Broadway’s My Beat: The Mary Trevor Murder Case (EP5083)

0:02 THE END.

0:28 Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio from Boise, Idaho. This is your host, Adam Graham. In a moment, we're going to bring you this week's episode of Broadway's My Beat. But first, I want to encourage you, if you're enjoying the podcast, to please follow us using your favorite podcast software.

0:51 Today's program is brought to you in part by the financial support of our listeners. You can support the show on a one-time basis using the Zelle app to box 13 at greatdetectives.net and become one of our ongoing Patreon supporters for as little as $ 2 per month. And I want to thank our latest Patreon supporter, Heidi, supporting the podcast at the show must level of $ 4 more per month.

1:16 Thanks so much for your support. But now from October 25th, 1952, here is The Mary Trevor Murder Case.

1:40 Broadway's my beat, from Times Square to Columbus Circle. The gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.

1:48 Broadway's my beat, from Times Square.

1:50 To Columbus Circle.

1:52 Broadway's My Beat with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover.

2:07 The wind of October begins its departure from Broadway, scatters the brown leaves of regret before it, piles them high at this corner and that, and the mob turns up its coat collar, drifts the autumn street and looks for a friend, looks... Sees only the two-hour dream promised by the theater marquee. Sees warmth on the other side of the plate glass windows. And sees this, the girl with the soft fur held close to her throat, covering her face right up to her eyes. And where she was is chillness. That was October, image and farewell. Get moving, kid.

2:47 And an evening above it, in the place of no seasons, Hospital Corridor, where I was, I detected Muggerman.

2:53 What about it, Danny?

2:53 Is she going to live? Dr. Sinski doesn't know. At least he says he doesn't know.

2:57 He knows.

2:58 A girl stabbed like that, she hasn't got a chance. Mind if we sit down here on this bench and smoke?

3:04 Just run it down for me, Muggerman.

3:06 The subway guard, Times Square, said it was 10 o'clock, give or take a couple of seconds, that he heard a scream. Local train had stopped. People getting on and off, rush, you know.

3:15 So a girl screamed.

3:15 Do you think the people stopped rushing to see what was the matter?

3:18 No, they kept right on.

3:18 Come on, Markerman, just tell me.

3:20 The guard battled his way through to where the girl screamed.

3:22 She had a knife in her. Yeah.

3:24 Couldn't tell if she'd been on the train and was getting off or what. They called emergency ambulance, got her here about a half an hour ago.

3:30 No witnesses?

3:31 No, the usual crop. Each with a story of the way they figured it happened.

3:35 Nothing.

3:36 Identification?

3:37 Lots of that. Wallet, usual stuff.

3:39 Oh, here, wait a minute.

3:42 Here. I wrote it down for you. Mary Trevor, 1212 West 37th. What else? She was carrying an overnight bag, Danny.

3:51 Been away or was going away for a day or two.

3:53 Nightgown, underthings, slippers. You know the stuff.

3:56 A novel to read, a couple of women's magazines.

3:59 She had a nice vacation, huh?

4:23 Who is it?

4:24 Police.

4:26 What do you want?

4:27 Information. Talk. About Mary Trevor.

4:34 Come on in. Plop yourself anywhere, mister. You'll excuse how I am. I was in the tub of the warm bath reading the paper and listening to the radio.

4:44 Tough day today.

4:45 The warm tub relaxes me. Music likewise.

4:48 I see. Yeah, sure you see.

4:51 So, okay, so now you killed it for me. What's with Mary?

4:54 She's in police emergency hospital. She's dying.

4:56 Mary got hurt?

4:58 Hit by a car, what? Someone tried to kill her.

5:00 Mary?

5:00 She's on a subway platform in Times Square. Someone stabbed her, ran. We found this address on her.

5:05 You found this address on her because this is where she lives sometimes. This is her home sometimes. Sometimes she remembers I'm her father. Those are the times when she yawns, asks me how things are going, where I work, goes to sleep in her room. I can count the times on the fingers of my hands.

5:25 Tell me about her, Mr. Travers.

