Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–1975): Season 1, Episode 18 - The Knightly Murders - full transcript
A haunted suit of armor, belonging to a man who swore that his resting place would never be disturbed by gaiety and music, seeks out the people behind turning the museum where his armor is located into a disco. Kolchak learns of the murders and seeks out who--or what--is responsible.
Tuesday, 11:15 p.m.
If you know anything
about Chicago politics,
you'll understand why
a 63-year-old ward captain...
was braving the ungentle hour
and the less-gentle streets.
You see, Ward Captain Leo J. Ramutka
was returning home from a wake...
An auf Wiedersehen
to a loyal registered voter...
he knew would one day meet him
in that great polling station in the sky.
What Ward Captain Ramutka
failed to foresee...
was just how soon
that meeting would be.
No!
No! No!
Roger, David-Niner.
Your request is a roger.
Coroner's unit at 113
Petrosky, North Side.
See Captain Rausch. Over.
Wednesday, 11:42 p.m.
113 Petrosky. It wasn't
a celebrated address,
the sort one gets excited over
or stores in his mental trousseau,
but the name on the radio
was... Captain Vernon W. Rausch.
To a reporter, he was the
Edward R. Murrow of homicide.
His list of credits reach
back into the mid-'50s...
and the infamous
Mercer-Dobrantz murders.
He was a good cop,
allegedly great.
So what do you say
to a living legend?
- Hi there.
- Mmm? Hey.
- Carl Kolchak, I.N.S.
- Carl.
I was wondering, just
what's underneath there?
Leo Ramutka, ward captain, 44th.
Ward captain? Really?
Please, no political questions.
- I'm not an authority.
- Yes, but...
Yes, Carl, an arrow.
An arrow?
It looks like a V-2.
On the face of it,
a crude atavistic device.
Retrogression,
one might suppose.
But you consider this,
if you will.
- Yes, yes, sure.
- Good.
A missile this size can be
as deadly as it is silent.
Recall, if you would, its extensive
use by British commandos...
- throughout the Second World War.
- Oh!
You mean, you suspect some guy
who thinks he's a British commando?
- No.
- Well... Oh.
I guess I'm a little confused.
You think you know
who did it, don't you?
- Yes...
- Uh-huh.
- And no.
- Eh?
As you well know, Carl, Leo
Ramutka was a ward heeler,
and like any human being in public
life, he was prone to antagonism.
- They collect... like river silt.
- Mmm.
Not that I'm speaking ill of
the dead, you understand.
Oh, certainly not.
Certainly not.
Let me tell you something, Carl.
Think of Greater Chicago.
Six million personalities pressed
together in a configuration...
Could I get this on tape?
- As complex and... - Excuse
me. Just... There we go.
Would you mind?
- Six million personalities pressed
together... - No. "Think of Chicago"...
Think of Greater Chicago.
Six million personalities
pressed together...
in a configuration as complex
and as dynamically rigorous...
as it is alienating.
Six million sets of needs,
wants, desires,
cries in the night.
"Want me. I want you.
Understand me.
I am a person."
Disintegration of the family,
unbridled vertical mobility...
The pressure cooker
of human disappointments.
Carl, understand the apathetic
atomized personality.
And, well,
sooner or later, he...
or she... erupts.
"She, she." You said she.
You think it's a woman?
Well, I like to call
him or her Mr. X.
Mr. X.? Why Mr. X.?
John Doe?
Yeah. It's a lot more professional
than calling him a nut or a freak...
or something like that.
- No, you've gotta respect people's feelings, Carl.
- Yes.
The next night, 10:20 p.m.
If Leo Ramutka's
popularity, or lack of it,
was born of ballots
and political patronage,
Rolf Danvers got his
more directly.
His was the allure
of ready cash...
and the deeds to several square
blocks of prime Chicago real estate.
However, within seconds,
the only real estate...
that would matter to Rolf Danvers
would be a small plot he owned...
in a memorial park
near Old Town.
Negative.
Last night's statement...
is no longer
functionally descriptive.
And a negative is also
appropriate to the second part...
of the second question
you asked.
There is no... I repeat... no
reason to believe that the death...
Did you know that there's a
rumor going around the pressroom?
Homicide is a very democratic
institution. One more question.
- Allow me to rephrase that...
- Negative. One more question.
Captain, regarding the death
of Ward Captain Ramutka.
It has been rumored among the press
that you're combing the 14th Precinct...
looking for a woman disguising
herself as a British commando?
What do you have to say about that? Any explanation?
- Is that true?
- Captain, please, I need something.
That'll be all, ladies and
gentlemen. Thank you very much.
Please, no more questions.
Carl, I see you're
making yourself at home.
- Yeah.
- Coffee?
I imagine you're here by way
of journalistic endeavor, right?
Uh, yes, as a matter of fact...
those murders, remember?
You've got a quick wit,
Carl. I like that.
It shows a proclivity to cope.
- Yeah, well, thank you, Captain.
- Don't mention it.
Now if I read your
body language correctly,
you want to ask me
what killed Rolf Danvers.
- Right.
- He was stabbed.
- Stabbed.
- You know.
Yes, of course,
but stabbed by what?
Fair question.
Something round and sharp.
I'd say a structural
facsimile to an ice pick.
Ice pick. Uh-huh.
There is, however, one
disconcerting wrinkle to that premise.
This particular instrument would
have to have a three-inch diameter.
- Then it isn't an ice pick.
- All right. I'll buy that.
I can buy a direct question,
and I respect you for it.
Thank you, Captain.
Now then... what killed him?
- Captain?
- Hmm?
What killed him?
- Society.
- Soc...
In a manner of speaking,
naturally.
Captain, in a manner of
speaking, two gentlemen are dead...
of two very bizarre means... an
oversized arrow and an obese ice pick.
Now I cannot minimize
the concern that I have...
that these murders
are somehow interrelated...
if for no other reason than that you're
handling the investigations of both.
Ah! That last one is an
excellent point. Excellent point.
It shows an inherently lucid
administrative insight, Carl.
Yeah, but how about
the first one, huh?
That the murders are
intertwined, interlocked?
Do you know there were
one-seventh as many ice-pick killings...
last year as there were in 1942?
- In 1942?
- Technology, Carl.
Um, ice comes in cubes
these days.
Ready-made, you see?
Wait a minute.
Are you telling me that there were ice
cubes at the scenes of both murders?
- No, not at all.
- Then what?
Not at all, Carl.
Look. All right.
Perhaps we can approach this
a little less directly.
Less directly?
Thursday, 2:12 p.m.
Extricating myself from
Captain Vernon W. Rausch...
cost me two hours of precious
time wherein I learned...
that the only thing more
maddening than certain cops...
was certain educated cops.
I was in the mood for
some fast, straight answers,
so I headed for the straight
arrow himself, Pop Stenvold.
- Hi, Pop.
- What do you want this time, Kolchak?
Oh, Pop, is that any way
to talk to me?
Look, it's your old
collaborator, your old friend Carl.
Something's new
around here. What is it?
Oh, you've got
a new eagle, right?
Same old eagle,
same old line of bushwa.
- When do we start, Kolchak?
- Later, later.
- Could you tell me what this is?
- It's an arrow.
I know it's an arrow,
but what kind of an arrow?
All right. Chapter three.
In the 11th summer of my life...
You don't know, right?
Okay. If you don't know,
you don't know.
Harry Truman said that in 1949.
- Ol' Harry really say that?
- Ol' Harry really said it.
- All right. I do know.
- Aha!
It come from a crossbow,
Middle Ages.
I couldn't sell that item in here if I
tried. You know what they want?
They want guns and elevator
shoes and karate lessons.
- Suppose I want a crossbow?
- Use your head, will you, Carl?
- You see the size of that arrow?
- Yeah.
It'd take a winch to cock the mechanism.
About 300 pounds of pressure at least.
- I don't care about that. I want one.
- Nah, no, you don't.
Yes, I do.
Where do I get one?
All right.
I'll tell you what you do.
- You walk out that door.
- Yeah?
- You get in your car.
- Yeah?
- And you start driving.
- Uh-huh?
And when you come
to the 14th century,
- ask your social worker.
- Social worker?
