00:00Good evening, friends. This is your host to welcome you through the creaking door into
00:13the inner sanctum. Come on in. One prankish little fellow whom we shall call maniac for
00:24lack of a stronger word. Just set fire to the walls. He said a closed room made him feel
00:31confined. As a result, four other characters are slightly burned up now.
00:46Tonight's inner sanctum mystery, Caught for Halloween, was written by John Robert and stars
00:52Larry Haynes in the role of Jimmy with Barry Kroger as Cavanaugh. And now, let's unhinge our minds
01:04a little. After all, what's a little insanity among friends? Tonight's story dramatizes the
01:14fanatical hold of memory. The one scene, the one fragment that plays and replays over and
01:22over again in your mind. The one terror that's with you when you die, when you walk, and
01:29when you sleep.
01:32Oh, sleep. Who can sleep? I'm here in the 35-cent flop, but I'm in the Burma jungle, watching
01:48a scene that never gets stale even though it's five years old. I can hear sounds travel across
01:56the brush. I pick them up as if I'm a receiving set. Animal sounds. And I see, as if my eyes
02:07are in the sky, I see two twin figures standing with their rifles aimed at a pair of jungle beasts.
02:12A tiger and its mate in a crotch, ready to jump. They fire point-blank together as if by signal.
02:20So good. They miss. The beasts roar and leap. I hear them scream out, Cavanaugh and Dr.
02:26Dolan. Just before they die.
02:29Five years. And you've been everywhere trying to forget. And you almost do forget. But it
02:44edges right back into your mind by itself. Like when a guy suddenly sneaks up on you in the night.
02:52Do you have a match?
02:53What? Do you have a match?
02:55Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. You popped up on me so suddenly.
02:59You're a nervous man.
03:04Thank you. I have a parcel with me. For you.
03:09For me? What, are you kidding?
03:11No. I have a parcel for you. Here, take it.
03:14Wait a minute. Hey, hey, hey, wait.
03:16But he's gone. Just the way he came. As if he's, he's a chip off my sanity. As if there'd
03:29been nobody. But there is a package left with me. The mind doesn't dream up a package. A cardboard
03:37box, heavy kind of. And tissue, lots of tissue around something that, that had the feel of
03:44a head. It is a head. The stuffed head of a jungle tiger. Its mouth fixed in the snarl.
03:55It sends the blood hammering to my head. Doesn't make sense. No good figuring it out. Toss
04:01it into a river, box and all, and get away. Get among the people. Yeah. Yeah, Rocco's
04:08got a Rocco's. Get the jukebox going. Slip into a fog. Coffee, Rocco. Jimmy, I got something
04:19for you. For me, Rocco? A package. The guy come in before and leaves a package for you.
04:26See? For Jimmy Fox. Your name on it. My name? My name's Jimmy Scott. You know that. Scott,
04:35yes, but the man says your name is also Jimmy Fox. He says he knows. He knows? I took the
04:45package outside into the night, into an alleyway. Another cardboard box, heavy. And tissue, lots
04:53of tissue around. Something that had the feel of a head. It was a head. But not a tiger's
05:02this time. It was a human skull. It shone with a hard white light where the moon touched
05:11it. And then it seemed to speak. Do you have a mask? What? You're being an idiot. It isn't
05:19the skull talking to you. It's me. You? Where are you? I'm behind you. I don't see you.
05:25It's because you're afraid to. See me now? Yeah. A black suit and a face grinning at me
05:34like, like a laughing mask. It is a laughing mask. Well, why are you wearing a mask? Why
05:42not tonight's Halloween? Halloween? Sure. Halloween. Not everybody plays jokes. Oh,
05:53George, I should have remembered. It was Halloween. Can you identify the skull?
05:59Identify? Look, what kind of a gag are you trying to... Suppose I give you an hour to identify
06:05the skull. It's eight now. Until nine o'clock then, Jimmy. Uh, wait. Hey, hey, wait. He was
06:12gone again. As if there'd been nobody. Just another big chip off my sanity. I really had
06:20to get away from myself now. I hit the back streets and then somewhere a big neon sign
06:27across a tenement pulled me off the sidewalk. It read, the Tillery Street Boys Neighborhood
06:32Association. Halloween costume ball. Public invited. A girl in a boot, masked like a witch,
06:40stopped me at the door. Mask, mister? Mask. Oh, sure, sure. Give me one. Black, green, yellow
06:48or purple? What's your favorite color? Uh, yellow. All right, here you are. Fifty cents. There
06:54you are. Oh. Oh, what? Just a description left with me. I'd almost forgotten. Are you...
