Quiet Please - Dialogue for a Tragedy

Quiet Please - Dialogue for a Tragedy

Mystery - Old Time Audio

B1July 21, 202629 min
Play

Presents tales filled with suspense and intrigue, each episode unraveling mysteries that keep listeners engaged and guessing until the end.

Transcript

Automatically generated from the audio. May contain errors.

I was a pilot for the Ornoth in 2013. My best is that we can use the software to use the software to use the software. We can use the software to use the frontend and frontend. If Shopify is a pilot, it would be my own policy.

That's why we can use the software to use Shopify. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu shopify.com-sivustolla. The American Broadcasting Company presents Quiet, Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper

and which features Ernest Chappell. Quiet, Please, for today is called Dialogue for a Strategy. Yes? Yes, I know the pistol's loaded.

Yes, it's perfectly easy to see that it's pointed at my head. Let me congratulate you on a very steady hand. You've held it without moving for almost a minute now. I've been glancing at the clock.

Certainly I know what you propose to do. You propose to squeeze the trigger of the pistol just a tiny little hair's breadth at a time. squeeze it softly, gently, just as you were taught to do out of Fort Riley all those years ago

when you were a fat little buck private in the cavalry. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, the way Ike Martin used to teach you. Squeeze the trigger until you squeeze the bullet right out of the muzzle. Right out of the muzzle, right up my head.

And the reason you squeeze the trigger so gently is so you won't know the exact moment the hammer falls on the firing pin. The firing pin sticks against the cap and the cartridge, and the gas begins to expand. And then I look at you like the young subaltern

in Kipling's grave at a hundred head, remember? With a big blue mark on his forehead and the back blown out of his head. Yes, I remember the grave at a hundred head.

I like Kipling. Remember a Snyder squid in the jungle? Somebody laughed and fled. And the men of the first Shikaris picked up the Shavalton dead.

With a big blue mark on his forehead and the back blown out of his head. Very pretty. Very, very pretty. I doubt very much if I'm going to be able to take you out of it.

You've got most of the slack taken up on that trigger, and now the real squeeze begins, doesn't it? Now you can feel the steel pressing against the steel inside the gun itself, pressing back against the pressure of your finger, as if it's reluctant to give that last irrevocable fraction of an inch.

A fraction of an inch that'll let slip that 30 grams of copper jacket of death. I never could remember the names of those parts inside the pistol that make the last final deal with the laws of physics and ballistics. I remember the sear, whatever it is, and the disconnector and the firing pin.

That I never could keep in separate, my mind. Then I had a sear and the disconnector and the firing pin and the firing pin spraying. and all the odd-shaped little gadgets inside that gun are conspiring to make a mess of the mind

that never could keep them separate. A very fine piece of poetic justice, indeed. No, no, don't just crook your finger on the trigger. Remember how, like Martin said, squeeze your whole hand?

Squeeze even the fingers that aren't touching the trigger. That takes longer. It makes a better game of it. Squeeze your whole hand. The trigger finger will squeeze that along with the others, and presently...

presently. You have feet dropped out of it, please. Well, then. Perhaps I have time to tell you a few things about yourself

before the hammer falls and puts a permanent period to my simple declared of English sentences. If you don't know the exact second the hammer will fall, I don't know it either. It'll be an interesting interlude.

All right, I begin. A whited sepulcher. A nice and charnel house of a man, spotless and clean to the eye, but within a stifling miasma of horror.

It's you I'm talking about. You with a pistol pointed at my head. You with your fingers closing on the trigger. You're a figure.

I've got something that I've got to talk to you about, dear. The children are here this afternoon. The school's children, the adopted ones, and they have some ridiculous idea

that everything would be right about her will. Her will. Why, they say they're both sure that there was another will, leaving all her money to them instead of you.

I know I said it was absurd. Yes, they said they knew she'd written another will in her own handwriting. A holographic will, is that what they call it? I know she made that will,

leaving all the money to you a long time ago, before the children were adopted. No, I don't like to discuss it either, dear. I said it to you, but Siri, didn't I?

But they knew that you and Sue, well, they knew how Sue do to dislike you for some fancy wrong or something that I don't know about. And they said,

well, you know how Sue works about her heart. They said she's made a will cutting you off. Yes, I know you're her brother. It's absurd.

Cutting you off and leaving the entire state to them. and they said they knew where she'd hidden the will, and when they went to find it, it had disappeared. Why, they seem to have some ridiculous idea that you...

Of course, I don't believe it. No, dear, they haven't got a sense, and it really gave me a guilty feeling with me being the sole heir to all her money.

The rich man people don't search out and destroy unfavorable wills in real life do they they don't rob orphans children in real life

do they don't they see you're rich aren't you see The kids.

The girl. Her name was Celeste. She's married now, got four kids, lives above a saloon down in Baltimore.

That's her money that bought that gun you're aiming at. The boy. Tough little devil, wasn't he? Seventeen when it happened, and he accused you right out, didn't he?

You shouldn't have kicked him so hard. Too bad he died, it won't be fun meeting him when you die. No, it won't be fun, not if there's any justice the other side of the grave. He was a bitter young fellow.

His sister's money. And his money. That's what caught the gun, wasn't it? Makes you cringe.

But I noticed your finger still on the trigger. And your wife, Norma. She was sorry for the kid, too, but what could she do? You never let her know exactly what became of the kid, did you?

A lot of things you never let Norma know.

This is the opening of the episode. Open the player for the full interactive transcript with clickable words, translation and flashcards.

Open full transcript

Audio belongs to its publisher and is played from their feed. Rights holders can request removal — copyright & takedown policy

Episodes · Mystery - Old Time Audio