Yeah, a social worker. A little 23-year-old
chippie comes in here and tells me,
"Any man can afford his own
business can afford his own teeth."
That's what's got your nose
out of joint!
Why didn't you tell me? Here, you
need some dollars for some molars.
No, no. Keep it, and we'll do a
couple more chapters of my biography.
Anything but that. Here,
take the money for the teeth.
As you may recall
in our last chapter...
As you may recall in our last
chapter, Cousin Rusty and me...
was spending our 11th summer
in Green Lake, Wisconsin.
Thursday, 11:59 p.m.
There was a saying amongst the
hallowed data banks of industry...
that when Brewster Hocking
slept, so did "K.A.L.C.,"
an acronym for the
Canadian-American Leisure Corporation.
In 12 short years, CALC...
C.A.L.C... and Hocking...
had risen from a humble
catering truck company...
to the world's 14th fastest
rising conglomerate,
digesting a plethora of diverse industries
from whiskey distilleries in Scotland...
to that nationally famous
analgesic for the morning-after.
Charles.
Charles,
stop that blasted clanking.
What is this?
Is this some kind of joke?
Charles!
Charles!
Oh, my God!
No, please!
For the Lord's sake, don't!
Take anything you want!
Look, I'll give you money.
Charles! Oh, no!
Don't just stand there,
you idiot! Help me!
One does not mix
one's centuries, madam!
You're destroying
continuity, all of it!
You're telling me
about continuity? Me?
That's genuine Provençal,
13th century!
Provençal, schmovençal!
That thing is blue.
That thing is black.
I will not tolerate a
black-and-blue cocktail lounge.
Unless someone has decided...
to rename the Camelot Bar
the Bruise Room.
- Hi.
- What do you want?
- I'd like to come in.
- Who are you?
A recorder of events great and
small, an instrument of the free press.
- I'm a reporter.
- More of that wretched prepublicity, huh?
Prepublicity? No, no.
All I'm interested in is to get a
little information about arrows.
"The steady hand upon the string,
the silver shaft about to spring."
- Sir Walter Scott.
- Mendel Boggs.
- Huh?
- Mr. Boggs!
Oh.
Now, our sound engineer
will be arriving today,
and you will let him in
this time,
and you will tell him for me that
the stereo components will go in here.
- Inside? Inside Garrick of Orange?
- Mm-hmm.
I protest! I will protest!
You do that. And while you're
protesting to whomever you protest,
I will be seeing about your removal
to whomever removes custodial help.
My title is curator!
Have a nice day, Boggsy.
- What was that?
- Minerva Musso.
- What's a Minerva Musso?
- An interior decorator of ill repute.
- What's happening around here?
- I thought you were here to write it up.
- Me? No, no.
- The grand march of progress...
How some soda pop company is transforming
all this into the Camelot Discotheque?
- May they all rot in Camelot.
- It's gonna cost you your job, huh?
Unless I learn how to be a
bartender or operate a strobe light.
Oh, one must
have faith and hope.
- They all did, you know.
- Who's "they"?
"The knights of yore, though
ten on one, a lance they bore."
Oh, that's terrific!
That's really very good.
Tell me. Would you consider this
to be an authentic medieval arrow?
The collection here
was so extensive.
They've taken away the best,
the oldest armor, to paint it. Paint it!
They want me to put in
speakers, tweeters, woofers.
That's absolutely dreadful.
The arrow.
Bolts. A crossbow
arrow's called a bolt.
- Bolt.
- If this was focused properly,
I might be able to make
an intelligent comment.
- Well...
- It has medieval styling.
- It's probably a replica.
- But, uh...
Uh...
What happened
to the arrows in here?
Attrition over the years.
High school field trips.
Little thieves,
nasty gum-chewing ferrets.
- Please don't touch.
- Excuse me. I'm sorry.
Let me ask you.
Would a bow and arrow... a bolt
like this fit on a crossbow like that?
Bows are built
to shoot bolts, aren't they?
I'm very busy.
If you'll excuse me, Mr...
- Kolchak.
- Yeah, whatever.
Easy there, boy. Easy.
- I asked you not to touch!
- All right, all right, all right!
Hi there. Real good to see
you again, uh, "Lester."
Good to see you too, man,
except I don't know you.
- I bet you know him.
- Oh, yeah.
He used to be some kind of
federal employee, didn't he?
- Yeah, president. He made out pretty good too.
- That's right.
Ah, ah. Brewster Hocking checked
in here last night, didn't he? Didn't he?
Huh?
Eh? Attaboy.
Brewster Hocking.
Oh, yes.
What hit him?
That, my friend, is the
$64 question around here.
- Even the big medical minds are stuck.
- Yeah?
If I had to say, I'd say he was stomped
on by a thousand-pound football shoe.
- Or a mace.
- Mace comes in a little can.
- It doesn't weigh anything.
- Mace, M-A-C-E.
You know, Robert Taylor,
Errol Flynn, King Arthur.
It's a spiked ball at the end of a
chain that swings around and ar...
Yeah.
Friday, 11:39 a.m.
I heard a brief radio interview
with Brewster Hocking's butler.
I say brief because butler Charles
Johnson refused to make any comment,
except that he loathed
and despised the press.
Rather than face an ugly confrontation,
I made a detour to the telegraph office,
where an old and mercenary
friend came through for me.
"Dear Carl. Stop. Please come to
Chicago as soon as possible. Stop.
"Need to talk to you
in person. Stop.
Fraternally yours, Hock."
- Hock.
- Odd, isn't it?
In my 10 years with Mr. Hocking, I
never heard him referred to as "Hock."
- Well...
- As a matter of fact,
I don't recall him
mentioning your name either.
Well, Hock was... Hock.
There's no doubt about that.
That hard-boiled old son of a gun.
I'll never forget our 11th
summer on Lake Wisconsin.
And now to find that he is dead.
Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.
Anything stolen?
No. This is the age
of senseless violence.
- Look at the room. It's hardly touched.
- Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, hardly at all.
What happened to this?
The police theorize that
the murderer smashed it...
to prevent Mr. Hocking
from calling for help.
Aha! Of course.
Certainly.
Yeah, that's why the phone on the
nightstand there weren't smashed.
Tell me, Charles.
Was Hocking... Hock...
- Was he worried about anything?
- He was somewhat concerned...
about a class action suit
against his diet drink subsidiary.
A man in Michigan
was claiming that...
the sugar substitute was causing
vertigo and excess hair loss.
Uh-huh.
A diet drink? Really?
I thought that Hock's fortune...
came from cigarette vending
machines and theater lobby concessions.
- Mr. "Kolchuck"...
- Chak. Kolchak.
Mr. Kolchak, a full five years
ago, Mr. Hocking's company...
bought out most of the independent
soft drink bottlers in the Midwest...
and became known as the
Canadian-American Leisure Corporation.
Oh, of course. Certainly.
Now it was Mr. Hocking's
custom to send his friends...
case upon case
of mixers at Christmas.
Quinine water, club soda,
ginger ale.
Now why didn't you
ever receive any?
I guess that Hock knew that
I only drank my milk straight.
Oh, sometimes on the rocks,
of course, but usually straight.
Just who are you,
Mr. Kolchak?
I told you. I'm an old
fraternity brother of Hock's.
Alpha Beta...
Over and out.
Good afternoon. I'm from
the telephone company.
Oh, yeah. Down here.
Are you the gentleman
with the problem?
Yeah, here. No dial tone.
Okay.
- That's right.
- No dial tone.
Listen, as long as you're here... would
you mind answering a few questions for me?
I'm trying to ascertain just how much pressure
it would take to crush one of these telephones.
You mean to destroy
telephone company equipment?
Hypothetically. Unless
you don't know, of course.
I know. Company specs
says 420 pounds.
- P.S.I.?
- P.S.I.
Huh.
This equipment
has been tampered with.
What? Bugged?
We've been bugged?
Don't give me that "bugged"
stuff. You're a con man.
You got me up here just
to answer a few questions.
Why, I... You ever try to call that
business office? They're always busy.
The least you can do is
put it back together again.
- Well, what have we here?
- What are you doing there?
I see you have some unauthorized
equipment on these premises.
I had nothing to do with it.
- Wait a minute. What's the problem?
- It's all over.
Well, Carl,
what's going on here?