07:02Jimmy Fox? Suppose I was Jimmy Fox. What about it? This grocery bag was left here for
07:09you. A man told me to tell you. You forgot it somewhere. And he said that he'd meet you
07:13one place or another later. Here, take it. By the shape of it, I'd say you had a Halloween
07:19pumpkin inside. What if I told you there was a human skull inside that grocery bag?
07:27He'd meet me one place or another. He did. He was under a street lamp, waiting for me to
07:44happen along. Hello, Jimmy. Have you dared to call the skull by name yet? Or must I? Look,
07:51that gag isn't paying off, mister. All right, go ahead. You call it. It's my name. Dolan.
07:57Boxer Dolan. Remember him? I, uh, never knew the guy. He was no doubt got me confused. Have
08:03I, Jimmy? You've changed your appearance cleverly, except for one thing disguise could never conceal.
08:09One thing? Your guilt. You wear it like a badge of shame. Oh, what am I guilty of? Murder.
08:16Two men left an encampment in the Burma jungle just before dawn. Two men. Boxer Dolan and
08:22Cavanaugh. A third man remained behind. He played sick, pretended to fever. The third man
08:30was you, Jimmy. Must I tell you the rest? Tell me the rest. Dolan and Cavanaugh carried
08:37rifles in the event of a jungle encounter. There was a jungle encounter. A tiger and its mate.
08:44An emergency, but an easy one to resolve for two expert hunters. Just one shot apiece and
08:51there'd be two more dead tigers. Just one shot apiece. They had their one shot apiece, but
08:59the tigers didn't drop dead in their tracks. Instead, Boxer Dolan and Cavanaugh dropped.
09:05Ask me what happened, Jimmy. What happened? During the night, someone had emptied their
09:13rifle loads and substituted blank bullets. You did that, Jimmy. You engineered the murder
09:20of two men. You murdered your two partners in crime. Just one day's push from the Hindu
09:24temple you'd all teamed up to loot. They got within 24 hours of treasure, and then you murdered
09:31them. One more day to the temple, so why split three ways, huh? You know about the temple,
09:38but I never pushed on to that temple. No loot, no nothing. How about that? You lost your
09:42nerve. You just hadn't counted on losing your nerve. What are you, a detective? No. I'm your
09:51second victim. I'm Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh. The Cavanaugh was killed. Unfortunately for you,
10:00he wasn't. I'll show you what I had to survive. Feel my sleeve. Feel it. It's empty. Torn out of
10:13the socket. Now the face behind this laughing gargoyle I wear. See the left profile. Oh, it
10:24isn't pretty, is it? The eye. The eye's gone, too. I spent five years finding you, Jimmy.
10:32I've waited a long time to let you see my face. You couldn't have to leave to kill me? After
10:39you've had the same 24 hours you arranged that Dolan and I would have. What do you mean,
10:45the same 24 hours? Unarmed, in the jungle, and helpless. I'm going to hunt you for 24 hours,
10:53in this jungle, the jungle of the city, with every beast of prey I can buy. I'm going to
10:59hunt you, Jimmy. And in the end, when I've wrung every suffering from you, I'm going to kill
11:06you. What do you mean, every beast of prey you can buy? The denizens of the city jungle,
11:12the riffraff, the murderers, the men and women who buy and sell murder. I can afford them,
11:20Jimmy. See this, Ruby? Hey, is it real? And I have dozens, Jimmy, dozens. I didn't lose
11:31my nerve. It's ten o'clock. You can go now. Go and see if you can escape me and my pack.
11:38You're going through with this? Get along, Jimmy. Hurry. The beast will be coming at
11:42you from the sewers and the cellars, ambushing you from the shadows into the dawn and through
11:47the day for 24 hours until ten tomorrow night. Or you win. You live. Hurry, Jimmy. See how
11:59painful death can be. That Kavanaugh's one fellow I never want to, uh, hunt me up. Mm-mm.
12:18No, sir. That guy slays for creeps. 24 hours. Kavanaugh's got 24 hours to kill.
12:29And Jimmy has just enough time to die. Yes, you know, Jimmy might win out over Kavanaugh now
12:40that he's got an extra skull to go with the one he's stuck with. After all, two heads are
12:46better than one. Let's live out the terror now, shall we?
12:53An animal game of murder for 24 hours. I was to be hunted down in a jungle where human beasts
13:04came at you from the sewers and cellars where killers and the hire of a homicidal lunatic lay
13:09an ambush. Well, I had to win. I had to save myself. I had to. Hide. The thing to do was to hide. Fade into an alleyway and find a cellar and stay put for 24 hours.
13:21Just stay put for the sickening rake of garbage cans until 10 tomorrow night.
13:31Was I alone? Movement. There was a whispering movement somewhere in the cellar.
