One Hundred Thousand Diameters

Title One Hundred Thousand Diameters
Description Episode 53
Message Text Quiet, Please!

Wyllis Cooper

No. 52

“One Hundred Thousand Diameters”

WOR – MBS – Mon. June 7, 1948 – 9:30-10:00 PM EDST
REH – Mon. June 7, 1948 – 2:00-5:00 PM EDST STUDIO 2
Mon. June 7, 1948 – 8:00-9:30 PM EDST STUDIO 15


CHAPPELL: Quiet, please.

(SEVEN SECONDS SILENCE)

CHAPPELL: Quiet, please.

(MUSIC … THEME … FADE FOR)

ANNCR: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents “Quiet, Please!” which is written and directed y Wyllis Cooper, and which features Ernest Chappell. “Quiet, Please!” for tonight is called, “One Hundred Thousand Diameters”.

(MUSIC … THEME … END)

---

JUDD: Just sit perfectly still.
Better keep your hands in your lap, there. And don’t move your feet. Just be still. (A PAUSE) It’ll go away in a second: all you have to do is play dead! And don’t look at it! Just sit stiiiiilllll … (A PAUSE) It’s fascinatin’ .. .you look at it and you see all kinds of things … hasn’t got any eyes but it sees you – it hears you – wiggles along the floor toward you …

SOUND: (AND THERE IS THE SOUND OF A VIGOROUS SLAP. JUDD, STARTS, AND SNAPS OUT OF IT INSTANTLY)

JUDD: Thanks, Jean.

JEAN: You know better than to sit and look at the thing!

JUDD: Sure; but you get carried away. Thanks for smacking me.

JEAN: Don’t mention it.

JUDD: You didn’t need to crack my bridgework, though.

JEAN: You wouldn’t have had any bridgework in another couple of seconds.

JUDD: Yes. Thanks. Where’d it go?

JEAN: (LOOKS AROUND) By the chair.

JUDD: I see it. Well, let’s put the salt solution over there; maybe it’ll crawl back in.

JEAN: All right. That’s close enough for me.

JUDD: Me, too. Well, now, friend. You’re all right. (A PAUSE) I say it won’t hurt you now. Sorry to scare you, but –

JEAN: Judd.

JUDD: What?

JEAN: Don’t touch him.

JUDD: Huh? Why?

JEAN: Look at him.

JUDD: Good gosh, the man’s dead.

(MUSIC … AN ACCENT)
JUDD: Now, I want to tell you about that, because you ought to know.
My name is Judd. Verne R. Judd. Not Vernon: Verne. I’m a histologist and bacteriologist. Not a doctor. Not a mad scientist; nothing spectacular, nothing up my sleeve. I look through microscopes, and make various kinds of reports on what I see. Photographs; drawings, qualitative and quantitative analyses. That is, you bring me a specimen and I look at it and dye it different colours and count the various kinds of bacteria I see, and so on. So many staphylococcuc aureus; so many polymorphonuclear cells, so on. I don’t tell you what to do with them or anything of that sort. I’m merely an observer and a reporter, that’s all.
Jean is my laboratory assistant. Cornell, two years in the lab at Cook County, three years with me. The dead man there in the chair. He’s a – he was a messenger for an analytical laboratory I’ve done some work for. Unimportant, although I agree that I was a little shocked at his sudden kicking off. I don’t know his name, and we’ve got to get rid of him, Jean.

JEAN: You’re telling me.

JUDD: Yes, yes. Now, I realize that you’re probably saying to yourself that I’m a pretty hardened customer, and that Jean is too. That we’ve got no feelings; that probably w’re murderers. Well, friend, disabuse yourself of any ideas like those, will you?
It’s too bad this fellow died.
But what we’re trying to do is keep a lot of other people from dying the way he got it. And we haven’t got time to fool around with emotions over one man.
You don’t agree with me?
One of the people we’re trying to save, mister, is you.
Some of the others are your family.
Your friends.
Practically everybody you know.

(MUSIC .. .AN ACCENT)

JUDD: So take it easy, will you?
And don’t jump up and down and wave your arms.
We’ll save you.
I hope.

JEAN: It’s back in the saline solution now, Judd.

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Submission Date Aug 15, 2003