Two of our bootleg telephones
just walked out that door.
- We've had a good thing going.
- Yeah.
Forget about the telephones.
That's not important.
What is important is that it
takes 420 pounds pressure...
P.S.I...
To crush a telephone.
Now it says right here that a
medieval knight in full armor...
and in full weaponry weighs
well over 400 pounds.
I feel much better. All
my life I wanted to know...
that a medieval knight
could crush a telephone.
I think three murders were
caused by medieval weapons.
Maybe by a guy in armor.
I don't know.
Anyway, I know a place
where there's a whole slew...
of medieval armor and weaponry,
and it's all run by a very angry man.
So what?
- "So what?"
- Yes.
Well...
So Brewster Hocking, last night's
victim, owns a soda pop conglomerate,
and they recently acquired Hydecker
Wine Importers and the Hydecker Museum.
Carl, I didn't understand
anything you just said.
Don't worry about it. You will as soon as
I get through talking with Minerva Musso.
- Minerva Musso.
- The interior decorator? You?
Yes. We're thinking of
brightening up the office.
You are gonna be replaced by a
Boston fern, and you, a snapdragon.
Why do I always feel
like I don't belong here?
Friday, 8:58 p.m.
When you're hot, you're hot.
And as I saw a mass of seemingly
unrelated facts starting to come together,
I knew I was
at least getting warm.
Hello?
Pamela, dear naive Pamela.
Now you have been with
enough ski instructors...
to realize they're
always in a hurry.
It must be something terribly
Freudian and terribly boring.
- Hello?
- Oh, just a moment, dear.
A strange man has just
walked into my boudoir.
No. No, really.
Come in, dear,
and shut the door.
- There's a draft.
- Oh.
Robbery or rape?
- What?
- No, I'm asking him, robbery or rape.
He hasn't said.
Neither one,
so don't get excited.
Oh, he says
I shouldn't get excited.
Depressing little man.
Karl Kolchak, I.N.S.
Oh, he's a newspaper man.
That explains it.
Ring you back, kiddo.
Warning, Mr. Reporter.
I shoot from the hip.
The door was open,
so I didn't break in.
I'm not talking about doors.
I'm talking about David Bowie.
You press people are always pestering
me about whether or not I'll do his house.
I'm... not sure.
I've met David,
and he's charming.
But I'm not sure
our ideas would gel.
- Well...
- Next question.
I'm not here about David Bowie actually.
I'm here about the Hydecker Museum.
Yuck. That junkyard?
If it wasn't for being
audited last year,
no amount of money could
get me to take the job.
I'm interested in the curator,
uh, Men... Men... Mendel Boggs.
- What do you know about him?
- Mendel?
- Mmm.
- With diligence, he might make village idiot.
Do you know that he talks
to those iron things?
- Really?
- Those knights, yes.
- What does he say?
- Well, poetry.
He spouts that doggerel of his.
I came in one morning,
and he was standing there...
in front of a mirror,
waving a pike...
and frothing about
"cleaving things in twain."
Whatever that means.
"Cleaving things in twain."
Well, I know he's really pretty
upset about the remodeling plans.
Did you ever hear him threaten
anybody, like Brewster Hocking?
Hocking?
He owns the Hydecker Museum.
He pays your salary.
Oh, yes. But I'm not salaried.
I've never met Mr. Hocking.
I work with the architect.
Uh-huh. Uh...
Did you hear that?
Huh.
- You got bad pipes or something?
- I beg your pardon?
I mean, is your dishwasher
broken or...
Oh, who knows?
Friday night, party night.
What is that noise?
- Don't you have a lock on this door?
- What's out there?
Now just a minute!
What's going on here?
- Get in the bathroom!
- I beg your pardon!
Get in the bathroom, you
dumb broad, and lock the door!
No!
- That's enough, John.
- Thank you.
Well, Carl, where's the pain?
- The base of the skull?
- Yeah.
Just rub back here.
Right back here.
- Just loosen up the trapezius muscle.
- Trapezius?
Mm-hmm.
No, no. Go easy.
Easy with the light.
Most forms of headache are
accompanied by photosensitivity.
Just keep on rubbing. Best
thing for a tension headache.
Tension... Tension headache?
What tension headache?
My head got bashed in.
Carl, neighbors heard screams,
and we find you camped
out here on the floor...
and a woman ax-murdered
right in there.
If I was you, I'd have
a big tension headache.
Oh, no. No, you can't
possibly think that I killed her...
and then knocked myself out
to wait for you to get here.
- You couldn't possibly think that.
- Of course I don't think that.
No. What about
my photosensitivity?
This isn't third degree, Carl.
It's only the first.
Can you intuit my meaning?
I got knocked out
before I knew what hit me.
- What transpired here?
- What is that stink?
- You're the stink.
- What? Me?
Oh!
The perfume must
have spilled all over me.
My lab man tells me it's
called Temptation of Adam.
- Temptation of Adam.
- Pretty strong medicine, isn't it?
But to the point, you are a
material witness... to murder.
- What?
- Ah.
I intuit your problem, Carl.
Feelings of persecution, ah?
Paranoia. A sense that
I, as an authority figure,
will take away your angle and give your
big story to other members of the press.
Listen, that's not
paranoia. That's fact!
All right. You just be straight with
me, and I'll give you an exclusive.
I've been watching you, Rausch.
For the past two years, you've been sitting
on your laurels, not to mention your brains.
You're lazy.
Police work bores you.
Those long, thoughtful
pauses of yours...
You're not thinking, you're sleeping!
That's what you're doing. You're sleeping.
And you don't do any
investigation anymore at all.
You rely on informants and tips
and ripping off angles from newsmen.
I wanna know what you got
on those murders.
- Do your own legwork, you phony.
- Phony?
Picture two weeks
in a drab room downtown,
filling out affidavits,
depositions, forms.
Your traffic record is pulled.
We go over it with a microscope.
We send your car
through safety inspection.
I didn't see a thing.
Carl, I don't want to work
this weekend.
My wife's chamber music
society has a supper concert,
and I'm supposed to write an
article for the police newsletter.
Now, please.
- Nothing.
- Spencer.
Fill that tub in there with cold water
as soon as Forensics finishes up.
You wouldn't dare.
You'd dare.
All right. If I told you,
you wouldn't believe it.
She was killed
by a knight in armor.
- A knight in armor?
- I told you you wouldn't believe it.
Merely because you've been
unreliable in the past...
doesn't mean that your
words have no value.
After all, as the Bard said, "There
are more things under the sun...
than are dreamed of in
your philosophy, Horatio."
- No, Kolchak. Carl Kolchak.
- But a knight... in armor?
Make me believe that, Carl.
Because if I find you're
shooting me through the grease,
it'll have a definite detrimental effect
on how we interface with each other.
You know what's funny?
I intuited that.
I suppose this creature
came squealing to you...
that I was arguing with
that wretched woman, eh?
That I'd uttered
epithets against her?
I'm sorry, but they
fried my eyeballs.
Are you sure you
don't want an attorney?
For what? To hold my pants while I
change into that? This is preposterous.
There's no blood on the ax,
the lance or the mace.
- It's been wiped or cleaned lately.
- Did you clean these lately?
I don't mean with polish.
You see, we found that...
in Miss Musso's murder, the killer
wiped the weapon off on a silk pillowcase,
and with Mr. Danvers,
on a piece of his sport jacket.
You mean you actually did some work in
between yoga classes and book reviews?
I never even knew a
Mr. Danvers or a Mr. Hocking.
Buxbaum.
Buxbaum, will you please help
Mr. Boggs off with his apron?
Give the boys a hand
with the helmet.
Are you sure this is
the armor you saw?
Yes, that, I am sure,
is the armor I saw.
Oh, enough!
All right, boys.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Boggs, anyone else have
access to this museum at night but you?
I have the only key.
I have nothing to hide.
That's the one I saw. Who else
could've been wearing it but h-him... you?
Maybe it wasn't a knight
you saw at all.
Maybe it was the Tin Woodsman.
Did it dance, sing?
Did Jack Haley's voice come out of it?
Careful with that!
All right. Then who's
committing these murders?
- How do you account for what I saw?
- I account for it thusly.