5:27 What do I know about her? This is her private hotel, these three rooms. I'm not her father, I'm her desk clerk, her bellboy. I take messages for her, send out her cleaning press and rustle up night snacks for her.

5:38 And you know what?

5:39 No.

5:40 She leaves tips for me on my dresser when she goes out. Yeah, five or ten spots. You know something else?

5:49 I take it.

5:51 I use it for get-loaded money, forget money. But I get more Father's Days than any father in the world.

5:58 Someone try to kill her, Mr. Trevor. Maybe you could.

6:00 Don't ask me too much about Mary. I don't know about her life, so I wouldn't know about her diet.

6:06 Or her friends, people she ran around with, men, girlfriends.

6:09 Doesn't get through to you, huh? Unbelievable, huh?

6:13 Now, I'll lay it out for you.

6:15 This girl stopped being my child maybe five years ago. After that, we couldn't find anything in common. We'd get lost in different worlds.

6:22 She had a bag with her when we found her. A traveling bag.

6:25 She ran in here a couple of nights ago. Said she was in a big hurry. Threw her things in a bag. Told me she was going out of town, not to wait up. Don't question me where, mister, because I knew better than to ask her.

6:35 You said she left money for you. Fives and tens. She must have a good job.

6:41 Yes.

6:42 You could call it a job if you want.

6:44 Tell me about it.

6:46 Murray's got a rich friend. Rich girlfriend. My Murray does things for her like sponge, I think the word is. That's the word, sponge.

6:53 You know who she is, where she lives?

6:55 Joan Hunt, Park Avenue. I checked once, found it in a phone book. Murray wasn't lying.

6:59 There was such a girlfriend.

7:02 Now, you do something for me, mister, the address where my kids die and I want to go to it. Maybe now I can get through to it.

7:13 So leave there, out into the street. And the street is filled with the near midnight silences and pockets of yellow, the street lamps. Night street, a zone of almost black and a few swift ebbing figures. And the sudden dart of car and the faraway lights where other people's laughter is. So go to the apartment now, to the few intimate things among the furnishings that come with the rent. And this is home and sleep. The morning comes suddenly. It screams at you, opens your eyes, and it blinds you.

7:49 Morning happens every day, and some morning years from now you'll be used to it. Up now, the shave, the shower, the coffee, the street, work to do. Call headquarters and give Detective Muggerman my route for the day. First stop, Park Avenue. This morning's Park Avenue maid wears gray silk and white collar, and her curtsy is not much at all, but her smile is. Takes your name to her mistress, Joan Hunt. Comes back, takes you, leaves. And Joan Hunt is in tailored slacks and tailored blouse. And her makeup is color geometry applied to the precise planes and arcs and ovals of her face. She sits erect and attentive.

8:28 And the chrome of her wheelchair gleams circularly. Good morning. Good morning.

8:33 Have you had coffee?

8:34 Yes, thank you. It's about Mary Trevor... Yes? She's dying.

8:43 That's a shame.

8:46 It happened on a subway. She was stabbed. And? Miss Hunt.

8:49 Yes?

8:49 The police are interested in finding out who did it. You must know I realize that. I saw Miss Trevor's father last night. He told me there was a sort of relationship between you two. Precisely what? He said his daughter sponged off you. She did? I'm sorry, Miss Hunt, but.

9:05 Like this, Mr.

9:06 Clover.

9:07 I was injured some years ago. It was a ski jumper. Since then, there have been friends, boys, girls. They come to read to me, one after another. And we discuss.

9:20 That's my life now, you know.

9:21 I sit here and I discuss with whoever is current. Let me put it this way. I support whoever is current. It's all very smilingly brave and gay, but I pay for it.

9:32 And the latest one, Mary Trevor.

9:34 This afternoon, when the news gets out, my doorbell will ring. There'll be someone else. No college chum... friend I haven't seen in years. Someone who's been here to a party last week.

9:45 Someone. I see. Perhaps I can help you, Mr. Clover.

9:49 I've something of a story which may or may not attend what has happened.

9:54 I'd like to hear it.

