Episode 1426

Aired: Monday December 13, 1971

In a repeat of Friday's close, Quentin steps in front of Trask in the woods, holding his gun. "Hold on, Trask," he says. Trask asks him what he's doing. "We're going to try an experiment," Quentin says. "I'm going to ask you about something that Carl told me about that I find very shocking. If you give me an answer that I like, I'll step out of your way." Trask says "And if not?" Quentin cocks the gun and says "Then I'll mistake you for our masked killer and have to defend myself." Trask gets scared. Meanwhile, Alice enters her room, and again, the room goes dark and the door slams behind her. Catherine's ghost appears to her and says "You escaped your fate once tonight, dear Alice, but fate has a way of catching up with you..." Alice becomes terrified and tries to get out of the room, but can't. Catherine begins to laugh as Alice yells and pounds on the door. "Go away! Go away! Stop haunting me!" Catherine cackles about "fate" while Alice buries her face against the door and begins to cry, but suddenly the lights come on again and Catherine is gone. Alice looks around the room, and then begins to laugh, saying "You've gone! And you'll stay away, do you hear? You'll stay away!" Alice continues to laugh, but then she sees a strange shadow by the window. Alice backs away meekly saying "No...no....NO!" Suddenly the black masked figure crashes through the window and stands before Alice with scimitar in hand....

After the titles, Alice stands near the door terrified as the black figure steps closer. Carl is outside, having heard her screams. He yells "Alice! What is it? Are you all right?" Inside, she screams for help, and outside, Carl cannot get the door open. He picks up a nearby chair in the hall and smashes the door open. He enters the room and comes face to face with the black masked killer. He gasps as the killer lunges for him with the scimitar, but Carl is quick enough to block the blade with the chair. The point of the blade sticks into the chair, and Carl pushes the killer back. Alice runs behind Carl as he throws a vase at the killer, who turns and jumps back out the window. Carl runs to the window to see where he went as Alice yells for him to be careful. "He's gone," Carl says, panting. "It was him....it was really him.... the killer Gladstone and I have been hunting." Alice says she's never been so terrified. Carl is getting more excited, saying "He left a ton of clues here for Gladstone. Don't touch anything in here. Find a spare room to sleep in and I'll get Gladstone over here to investigate. We're gonna get him this time, Alice, we're gonna get him!" He leaves and she follows. Meanwhile, in the woods, Quentin holds the gun on Trask. Trask starts to smile. "I don't see how you can be so happy, Trask," Quentin snaps. "And I don't see how you can be so brash, Quentin, especially when you're looking at the new master of Collinwood." Quentin, surprised, says "What are you talking about?" Trask tells him that "Your dear cousin Valery has signed control of the estate over to me. I assure you the paperwork is all neat and legal." Quentin cocks the gun and points it at Trask's face. "You lying blackguard!" he says. "I know what you and my dear cousin Alice are plotting." Trask tells him it's too late. "Go ahead and kill me if you don't believe me, Quentin. Because Valery has signed the estate over to me, and I have already seen to it that if anything happens to me, the property will remain in the Trask family and not the Collins. Go on and shoot if you don't believe me, Quentin! Because then you can be both a murderer and a pauper!" Quentin thinks a moment and then lowers the gun. Trask takes a deep breath and says "It's good to see you come to your senses." Quentin suddenly socks Trask across the jaw and sends him to the ground. "Don't be too sure Valery owned the estate to begin with," he says. Quentin smirks and walks away as Trask wonders what he meant.