You are a man who has
resorted to lies and chicanery...
to the point
of being pathological.
I believe that you suffer
from autosuggestion.
And in an obsessive desire
to win approval,
expressed through the need
for a big story,
you convince yourself that
what you want to be true is true.
In short,
I believe your brain has turned to onion dip.
Mr. Boggs,
I'm sorry for the trouble.
You've been very
cooperative, and I thank you.
I told you from the
beginning it was laughable.
Unfortunately, I have to
check out all the leads.
It's my duty, you know,
in spite of the source.
Don't go far. We'll still
want to talk to you.
But, uh, I think...
I'll consult with
our police psychiatrist.
Buxbaum.
I'm sorry about this
whole thing. I really am.
But I did see that armor.
Who was this Black Cross Knight?
Where did this armor come from?
I wouldn't give you another
piece of information...
if you held me down and let a pack of
rats run through my clothes willy-nilly.
Not if you made me drink the oil slick off
Lake Michigan would you get anything out of me.
Now please leave here, and
take that sickly stench with you.
Hello.
My name's Carl Kolchak.
I'd like some information
about coats of arms.
Kolchak. That's an old and
revered Russian name, isn't it?
- Actually, no, it's Polish.
- Polish?
Oh, yes, of course. Kolchak.
An ancient lineage there.
You must be descended from
Archbishop Kolchak of Kraków,
who defended the church
from the Magyar onslaught.
- Really?
- Oh, it's a proud line you're from.
That's terrific.
I didn't know that.
My grandmother always told me
that we were descended from Slavs.
Oh, no, Archbishop Kolchak.
Maura, you have the Kolchak
crest back there, don't you?
- I'm sure we do, honey.
- No. Wait. That's very interesting,
but, you see, I'm not interested
in buying a coat of arms.
I'm a reporter. I need some
information about a shield.
We're in the business
of selling coats of arms.
Mostly mail order.
We're very busy today.
Yeah, well, I guess
I'll buy a coat of arms.
- Twelve dollars for the pine plaque.
- Twelve bucks, huh?
Listen, the shield I saw was red,
with a black lion sitting on top of it,
and then there was a diagonal
stripe of black down across it.
- We call that "the lion rampant and the black bend sinister."
- Uh-huh.
What you're describing
is a heraldic design...
of the infamous Mettancoeur
family of Burgundy.
- Infamous?
- Oh, bad people.
The last of the line,
Guy de Mettancoeur,
was particularly a pig,
even by today's standards.
He stayed behind in Burgundy.
He didn't go to the Crusades.
He amassed a fortune, slaying
even women and children.
Here we are. Of course,
when we mail it to you,
it will have "Kolchak"
emblazoned beneath,
hand-lettered
by one of our artists.
Oh, it has such striking colors.
I think it really deserves a
walnut plaque... for only $60.
- Pine'll be fine.
- But if I had your ancestry, I'd flaunt it.
Did Roger tell you about Baron
the General Joachim-Meinz Kolchak?
He was the military adviser
for the Emperor Franz Joseph.
They called him
the Lion of Warsaw.
Mm-hmm.
I got a hunch it'll be a walnut.
Uh... Hmm.
Could you take a check?
Oh, of course.
You were talking about
Guy, Guy, the...
- Mettancoeur.
- Yeah.
His family had the finest
vineyards in Burgundy.
Château Mettancoeur.
But Guy himself
hated human pleasures.
He became a pariah
in his own time.
Yeah, I've known
a few like that myself.
What do you mean he hated
all human pleasures?
He consorted with dabblers
in the black arts.
He became, uh,
"legendary for his invincibility
and his unchivalrous acts."
- Here. Here we are, like here.
- Oh, yeah.
"After he had killed a foe,
it was his custom...
"to wipe the blood
from his weapon...
on the flying colors of the dead
foe, as a gesture of contempt."
- What are flying colors?
- A silk scarf, a bright piece of clothing.
How about a pillowcase
or a sport jacket?
I beg your pardon?
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Guy... de Mettan...
There he is... the black knight.
Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no, no, no.
The Hydecker Company Importers.
Yeah, right, Ernie. They were bought
out by Canadian-American Leisure.
What were the fancy French
labels they used to import?
You mean they did import
Château Mettancoeur.
Oh, that's terrific.
I'd send you a case of scotch, only
you're already in the liquor business.
- I got it, Tony.
- Carl, did you have to use the whole bottle?
- Hmm?
- Whew!
- Oh. Uh...
- Carl, look.
You were supposed to be
covering, among other things,
the death of Brewster Hocking
of Chicago of the 20th century.
As I read your notes here,
you're trying to pin this killing,
and several others, on a
12th-century French knight.
- Am I correct there, Carl?
- Oh, it's bizarre, Tony.
It's incredible, but I do
believe that's what's happening.
What rot. And I have to sit here
and write financial news, and he...
Uh, Ron, Ron.
Look, Carl,
I saw my sister-in-law have a
nervous breakdown, and it was messy.
- Now I recognize all the symptoms, Carl.
- Oh.
Fantasy, the inability to
concentrate on real issues.
Well, it probably runs
in the family, Tony.
Listen, just because
it sounds strange...
doesn't mean there's any reason
for me to go to the lollipop factory.
Guy de Mettancoeur was an ogre.
He had a suit of armor fashioned
by a necromancer, a sorcerer.
It made him impregnable
to attack.
You see what I mean?
Fantasy.
So there's armor
at the Hydecker Museum.
So what does that mean?
It's an empty suit.
It's just a glorified set
of drainpipes. That's all.
Now you come in here rambling
about some blessed battle-ax...
and Pope Gregory and smelling
like a vase full of dead begonias.
No, that's
Minerva Musso's perfume.
Carl... Carl, what is
happening in your life?
Okay.
All right.
The armor and the battle-ax
are both out of the museum.
The whole story is there. Pope
Gregory blessed that battle-ax...
and asked the Knight of Strasbourg
to do battle with Mettancoeur.
The holy ax was the only thing that could
pierce Mettancoeur's armor, and it did.
Mettancoeur died, but he swore
with his last breath...
that music and human gaiety would never
be permitted around his resting place.
- See, he was a misanthrope.
- What beef could he have...
with Brewster Hocking
or Minerva Musso?
Their great-grandfathers
hadn't even been born yet.
Can you understand that?
Can you see that?
You see, Brewster and Minerva...
were both parties to a plan
to turn the Hydecker Museum...
into a medieval
steak-and-lobster discotheque.
And this misanthropic knight
took issue with that?
It's all part of a curse, Tony. I saw this
knight walk into Minerva's bedroom and kill her.
I saw it, man!
He walked in, and I saw it!
All right, Carl. Let us say that you
saw this knight walk into her bedroom.
- Just let's suppose that.
- That's right.
Must we also assume that it had to
be a Frenchman out of the year 1227?
Does our logic dictate that it
had to be some superhuman ghost?
I know where you're heading,
Tony, and you're wrong.
- I've already been there.
- Leo Ramutka.
He's a ward boss. What does he
know about museums and discotheques?
Tony, the Hydecker Museum
is too old to be remodeled.
You see,
it's below building codes.
Guess who was interceding with the
building department to get a variance.
Leo Ramutka.
And-And Mr. Rolf Danvers,
Tony.
Rolf Danvers owned the lot
next door to the museum.
- Parking, Tony. Parking.
- Why don't you rest a little bit?
Why don't you come into my
office, lie down on the sofa...
and relax, take a shower,
clean yourself up?
- Rest, sleep on my sofa.
- No, Tony.
I'll be back with the most amazing,
astounding story that you ever heard.
And you're gonna beat your fingers
to a bloody pulp on the Teletypes...
so we can get the whole story
out to our customers!
Carl, please, stay a while. Stay
a while and have dinner with me.
- Look, I'll buy.
- You'll buy?
- Yes.
- What's the matter with you?
Have you suddenly
lost your mind or something?
Buy? You've never bought
anything in your life.
It's my sister-in-law
all over again.
Oh!
I don't know.
I don't know. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe
I've been browbeating him too much.
Don't castigate yourself.
Shhh!
A blessed battle-ax and an
iron suit full of thin air.
I knew I'd have a lot of explaining to do
to the owners of the Hydecker Museum,
to Captain Vernon Rausch
and, of course,
to my own beloved
bureau chief, A. Vincenzo.