9:56 Monday, Mary left with my fiancé. Oh, not the obvious, Mr.

10:00 Clover.

10:01 I'm much too rich for anything like my fiancé' s running off with someone else.

10:06 So what is his name, won't you? Robert Gray. Go on.

10:11 They left for Lake Champlain Monday. They and another couple, a Mr. and Mrs.

10:15 Nelson, to fix up my lodge, our honeymoon cottage. Shall I tell you about that?

10:20 Yes.

10:21 It has 20 rooms, four of which have been closed off to give the atmosphere of roughing it. Near a small town with a stupid name, Rouse's Point, near the border. I will permit a honeymoon there, and I shall come back to this house and never leave it.

10:36 Have you seen your fiancé?

10:37 Neither him nor.

10:38 The Nelsons since Monday. They left phone calls late yesterday that they were in town. Now, what else do you want?

10:45 The Nelsons' address and Robert Gray's address.

10:49 I'll get them for you. Then if you don't mind, will you please leave?

11:05 Whatever it is you want of me, make it brief, hmm? Let's not make a crease of it. Crease, that's crisis in case you don't know.

11:14 Prince. I didn't know.

11:17 You stated it simply enough. Mary Trevor is dying, you said, of knife wounds. What do you want of me?

11:23 Just this, Mr. Gray. Did you try to kill her?

11:26 No.

11:28 No, I wouldn't, you see. Tell me about it. I wouldn't, you see, because once I loved Mary Trevor. And now you don't, and suddenly she's knifed on a subway platform. Tell me when you stopped loving her, Mr. Gray. I could tell you the precise moment. Do that.

11:45 Less than a month ago, I sat in a bistro in Paris... On the table before me was an aperitif, amber in color, and my visitor's visa to America. I sat and sipped, and I culled through half-forgotten memories.

12:00 High among them was Mary Trevor. You said a visitor's visa.

12:04 Exactly.

12:05 Thirty days have I in the country of my birth. Here, I'll show you.

12:15 My papers, the visa, my birth certificate, my passport. French passport, as you see, because I'm a French citizen.

12:23 Oh, look at them.

12:26 It happened to me what they say in the travel folders. I saw Paris, I tasted of Paris, I went on my knees to her, begged for citizenship.

12:33 Got it. What brought you back, Mr. Graham?

12:36 A longing.

12:38 In Paris, I lived on small articles to the Tribune about American tourist behavior and customs abroad.

12:44 Now, here I shall live on small articles of the Paris Tribune. Behavior and customs of the American at home. Until you marry Joan Hunt, that is.

12:54 You asked for the moment when I fell out of love with Mary Trevor. I called her when I arrived. We had cocktails and old remembrances. And then she took me to Joan to display me.

13:08 I saw Joan. At that precise moment, I loved Joan and no longer married her. Miss Hunt is very rich.

13:15 Miss Hunt is helpless and lonely and crippled, and I love her, and I'm going to marry her.

13:19 Touché, Mr. Plover. You went to Miss Hunt's lodge with Mary. To prepare Jones and my place of honeymoon. Clean it up. With Mary and with Dickie and Lucy Nelson. Very proper.

13:31 Very carnal foe. Dickie and Lucy are giddy idiots, but they're respectable folk.

13:36 As was Mary.

13:38 As was I.

13:39 When did you see her last?

13:40 When my cab dropped in, Olsen's off at their apartment. Then Mary off at a subway station uptown. I kissed Mary's forehead and our forever parting was graceful.

13:50 Now, if you.

13:52 Never mind, Mr. Gray, I'll get it. Hello? Aren't you Danny? Yeah, Muggerman, what do you want?

13:57 I'm here at the hospital with Mary Trevor, Danny.

13:59 She's trying to say something.

14:00 She wants to talk to Robert Gray.

14:01 All right, write down what she says. I'll get Gray. It's for you, Mr.

14:04 Gray.

14:05 Who? Mary Trevor. She wants to talk to you. You going to take the call, Mr. Gray? Yes.

14:12 Yes, I am.

14:16 Mary? It's me. It's Robert. I'm deeply sorry, but.

