 The adventures of Sam Spade detective brought to you by Wild Root Cream Oil Hair Tonic. The non-alcoholic hair tonic that contains lanolin. Wild Root Cream Oil again and again the choice of men who put good grooming first. Me sweetheart. Sam, how did it go? It was the end, Effie, but the end. Oh Sam, not another one of those society things. Depends on what you mean by society. Well you know Sam, cafe society, cocktails for two, hands across the table, making another old-fashioned pluri. Let's not lose our head, Effie. Nothing but double martinis, very dry, with two olives, sweetheart. Two olives? Oh Sam, isn't that overdoing it? It was all overdone, sweetheart. That's what cracked it. Now stay right where you are. I'll be right down to mix up my report on the dry martini caper. Get it? Dashel Hammett, America's leading detective fiction writer and creator of Sam Spade, the hard-boiled private eye and William Speer, radio's outstanding producer director of mystery and crime drama, join their talents to make your hair stand on end with the adventures of Sam Spade. Presented by the makers of Wild Root Cream Oil for the hair. August is always a great vacation month and for those of you planning to take your vacation soon, let me suggest that when you're packing, be sure you include a bottle and a handy tube of Wild Root Cream Oil Hair Tonic. Or no matter where you go, you can always depend on Wild Root Cream Oil to groom your hair neatly and naturally. Relieve dryness and remove loose dandruff. Yes, you can take it with you on your vacation and you should. Wild Root Cream Oil Hair Tonic. Again and again, the choice of men who put good grooming first. And now with Howard Duff starring as Spade, Wild Root brings to the air the greatest private detective of them all in The Adventures of Sam Spade. Wise as an owl, sober as a judge eff. Oh, well the way you talked on the phone, I thought you drowned the shamrock, kissed the black Betty, spliced the main brace, decorated the mahogany, made a Dutch bargain, or, in a word, gone to give a Chinaman a music lesson. Effie, I wish you'd spend more time with Harper's Bizarre while I'm gone, unless with the thesaurus of slang. Ah. Didn't know I could say that. Are you sober? Well, I've been riding the choo-choo, drinking Adam's Ale. And if you don't believe it, just ask me to walk good chalk. Okay, heelsie-toesie, arms to Kimball, eyes glazed. Yes, Sam. Now, then tip of the forefinger to the tip of the nose. Oh, Sam, it makes me dizzy. Dizzy Gillespie? Dizzy, go old Sam. Exactly. And you are not sewn up, shagged, shellacked, shickered, stuccoed, tap-shackled, stiffo or real crazy. Well, you know best, Sam. Good, now try this one. Yes, Fred. Sitting posture, limbs cruciform. What? Cheesecake style. Oh, Sam. That's it. Now place the notebook. Uh-uh, just a little higher. Good. Now apply the tip of the pencil to the top of the fool's cap and proceed this. This. Date. August 1st, 1948. To Mrs. Netta Martini, 1,000 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco. From Samuel Spade, license number 127-596. Subject, Dear Netta. The first I knew of the caper was the day before yesterday morning when I saw your husband's picture in the paper. It was one of those lovingly retouched executive type photographs of a man in his late 40s or early 50s graying at the temples and wearing an embalmed man of distinction look. The story was headlined, corporation head way-laid by mysterious assailant. Shover, foils, would-be kidnappers at offices of Martini Trading Company. The item under it wasn't as thrilling as the headline. Sounded as if he'd been knocked down for his wallet and the attempted kidnapping had been dreamed up by a board city news reporter. I tossed another wastebasket along with my morning mail and went back to the police cassette. On page 3, the phone rang. Unique garage, Harry speaking. Mr. Spade. One moment, who's calling? Gordon Martini. Not Gordon Martini, the corporation head, way-laid by mysterious assailant. Chairman of the board and there's nothing mysterious about it. Then what are you doing on this phone? I can't talk on the phone. Where are you? In a hospital? I left that pest house this morning. I'm at my residence, 1,000 Marina Boulevard. It'll take you exactly 20 minutes by cab. You will meet me in front of the building and we'll have our conference in my car on route to the office. Where's your office? Downtown Post Street. Why don't I meet you there? I'm a busy man. I have a full calendar. I'm already late due to all that hospital red tape. But I can fit you into my schedule if you'll hurry and I'll look alive, man. Well, it's a little early in the morning, but I'm trying on. Good. What will you want for a retainer? I'll let you know if I decide to take the job. Fair enough. 