There wouldn't be much I could
tell them, except what I'll tell you.
It all really happened.
If you know anything
about Chicago politics,
you'll understand why
a 63-year-old ward captain...
was braving the ungentle hour
and the less-gentle streets.
You see, Ward Captain Leo J. Ramutka
was returning home from a wake...
An auf Wiedersehen
to a loyal registered voter...
he knew would one day meet him
in that great polling station in the sky.
What Ward Captain Ramutka
failed to foresee...
was just how soon
that meeting would be.
No!
No! No!
Roger, David-Niner.
Your request is a roger.
Coroner's unit at 113
Petrosky, North Side.
See Captain Rausch. Over.
Wednesday, 11:42 p.m.
113 Petrosky. It wasn't
a celebrated address,
the sort one gets excited over
or stores in his mental trousseau,
but the name on the radio
was... Captain Vernon W. Rausch.
To a reporter, he was the
Edward R. Murrow of homicide.
His list of credits reach
back into the mid-'50s...
and the infamous
Mercer-Dobrantz murders.
He was a good cop,
allegedly great.
So what do you say
to a living legend?
- Hi there.
- Mmm? Hey.
- Carl Kolchak, I.N.S.
- Carl.
I was wondering, just
what's underneath there?
Leo Ramutka, ward captain, 44th.
Ward captain? Really?
Please, no political questions.
- I'm not an authority.
- Yes, but...
Yes, Carl, an arrow.
An arrow?
It looks like a V-2.
On the face of it,
a crude atavistic device.
Retrogression,
one might suppose.
But you consider this,
if you will.
- Yes, yes, sure.
- Good.
A missile this size can be
as deadly as it is silent.
Recall, if you would, its extensive
use by British commandos...
- throughout the Second World War.
- Oh!
You mean, you suspect some guy
who thinks he's a British commando?
- No.
- Well... Oh.
I guess I'm a little confused.
You think you know
who did it, don't you?
- Yes...
- Uh-huh.
- And no.
- Eh?
As you well know, Carl, Leo
Ramutka was a ward heeler,
and like any human being in public
life, he was prone to antagonism.
- They collect... like river silt.
- Mmm.
Not that I'm speaking ill of
the dead, you understand.
Oh, certainly not.
Certainly not.
Let me tell you something, Carl.
Think of Greater Chicago.
Six million personalities pressed
together in a configuration...
Could I get this on tape?
- As complex and... - Excuse
me. Just... There we go.
Would you mind?
- Six million personalities pressed
together... - No. "Think of Chicago"...
Think of Greater Chicago.
Six million personalities
pressed together...
in a configuration as complex
and as dynamically rigorous...
as it is alienating.
Six million sets of needs,
wants, desires,
cries in the night.
"Want me. I want you.
Understand me.
I am a person."
Disintegration of the family,
unbridled vertical mobility...
The pressure cooker
of human disappointments.
Carl, understand the apathetic
atomized personality.
And, well,
sooner or later, he...
or she... erupts.
"She, she." You said she.
You think it's a woman?
Well, I like to call
him or her Mr. X.
Mr. X.? Why Mr. X.?
John Doe?
Yeah. It's a lot more professional
than calling him a nut or a freak...
or something like that.
- No, you've gotta respect people's feelings, Carl.
- Yes.
The next night, 10:20 p.m.
If Leo Ramutka's
popularity, or lack of it,
was born of ballots
and political patronage,
Rolf Danvers got his
more directly.
His was the allure
of ready cash...
and the deeds to several square
blocks of prime Chicago real estate.
However, within seconds,
the only real estate...
that would matter to Rolf Danvers
would be a small plot he owned...
in a memorial park
near Old Town.
Negative.
Last night's statement...
is no longer
functionally descriptive.
And a negative is also
appropriate to the second part...
of the second question
you asked.
There is no... I repeat... no
reason to believe that the death...
Did you know that there's a
rumor going around the pressroom?
Homicide is a very democratic
institution. One more question.
- Allow me to rephrase that...
- Negative. One more question.
Captain, regarding the death
of Ward Captain Ramutka.
It has been rumored among the press
that you're combing the 14th Precinct...
looking for a woman disguising
herself as a British commando?
What do you have to say about that? Any explanation?
- Is that true?
- Captain, please, I need something.
That'll be all, ladies and
gentlemen. Thank you very much.
Please, no more questions.
Carl, I see you're
making yourself at home.
- Yeah.
- Coffee?
I imagine you're here by way
of journalistic endeavor, right?
Uh, yes, as a matter of fact...
those murders, remember?
You've got a quick wit,
Carl. I like that.
It shows a proclivity to cope.
- Yeah, well, thank you, Captain.
- Don't mention it.
Now if I read your
body language correctly,
you want to ask me
what killed Rolf Danvers.
- Right.
- He was stabbed.
- Stabbed.
- You know.
Yes, of course,
but stabbed by what?
Fair question.
Something round and sharp.
I'd say a structural
facsimile to an ice pick.
Ice pick. Uh-huh.
There is, however, one
disconcerting wrinkle to that premise.
This particular instrument would
have to have a three-inch diameter.
- Then it isn't an ice pick.
- All right. I'll buy that.
I can buy a direct question,
and I respect you for it.
Thank you, Captain.
Now then... what killed him?
- Captain?
- Hmm?
What killed him?
- Society.
- Soc...
In a manner of speaking,
naturally.
Captain, in a manner of
speaking, two gentlemen are dead...
of two very bizarre means... an
oversized arrow and an obese ice pick.
Now I cannot minimize
the concern that I have...
that these murders
are somehow interrelated...
if for no other reason than that you're
handling the investigations of both.
Ah! That last one is an
excellent point. Excellent point.
It shows an inherently lucid
administrative insight, Carl.
Yeah, but how about
the first one, huh?
That the murders are
intertwined, interlocked?
Do you know there were
one-seventh as many ice-pick killings...
last year as there were in 1942?
- In 1942?
- Technology, Carl.
Um, ice comes in cubes
these days.
Ready-made, you see?
Wait a minute.
Are you telling me that there were ice
cubes at the scenes of both murders?
- No, not at all.
- Then what?
Not at all, Carl.
Look. All right.
Perhaps we can approach this
a little less directly.
Less directly?
Thursday, 2:12 p.m.
Extricating myself from
Captain Vernon W. Rausch...
cost me two hours of precious
time wherein I learned...
that the only thing more
maddening than certain cops...
was certain educated cops.
I was in the mood for
some fast, straight answers,
so I headed for the straight
arrow himself, Pop Stenvold.
- Hi, Pop.
- What do you want this time, Kolchak?
Oh, Pop, is that any way
to talk to me?
Look, it's your old
collaborator, your old friend Carl.
Something's new
around here. What is it?
Oh, you've got
a new eagle, right?
Same old eagle,
same old line of bushwa.
- When do we start, Kolchak?
- Later, later.
- Could you tell me what this is?
- It's an arrow.
I know it's an arrow,
but what kind of an arrow?
All right. Chapter three.
In the 11th summer of my life...
You don't know, right?
Okay. If you don't know,
you don't know.
Harry Truman said that in 1949.
- Ol' Harry really say that?
- Ol' Harry really said it.
- All right. I do know.
- Aha!
It come from a crossbow,
Middle Ages.
I couldn't sell that item in here if I
tried. You know what they want?
They want guns and elevator
shoes and karate lessons.
- Suppose I want a crossbow?
- Use your head, will you, Carl?
- You see the size of that arrow?
- Yeah.
It'd take a winch to cock the mechanism.
About 300 pounds of pressure at least.
- I don't care about that. I want one.
- Nah, no, you don't.
Yes, I do.
Where do I get one?
All right.
I'll tell you what you do.
- You walk out that door.
- Yeah?
- You get in your car.
- Yeah?
- And you start driving.
- Uh-huh?
And when you come
to the 14th century,
- ask your social worker.
- Social worker?
Yeah, a social worker. A little 23-year-old
chippie comes in here and tells me,
"Any man can afford his own
business can afford his own teeth."
That's what's got your nose
out of joint!
Why didn't you tell me? Here, you
need some dollars for some molars.
