Radio veterans Vic Perrin and Joyce McCluskey have this episode mostly to themselves as they play two people waiting at a remote bus shelter waiting for the route’s midnight stop. Like On a Country Road, an escaped lunatic is on the loose. That means there’s a surprise ahead for misidentifying the source of potential danger.
McCloskey’s character is awaiting her bus, and she meets a man there who is intent on conversation. He seems quite odd, and to listen to him you’d be convinced he’s the lunatic (so you know it won’t be him; it’s too early). He clearly has obsessive compulsive disorder, and that’s supposed to lead us believe OCD can make him a killer. We learn at the end why organization and placement of the typical things of life are so important to him… and who the person with psychiatric issues is.
There are clues to the ending and the rationale of the behavior of Perrin’s character throughout. Once you hear the ending, you may want to re-listen to hear the clues you missed and they may suddenly seem obvious… but you missed them on the first listen!
The script is by Don Yerrill, who also wrote for the Cathy and Elliott Lewis series, On Stage. Yerrill lived in Scotland and had his plays performed in the UK and Australia. He did some US television writing in the 1950s. He was a prominent crossword puzzle author, under the name “Tantalus.” His puzzles appeared in the London Times Literary Supplement. He was composing puzzles until age 92. In 2016, his death certificate listed his occupation as “wordsmith.” This is the first of two Suspense scripts prepared by him. The other is the long-missing The Eavesdropper of January 1956 that was recently found as an AFRS recording.
Most of the circulating recordings of this episode are combinations of dull or narrow range, and have background tape noise. This recording is an improvement over what has been available before.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP541028
THE CAST
Vic Perrin (Man in shelter), Joyce McCluskey (Woman), Helen Kleeb (Mother), Dick Ryan (Car driver), Herb Ellis (Uncle Will), Frank Gerstle (Radio announcer), Larry Thor (Narrator)
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