14:21 Mary?

14:22 Mary? Playful joke, Mr. Clover. There's no one there. Give me the phone.

14:31 Hello?

14:32 Hello, Mugovan? Yeah, Danny. Give Mr. Gray the message. Tell him Mary Trevor couldn't say.

14:36 A word to him.

14:37 He just died.

14:48 You are listening to Broadway's My Beat, written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin, and starring Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover.

14:57 When you set about.

14:57 Explaining how democracy works, the first thing you're apt to mention is that it's the system where everybody has his say on how things are run. It's pretty embarrassing, then, to be reminded that in the 1948 election, only half the eligible voters in this democracy went to the polls to say their say. For our own sakes... and to show the world in general... that the democratic ideal can be fulfilled... let's do better this time. Vote as you please this November... but vote. See you at the polls.

15:38 October's dying is of gold... and of an autumn leaf that floats a river... stilling in the winter seas. And for Broadway, too... It is the gentle time, the slow curve of light that bends from brilliant summer glint, bows, dissolves into chill grays. Indian summer mists into autumn smoke. The time of the early afternoon stroll and the swift appraisal of winter's mannequins. The drawing of lots in the football pools. And the newest emotion, movies in three dimensions.

16:07 The good time, the gentle time. So walk the late October street, kid, before it's pulled out from under you. And the place where I was, high above the Autumn City, 30 stories away from Flo and Sound of East River. The place of Dickie and Lucy Nelson, where there was fireplace, Grecian figurines, and where the talk was of a dead girl, Mary Trevor.

16:36 Tell him, Dickie.

16:37 Tell him, Sweet, how desolate we are over the girl.

16:40 Mary was a companion, Mr. Clover. A boon companion.

16:43 Often made us laugh till tears, Lucy and me. Can you understand our sense of loss?

16:49 She made jokes, and you'll miss them, is that it?

16:51 Now that you've asked, yes, we'll miss them.

16:53 Dickie? Yes, dear?

16:55 Is it too possibly early for a martini? I feel the need of something. I don't quite know what.

17:01 You think martini? The chap has a mission, dear. Later, after he's gone.

17:05 Whatever you say, sweet. It's just that I'm so drained.

17:09 That gay, gay frolic at Joan's place. Now the reaction's setting in.

17:13 Drainless. Tell me about it, Mrs. Nelson.

17:16 About what?

17:16 The gay time you had at Joan Hunt's place.

17:19 Lake Champlain was never lovelier.

17:23 Sweet.

17:24 Will you ever forget that odd little native fellow who helped us get Joan's place ready for her honeymoon?

17:30 Will you ever forget that thing he said about the canopy bed?

17:35 Never. Never as long as I draw breath. Let me try to explain something to you two. Please do. Please. A girl is dead. Murdered. The last few days of her life, you were with her. You can tell me about it here or we can go downtown. There aren't many yucks there. I think you should know that. The chap is quite right, dear. This is deadly serious. Get your things. We're going downtown.

17:58 No, no.

17:58 It's quite simple, really. Don't get your hackles up. Mary and that Robert Gray, the fortunate fiancé... and Lucy and I... early Tuesday we arrived at Joan's place. We got it in order for her honeymoon.

18:12 Then Wednesday we celebrated.

18:14 There was a jug and Lucy and I got squiffed.

18:16 and we communed with nature and had laughter together... And when we woke up Thursday, there was Robert and Mary with coffee for us. And our things all packed for the trip home. And Thursday evening, Robert rushed us off right over here. And that's the last we've seen of either of them.

18:31 Our oath. Our solemn word.

18:33 Dickie?

18:34 Yes, dear?

18:35 I had a thought.

18:37 I had a funny thought. Let's open honeymoon palaces all over the world. We'll make it a career. I like work.

18:45 Oh, Dick, you just thought killed me. Honeymoon palaces.

18:51 Lucy, darling, you've outdone yourself.

18:54 Honeymoon.