No, no. Keep it, and we'll do a
couple more chapters of my biography.
Anything but that. Here,
take the money for the teeth.
As you may recall
in our last chapter...
As you may recall in our last
chapter, Cousin Rusty and me...
was spending our 11th summer
in Green Lake, Wisconsin.
Thursday, 11:59 p.m.
There was a saying amongst the
hallowed data banks of industry...
that when Brewster Hocking
slept, so did "K.A.L.C.,"
an acronym for the
Canadian-American Leisure Corporation.
In 12 short years, CALC...
C.A.L.C... and Hocking...
had risen from a humble
catering truck company...
to the world's 14th fastest
rising conglomerate,
digesting a plethora of diverse industries
from whiskey distilleries in Scotland...
to that nationally famous
analgesic for the morning-after.
Charles.
Charles,
stop that blasted clanking.
What is this?
Is this some kind of joke?
Charles!
Charles!
Oh, my God!
No, please!
For the Lord's sake, don't!
Take anything you want!
Look, I'll give you money.
Charles! Oh, no!
Don't just stand there,
you idiot! Help me!
One does not mix
one's centuries, madam!
You're destroying
continuity, all of it!
You're telling me
about continuity? Me?
That's genuine Provençal,
13th century!
Provençal, schmovençal!
That thing is blue.
That thing is black.
I will not tolerate a
black-and-blue cocktail lounge.
Unless someone has decided...
to rename the Camelot Bar
the Bruise Room.
- Hi.
- What do you want?
- I'd like to come in.
- Who are you?
A recorder of events great and
small, an instrument of the free press.
- I'm a reporter.
- More of that wretched prepublicity, huh?
Prepublicity? No, no.
All I'm interested in is to get a
little information about arrows.
"The steady hand upon the string,
the silver shaft about to spring."
- Sir Walter Scott.
- Mendel Boggs.
- Huh?
- Mr. Boggs!
Oh.
Now, our sound engineer
will be arriving today,
and you will let him in
this time,
and you will tell him for me that
the stereo components will go in here.
- Inside? Inside Garrick of Orange?
- Mm-hmm.
I protest! I will protest!
You do that. And while you're
protesting to whomever you protest,
I will be seeing about your removal
to whomever removes custodial help.
My title is curator!
Have a nice day, Boggsy.
- What was that?
- Minerva Musso.
- What's a Minerva Musso?
- An interior decorator of ill repute.
- What's happening around here?
- I thought you were here to write it up.
- Me? No, no.
- The grand march of progress...
How some soda pop company is transforming
all this into the Camelot Discotheque?
- May they all rot in Camelot.
- It's gonna cost you your job, huh?
Unless I learn how to be a
bartender or operate a strobe light.
Oh, one must
have faith and hope.
- They all did, you know.
- Who's "they"?
"The knights of yore, though
ten on one, a lance they bore."
Oh, that's terrific!
That's really very good.
Tell me. Would you consider this
to be an authentic medieval arrow?
The collection here
was so extensive.
They've taken away the best,
the oldest armor, to paint it. Paint it!
They want me to put in
speakers, tweeters, woofers.
That's absolutely dreadful.
The arrow.
Bolts. A crossbow
arrow's called a bolt.
- Bolt.
- If this was focused properly,
I might be able to make
an intelligent comment.
- Well...
- It has medieval styling.
- It's probably a replica.
- But, uh...
Uh...
What happened
to the arrows in here?
Attrition over the years.
High school field trips.
Little thieves,
nasty gum-chewing ferrets.
- Please don't touch.
- Excuse me. I'm sorry.
Let me ask you.
Would a bow and arrow... a bolt
like this fit on a crossbow like that?
Bows are built
to shoot bolts, aren't they?
I'm very busy.
If you'll excuse me, Mr...
- Kolchak.
- Yeah, whatever.
Easy there, boy. Easy.
- I asked you not to touch!
- All right, all right, all right!
Hi there. Real good to see
you again, uh, "Lester."
Good to see you too, man,
except I don't know you.
- I bet you know him.
- Oh, yeah.
He used to be some kind of
federal employee, didn't he?
- Yeah, president. He made out pretty good too.
- That's right.
Ah, ah. Brewster Hocking checked
in here last night, didn't he? Didn't he?
Huh?
Eh? Attaboy.
Brewster Hocking.
Oh, yes.
What hit him?
That, my friend, is the
$64 question around here.
- Even the big medical minds are stuck.
- Yeah?
If I had to say, I'd say he was stomped
on by a thousand-pound football shoe.
- Or a mace.
- Mace comes in a little can.
- It doesn't weigh anything.
- Mace, M-A-C-E.
You know, Robert Taylor,
Errol Flynn, King Arthur.
It's a spiked ball at the end of a
chain that swings around and ar...
Yeah.
Friday, 11:39 a.m.
I heard a brief radio interview
with Brewster Hocking's butler.
I say brief because butler Charles
Johnson refused to make any comment,
except that he loathed
and despised the press.
Rather than face an ugly confrontation,
I made a detour to the telegraph office,
where an old and mercenary
friend came through for me.
"Dear Carl. Stop. Please come to
Chicago as soon as possible. Stop.
"Need to talk to you
in person. Stop.
Fraternally yours, Hock."
- Hock.
- Odd, isn't it?
In my 10 years with Mr. Hocking, I
never heard him referred to as "Hock."
- Well...
- As a matter of fact,
I don't recall him
mentioning your name either.
Well, Hock was... Hock.
There's no doubt about that.
That hard-boiled old son of a gun.
I'll never forget our 11th
summer on Lake Wisconsin.
And now to find that he is dead.
Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.
Anything stolen?
No. This is the age
of senseless violence.
- Look at the room. It's hardly touched.
- Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, hardly at all.
What happened to this?
The police theorize that
the murderer smashed it...
to prevent Mr. Hocking
from calling for help.
Aha! Of course.
Certainly.
Yeah, that's why the phone on the
nightstand there weren't smashed.
Tell me, Charles.
Was Hocking... Hock...
- Was he worried about anything?
- He was somewhat concerned...
about a class action suit
against his diet drink subsidiary.
A man in Michigan
was claiming that...
the sugar substitute was causing
vertigo and excess hair loss.
Uh-huh.
A diet drink? Really?
I thought that Hock's fortune...
came from cigarette vending
machines and theater lobby concessions.
- Mr. "Kolchuck"...
- Chak. Kolchak.
Mr. Kolchak, a full five years
ago, Mr. Hocking's company...
bought out most of the independent
soft drink bottlers in the Midwest...
and became known as the
Canadian-American Leisure Corporation.
Oh, of course. Certainly.
Now it was Mr. Hocking's
custom to send his friends...
case upon case
of mixers at Christmas.
Quinine water, club soda,
ginger ale.
Now why didn't you
ever receive any?
I guess that Hock knew that
I only drank my milk straight.
Oh, sometimes on the rocks,
of course, but usually straight.
Just who are you,
Mr. Kolchak?
I told you. I'm an old
fraternity brother of Hock's.
Alpha Beta...
Over and out.
Good afternoon. I'm from
the telephone company.
Oh, yeah. Down here.
Are you the gentleman
with the problem?
Yeah, here. No dial tone.
Okay.
- That's right.
- No dial tone.
Listen, as long as you're here... would
you mind answering a few questions for me?
I'm trying to ascertain just how much pressure
it would take to crush one of these telephones.
You mean to destroy
telephone company equipment?
Hypothetically. Unless
you don't know, of course.
I know. Company specs
says 420 pounds.
- P.S.I.?
- P.S.I.
Huh.
This equipment
has been tampered with.
What? Bugged?
We've been bugged?
Don't give me that "bugged"
stuff. You're a con man.
You got me up here just
to answer a few questions.
Why, I... You ever try to call that
business office? They're always busy.
The least you can do is
put it back together again.
- Well, what have we here?
- What are you doing there?
I see you have some unauthorized
equipment on these premises.
I had nothing to do with it.
- Wait a minute. What's the problem?
- It's all over.
Well, Carl,
what's going on here?
Two of our bootleg telephones
just walked out that door.
- We've had a good thing going.
- Yeah.
Forget about the telephones.
That's not important.
What is important is that it
takes 420 pounds pressure...
