The Mask of Medusa (Mystery in the Air Radio Dramatization)

The Mask of Medusa is a Mystery in the Air episode based on a story written by Nelson Bond. Peter Lorre plays an exhibit in a waxwork museum owned by the self-proclaimed artist and connoisseur of crime, Aristide Zweig.

Lorre’s character is just one of forty-seven murderers on display and he is sick to the back teeth of listening to Zweig talking about him and his fellow felons.

“Oh, there he goes once more,” Lorre thinks. “Telling people all the bad things we did. Oh, but it’s terrible being nothing but figures in a wax museum with people staring at us all day long, and not one of them—not one, ever—suspects that we are still alive!”

Zweig, it seems, is not an artist at all and, although Zweig made them what they are, they are not wax and neither are they carvings. Every exhibit is a real killer and they are all still alive, but they cannot move.

In a way, Zweig is a criminal himself. He does not represent the law, he just takes it into his own hands, has set himself up as judge and juror, and is handing out life sentences with the aid of—have you guessed?—the severed head of Medusa.

The exhibits find a way to get back at Zweig in the end, of course; but there is an interesting twist in this tale and if nobody lives happily ever after that’s okay because none of them deserves to anyway.

Mystery in the Air: The Mask of Medusa

(Listen to the Full Episode)