"Archons of Athens! What an Idiot I've Been! What a Turnip! What a Dunce!"

HERE'S a first from Ellery Queen (the editor) meant to follow another first, an earlier radio play reprinting, which we dealt with (HERE) . . .

"The Hangman Won't Wait."

By John Dickson Carr (1906-77; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; the Authors' Calendar HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

First appearance: An episode of Suspense, CBS radio, February 9, 1943. Online HERE (15 minutes 31 seconds).

Reprints:

  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 1944 (today's text).

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces” #18, September 1944.

  Alfred Hitchcock’s Fireside Book of Suspense, 1947.

  The Door to Doom and Other Detections, 1980.

Radio play script (14 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE; go to text page 115).

(Note: Some defacing on pages 127-128.)

   "Then, with your permission, I propose to prove that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points."

THINGS look bad for Helen Barton—very bad. A classic victim of post-traumatic stress disorder, tried and convicted of murder, and due to hang in a few hours for it, Helen has, 

as a barrister in a different context put it, "one foot on the gallows and the other on a 

banana peel." Her only hope lies in the far-reaching sagacity of Dr. Fell . . .

References:

- "a combination of Dr. Johnson and G. K. Chesterton":

  "Dr. Fell is supposedly based upon G. K. Chesterton (author of the Father Brown stories), whose physical appearance and personality were similar to those of Doctor Fell." (Wikipedia HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

- "With sudden shock the prison clock / Smote on the shivering air . . .":

  The quote is from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." (Poetry Foundation HERE.)

- "And you hang her tomorrow morning":

  It looks as if JDC anticipated the Ruth Ellis case by twelve years:

  "Ruth Ellis (née Neilson; 9 October 1926 – 13 July 1955) was a Welsh-born nightclub hostess and convicted murderer who became the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom following the fatal shooting of her lover, David Blakely." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a .32 revolver":

  . . . or, more likely, a .32 automatic.

Resource:

- The last JDC play that we featured was "Cabin B-13" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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