 Adventures by Morse, Carlton E. Morse presents The City of the Dead, featuring Captain Friday. If you like high adventure, come with me. If you like the stealth of intrigue, come with me. If you like blood and thunder, come with me. Midnight, on the third night in the old abandoned graveyard, better known as the City of the Dead. A melancholy silence is settled on the cottage of Mayor Joshua Friday. A lifelong caretaker of the old cemetery. Jimmy Parker, a prisoner, sleeps uneasily in one bedroom. His girlfriend, Phyllis Carroll, lies in a bed before the flickering embers of the dying front room fire. The knife wound in her back breaks her light breathing with barely audible moans. Dr. Tooner is sleeping heavily on the lounge, ready to attend her at an instant notice. The Mayor and his son, Captain Friday, private investigator, occupy the double bed in the bedroom assigned to Miss Carroll before she was stabbed. Earlier this evening, but let Captain Friday tell it. Earlier in the evening, a skeleton had suddenly been thrust through the front door to collapse on the rug, almost at Phyllis Carroll's feet. It was a skeleton neatly wired together, joint by joint. Around its spinal column was fastened a message which said, I have come out of the grave, marked Theodore Beverly, but I do not belong in his grave. I am not his skeleton. Theodore Beverly was Miss Carroll's grandfather and was supposedly buried in the city of the dead 14 years ago. He likewise had buried half a million dollars worth of black pearls in the city of the dead before he died and left instructions where to find them in papers received by his granddaughter on her 20th birthday. Yes, that's why Jimmy Parker and I came down to the old cemetery here. And now this skeleton has come up out of my grandfather's grave to tell me that he is not my grandfather and should not have been buried in my grandfather Beverly's tomb. Yes, well Miss Carroll went all to pieces over the presence of the skeleton and it had taken several hours to get the household settled down for the night and to lay the skeleton out decently in the shed at the rear of the house. Finally, a semblance of quiet had descended upon the house and its occupants had retired to their rest. And so came midnight. Are you older hurting you Miss Carroll? I'm sorry Dr. Tuner, I didn't mean to awaken you. You didn't, it was that catawalling outside. I was just dropping off to sleep when it began. Why do you suppose it does that? Makes that awful noise. Captain Friday swears it's human. Don't worry about old clawfoot, you feel feverish? No, just uncomfortable. Let's see, open your mouth and put the thermometer on your tongue. There, have you slept at all? When, Tuckett, didn't you say so? I'd have given you something. I was out of nowhere when you were awake when you lay there still as a log. Hold your tongue still, I'll do the talking. You haven't been worrying have you? Didn't I tell you not to talk? Here, let me have that thermometer. And just a milder fever, not enough to keep you awake. I'm going to give you a sleeping powder and Tuckett and I want you to go to sleep. I'll try. What's with Tuckett's hand? That came from Jimmy's room. Hi, hi out there. What's the matter? Is Phyllis all right? What's the matter with you, Parker? I can't sleep. I heard someone talking. Is Phyllis worse? No, Phyllis is not worse. She's trying to get some sleep. Look here, Doctor, let me out of this room. Let me sit beside her the rest of the night. I won't run off. Hey, I was making all this rumpus. Who was that pounding? You were awake too, Captain. Young Parker's pounding on his door. He wants out. Does, huh? What do you want, Parker? I can't sleep, Captain Friday. Let me sit by Phyllis the rest of the night. I won't run away. How could I do that? Well, I feel easier. Oh, I'm sure I could sleep if Jimmy was sitting by me. You kids aren't up to something, are you? Oh, no, really. I feel too woozy and Jimmy wouldn't go away without me. Hello. Old Clawfoot's out again tonight. He's been around for the last hour. Up to some new devil, I suppose. Aren't you going to let me out? All right. Come on out. I promise I won't try to escape. You won't try if you know what's good for you. That room gives me the creeps. Did you hear old Clawfoot at it again? How could we help her? I caught a glimpse of him through the bars in my window. He was out there by the shed. You mean where we put the skeleton? Say, I'd forgotten the