a knife. The longer I stood there the more unhealthy my position became and I wanted about Albert. The night watchman. Well, was he? He had a gun but... I wanted to get out of there more than anything in the world. Just get out! My dash for the stairs to the 4th floor was like a slow motion dream herming in sleeping pills. I bumped to the floor just out of range as the mirroring lighted the elevator dropped toward me. Suddenly there it was. The naked, delighted little room suspended in space. I came to its 4th wall with Eddie. His face looked sick and green as he hugged the corner there at the controls. It's nothing to make him look behind to the rear of the car where a big man I hadn't seen before held something in his arms. Something like an oversized doll whose legs dangle lently. Panic was fighting my fighting as I stood there trying to think. Then I remember the telephone. There was a perfectly good telephone in my office. But that was 5 flights up. 5 long flights. Couldn't have been a phone in one of the other floors of the base station. I thought my way upward again and found it. I found it on the 3rd. I remember not to close the door of the booth completely because if I did that the little light would flash on and light was the last thing I wanted. I broke the phone off the hook, took a deep breath and the phone sounded louder than a fireman on a dead of night. Suddenly I dialed the operator. The words wouldn't come out. Number please. Police were sweaty. I was listening with half an ear down the hall. I thought I heard a slight scuffling sound but I couldn't be sure. I wasn't taking so long. Calling from the Nugent building on 3rd street north there's a robbery going on here. A robbery. A girl's been killed on that address. Who's going? My name's McClain. I work in this building. The address is all right Mr. Hang up that phone. The light struck across my face like a fist. I shriveled and nothing inside it. And I saw the man behind the gun. It wasn't Joe. It wasn't any of the man I'd expected. It was the guy I'd almost written off as gagged and tied or dead. Albert! Albert, the night watchman. Hang it up. Albert, I was looking for you a while ago. It's all right. I'm McClain. You aren't McClain, remember? Stillman and company up on the 7th floor. Hang up that phone Mr. McClain. Hello, when you're in here. Oh look, you don't understand. What's going on? I'll tell you there's a gang of cooks in this building Albert. You never see the ding here tonight, Mr. Hang. What? Come on. We're going to see him. Him? Joe? Come on. What? It was a trick we'd practiced a hundred times for combat use, but I never tried it before when it really counted. I came to the head of the stairs, I whirled and my life never got into the play. Albert had me by the fruit, two of his pitch-down steps towards the landing. Locked together with a couple of wrestlers, but it was Albert who took the brunt of the fork. Still beating you. He was just knocked out before. How long? I suppose it was someone who'd heard of this. They must have heard of this. The gun fall, too. The gun. Up at the top of the stairs. I had to get it. I had to get that gun. I didn't feel so naked now. This was Joeman and company's quarters fast. The way I'd left it, I slipped in and closed it behind me. I knew that maybe I had only a matter of a few minutes to get out of final S.O.S. Albert would come to us and start talking. I'd stumble over to my desk and put the gun down and started to reach for the phone. I knew our boy would be coming back to see us as soon as he'd visit P.D. Okay, guys. Move out where we can see you. P.D. At least three of them and everything was in their favor. My hands moved even before I thought the desk drawer was open. I put the gun into it and moved in front of the door. Okay, Mac. Or whatever your name is. P.D., look them over. Yeah, sure, Joe. Think you're hanging around here a little late, Mac? Right. I went down the hall for a minute. I had to work to do it. Guess I fell asleep. When I woke up, I just want to find out what time it was. Mr., I think you'll pick up bad night to work late. P.D., You'll wait in the hall and keep your eyes open. In five minutes, we'll be out of this dump. You stay here with this guy, P.D. You're not good to us downstairs and I'm tired of looking at you. P.D., I'll tell you what. I think maybe we'd better make it easy for P.D. Oh, no. Let's go. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I mean, suppose we take this guy's time, make a nice handcuff for him. Then these two businessmen can sit down and talk business until we're ready to go. In a few seconds, not only were my wrists locked together, but I was sitting in the chair facing the door while Ferris slumped in the seat I wanted to have. The chair at the desk, inches away from the gun in the drawer, Ferris didn't look at me at all. Silence ticked by an agent and I shifted a little in my seat, texting Ferris, seeing if he'd noticed that. I got no reaction. Just a clear look on his face. The elevator would be bringing bad news in a matter of heartbeats. Hey. Hey, who's that? What? The phone, the cell phone. Oh, the phone. Well, it's my wife, I guess. Yeah, you see, I told her I'd be working late. She's probably calling to say that she's on her way down to pick me up. Why keep coming down here? Look, you don't want nobody else putting in down here. I don't want her down here any more than you do. The phone ringing and ringing like that, she'll just figure I've dozed off and come on down. Yeah, but, Joe, my... Hey, Ferris, don't you think you should try a better ass? Come over here, Mr. Talk to her. Tell her, uh... Hello? Tell her she... She don't have to pick you up, please. Hello, darling. I figured it was time you were calling. Oh, it seems you'll buy it, darling. I've been worried out of my mind at three o'clock in the morning. I've just about wound up the work for the, uh, Warren