18:57 And they laughed and they hit each other with their elbows and they were happy. The jollity was too much for me. I felt left out and unwanted and it struck me that perhaps the time to go was now. So I did. Back to headquarters. and sit at the desk, a few minutes of thinking. And Sergeant Gino Tartaglia happens. Danny?

19:18 Come on in, Gino. Why the big grin? Listen. You listening, Danny? Yeah. Tip a canoe and tile it, too.

19:30 What?

19:31 Tip a canoe and tile it.

19:33 Too, Danny.

19:34 What about it?

19:35 It does have a ring to it, doesn't it? My fourth-born, Donald, brought the phrase home from school with him last night. Tippy Canoe and Tyler, too.

19:45 Gino. Gino. Huh? Huh? You have anything for me?

19:51 Oh, hardly a thing. Nothing of note in Miss Trevor's background. Nothing of note in Miss Trevor's overnight bag. Personal effects. A novel entitled, let's see, titled The Cane Mutiny, in which was her birth certificate as a bookmark between chapter four.

20:08 Birth certificate? As I have said. Now, if you would.

20:11 Don't mind me, Lieutenant.

20:13 Thank you. Danny Clover speaking.

20:15 Muggerman, Danny, with the Trevor apartment.

20:17 Yeah, what's up?

20:18 Mary Trevor's father, Danny, just tried to kill himself.

20:20 What?

20:20 Yeah, just tried suicide.

20:22 Stick with him, Muggerman.

20:24 It must have been out of my mind.

20:37 I don't know.

20:38 I went crazy.

20:40 Suddenly it was the only thing I could do, kill myself.

20:42 Why?

20:45 Why did you try to commit suicide, Mr. Trevor?

20:49 Well, don't just sit there and shake your head. You plugged up the apartment and turned on the gas, so there.

20:52 Must have been a reason.

20:54 Remorse? You sorry about something?

20:57 Nodding your head won't do it, Mr.

20:58 Trevor. Talk to us.

20:59 Tell us what you're sorry about.

21:00 Leave me alone.

21:02 Look, Mr.

21:02 Trevor, your daughter was murdered. You don't like the kind of life she leads, so you kill her. Then you become very unhappy. You've done a very terrible thing, you tell yourself, so you make up for it.

21:11 Flip on the gas. It doesn't hurt. You're dead real easy and the whole thing's over with.

21:14 That's the best you'll give us, huh?

21:18 The bit with shaking the head?

21:19 Who called the police, Muggum?

21:21 Some woman saw Trevor break that window over there, give a yell and fall down, called it in.

21:26 What are we going to do with him? Book him, I guess. Let's go, Trevor. Didn't you hear what the lieutenant said? I was crazy. Scared, too, huh?

21:35 When you started getting a little woozy from the gas, real panicky, all of a sudden you don't want to kill yourself.

21:39 Like you killed your daughter.

21:41 What?

21:42 Like you killed your daughter.

21:43 No, I didn't do that. She's dead.

21:48 I didn't want to live anymore because she's dead, but I didn't kill her.

21:52 You see.

21:53 What?

21:54 Something happened to me. My baby dying and she was going to get married and me being her father and loving her. That's all there was to anything I did loving her. What could I do anymore about living? Who was your daughter going to marry?

22:11 There.

22:12 Huh?

22:14 In the table drawer where the phone is.

22:19 This letter?

22:20 Yeah.

22:21 Let's see.

22:23 It.

22:26 We're here in Canada, Daddy, Bob and I. He's going to marry me. I'll make him do it. I found a way. Signed Mary. Take a look, Muggerman. The envelope, too.

22:37 Uh-huh.

22:38 Bob.

22:39 Robert Gray?

22:39 Has to be.

22:41 The envelope's postmarked Wednesday. Look, call Canada.

22:44 Yeah. Have Dr. Sinski look at Mr. Trevor, Muggerman. I got a couple of stops to make. So ride the late afternoon streets. Uptown on 5th to 42nd. Public library. Ask for an atlas and get it. and locate a town in Canada called Lacal. Then know what you need to know. Leave there, cross town to a place you've been to before, to the apartment of Robert Gray. And no one answers your knock. Robert Gray's door is locked.

