The Hitchcock Adventure
The great day had finally come
when he had heard the call of youth
Time to tread the mystery road!
And so, with a toast of champagne,
he set sail on the Spanish Jade
Bon Voyage, he heard the farmer’s wife exclaim!
Bon Voyage, Richard Elstree!
The course, north by northwest,
Adventure Malgache
He’d always dreamed of Madagascar
and a story “To tell your children”
“Though I’m certain of my decision”, he said
“beyond the shadow of a doubt,
I confess a bit of stage freight
as I watch the birds fly south”
Now many an interesting bloke did he meet
Including Harry, the man from home
who had affairs one after the other,
woman to woman
and who was obsessed with the number 13.
When questioned why he had never married,
his reply was simple,
“You always tell your wife the truth
when your drunk and I’m always drunk
and that would be the end
of the passionate adventure
in the pleasure garden!”
Under Capricorn sun they continued
when a stowaway was found
A woman named Marnie in a life boat revealed.
A woman of easy virtue, from all appearances
except for the ring, that Topaz ring.
Perhaps a rich and strange great lady
who had stumbled downhill, a prude’s fall
or one of Lord Camber’s ladies?
Suspicion overwhelmed, could she be a saboteur?
Perhaps a secret agent!
Would they force her to walk the 39 steps,
off the plank to a watery grave!
Seeming so young and innocent, her fate improved.
From port to port, circumventing the sea, she became
a part of the crew.
Still spellbound by her beauty, they plotted a course
to the Islands.
Finally, reaching the Jamaica Inn
Harry, the philanderer had to have room 13,
That’s the trouble with Harry!
Marnie, whom they called Mary for short,
was assigned to number seventeen
just next door.
Respite for a day or two, restocking and such was all
that was planned.
Richard, Harry and John Paradine
decided to ask Mary to join them
for dinner, before sailing for the States.
Tapping her door, Elstree calling! He summoned
There was silence! She was not in her room.
They search.
She’s not anywhere, the lady vanishes!
At her window, a torn curtain!
Now Mary did suffer from vertigo, could she have
fallen from her rear window
or was this the work of a psycho!
The authorities said, their faces resembled those
of three live ghosts when the men feared this
this could be murder!
“She left of her own free will” said
The blackguard of a police chief,”open and shut!”
“The result of love’s boomerang, she’s gone,
back to her lover!”
Maybe that was true, just an elastic affair and
she flew away as fast as the mountain eagle.
into the arms of the manxman of her youth.
Sadly, they embarked, knowing not
what had happened.
Once again, a long voyage northward,
docking alongside “the Princess of New York”
The backdrop of Manhattan, a spectacular sight!
Though they could not forget about Mary,
The distractions of the city did help.
First a play, “The Bonnie Brier Bush”
Then another,” Juno and the Paycock”
Then a movie,”
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog’
Now, Harry Smith and Richard never trusted Paradine,
Ever since they’d caught him telling dangerous lies!
Was he capable of blackmail?
Friends close, enemies closer, their motto,
so they decided
to give him enough rope to hang himself.
Perhaps, they would crack the Paradine case.
Harry, Richard learned, had been a member of
The Fighting Generation, a movement back home
and he trusted his skill. He would sniff
out the skin game.
There’s more than one way to catch a thief and if
John Paradine had anything to do with it,
Harry would figure it out; after all,
he had solved the case of the “the White Shadow”
He wasn’t afraid to dial “M” for murder!
But was Harry the man who knew too much?
Was Richard helping the wrong man?
Just then, in waltzes from Vienna, a beautiful woman.
She looked like Mary!
But how could this be, yet, it was she!
Her real name was
Rebecca and she and Harry
were Mr. and Mrs. Smith!
She was a Foreign Correspondent
and this whole escapade had been
a frenzy of a family plot
to keep her safe!
She had escaped the
German concentration camps factual survey.
Constructed using every title
In Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography
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