people. I figured you were just having a little trouble putting Junior to bed. Listen, tell her not to come down. What is it? What are you talking about? Who is Junior? And the Warrens? Yes, darling. Put the car back in the garage. The Hermi... Hermi is here. He's gonna drive me home. Hermi? But Hermi's here with me, don't you? Find something wrong? You're absolutely right, dear. Absolutely. Oh, my God! All right, don't talk all night. Goodbye, darling. Bye! What was this, Hermi? He's a friend of mine. Sometimes we both work late and he drives me home. I had to tell her something, she believed. I didn't want her calling back. Well, we'll fix that. So he pointed me back to my chair and took the receiver off the hook. All the time, we might have been pictures on the wall for all the interest it's Ferris took in us. Pity went back out in the hall and when Ferris did speak, it was all I could do to keep him jumping out of my skin. And we stayed. And I suddenly remembered when and where I'd seen a look like the one on Ferris's face. Funny thing, all this time I never knew you were married. Oh, yes, yes. It's been many three years now. Marie and me, we... that's what we had in mind all the time. We figured we could make it work. We were gonna get married. But you know how it is sometimes putting up all your make and close and cut there. Bill said no rough stuff. Marie just got excited. He didn't have to. He didn't have to. Ferris, there they come. Ferris, Ferris, listen to me. The desk drawer in front of you. There's a gun in there, a gun. And John chose coming back there's not much time for us right in front of you in the desk drawer opening. Get the gun. He's the boy who went out to find what time it was. Smart boy. Can't keep his nose out of people's business. Well, we're gonna fix all that up. Oh, let's go. Shut up. We found the watchman wise guy. But one little thing we didn't find. We don't find the gun you took off of him. Now you're gonna tell me where that gun is. I got something figured out for that little gun. Okay, ready? Ready. Come on. Ask me why don't you do. Is this what you're looking for? Wait a minute. The first shot Ferris buckled sweeping the lamp off the desk. In the darkness I groped for the outer office. P.D. was in my path but he was through stopping anybody. When I got to the window there at the first landing I didn't waste motion this time in the lock especially with my hands done up the way they were. I kicked twice. Pain was out of the window and then I was out. My escape was rickety but it had a railing and a cold wonderful night air was smacking me in the face. And just as I realized that the throbbing in my left arm meant that not all the stray lead had missed me I heard the music that I had been waiting for. Bless her. Bless my captain. I'm not in the Nugent building anymore and here at Pratys and Miles I managed to exercise such talent and training as I have without putting too great a strain on my future. A situation which not only pleases Mrs. McLean a girl named Katherine but also meets with the unreserved approval of her husband. Aside from an aversion to a little white pills and a tendency to sneak frequent looks that he's watched along about a closing time each day that husband is reputed to have only the normal number of faults. His greatest strong point remains his memory which is convenient equipment for anniversaries. He will also ever be cherished for reminding him that the look on the face of a fellow named Ferris was a carbon copy of the expression he had last seen the day one of the men in his outfit disobeyed orders and wiped out half a dozen belligerent niponies. Ferris got only two while a man who was protesting what had happened to his brother got twice that many but it is possible that he died just as happy. Personally I Oh, good luck. Look what time it is. Where's my briefcase? It's gone now. Hold it, Johnny. Make room for one more. Presented by AutoLite, the night star Dennis O'Keefe. Harlow, you just can't beat the circus for real thrills. The suspense is terrific when the barker sings out Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. AutoLite makes more than 400 products for cars, trucks, planes and boats in 28 plants coast to coast. These include complete electrical systems and many makes of America's finest cars. Generators, coils, distributors, voltage regulators, wire and cables, starting motors, electric windshield wipers. All engineered to fit together perfectly, work together perfectly because they're a perfect team. So friends, don't accept electrical parts opposed to be as good. Ask for and insist on AutoLite, original factory parts. At your neighborhood service station, car dealer, garage or repair shop. Remember, you're always right with AutoLite. Next Thursday for suspense, our star will be Mr. Edward G. Robinson. The play is called A Case of Nerves and it is, as we say, a tale well-calculated to keep you in... A PEN. Tonight's suspense play was produced and edited by William Spear, directed by Norman McDonald. Music for suspense is composed by Lucian Morrowek and conducted by Lud Bluskin. Very much like a nightmare as an original play written for radio by M. Carl Holman and John Michael Hayes. Dennis O'Keefe may soon be seen co-starred with Ann Sheridan in the Howard Welch production, Woman on the Run. In the coming week, you will hear such stars as Charles Boyet, Broderick Crawford and Jack Cartwell. Don't forget, next Thursday, same time, AutoLite will present suspense starring Edward G. Robinson. You can buy AutoLite's faithful batteries, AutoLite resistor or regular spark plugs, AutoLite electrical parts at your neighborhood AutoLite dealer. Switch to AutoLite. Good night. This is the 19th annual observance of World Trade Week. Every one of us has a stake in the commerce our country carries on with the rest of the world. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.