20 minutes. I'll expect you. I should have looked more alive. It took me two minutes to get out of the street, one minute to flag down a cab and 18 minutes to reach your address letter, a total of 21 minutes. As my taxi drew up to the curb in front of the canopy entrance to the corner apartment house at 1,000 Marina, I saw your husband pacing indignantly up and down in front of the entrance, pausing only to glare at the outsized chronometer on his left wrist. His gray hamberg was perched atop an outsized turban of gauze bandits that decorated his head. Ah, now you've spayed. You're exactly one minute and 22 seconds late. Hours are made of minutes, minutes are made of seconds and killing this seemingly negligible interval of time you have wounded an hour. Oh, I have. Well, I'm sorry. The traffic's pretty heavy out here. There's hour of the morning. You should have started a minute and 22 seconds earlier. I'm sorry there was a bore on the telephone. I kept talking about how valuable his time was. Don't apologize. Only wait some more time. Now, you should check. $100. My car's just around the corner. I pay that chauffeur a large salary. We mustn't keep him waiting. In the meantime, you may as well start earning a fee. I've been earning it for the past 22 minutes and 22 seconds. Uh-huh. I suspect it as much. Do you drive a car? Yeah, you mean one man drives all that? I see him. That rascally chauffeur of mine. Sleep in the back seat. All right, come out of there. Hey, watch it! I was behind him and a little to the right. The shock of the rapid fire, 30 caliber slugs lifted him off his feet and knocked him against me. I went down under his 300 pounds of dead weight. The time I rolled him off of me and got up, the gunman had jumped out of the limousine and into a gray sedan that was double parked alongside. In the welder of traffic on the boulevard, I didn't dare risk drawing a shot after him, but I did get the first three numbers of the license plate before it buried itself in a heavy stream of AM commuters. That's when the air chains were exhaust fumes to something out of a Persian garden. I turned and looked for the first time into your Nile Green Eyes letter and saw you twisting a handkerchief in your pale hands I might have loved beside the shallower, but on Marina boulevard, they looked like hysterics, dead air, dead air, but on Marina boulevard, they looked like hysterics, dead air, who did it? You saw him, don't lie to me. Why don't they come with the ambulance? Why are all those people standing around their stair yet? Make them go away, make them go away. I can't stand. Stop it, will you? That's better. Now come on over here. Who are you, his wife? Yes, and it was all my fault. This is the end. I called Ernie out the window and asked him to come upstairs. I wanted him to return some lingerie. They sent the wrong color, Pete. Yeah, yeah, who's Ernie? He's our chauffeur. I was looking for the exchange slip when we heard the shots. Is he dead this time? Yeah, don't go to pieces. Poor Gordon, he had so many enemies. He didn't drink well, you know. People dropped us like flies. They certainly dropped your husband. Are you a policeman? No, but I'll do until the real thing comes along, which is right now. If I were you, lady, I'd go back upstairs and relax. They'll get to you soon enough. Yes, I suppose you're right. I'll get up and stagger on into the elevator. He didn't drink at all well. Go on, will you? Oh, Ernie, where did you go? Down to the garage. I heard a car driving. Poor Mr. Martini. It's all my fault. No, Ernie, it's mine if I only hadn't mislead that exchange slip. What? You know when I called you out the window to come and get that package. Oh, oh, that. What do we got here? Who's the witness? Me. Oh, Spade, lost another client, huh? Not quite. I hadn't cashed the check yet. I don't know what I'm doing anyway. All right, clear a space in there. Let him through with that stretcher. Step over here out of the crotch, Sam. I want to get that statement. Okay, Gary, take it down. Got a pencil? Yeah, and I want it back. Let's have it. This guy is