S2E4: Time and Again

If You Please, Himan Brown’s Radio Mystery Theater

This episode of Hyman Brown's Radio Mystery Theater presents the gothic horror drama 'Time and Again,' written by Ian Martin. The story foll

Key takeaways

Ethan Vigil discovers a mysterious hourglass clock featuring the numeral 13 instead of 12.
The clock's internal mechanism mimics the rhythmic beat of a human heart.
The device was first activated when Ethan's wife, Henrietta, cut her finger on its works.
To keep the clock running, Ethan steals blood samples from Dr. Royce's medical office.
The narrative explores the heavy price of seeking perpetual youth and stolen time.

Main topics

Gothic horror drama
Supernatural time manipulation
Radio drama history

Notable quotes

The time is out of joint.

Conclusion

A chilling exploration of how the pursuit of personal advantage can le

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Welcome to the second season of, if you please, Hyman Brown's Radio Mystery Theater. On this series, we are offering rebroadcasts of a select group of programs created by this legendary producer for CBS between 1974 and 1982. Brown reimagined radio drama for contemporary times. Our new series offers some of these exciting works again. Speaker 1 (0:22) In Speaker 2 (0:23) season one, we delivered riveting tales of foul play, betrayal, greed, and misguided love. We foiled a murder, considered reincarnation, pondered the nature of guilt, and traveled through time. We heard Hyman Brown's troupe of seasoned audio actors embody a wide range of characters and deliver thrills time and again. And for season two, they are all set to keep our headsets on and our fingers tapping play. Before each program, commentator John Slavny shares details about the cast, the writer, and the plot. Your job? Listen. If You Please is produced in loving memory of Robert Isaacson. Speaker 1 (1:07) Hello, listeners. I'm John Slavny, and I'm here to bring you a decidedly weird, eldritch, and gothic horror story from the fertile and delightfully twisted mind of the writer and actor Ian Martin. The setting of our play is never quite specified. Despite a few concessions to modern conveniences, for instance, there's a telephone, our story seems to take place in a vague sort of gothic un-time. We're in America, to be sure, Boston perhaps, or somewhere further up the New England coast, or maybe we're in Edgar Allan Poe's Baltimore. Our protagonist and narrator is Ethan Vigil. Ethan means steadfast, and Vigil is certainly a curious name, one that chimes with clocks and time and keeping watch. As our story begins, Ethan buys a strange antique timepiece from a desperate sailor. The clock doesn't just keep time, it alters it with hair-raising results. Without giving too much away, I will say that the story bears a decided resemblance to Roger Corman's bizarre and irresistible 1960 cult classic, The Little Shop of Horrors, in which a florist's assistant becomes a slave to his bloodthirsty houseplant. The marvelous John Beale is our clockmaker. Born in Joplin, Missouri, Beale was a veteran of stage and screen whose career began on Broadway at the start of the 30s. He moved to Hollywood soon after. He had come to this recording almost directly from the Broadway production of David Story's The Changing Room, where he served in standby capacity for five separate roles, including the role played by Ian Martin in that production. Ethan's wife Henrietta is played by the Toronto-born Grace Matthews, a member of Golden Age Radio Royalty. Matthews was one of several actors to voice Margot Lane on The Shadow, a role she had from 1946 to 1949. Incidentally, our series host Margot Avery is the daughter of the actress Margot Stevenson, for whom the character Margot Lane was named. Grace Matthews had been working in American radio and television since the mid-40s, and she brought all of her experience to Hyman Brown's new venture. Utility player Bryna Rayburn plays Harriet, Henrietta's sister, and is thoroughly unpleasant in all the right ways. Ian Martin himself doubles as Dr. Royce, Ethan's friend and chess partner, and is a sailor whose visit sets a catastrophe in motion. Martin was born in Glasgow and had a reputation for dialects, which makes it all the more endearing that his Cockney accent here is a trifle shaky. This episode is one of the three Radio Mystery Theatre tales adapted as short stories. and collected in the paperback Strange Tales from the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, published by Popular Library in 1976. But enough from me. The seconds are ticking away, and we really should get on with our story. Time and Again was recorded at CBS Radio Studios on Christmas Eve 1973, and first aired a little more than a month later, on January 27, 1974. I hope your time listening is time well spent. Speaker 3 (4:02) The CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents... Come in. I'm E.G. Marshall. Welcome to the fear you can hear. Welcome to the sounds of suspense. It was the ill-fated Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, who lamented, The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. Many people before and since have echoed the same cry of despair, but none with more compelling justice and reason than Ethan Vigil, clockmaker and destroyer. Ethan Vigil, for whom a special clock struck a magic and an evil hour. Got your box in. Your move, Speaker 5 (5:12) Jake. Speaker 4 (5:12) No, don't rush me. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Speaker 4 (5:19) God in heaven, Ethan, how can you stand that infernal racket? What? What racket? Oh, you mean the clock striking? I don't even notice them anymore. Speaker 5 (5:29) Well, Speaker 4 (5:30) go ahead. Speaker 5 (5:30) What Speaker 4 (5:31) do you want to give up? No, no, no. Who can think of a chess move with all hell breaking loose? Now on start our games after midnight. We have to drive a man stark staring mad. I swear to Sam Hill, Ethan, you deliberately... Speaker 5 (5:52) Only two living things left in the room at that terrifying moment as time stood still were myself and that damnable machine. Our Speaker 3 (6:13) mystery drama, Time and Again, was written especially for the Mystery Theater by Ian Martin and stars John Beale. I'll be back shortly with Act One. Speaker 3 (6:42) Few of us can resist the fascination of an auction, and I'm no different than most, which is how and why I happen to possess this curious document which reveals a bone-chilling account of how many lives were lost so uncannily and eerily to the inhuman demands of what Ethan Vigil called that damnable machine. The tale I'm about to tell... No, no, wait. If you can manage to decipher his cramped longhand, let Ethan Vigil confess for himself. Speaker 5 (7:20) I, Ethan Vigil, clockmaker by trade, am writing this in case, when the moment comes, I fail to destroy the hourglass clock. For if I fail, someone must destroy it, kill it, end its ghastly existence before God knows how many innocent people will die to satisfy its insatiable thirst. Speaker 5 (7:48) The clock itself came into my possession more or less by accident. I was working late at my shop one night about a year ago, and I heard it tapping on the closed glass door. Darn nation, some people can't read signs. Darn fools like to break that glass. Speaker 4 (8:08) Stop that! Can't you see I'm close? Hey, come here, please. Let me in. Oh, get on with you. You won't be sorry. Give me a chance. I'll give you the chance of a lifetime. Look. Speaker 5 (8:27) It was raining heavily, the water streaming down the glass, but the object he had drawn from the cover of his pea jacket drew my eyes like a magnet. It was a clock, the like of which I'd never seen. It was shaped like an hourglass, with a strange-appearing pendulum hanging in the lower half and the face in the upper half. And in the place of the figure 12, at the top of the face, was the numeral 13. I had to see that clock more closely. Speaker 4 (9:00) Oh, bless you, Governor. You're a lifesaver, you are. What do you want? Oh, I want you to have a look Speaker 5 (9:07) at this here clock. Clock is the only reason I let you in. I'd like to have a look at it myself. Let's take it over to Speaker 4 (9:15) the bench. Speaker 5 (9:17) You want this clock repaired? Speaker 4 (9:18) I want to sell it to you, is what I want. I hope I don't regret this, but come on to my place in the back. Speaker 5 (9:28) There's a fire in there to dry you up Speaker 4 (9:29) a Speaker 5 (9:29) bit. Speaker 4 (9:32) Where'd you get this clock? Why, it came into my possession when its owner died. Does it run? Well, no. That there clock, it doesn't run. I'd be the first to admit it. I'll give you $20. Oh, now, look here. $20, take it or leave it. No, I don't intend to be taken advantage of by somebody else. There Speaker 5 (9:52) doesn't seem Speaker 4 (9:52) to be Speaker 7 (9:53) any question of who's being taken advantage of. Harriet. Ethan. Speaker 5 (9:57) Who is this person? He's a customer, Speaker 7 (9:59) more Speaker 5 (10:00) or less. This is my sister-in-law. Speaker 7 (10:02) It's near on to midnight, and my poor sick sister is pining upstairs for her husband to bring her a little faith and consolation. Oh, Speaker 4 (10:09) now, ma'am, I certainly am sorry to intrude on family problems. Then Speaker 7 (10:15) don't. Ethan, get rid of this man. Speaker 4 (10:18) You better go. Yeah, well, what about our business and the clock? Speaker 5 (10:22) Twenty dollars is all I have to my name. Speaker 4 (10:24) I'll take it. Don't you do it, Ethan. Mind Speaker 5 (10:27) your own business for once, Harriet. I had little doubt my sailor, who called himself Harry Stubbs, had dubious title to that strange clock. But like all collectors, to own something totally and unreservedly unique is an overriding obsession. Speaker 7 (10:48) Is he gone? Speaker 5 (10:49) Yes. Speaker 7 (10:51) Oh, just look at this place after you had that derelict in here. Lights on all over the place eating up money. To say nothing of good hard cash thrown away on that piece of junk on the table. Speaker 5 (11:03) It was my own money. Speaker 7 (11:05) What own money? You and Henrietta wouldn't even have a roof over your heads, let alone a piece of business, if it weren't for me. Oh, no, it's my money that keeps you going, and don't you forget it. Now you lock the door to the shop. Speaker 5 (11:19) I still have some repairs left to do. Speaker 7 (11:22) You'll have to get up early tomorrow and do them. I Speaker 5 (11:24) just... I just wanted to have another look at this clock Speaker 7 (11:27) before... You'll waste no more time or light or fuel down here tonight. If it wasn't for good money paid out, I'd... Take that piece of junk on the table and dump it in the rubbish. Speaker 5 (11:39) How I wish she'd done just that. Let the city collect it with the morning trash and bury it forever. But fate hadn't planned it that way. So I went upstairs from Harriet to face another problem I didn't know how to solve. My ailing wife, Henrietta. Speaker 6 (11:58) Ethan, is that you? Speaker 5 (12:00) Yes, I know. Where Speaker 6 (12:01) have