Transcript
William N. Robeson (0:06)
Suspense and the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master of mystery and adventure, William N. Robeson.
Narrator (0:16)
Among the great classics of radio drama, none is more memorable than Three Skeleton Key. Although few who have heard it would remember it by that title. To them it is simply that story about the rats and that it is an unforgettable experience in horror. We repeat it now because we can't help ourselves. We like to scare as well as you like to be scared. Listen. Listen then, as Vincent Price stars in Three Skeleton Key, which begins in just a moment.
William N. Robeson (0:50)
And now Three Skeleton Key, starring Vincent Price. A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Main Character (possibly the lighthouse keeper) (1:16)
Try and picture this place. A gray tapering cylinder welded by iron rods and concrete to the key itself. A bare black rock 150ft long, maybe 40 wide. That's at low tide, at high tide. Just the light rising 110ft straight up out of the ocean. And all about it the churning water. Gray, green scum, dappled, warm as soup and swarming with gigantic bat like devil fish, great violet schools of Portuguese, man of war and yes, sharks, the big ones. 15 footers. And as if this wasn't enough, there was a hot, dank, rotten smelling wind that came at us day and night off the jungle swamps of the mainland. A wind that smelled like death. Set in the base of the light is a watertight bronze door. And in you go. And up and up, round and round. Over the light storeroom is the food storeroom. And over the food storeroom is the bunk room where the three of us slept. And over the bunk room is the living and cooking room. And over the living and cooking room is the light. She was a beauty, balanced like a ballerina on the glistening steel axle of her rotary mechanism. My companions in the light were an odd and opposite pair. Big Louie, the head man who hardly ever talked, and August, who never stopped. But it wasn't a bad life, especially at night when the others were snoring in their sacks two levels down. Usually there was nothing to see across the starlit water, for most ships knew better than to come close to Three Skeleton Key. But one night, gazing out across the phosphorescent comas, I noticed something show for a second in the revolving light. Something far off. A three master, a big one, about half a mile off and coming down out of the north northwest, coming straight for us. I went over to the gallery door.
Louie or August (companions of the main character) (3:36)
And yelled, murray, Marie, what is it? Ship headed for the reef. Right on.
Main Character (possibly the lighthouse keeper) (3:44)