Gordon Martini. He headed up a local firm, the Martini Trading Company. Last night, he was working late at his office. Got buoyed, phoned me this morning. Didn't know why. Thought maybe he wanted a bodyguard anyway. He needed one. He came out of the crotch in the back seat of the limousine, shoved the car bean out when Martini opened the door. Car bean. Didn't get a good look at him. You can see why. The way it's closed in, no side windows. Foreign car, isn't it? Stop drilling. You can't afford one. You getting all this? What about the getaway? Martini fell on top of me. I saw the getaway car in the back of his head. The car was a gray sedan. The back of his head was a standard make-toe. Only got the first three digits of license plate. G9, anything else? Yeah, give me back my pencil. The homicide boys want some help. They know my fee. Mr. Spade. This is Martini. Why aren't you and Ernie upstairs getting your alibis shaped up? Please, I can't fix the questions just yet. Would it be legal if I just avoided them till I can collect myself? I don't know about legal, but it might be smart. Where can we talk? What do you suggest? Well, there's a little cocktail lounge up on Lombard. We're Ernie and I. Well, that's handy. Let's go. Against my mother's advice, I should have listened. But, well, that's why I married Mr. Martini. Well, uh, that brings us up to 1943, and it's only, uh, quarter to 12. You're just like him. Always holding a stopwatch over my head. Always? Well, he drank, you know. You told me that. But it's much more important than you think. He often fell down and bumped his head. You mean that mysterious assailant who was in the pictures before dinner. Ernie had to carry him up to his office. Well, where'd he go up there for? Oh, he had an appointment with the vice president of the firm, Mr. Nesbitt. Something had come up and he wanted Gordon to sign some papers. I don't know what. It wasn't the first time. I waited outside in the car. After Ernie had taken him upstairs, he came back to the car and we talked. Ernie has alibis upstairs, downstairs, and all around the house. Well, then when the others came out and Gordon didn't, Ernie went upstairs to see why. Others? Mr. Nesbitt and who else? Secretary? No, she's an attorney. And if you think everything was legal between those two, well... But after all, who am I to call the kettle black? What are you trying to tell me? That she got him drunk so they could make him sign some papers that he got himself drunk so he couldn't write his name or that he just got drunk and fell down? Between you and me, I think she pushed him down a flight of stairs. In his condition, he never remembered. Why are you putting a finger on the Callaghan thing? What would you think? She was the last one out of the building. Why didn't you want to tell all this to the police? Well, I didn't want to talk about his drinking. Things were bad enough already. That would have been the end. Well, let's just get an answer, Zenny. What do you want me to do for you? Prove that she did it and Ernie didn't. I'll let you take care of Ernie. Oh, no. I don't want to alibi him unless I have to. He might get the wrong idea. You mean I've got the wrong idea? He might think it meant I still care for him and I don't. I can't stand him anymore. The way he chews those two things. And besides, if his alibi is too good, I might have trouble about that car being in the backseat of my car. Pardon me. It sounded as if you said you might have trouble about a car being in the backseat of your car. That's what I said. Where is your car? In the garage. But somebody had it out this morning. They scraped the fender coming back in and they ran into the wall. They must have been in an awful hurry. Tell me this car yours. It wouldn't be a grace of an... Yes. License number? Oh, wait a minute. It's on my key ring. Here. 5D90... That's enough. Why didn't you tell me this before? Well, I couldn't get up the nerve. After I heard you tell that policeman, the gun that killed Gordon was a car being. And the gray sedan and all that, well, it's the end. I hoped you were right, but I didn't think so. When I went to look at the gray sedan in your garage, I knew you were wrong. Dead wrong. It was the getaway car all right and the car being, as you know, was proven later to be the one that killed your husband. But Ernie had turned into a very poor suspect indeed. He was hugging the carpet between the front and rear