skeleton. Yes, that's right where he was. The bird's got a nose for old bones. I think we better investigate. Doc, you stay here with Miss Carol. Parker, you come with me. Captain, is the mayor sleeping through all this? Huh? Oh, Dad? I guess he is. Tell you what I'll do. I'll lock his door so nothing will disturb him. Let him sleep. Now, what junk are you locking the mayor in for? I just told you, didn't you hear me, Doc? Sounds like a lot of foolishness to me. None of a mind. Let's go, Parker. You all right, Phyllis? I'm all right, Jimmy. Don't worry about me. Come along, Parker. Yeah, okay. You sure you saw old Clawfoot hanging around the shed? You don't think I could mistake him, do you? This is the screwiest business. Now, keep on the grass. Listen, the church bell. If that isn't coming up the valley from the old church, ruins nothing ever did. Hello, are you all right, Parker? The shed door's open. Golly, I wonder if... Have a look. The skeleton's gone. Door broken open and the skeleton gone. What a sign of him. We laid him out on the bench there, didn't we? Look around outside for footprints. Man, it's hard to see anything. Even with him only. Yeah, but no fog. See anything? Nothing over here. I don't think so. Hey! Captain Friday, come here. What have you found? Some kind of a bone. Bone? Well, look what you found. You know what this is, Parker? No. One of the bones off the foot of our skeleton. Off the skeleton? Looks like he dropped something in his escape. Yeah, but Captain... Look over there. There's another. Well, who says a skeleton can't leave a trail? Come along, maybe we'll find another one. But it's taking us down into the city of the dead. What of it? Graveyard's a natural place for a skeleton, isn't it? I suppose so, but... I was right. Here's another bone. Looks like an ankle bone, doesn't it? I don't know. I never studied anatomy. Do you think old cloth would have done this? Strung that skeleton's bones out over the country this way? Looks like it, doesn't it? I mean, why? I wish I knew. That's the reason we're following this trail of bones. There's a purpose. We'll find it out soon enough. Oh, there's another bone. Where? There ahead, glistening in the moonlight. Ah, so there is. Ah, it's a bone from the skeleton's lower leg. Looks like an old bag of bones is going to pieces fast. Oh, so am I. I don't like trailing skeletons in a cemetery. Not with that claw-footed thing slinking around. I think I see another bone ahead. The trail's leading us down toward the old church. Who knows, maybe we'll find another message. The message is tied around the neck of a skeleton. That's about the limit. It was a weird bit, wasn't it? Let's see. What was it now? I have come to you out of the grave marked Theodore Beverly, but I do not belong in his grave. I am not his skeleton. That sounds as though the man who was buried his Phyllis's grandfather wasn't her grandfather at all. Do you think that's what the message intended to say? You know, Phyllis's mother never was certain that the body was out of Theodore Beverly. That was a good many years ago. If no one could be certain back at that time, how could anyone know for certain at this late day? I don't know. After all, who wrote the note? Hello. There's a bone from the upper leg. What do you suppose we'll find next? Look here, Captain Friday. Let's not carry this thing out any further. Let's go back to the house and wait till morning. I should say not. But you don't know what kind of a trap you're running us into. Trap? Yes, trap. Listen. Just a phantom church bell again. Look. Look over there. Didn't you see something move? I did not. Well, I did. I doubt it. You're just plain scared. I tell you, I'm not. I saw something. Something creeping. Something in the shadows of the tombstones. But it isn't. It's something alive. There are creeping things all around us. I tell you, I can see them everywhere. And I wish to heaven you'd point some of them out to me. I can't see a thing. Except up ahead, I see another bone. I tell you, I'm going back. You're going ahead with me. I'm not. Parker, are you going to come along? No. You are, and quick. I have a gun here, Parker. It's loaded. Pretty brave with a gun in your hand, aren't you? I'll give you until I count to three to start walking toward that next bone. I won't move. One, two. Go ahead and shoot. I'm not going to shoot you, Parker. I just wanted to see if you were really as yellow as you were trying to make out. Yellow? Sure. Trying