Plot
Columnist Jordan Herrick, a noted cynic, prepares to interview famed actress Pamela Morris. She is known for her vitality and beauty, and many want to know her secret to staying young and beautiful. Herrick is welcomed to Morris's sprawling manor by a very aged woman named Viola. He naturally assumes that this is Morris's mother, and greets her as such; he is shocked when Viola later confides that she is in fact Pamela's daughter.
Herrick takes this as a sign of senility, and greets the beautiful Pamela when she comes down the stairs. The two flirt and have drinks, Herrick obviously smitten with the gorgeous actress. The two talk, Pamela all the while hinting at some great secret that she possesses. Herrick's curiosity and attraction finally win out, and he demands to know the secret. Pamela complies and demonstrates a small scarab beetle that she hides in a plant. She explains that the beetle, prized in ancient Egypt, is able to drain the life from others, that the owner might apply it to him or herself.
Herrick scoffs at this ridiculous story, but suddenly wonders why Pamela would choose to tell him such bizarre information. Pamela drugged his coffee, and though he tries to escape, he slumps unconscious to her living room floor. Pamela applies the scarab to Herrick's body and pulls the youth from it, killing the columnist and reducing him to a pile of dust and clothes.
The episode ends with yet another young and handsome columnist arriving to interview Pamela, starting the cycle once again. It is implied that Pamela is actually Cleopatra VII, and that she has been existing this way for centuries. If so, the elderly Viola could indeed be her daughter.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)