seats and when I nudged him, he didn't move. He'd been shot at close range in Gordon Martini and the killer had used only one slug. It was planted in the base of his brain, which made him not only a very poor suspect, but a very dead one. The makers of Wild Root Cream Oil are presenting the weekly Sunday adventure of Dashel Hammett's famous private detective, Sam Spade. If you want a well-groomed look that helps you get ahead socially and on the job, listen. Recently, thousands of people from coast to coast who bought Wild Root Cream Oil for the first time were asked, how does Wild Root Cream Oil compare with the hair tonic you previously used? Better than four out of five who replied said they preferred Wild Root Cream Oil. And no wonder, Wild Root Cream Oil grooms the hair neatly and naturally, relieves annoying dryness, and removes loose dandruff. What's more, non-alcoholic Wild Root Cream Oil is the only leading hair tonic that contains soothing lanolin. So ask for Wild Root Cream Oil Hair Tonic. Again and again, the choice of men who put good grooming first. By the way, smart girls use Wild Root Cream Oil too, and mothers say it's grand for training children's hair. Now back to the dry martini caper, tonight's adventure with Sam Spade. I'll see that he gets your message. Well, what can I do for you? I would like to see Miss Callahan. Miss Callahan is in conference with Mr. Nasset. Good. I would like to see them both. But I have orders not to disturb them. You do not have to. I will. Just a minute, you can't go breaking unlike that. Yes, and I'll tell you something else. He won't ever get away with it. Why, everyone in this town knows about your underworld connection. Why, you doddering old fool, when I get through with you, if you don't go to the gas chamber for Gordon Martin, he's murdering you with your head. If I go to the gas chamber, it'll be for killing you, not Gordon. Miss Callahan? Did you hear that? You weren't talking loud enough. I didn't hear a thing. Well, come on in here and I'll tell you a thing or two. Close that door. Now, sit down. Thanks. I listened better on my feet. Oh, so you're the detective, Netta Martinian Freud, eh? What's she paying you? That'll depend on how much I have to do for it. Well, I'll tell you how much you'll have to do for it. You'll have to make a case against me, and that's not going to be easy. Why do you think she's out to get you? Why, indeed. For years, this moth eatin' mouthpiece, this parboiled pusher, has been victimizing poor Gordon, taking advantage of his weakness for drinks. Now that she's liquidated him, she appears with 55% of the common stock. Motive enough, eh? Why, you fraudulent old fool, I simply bought up his debts and threw an attachment on those stocks, unethical but perfectly legal. But you're not even a proper thief. You're nothing but a bumbling old embezzler. Now listen here. You ate your books as he was going to call in the auditors. Look over those books of yours. You've paid this for the courtroom scene. Now you've convinced me. You're both crooked. I'll say that you both go up for something. That's a promise. Mr. Spade, I gave you credit for better sense. You know that this Medusa of the magistrates court, this harpy of the Hall of Justice, tricked him into changing the beneficiary of his insurance the very night she pushed him down the stand. And you were all in favor of it when you thought you held a controlling interest in the company. Answer that to see Mr. Spade. He can't answer that. Good, good. I'm glad one of you is temporarily lost for words. Now, I only want to know one thing and a great answer. And if either one of you starts off in another speech, I'm going to push you into the nearest cloakroom and lock you in together. Why, you wouldn't dare. Try me, sweetheart. Well, what do you want to know about this Amazon ambulance station? This trillby of the traffic course. Watch it. Well, what do you want to know? About Martini's insurance policy. Now, you say he changed the beneficiary. Please answer in ten words or less. Who was the beneficiary and who is the beneficiary now? I'll have to answer that question in two parts. The beneficiary was his wife. He changed it to the Martini Trading Company, a corporation of the state of California. Thank you and goodbye, Mary Callahan. And that letter took the heat off of you for the time being which made things tough for me. Because Callahan and Nesbitt were so horrible