to kid me into believing you're deathly afraid of a cemetery at night. What about it? You haven't seen anything to make you scared and you know it. And you wouldn't be as scared as you pretended, even if you did see all those creeping horrors you were babbling about. Creeping horrors. Pretty smart, aren't you? Any man who'll stand up against a gun as you've just done isn't very much afraid of anything. Thanks for nothing. So, as I've got it figured out, there's some very definite reason why you don't want us to go any further. Go ahead and figure all you like. I'm all through figuring tonight, fella. I know now why you balked on me. How do you know? Because I have the same suspicion as you where this trail of bones is leading us. I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, yes you do. You think, and so do I, that someone is guiding us to the place where the Beverly Pearls are buried. What is this trail of bones? This search for a king's ransom in Pearls. What are these messages from the grave? If the skeleton in the grave of Miss Carol's grandfather is not her grandfather, then who is it? And where is grandfather Beverly? Supposedly for so long at his rest. And why, but more in just a moment. Captain Friday, I tell you, I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, yes you do, Parker. You think, and so do I, that someone is guiding us to the place where the Beverly Pearls are buried. No, nothing of that kind. It's not true. Oh, yes it is. Are you going to come along with me to find out, or do you want me to go on alone? I wasn't thinking about the Black Pearls. Oh, sure. And look here, Parker. There's no one who's trying to kid me. I can read a man's face and I know exactly what's been passing through your mind. Now, if you like, I'll take you back to the house and lock you in and then return alone. I'll go along with you. I thought you would. I wish that bell would stop that. Forget about it. Look, here's not a little heap of foot bones. Skeletons lost their second foot now. And right up there ahead is, no, it's his ankle bone. Well, I'll certainly no bone structure the human body by the time I get out of this place. Too bad you're not studying medicine over at the University of California. Look at the starch you'd have on most of the fellas. No, thank you. And I'm not growing up to be a grave digger either. Well, here's the bone of the lower left leg. We're getting well down into the city of the dead, you realize that? I must have come a mile. If it was just a little lighter, we'd be able to see the outline of the old church. I wish I knew who threw that knife that stabbed Phyllis. A number of things I'd like to know. For instance, I'd give a half share on the Rockefeller Foundation to know how come Lamy Fink was scared to death. And who burned down Lamy's shack? And who it was that tried to get into your room and was murdered by old Clawfoot? And who Clawfoot is? And who filled up Ernie Morton's grave? And who tried to shoot Dad down in the old church? And what your father does every night when he slips out of the house after everyone else is asleep? There's another bone that makes both feet and legs of our skeleton. We ought to gain on him fast now that he's left his lower extremities behind. Look, there's a little pile of bones over the left. Ah, so there is. Are not mistaken, those are the bones of his fingers and right hand. And I'd still like to know what the mayor does when he slips out. You'll be just as well off Parker if you don't wonder too much. Come on. Well, we'd probably find out a lot about this mystery if we didn't know. I'll tend to that end of the matter. Well, there's the bones of the left hand and the nice little pile. I wonder what's become of old Clawfoot himself. He certainly made himself absences as we come out of the house. He's a little like the Pink Flea. Here one moment and where the next. Well, anyway, your father won't be out tonight seeing you locked him in before we left. Let the mayor alone. Well, we must be getting near the end of the trail. There's the two forearms of our skeleton together. Look here, Captain Friday. What do you really expect to find at the end of this trail? I don't know. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the pearls. The why and the do is anyone would want to give the secret away. I don't know. No one knows where the pearls are hidden, but fill us in myself. Well, if you knew, why didn't you dig them up the first night? The night you were taken prisoners by the mayor and Doc Tuna. We... Well, we certainly did some digging. The blisters on your hands show that. Oh, I dug all right. Well, did you find anything? I guess I miscalculated in the dark. Did you dig in just one grave? I didn't say I opened a grave. Well, then, did you dig in just one spot? Yeah. Why did you give up so easily? Well, we thought we heard someone moving around in the city of the dead, and fill us got scared. She wouldn't let me try a second time. Heard someone, huh? Did you see anyone? Just shadows. I couldn't be sure it was anyone. Fill us was nervous about being down here anyway, and you can't blame her. No, I suppose not. Then what happened? Well, there's some more bones, Captain. Well, good. The two upper arms. We must be getting close. There isn't a heck of a lot left to this skeleton. Now, go on. What happened after Miss Carol insisted that you leave the city of the dead? We went back to the car, which we left on the road outside the city of the dead above the mayor's cottage. Didn't you fill up the grave? You mean the hole, don't you? Yes. Didn't you fill up the hole you dug? No. We left in kind of a hurry. Then my cue was to look for the excavation. Not a good'll do you. Why do you say that? Because I've seen the spot since and it's been filled up. It has? You're certain? Yeah. I know it has. When did you have the opportunity of investigating? You've been locked up since that night. I saw the place the day you took me down into the city of the dead and discovered that Ernie Morton's grave had been opened. Oh, so that's it. Look, look there. Well, ain't that something. Our skeleton has had the audacity to leave his pelvis bone lying right out in the open. I suppose we'll find a trail of ribs and vertebrae scattered along ahead of us next. I suppose so. George Parker, why didn't I think of it before? I know where we're headed for. Yeah? Where? I'll bet you money this trail is going to lead us directly to Ernie Morton's grave. You don't say. I most certainly do say. I'll be a mighty disappointed man if I don't find the grinning skull of our friend the skeleton perched on Ernie Morton's headstone. Well, there's a couple of ribs. Two more of them down there about 20 yards. Good enough. We'll be in sight of Ernie's grave in a few minutes now. Well, what will you do if the trail does end there? We'll sit down and keep guarding the morning, and then first thing after breakfast we'll reopen that grave. There must be something buried there. All the activity seems to center around the place. Well, if you're going to do it by daylight... Shut up, Parker. I hear something. What is it? Listen. Someone's digging over there. Not a word now. We'll sneak up on the grave or other. Keep down in the shadows of the headstone. I can see his outline. Be careful. I'll hear you. Look. Look there on the headstone. The skull. The skull of our skeleton. The end of the trail. And it is Ernie Morton's grave. If that fellow would turn around, I'd be able to see his face in the moonlight. Look. Look. Now you can see who it is. Dr. Tuner, why are Jimmy and Captain Friday staying out there so long? Do you think anything's happened? Now you don't need to worry about them. Captain Friday can take care of himself and young Parker. But they were just going out to examine the shed, and they've been gone almost an hour. And then you just settle down there and go to sleep. Isn't that powder I gave you, Major Drowsy? Yeah, but I keep thinking. Oh, he's right outside. I don't reckon it matters much if he is. But why don't Jimmy and Captain Friday drive him away? You can't tell. Maybe they're trying to trail Old Clawfoot, and he gave him the slip and came back to home. But what does he want here? Why does he keep hanging around the house? Well, you're not afraid with me here, are you, Miss Carol? No, but I wish Jimmy was back in the house. Yeah, I reckon you're safe enough. And then there's the mayor sleeping right in the next room. No goodness knows how he can sleep with all his ruckus. But his door's locked. He wouldn't be any good directive if anything should happen. He could break the lock easy enough. It's probably old. There isn't any need, young lady. Oh, I am afraid, Dr. Tuner. Maybe Jimmy and Captain Friday were lured away from the house on purpose. Look at you. I never thought of that. See, maybe I'd better wake up to Mayor. Then if he says so, I'll bust the lock. Captain had no business