P.S.I...
To crush a telephone.
Now it says right here that a
medieval knight in full armor...
and in full weaponry weighs
well over 400 pounds.
I feel much better. All
my life I wanted to know...
that a medieval knight
could crush a telephone.
I think three murders were
caused by medieval weapons.
Maybe by a guy in armor.
I don't know.
Anyway, I know a place
where there's a whole slew...
of medieval armor and weaponry,
and it's all run by a very angry man.
So what?
- "So what?"
- Yes.
Well...
So Brewster Hocking, last night's
victim, owns a soda pop conglomerate,
and they recently acquired Hydecker
Wine Importers and the Hydecker Museum.
Carl, I didn't understand
anything you just said.
Don't worry about it. You will as soon as
I get through talking with Minerva Musso.
- Minerva Musso.
- The interior decorator? You?
Yes. We're thinking of
brightening up the office.
You are gonna be replaced by a
Boston fern, and you, a snapdragon.
Why do I always feel
like I don't belong here?
Friday, 8:58 p.m.
When you're hot, you're hot.
And as I saw a mass of seemingly
unrelated facts starting to come together,
I knew I was
at least getting warm.
Hello?
Pamela, dear naive Pamela.
Now you have been with
enough ski instructors...
to realize they're
always in a hurry.
It must be something terribly
Freudian and terribly boring.
- Hello?
- Oh, just a moment, dear.
A strange man has just
walked into my boudoir.
No. No, really.
Come in, dear,
and shut the door.
- There's a draft.
- Oh.
Robbery or rape?
- What?
- No, I'm asking him, robbery or rape.
He hasn't said.
Neither one,
so don't get excited.
Oh, he says
I shouldn't get excited.
Depressing little man.
Karl Kolchak, I.N.S.
Oh, he's a newspaper man.
That explains it.
Ring you back, kiddo.
Warning, Mr. Reporter.
I shoot from the hip.
The door was open,
so I didn't break in.
I'm not talking about doors.
I'm talking about David Bowie.
You press people are always pestering
me about whether or not I'll do his house.
I'm... not sure.
I've met David,
and he's charming.
But I'm not sure
our ideas would gel.
- Well...
- Next question.
I'm not here about David Bowie actually.
I'm here about the Hydecker Museum.
Yuck. That junkyard?
If it wasn't for being
audited last year,
no amount of money could
get me to take the job.
I'm interested in the curator,
uh, Men... Men... Mendel Boggs.
- What do you know about him?
- Mendel?
- Mmm.
- With diligence, he might make village idiot.
Do you know that he talks
to those iron things?
- Really?
- Those knights, yes.
- What does he say?
- Well, poetry.
He spouts that doggerel of his.
I came in one morning,
and he was standing there...
in front of a mirror,
waving a pike...
and frothing about
"cleaving things in twain."
Whatever that means.
"Cleaving things in twain."
Well, I know he's really pretty
upset about the remodeling plans.
Did you ever hear him threaten
anybody, like Brewster Hocking?
Hocking?
He owns the Hydecker Museum.
He pays your salary.
Oh, yes. But I'm not salaried.
I've never met Mr. Hocking.
I work with the architect.
Uh-huh. Uh...
Did you hear that?
Huh.
- You got bad pipes or something?
- I beg your pardon?
I mean, is your dishwasher
broken or...
Oh, who knows?
Friday night, party night.
What is that noise?
- Don't you have a lock on this door?
- What's out there?
Now just a minute!
What's going on here?
- Get in the bathroom!
- I beg your pardon!
Get in the bathroom, you
dumb broad, and lock the door!
No!
- That's enough, John.
- Thank you.
Well, Carl, where's the pain?
- The base of the skull?
- Yeah.
Just rub back here.
Right back here.
- Just loosen up the trapezius muscle.
- Trapezius?
Mm-hmm.
No, no. Go easy.
Easy with the light.
Most forms of headache are
accompanied by photosensitivity.
Just keep on rubbing. Best
thing for a tension headache.
Tension... Tension headache?
What tension headache?
My head got bashed in.
Carl, neighbors heard screams,
and we find you camped
out here on the floor...
and a woman ax-murdered
right in there.
If I was you, I'd have
a big tension headache.
Oh, no. No, you can't
possibly think that I killed her...
and then knocked myself out
to wait for you to get here.
- You couldn't possibly think that.
- Of course I don't think that.
No. What about
my photosensitivity?
This isn't third degree, Carl.
It's only the first.
Can you intuit my meaning?
I got knocked out
before I knew what hit me.
- What transpired here?
- What is that stink?
- You're the stink.
- What? Me?
Oh!
The perfume must
have spilled all over me.
My lab man tells me it's
called Temptation of Adam.
- Temptation of Adam.
- Pretty strong medicine, isn't it?
But to the point, you are a
material witness... to murder.
- What?
- Ah.
I intuit your problem, Carl.
Feelings of persecution, ah?
Paranoia. A sense that
I, as an authority figure,
will take away your angle and give your
big story to other members of the press.
Listen, that's not
paranoia. That's fact!
All right. You just be straight with
me, and I'll give you an exclusive.
I've been watching you, Rausch.
For the past two years, you've been sitting
on your laurels, not to mention your brains.
You're lazy.
Police work bores you.
Those long, thoughtful
pauses of yours...
You're not thinking, you're sleeping!
That's what you're doing. You're sleeping.
And you don't do any
investigation anymore at all.
You rely on informants and tips
and ripping off angles from newsmen.
I wanna know what you got
on those murders.
- Do your own legwork, you phony.
- Phony?
Picture two weeks
in a drab room downtown,
filling out affidavits,
depositions, forms.
Your traffic record is pulled.
We go over it with a microscope.
We send your car
through safety inspection.
I didn't see a thing.
Carl, I don't want to work
this weekend.
My wife's chamber music
society has a supper concert,
and I'm supposed to write an
article for the police newsletter.
Now, please.
- Nothing.
- Spencer.
Fill that tub in there with cold water
as soon as Forensics finishes up.
You wouldn't dare.
You'd dare.
All right. If I told you,
you wouldn't believe it.
She was killed
by a knight in armor.
- A knight in armor?
- I told you you wouldn't believe it.
Merely because you've been
unreliable in the past...
doesn't mean that your
words have no value.
After all, as the Bard said, "There
are more things under the sun...
than are dreamed of in
your philosophy, Horatio."
- No, Kolchak. Carl Kolchak.
- But a knight... in armor?
Make me believe that, Carl.
Because if I find you're
shooting me through the grease,
it'll have a definite detrimental effect
on how we interface with each other.
You know what's funny?
I intuited that.
I suppose this creature
came squealing to you...
that I was arguing with
that wretched woman, eh?
That I'd uttered
epithets against her?
I'm sorry, but they
fried my eyeballs.
Are you sure you
don't want an attorney?
For what? To hold my pants while I
change into that? This is preposterous.
There's no blood on the ax,
the lance or the mace.
- It's been wiped or cleaned lately.
- Did you clean these lately?
I don't mean with polish.
You see, we found that...
in Miss Musso's murder, the killer
wiped the weapon off on a silk pillowcase,
and with Mr. Danvers,
on a piece of his sport jacket.
You mean you actually did some work in
between yoga classes and book reviews?
I never even knew a
Mr. Danvers or a Mr. Hocking.
Buxbaum.
Buxbaum, will you please help
Mr. Boggs off with his apron?
Give the boys a hand
with the helmet.
Are you sure this is
the armor you saw?
Yes, that, I am sure,
is the armor I saw.
Oh, enough!
All right, boys.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Boggs, anyone else have
access to this museum at night but you?
I have the only key.
I have nothing to hide.
That's the one I saw. Who else
could've been wearing it but h-him... you?
Maybe it wasn't a knight
you saw at all.
Maybe it was the Tin Woodsman.
Did it dance, sing?
Did Jack Haley's voice come out of it?
Careful with that!
All right. Then who's
committing these murders?
- How do you account for what I saw?
- I account for it thusly.
You are a man who has
resorted to lies and chicanery...
to the point
of being pathological.
I believe that you suffer
from autosuggestion.
And in an obsessive desire
to win approval,
expressed through the need
for a big story,
you convince yourself that
what you want to be true is true.