Quentin returns to Collinwood with Trask right behind. Charity is there and asks Quentin if he saw anything out there. "No, nothing," he answers. Trask says hello to his sister, but tells her that he needs to speak to Quentin alone in the drawing room. She wonders why, and as Trask closes the doors, she starts to listen outside. Trask immediately asks Quentin what he meant by saying that Valery may not own the estate. "It was left to her in your grandmother's will!" Trask insists. Quentin snaps "Was it? Before you go on plotting, Trask, you may want to know that I know about my grandmother's other will. Her true will." Trask suddenly looks very concerned, enough for Quentin to notice. "I can tell by your reaction that you know what I'm talking about," Quentin sneers. Trask turns to him and says "That's a lie!" Charity, listening outside, seems shocked to be hearing this. Inside, Quentin says "You must have known about her earlier will before you concocted the other! I can tell you're worried that it would turn up." Trask tries to lie "It's true that Catherine changed her will many times, but that doesn't mean that the final one will not stand." Quentin turns Trask around and says "That depends on what it says now, doesn't it? And I know that Valery will have a much better sense of fairness than you will about these things, at least I'm sure of that after hearing what you've been plotting against her!" Trask protests that he's "plotted nothing" and at that moment, Charity comes in, angry. "How dare you accuse my brother of such a thing!" she snarls at Quentin. Quentin says "You were listening outside? Then you might as well know the entire story!" Trask tells Quentin to "shut up, before you upset her anymore." Quentin says "You should know about your brother's neat arrangements, Charity. He's somehow gotten Valery to sign over control of the estate to him. And from what I heard from Carl, my dear cousin Alice seems to figure into all of this somehow." Charity says she refuses to believe it, and Quentin says "Believe what you want, I know what the truth is. I'm going to bed. I'll leave the two of you to each other." He storms out, leaving Charity and Trask looking at each other.

The next morning, Gladstone is examining evidence in Alice's room. He seems excited as Carl tells him what had happened the preceding evening. "I wish you had called me earlier," Gladstone says. "If I could have gotten here last night, I may have been able to trail him through the woods. Still, there's a lot here for me to work with." Carl says "Your men said they couldn't find you last night." Gladstone says "I was home most of the evening, they must have just missed me." He looks over the chair with the sword cut in it and says "You say he was carrying a large sword, a scimitar?" Carl says yes, and Gladstone nods, saying "No doubt why his victim's throats are so cleanly cut along with the wrists...." Carl looks a little sad, and Gladstone says "Sorry, I know this is close to you." Gladstone looks at the floor and says "He tracked a lot of dirt in here...." He examines the dirty footprints more closely, and says "We may have a break here. If I'm right, he wasn't wearing shoes." Carl says he didn't notice, but that the killer "seemed to move silently." Gladstone says he'll need to check outside for something. Downstairs, Alice waits as Gladstone and Carl come downstairs. "Do you think you can catch him?" she asks. Gladstone says he hopes so, and Carl says "After I'm done with the sheriff, I still need to talk to you. And you know about what." Alice doesn't look thrilled at this prospect as Carl and Gladstone head outside. Beneath the windows, Gladstone spots another footprint, this one deeply indented in the soft soil. Smiling, he looks it over with a magnifying glass and says "Yes....definitely.... he was wearing no shoes." Gladstone calls over a deputy and tells him to make a cast of the foot from the print. "I think we may have our first piece of physical evidence on this killer," he tells Carl. Carl asks what can be figured out from a foot, and Gladstone answers "It may nothing, or it may hold some clue to his identity. I can check records and medical records, especially if the foot has any anomalies in it." The deputies come back with plaster and measuring tools.

Gladstone returns to his office and puts his box of clues on his desk. As he examines pieces of things he gathered from the old house, the deputy enters with another box. "The cast is finished," he says. Gladstone tells him to leave it on the desk. We hear him think "All this time and I finally have a piece of you...." as he opens the box and looks at the cast. He takes it out of the box and examines it, but his curiosity soon turns to horror. "No....the second toe....missing! This foot has a missing toe....and...." he thinks as he looks at the heel. "a flat heel...." Out loud, he says "Oh my God..." as he puts the cast down. He paces back and forth saying "No, it can't be, it's impossible! It's impossible!" He jumps into his chair and takes his own shoe off - lifting up his own foot where we see it's a perfect match for the cast.