locking the door in the first place. Oh, I wish you would. Oh, listen to him. Look! Look! Look at the window! Look at the window! Where? I don't see it. It was there! It was there at the window staring in at me. Who, Old Clawfoot? Yes! Yes! I'm getting mighty brave. I'm going to arouse the Mayor. Mayor! I am Mayor! I'm sleeping dang heavy even for the Mayor. Try again. You're supposed to have the matter with him. Funny. I can't get a sound out of him. Listen a moment. See if I can hear him breathing. What do you suppose makes him do that? I can't get the Mayor at all. That's funny, too. Because he always snores like a folk horn when he's sleeping heavily. You don't suppose something has happened to him, too, do you? What could happen to a man in there? The windows were barred and the door's been locked. Ever since Captain Friday left. But the windows were barred and the door was locked when someone stabbed me. If I don't wonder if the Mayor's been stabbed, I'm going to open that door. Oh, yes, please. I think you ought to. Oh, Dr. Tuner, I'm so frightened. Let me go now. Is that the window again? Is that the window? Oh, make him go away! What do you want me to do? Wave the tablecloth at him? You keep still. I can't do more than one thing at a time. And I'm going to see what's happened to the Mayor. Don't look at the window if he frightens you. Oh, I can't help it. What are you going to do with that chair? I'm going to break in the Mayor's door. I wish I had a gun. I'd take a pop at that thing. That burn is wailing anyway. Oh, please, hurry with the door. What are you doing now? I'm putting the other furniture back so I can get a good swing. Now then, we'll see how strong that lock is. It's starting, I thought. You've broken the leg off the chair. There she is. Is he in there? Is he all right, Dr. Tuner? Blackburn Sam Scratch in here. Where's the Mayor's flashlight? They're on the table. We've known about a half a minute, that's right. Doctor? Dr. Tuner? In that room. He's not there. Oh, are you sure? Of course I'm sure. I even looked under the bed for the body. But how did he get out? Are the bars still in the window? Yeah, I looked especially to see. I've never heard tell-out. But he must be there. But people simply can't just disappear through a locked door. They can't. Well, the Mayor's gone and died. But if the Mayor's disappeared, then one of us may be next. Don't talk like that makes me feel any better. Well, I wish Jimmy was here. Dr. Tuner, do you support the Ian Captain Friday of Vanished Tour? No, I ain't thinking of anything except I'm going out and clean up on that claw footage I never got in about a half a minute. Oh, please, you won't leave me, will you? Don't reckon you need to worry on that score. I ain't one of them brave fellas that goes out looking for trouble. Now, I'll stay here with you, all right? But what do I do? You don't suppose that... that thing... What thing? Whatever it was that got the Mayor. You don't think it's still in the house, do you? How should I know? I don't even know that the Mayor's been gone. Well, if something hasn't got him, then what has become of him? Did you imagine he'd always work overtime this way? Well, I could get the creeps just sitting listening to you imagining things. I'm sorry if I'm acting badly, but... but nothing like this ever happened to me before. Well, it doesn't happen to me every day, either, thank heavens. If that thing outside the door would only go away, I wouldn't feel this way, but... Dr. Tuner. Dr. Tuner, look. Look at the front door. It's opening. You're in shape. I forgot to lock it. Oh, Ari. Ari. Lean against it. Hold it shut. Don't let him get it open. I've got it. If I can push it shut... Who's out there? Can't you hold it? Can't you hold it? I'm trying my dang good. Whoever's on the other side... You're rich. George, it'll give me something to fight with. Can you reach it? Yeah. Yeah, I've got it. I'm gonna let go of the door and crack him over the head with the poker when he comes in. Be careful. Off-foot has descended on the old caretaker's cottage. What of the girl's peril, alone in the presence of the wailing phantom? What of the ghoul caught digging in Ernie Morton's grave? What of the skeleton that walks, the phantom church bell, the buried treasure of black pearls? Listen at the same hour next week when we bring you chapter 7 of the cartony Morse adventure drama, City of the Dead. Listen to chapter 7 entitled Captain Friday, Vanishes.