I never wanted to see them again even to testify against them in court. I was sure of one thing. None of you would pull the trigger of that car beam. I was in a hired killer behind it and the way he operated, taking crazy chances in broad daylight and a crowded street told me an important thing about it. That night I made the rounds of the joints at a plant called the Bing Room. I found a bouncer who had tossed out a customer that went up a bill and tried to pay it with a thousand dollar check. He sent me to the Atlas Hotel. The Atlas Hotel is off at 3rd Street down near the railroad yards. Not even a plea bay. The pleas sickened and died a long time ago. The guests sprawled out in the mission furniture of the lobby they wouldn't be able to much longer. A half-dead room clerk came back to the land of the living long enough to mutter a room number and wave me feebly toward a flight of crummy stairs. Yeah, what do you want? You, uh, hack Heartland? Hey, you got anything for me, huh? Yeah, I got news for you. Get back in the room. I'll tell you all about it. Yeah, well, come on in. Drop the shiv. Yeah, I'll drop it. I'll fix you. I'll cut you good. I'll make it easy for me. Now, get over there. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, huh? I'm not feeling so good. You can feel a lot worse. Who hired you to put the burn on Martini? You don't get nothing out of me. Who gave you that check? Leave me alone. I got all night, hack, and I feel better than you do. What did you do with that check? I'll shake it if your teeth come out with it. Come on. All right. All right. Stop it. Stop it. I don't feel so good. Pocket, my shirt. Don't reach. I'll get it. There was a company check, which is what I'd expected. It was for $1,000 drawn in the Golden Gate Trust alone. But I wasn't expecting to find the signature on the bottom line. It was signed in a bold, firm hand, Gordon Martini. Who was the penman on this? He wrote it himself, right in front of me. What was it supposed to be for? He wanted I should knock off his brother. You get mixed up? He's dead, ain't he? That's what I mean. Gordon Martini's dead. Ah, the papers got it wrong. That was his brother, his twin brother, and that other guy, that chauffeur, kept hanging around the garage so I couldn't get out. I had to, I had to burn him too. You know what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm making sense. Now get out of here. I'm getting steamed. Don't let it worry you. I got a nice, cool place all picked out for you. After I turned hack over to the cops, I did what checking I could on my own at that time of night. As nearly as I could learn, Gordon Martini could never have had a brother, twin or otherwise. He was a first child, his mother died in childbirth, and his father died one month later. So I went back to the offices of the Martini trading company, glass keyed my way in, and made a quick frisk of it. There I learned that the signature on the check was indeed Gordon's, but that he had closed out his account at that bank the day he wrote it. I thought about that on the way out to your apartment. Sam, I've been calling and calling, trying to reach you. I've been so worried. It's the end. This time you might be right. Fix me a drink. Well, there's nothing in the house, but those prepared Martini's Gordon used to drink. Is that all right? No, but fix me one anyway. Never mind the ice. It's not morning yet, but I hate myself already. Why don't you just relax and let me get it for you? I'll relax you get the Martini's. She's cute. You're all cute. I put ice in anyway. It's nasty with ice. It's nasty anyway. I hope it doesn't make you fall down the way it did for Gordon. Thanks. What's the matter? Too dry? You open this bottle fresh? Well, yes. What's the matter? Where are they? The rest of the bottles. Oh, yeah. More of the same. Is this all your husband ever drank? Yes, gallons of it. It's a special brand. He even took it with him to bars and people's houses. He'd sit and drink them right out of the bottle like a little child. Then he'd be falling down drunk, of course. And that's how we lost so many friends. They dropped us like flies. Maxie, Sam Spain. Sammy, what can I do on you? On Martini, Maxie. They got around the autopsy in? Yeah, they rushed them through. Got the report handy? Right in front of me. Funny thing, Sam. The doc said they should have saved themselves the trouble. He'd have been dead in a week or two