The Norliss Tapes

Good morning, Mr. Evans.

Monday morning is never good.

Anything important?

David Norliss on three.

Ah.

Hello, David. Been a while.

How's the book coming?

Sanford, I've gotta talk to you.

I know, you're gonna tell me it's only half-written,

and we're gonna have to delay our--

Half-written, hell. I don't have a word on paper.

It's been almost a year.

I know how long it's been, Sanford.

But I, uh...

I can't write it.

I'm afraid to write it.

You're not making sense.

We gave you a sizeable advance

to write a book debunking the supernatural,

which was your idea, not ours.

And now you tell me, a year later,

you haven't even started it.

I'm into the book.

Deep into it.

But, uh...

it's on...on tapes.

A series of tapes. When you hear them, you'll understand.

What will I understand?

How far I've gone.

How dangerous this whole thing is.

Sanford, I have to talk to you.

David, you sound very strange.

Are you all right?

David, are you all right?

Yeah.

Okay. Okay, what about The Canellia Room for lunch tomorrow?

That's no good. I have to see you now.

It's Monday, Dave. You know what Mondays are like.

Why not tomorrow?

Tomorrow might be too late.

Do you wish to order now, sir?

No, just bring me a phone.

That was a week ago.

He never showed for lunch, never phoned to explain why,

and I haven't been able to contact him since.

Sanford, you should be used to eccentric writers by now.

And, in my opinion, David Norliss

is just a bit more eccentric than most.

Man, I'll never get over this view.

There is something wrong.

I wish you'd check this thing out, find out where he is.

Sanford, I'm his lawyer, not his nursemaid.

Please.

All right, I'll look into it.

I still say you're making too much of a broken lunch date.

Sanford! Sanford!

Oh, good. I was hoping I'd see you.

Yeah, glad I ran into you.

Have you got time to catch the cable with me?

Where are you going?

I'm going up to the club.

All right, fine. We'll have a drink.

Good. Yeah.

I, uh, have been terribly worried.

I tried to phone you earlier.

Well, I was in a publisher's meeting.

Tied up the whole bloody afternoon.

Sanford, I'm sorry I didn't take you very seriously

in the meeting the other day.

Well?

I just thought you were making much too much of it.

I hope you have something.

What'd you find out?

Nobody knows where David is. Nobody's seen him.

He's just...gone.

Are you sure?

We checked every possible source,

everything conceivable.

It seems incredible to me.

David?

Notes for introduction.

Today is Thursday, September 25,

and I might as well get started with this thing,

get the book rolling with what I've got so far.

God knows, it isn't taking the direction I assumed it would.

This whole thing began when my natural writer's curiosity

was aroused by an article I had read in a weekly periodical.

The article was concerned with the commercial aspects

of spiritualism and the occult.

My original idea was to expose the phonies

who are bilking millions of dollars each year

out of their gullible victims,

to go after the fake mediums, phony astrologers,

the self-proclaimed seers and trick mystics.

I was successful at this for some time.

The floating face, which was a dummy's head on a wire,

the ghost of a woman's son

who turned out to be the medium's own kid in a weird get-up.

The fortune teller who's life images in a crystal ball

were supplied by a hidden film projector.

But then I got into this business with Ellen Cort.

I had better try to get this down exactly the way it happened.

Ellen Sterns Cort was recently widowed.

Her late husband, James Raymond Cort,

was a successful sculptor from a well-to-do family.

He worked from a studio on the grounds of his estate in Carmel.

When he married, he brought Ellen there to live.

The night before she came to see me,

she'd undergone a very bizarre and frightening experience.

Shortly after midnight, she was awakened from a sound sleep

by the barking of her dog, Rollie.

What is it, Rollie?

What's the matter, boy? Is somebody out there?

Show me.

Okay, show me what you want.

Okay. Easy. Easy, boy. Easy.

The following night, Mrs. Cort came to see me.

Actually, her sister, Marsha Sterns,

an acquaintance of mine, had set up the meeting.

Marsha knew about my work in the supernatural.

When Ellen called her about the incident,

Marsha had Ellen contact me.

And the police found only the body of my dog Rollie,

his next snapped, ribs broken.

They analyzed the blood stains on the floor,

and they were his. All his.

Are you sure you hit the man

when you fired the shotgun?

I'm telling you, I hit him.

Well, think about it. You were upset, you saw your dog killed.

You could've missed.

I've handled guns before.

He was right in front of me

in my direct line of fire.

The charges hit him, smashed him backwards,

and that's when I ran.

But when the police arrived,

there wasn't a trace of him.

No, he was gone.

And when I told them who it was,

they wouldn't believe me.

Now, that's why I've come to you.

Mrs. Cort, why wouldn't the police believe you?

Because the man I shot was already dead.

It was Jim.

My dead husband, James Cort.

Ellen Cort seemed convinced that she had encountered

the risen form of her recently entombed husband.

I asked her to describe the circumstances surrounding Cort's death.

Jim had been feeling very bad.

We didn't know why, and our family doctor

suggested that he undergo a series of tests at the Frasier Clinic.

That's when we discovered he was suffering

from a terminal disease of the brain called Pick's Disease.

I've heard of it.

There's no cure, there's no treatment,

and he-- I don't know,

Jim just seemed to change almost overnight.

He was confined to a wheelchair, would no longer work.

He even had me board up his studio.

He wouldn't even talk about his work.

Was he at all involved with the supernatural?

Yes, he was.

And it started just before his death.

Tell me about that.

I'd arranged an exhibit of Jim's sculptures

at the Langdon Gallery,

and he met a woman there named Madame Jeckiel.

She owns an antique shop here in San Francisco,

and part of her business involves the occult.

In what way?

She deals with objects

that are supposed to have occult power.

She even claims to cure the sick, and Jim believed her.

Hmm. No doubt asking for a lot of money, too.

No. No, she didn't.

As far as I know, Jim never gave her a penny.

Not even for that ring.

What ring?

An Egyptian scarab.

Something to do with the god Osiris.

Osiris is an Egyptian god

involved with the doctrine of immortality.

Yes. The ring was part of an agreement he made with her.

You use the word agreement.

What kind of agreement did they have?

I wish I could tell you. I can't.

All I know is Jim accepted that ring

in return for some kind of promise.

He refused to discuss it.

Where's the ring now?

Do you know where it is?

Yes.

It's in his coffin.

His coffin?

Jim even specified that he was to be buried with that ring,

that it be kept on his hand.

And his body is in the crypt

on the grounds of the estate?

That's where his body should be,