13:41A faint rattle of ash cans as if... as if the wind was rattling them. Wind in an airtight cellar.
13:52Hello? Anybody there?
13:55No answer. I've been imagining. But then something winged at me, glaring into my shoulder, sharp and deadly like a knife.
14:14I came to, bleeding from a shoulder gash. I got out of there and back into the streets, into a jungle of faces.
14:24It was Halloween night like I'd never seen it. Masks and costumes on kids of six and old thrones of 60s.
14:33A crazy jungle of witches and snarling speedcaps and lunatics. They couldn't all be in the hire of Kavanaugh.
14:41And then, where a fence was plastered with circus posters of jungle animals, a zany-looking guy was shooting from the hip at the poster while making menacing faces like a bad man.
14:51I caught a whiff of powder in the night air. The shot had burned into the poster.
14:57I crept up behind him, faking a gun with my fist in my coat pocket. I rammed against his back.
15:04Get him up, pal.
15:04I, I, I, you're nothing. I'm not a semblance.
15:07Your gun, I want your gun. Hand it over.
15:08Oh, sure, yeah.
15:10Now walk. Walk up the block and don't turn back to look.
15:19I had a gun now and the tables were turned.
15:22I was the hunter now.
15:24I drifted to the docks and took up a position with my back to the river.
15:28Are you thinking of suicide, Jimmy?
15:31Not anymore, Kavanaugh.
15:32You sound as if your morale had suddenly, uh, improved.
15:37My morale's going great, Kavanaugh.
15:40Your animal hunt's about to boomerang.
15:43Blow right up in your face like this.
15:45Who's hunting to move, Kavanaugh?
15:47Who's hunting to move?
15:51Kavanaugh kept standing up.
15:53Three bullets point-blank enough to blow his head off,
15:57but Kavanaugh kept standing up on long.
16:02How does it feel to hunt game with blank cartridges
16:05like Boxer Dolan and I did once?
16:08Blank cartridges?
16:10But that crazy-looking guy saw him burn a hole in the circus poster.
16:13Only one bullet. The first one was real.
16:17Simple.
16:19Yeah, simple.
16:21I get it.
16:24Dead-Eyed Dick was another one of your beasts.
16:28Who's hunting who, Jimmy?
16:31Who's hunting who?
16:32Look, Kavanaugh.
16:33Kavanaugh, wait.
16:35Kavanaugh, kill me.
16:36Get it over with and kill me now, will you?
16:38Kavanaugh, you've got to kill me!
16:44I had to get out of there.
16:46The subway.
16:47No, the subway.
16:47Fade into the subway.
16:48Get on a train and ride to the end of the line.
16:50Ride out of the jungle.
16:51An empty station.
16:53No one in it.
16:54No.
16:55No someone.
16:56Two people.
16:58A type of little guy buried behind a newspaper.
17:01And an old lady in ragged clothes,
17:02carrying a pet half hidden under a coat.
17:05A pet that looked like a cat.
17:08She came up to me, close.
17:10Like to ask me something.
17:11Uh, this side goes to Lepperts Avenue station?
17:16Uh, Lepperts, I don't know.
17:18I'm a stranger here.
17:19Oh, oh.
17:20Hush, Genevieve.
17:22Oh, oh.
17:24Genevieve is hungry.
17:25That's not a cat.
17:27No, son.
17:29A cub.
17:30A tiger cub.
17:33A tiger cub?
17:34Would you like to stroke Genevieve?
17:37Oh, no, no.
17:38Don't run away, son.
17:42Genevieve won't hurt.
17:43I ran away with the old crone after me,
17:46hobbling on the skirts,
17:48and the little dapper guy behind the newspaper
17:49circling at me from the opposite direction,
17:51cornering me.
17:52I jumped to the tracks,
17:53my only heart,
17:54and I ran.
17:54I ran it deep into the bowels of the subway,
17:56deep, very deep,
17:58with the little dapper guy after me
17:59as if he led business.
18:01And then the train
18:02had had a Halloween look, too,
18:04bearing down on me,
18:05an iron face with Vangelo eyes.
18:07I ran against the wall and flattened off.
18:09The train crashed past,
18:11and the dapper little guy screamed.
18:18Kavanaugh was shy of one beast in his jungle.
18:24The little guy had been hit glancingly
18:26and hurled against the subway wall,
18:28pulverized.
18:28I got to him quickly and freshed him.
18:31I had a gun now.
18:33A gun with bullets that killed.
18:36I ran.
18:37I ran a half mile underground
18:39to another station
18:40and then back on the streets.
18:43Back in the animal game.
18:46It was three in the morning.
18:48A neon sign read
18:50Tillery Street Boys Neighborhood Association.
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