without no help. What from? Brain tumor. Malignant, it says here. Any alcohol in them? None from drinking, Sammy. What about the head wounds? Discondition. Thanks, Maxie. Well, what is it, Sam? Were the Martini's poisoned? No, sweetheart. The Martini's were colored water. Why, they couldn't. What made him get so drunk? He didn't. He was sick. But Sam, who killed him? Killed himself. But he couldn't have. He hired a gunman to do it. He planned his own murder. But why didn't he leave a note or something? He could have ruined us all. Yeah, just what he wanted you to do. He wanted to ruin you. He let Mary Callahan place him out of his interest in the company. He let Nesba juggle the books. He let you go your way with Ernie. He let all three of you fix yourselves up with as nice a set of motives for murder as a jury could ask for. Oh, couldn't have. The real joker was the check he used to pay off the man he hired to kill him. It bounced. It also proved he planned his own murder. But he still has his revenge. Because the insurance that would have kept the corporation from going broke won't be paid off on account of a self-liquidating cause. Oh, Sam. Darling, what's going to become of us all? Well, uh, Callahan and Nesba will probably sue each other to death. You might have to go to work and earn a living. Well, I have $500. I might invest it in something. You already have. Here's my bill. But, Sam, you didn't help me. What? This is the end? No, it isn't, sweetheart. This is the beginning. Come here. Period. End of the end. Well, you asked me. You helped it. Now, F. Well, I just goes to show you. Show what, F? Man's in gratitude to man. But what did Mr. Martini have against you? Why, uh, nothing, sweetheart. He just needed a smart operator like, uh, well, no, no. I don't know. I don't know. Sam, have you cashed that check Mr. Martini gave you? Well, uh, not yet. I, uh... Sam, any bartender would know better than to take a check from a man who drinks that much? F, you haven't been paying attention. He didn't drink. He didn't. I was able to establish that later on. You haven't been listening. Well, at the time, Sam, for all anybody knew he was a hopeless drunk. He was, Sam. Oh, you're so wonderful and trusting. But I do wish that you'd understand this. He was a hopeless drunk. For the last time, Effie, he didn't really drink. I'll just type this up, Sam, while you call the bank. I'll do that. A final reminder, friends. Whether you're going on a long vacation trip or just a weekend to the beach, be sure you've got a bottle and tube of wild root cream oil tucked away in your suitcase. Do this, and you'll find it's easy and quick to spruce up again after stepping out of the water or off the tennis court. For no matter where or when you use it, wild root cream oil grooms your hair neatly and naturally. Relieves dryness, removes loose dandruff. So, at home and away from home, help yourself to handsome hair with wild root cream oil. And next time you have a chance, ask your barber for a professional application of wild root cream oil hair tonic. Again and again, the choice of men who put good grooming first. Where's the price of the paper and carbon? You made carbon copies of that? An unimportant report like that? It bounced? Well, your state isn't settled yet. Oh, Sam, you're so wonderful and trusting. Effie, I am not wonderful and trusting. I am a hard-boiled, private eye. I know. Just a pity there's no money in it. And I'm also too fisted. Have you ever thought of ceramics? Of what? Ceramics. It takes virtually no capital. All you need is a small furnace and some clay. And if you don't have any talent, you can just make ashtrays. Thanks, I already have one. Oh, flower pots are fun. You can pot them on a wheel. And you can pot your hat on a wheel on out of here and also take your furnace and clay. Oh, I love you when you're so gay and carefree. I am not gay and carefree. You are a hard-boiled, private eye. Good night and sue me for your back-salvy sweetheart. Here's one who put good grooming first. This is Dick Joy reminding you to... Get wild root cream oil, Charlie. It keeps your hair in trim. You see, it's non-alcoholic, Charlie. It's made with sooth and ladle in. You better get wild root cream oil, Charlie. Start using it today. You'll find that you will have a tough time, Charlie. Keep an ol' gal's away. Hide your baldy. Get wild root right away. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.