In short,
I believe your brain has turned to onion dip.
Mr. Boggs,
I'm sorry for the trouble.
You've been very
cooperative, and I thank you.
I told you from the
beginning it was laughable.
Unfortunately, I have to
check out all the leads.
It's my duty, you know,
in spite of the source.
Don't go far. We'll still
want to talk to you.
But, uh, I think...
I'll consult with
our police psychiatrist.
Buxbaum.
I'm sorry about this
whole thing. I really am.
But I did see that armor.
Who was this Black Cross Knight?
Where did this armor come from?
I wouldn't give you another
piece of information...
if you held me down and let a pack of
rats run through my clothes willy-nilly.
Not if you made me drink the oil slick off
Lake Michigan would you get anything out of me.
Now please leave here, and
take that sickly stench with you.
Hello.
My name's Carl Kolchak.
I'd like some information
about coats of arms.
Kolchak. That's an old and
revered Russian name, isn't it?
- Actually, no, it's Polish.
- Polish?
Oh, yes, of course. Kolchak.
An ancient lineage there.
You must be descended from
Archbishop Kolchak of Kraków,
who defended the church
from the Magyar onslaught.
- Really?
- Oh, it's a proud line you're from.
That's terrific.
I didn't know that.
My grandmother always told me
that we were descended from Slavs.
Oh, no, Archbishop Kolchak.
Maura, you have the Kolchak
crest back there, don't you?
- I'm sure we do, honey.
- No. Wait. That's very interesting,
but, you see, I'm not interested
in buying a coat of arms.
I'm a reporter. I need some
information about a shield.
We're in the business
of selling coats of arms.
Mostly mail order.
We're very busy today.
Yeah, well, I guess
I'll buy a coat of arms.
- Twelve dollars for the pine plaque.
- Twelve bucks, huh?
Listen, the shield I saw was red,
with a black lion sitting on top of it,
and then there was a diagonal
stripe of black down across it.
- We call that "the lion rampant and the black bend sinister."
- Uh-huh.
What you're describing
is a heraldic design...
of the infamous Mettancoeur
family of Burgundy.
- Infamous?
- Oh, bad people.
The last of the line,
Guy de Mettancoeur,
was particularly a pig,
even by today's standards.
He stayed behind in Burgundy.
He didn't go to the Crusades.
He amassed a fortune, slaying
even women and children.
Here we are. Of course,
when we mail it to you,
it will have "Kolchak"
emblazoned beneath,
hand-lettered
by one of our artists.
Oh, it has such striking colors.
I think it really deserves a
walnut plaque... for only $60.
- Pine'll be fine.
- But if I had your ancestry, I'd flaunt it.
Did Roger tell you about Baron
the General Joachim-Meinz Kolchak?
He was the military adviser
for the Emperor Franz Joseph.
They called him
the Lion of Warsaw.
Mm-hmm.
I got a hunch it'll be a walnut.
Uh... Hmm.
Could you take a check?
Oh, of course.
You were talking about
Guy, Guy, the...
- Mettancoeur.
- Yeah.
His family had the finest
vineyards in Burgundy.
Château Mettancoeur.
But Guy himself
hated human pleasures.
He became a pariah
in his own time.
Yeah, I've known
a few like that myself.
What do you mean he hated
all human pleasures?
He consorted with dabblers
in the black arts.
He became, uh,
"legendary for his invincibility
and his unchivalrous acts."
- Here. Here we are, like here.
- Oh, yeah.
"After he had killed a foe,
it was his custom...
"to wipe the blood
from his weapon...
on the flying colors of the dead
foe, as a gesture of contempt."
- What are flying colors?
- A silk scarf, a bright piece of clothing.
How about a pillowcase
or a sport jacket?
I beg your pardon?
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Guy... de Mettan...
There he is... the black knight.
Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no, no, no.
The Hydecker Company Importers.
Yeah, right, Ernie. They were bought
out by Canadian-American Leisure.
What were the fancy French
labels they used to import?
You mean they did import
Château Mettancoeur.
Oh, that's terrific.
I'd send you a case of scotch, only
you're already in the liquor business.
- I got it, Tony.
- Carl, did you have to use the whole bottle?
- Hmm?
- Whew!
- Oh. Uh...
- Carl, look.
You were supposed to be
covering, among other things,
the death of Brewster Hocking
of Chicago of the 20th century.
As I read your notes here,
you're trying to pin this killing,
and several others, on a
12th-century French knight.
- Am I correct there, Carl?
- Oh, it's bizarre, Tony.
It's incredible, but I do
believe that's what's happening.
What rot. And I have to sit here
and write financial news, and he...
Uh, Ron, Ron.
Look, Carl,
I saw my sister-in-law have a
nervous breakdown, and it was messy.
- Now I recognize all the symptoms, Carl.
- Oh.
Fantasy, the inability to
concentrate on real issues.
Well, it probably runs
in the family, Tony.
Listen, just because
it sounds strange...
doesn't mean there's any reason
for me to go to the lollipop factory.
Guy de Mettancoeur was an ogre.
He had a suit of armor fashioned
by a necromancer, a sorcerer.
It made him impregnable
to attack.
You see what I mean?
Fantasy.
So there's armor
at the Hydecker Museum.
So what does that mean?
It's an empty suit.
It's just a glorified set
of drainpipes. That's all.
Now you come in here rambling
about some blessed battle-ax...
and Pope Gregory and smelling
like a vase full of dead begonias.
No, that's
Minerva Musso's perfume.
Carl... Carl, what is
happening in your life?
Okay.
All right.
The armor and the battle-ax
are both out of the museum.
The whole story is there. Pope
Gregory blessed that battle-ax...
and asked the Knight of Strasbourg
to do battle with Mettancoeur.
The holy ax was the only thing that could
pierce Mettancoeur's armor, and it did.
Mettancoeur died, but he swore
with his last breath...
that music and human gaiety would never
be permitted around his resting place.
- See, he was a misanthrope.
- What beef could he have...
with Brewster Hocking
or Minerva Musso?
Their great-grandfathers
hadn't even been born yet.
Can you understand that?
Can you see that?
You see, Brewster and Minerva...
were both parties to a plan
to turn the Hydecker Museum...
into a medieval
steak-and-lobster discotheque.
And this misanthropic knight
took issue with that?
It's all part of a curse, Tony. I saw this
knight walk into Minerva's bedroom and kill her.
I saw it, man!
He walked in, and I saw it!
All right, Carl. Let us say that you
saw this knight walk into her bedroom.
- Just let's suppose that.
- That's right.
Must we also assume that it had to
be a Frenchman out of the year 1227?
Does our logic dictate that it
had to be some superhuman ghost?
I know where you're heading,
Tony, and you're wrong.
- I've already been there.
- Leo Ramutka.
He's a ward boss. What does he
know about museums and discotheques?
Tony, the Hydecker Museum
is too old to be remodeled.
You see,
it's below building codes.
Guess who was interceding with the
building department to get a variance.
Leo Ramutka.
And-And Mr. Rolf Danvers,
Tony.
Rolf Danvers owned the lot
next door to the museum.
- Parking, Tony. Parking.
- Why don't you rest a little bit?
Why don't you come into my
office, lie down on the sofa...
and relax, take a shower,
clean yourself up?
- Rest, sleep on my sofa.
- No, Tony.
I'll be back with the most amazing,
astounding story that you ever heard.
And you're gonna beat your fingers
to a bloody pulp on the Teletypes...
so we can get the whole story
out to our customers!
Carl, please, stay a while. Stay
a while and have dinner with me.
- Look, I'll buy.
- You'll buy?
- Yes.
- What's the matter with you?
Have you suddenly
lost your mind or something?
Buy? You've never bought
anything in your life.
It's my sister-in-law
all over again.
Oh!
I don't know.
I don't know. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe
I've been browbeating him too much.
Don't castigate yourself.
Shhh!
A blessed battle-ax and an
iron suit full of thin air.
I knew I'd have a lot of explaining to do
to the owners of the Hydecker Museum,
to Captain Vernon Rausch
and, of course,
to my own beloved
bureau chief, A. Vincenzo.
There wouldn't be much I could
tell them, except what I'll tell you.
It all really happened.