23:13 So downstairs be told by a man at the switchboard that Mr. Gray had left word he might be reached at this number. Check the number against a name and an address you have, and it matches. So uptown again to Park Avenue at dog walk time. And the doxies and the Spaniels lead their butlers on leashes. And today's maid wears today's gray silk and white collar and a smile left over from yesterday. Go through the ritual and finally be ushered across the parquet floor to another room.

23:42 Come in, Mr. Clover.

23:45 Thanks.

23:47 Robert and I were having tea.

23:49 Will you join us? No, thanks. Did you want to see me? Both of you. Joan, dear.

23:55 Yes?

23:56 Whatever Mr. Clover wants to say to us, I'm sure I can answer it. Now, why don't... Don't act the gallant, Robert. Sit there. Speak when you're spoken to.

24:03 Now, what is it, Mr.

24:06 Clover? Maybe Mr. Gray is right. Maybe just he and I... If it concerns Robert, it concerns me.

24:13 Isn't that right, Robert?

24:15 Robert. Yes. Robert says that's right, Mr. Clover. All right, Clover. Let's juror. Let me pose the name of a town, Mr. Gray. Lacal. Lacal is a town in Canada. It's about ten miles over the border.

24:30 Well, I know where it is.

24:32 When I used to spend the summers at my lodge at Rouse's Point, we'd go right across the border into Lacal for Canadian whiskey.

24:38 But there's nothing there, actually.

24:39 There's a post office there.

24:41 And as the sun slowly sinks below the post office at Lacal, you will bid us a fond farewell.

24:47 Take off, Clover.

24:49 Listen to my man.

24:51 Men. What?

24:53 I'm proud. Are we a handsome couple, Mr.

24:56 Clover? Robert in his great red leather chair. Me and mine. Of course we are. A little while ago, I saw a letter from the call. It was mailed Wednesday by Mary Trevor.

25:08 Was Mary in Canada? Was she, Robert? I'm talking to you, Robert.

25:16 She was there. And so were you, Mr. Gray.

25:19 Why didn't you tell me, Robert?

25:22 We went up for Canadian whiskey. But you should have told me.

25:26 The Nelsons didn't mention anything about going to Canada.

25:29 I don't think they went. Did they get loaded, Robert? Listen, Joan.

25:35 Did they get loaded, Robert? And did you lose them, Robert? And you and Mary went to Canada.

25:43 Why?

25:44 Will you just listen? All right. It's just across the border... That's right, Robert. Go on, Robert. The Nelsons were drunk. They got dull. Mary and I... He loved you very much, didn't she? Well, what of it?

26:02 Isn't that nice? Women fall in love with Robert.

26:05 And blackmail him, too. Joan, listen to me.

26:08 I've been listening. You've said nothing at all.

26:11 Except that you got rid of your chaperone and went to a foreign land with a girl who was in love with you.

26:17 Now, I've just gotten word that she was blackmailing you.

26:20 What a time you must have.

26:21 Had, Robert.

26:22 I'm telling you, nothing happened, Joe. It doesn't matter. You're an alien on a visitor's permit. You went out of the country. The law says you'd be deported for that. You couldn't let that happen. The blackmail, right, Mr.

26:34 Glover?

26:35 That's right. What did she want from you, Robert? Money? No, it couldn't be that.

26:43 Then what else? You? That's what she wanted, Robert. She wanted to marry you, didn't she?

26:53 You know what she did? She made me go. She had it all planned.

26:56 She had her birth certificate along so she could get out of the country and in again.

26:59 Made you go?

27:01 Oh, but oh.

27:02 She said, let's get away from the Nelsons. All I'd have to do is show my birth certificate and no one would know that I was an alien.

27:08 Let's get back to the blackmail, shall we? Mary could have had you deported.

27:11 And deported, Robert. Couldn't have me. And let's face it, my darling, my money.

27:18 So you had to.

27:18 Kill her to keep her quiet. Is that right, Robert?

27:24 How did you do it, dear? Dear? I... I dropped her off at home. I told her I'd meet her later. We met. We met and... No suspense, darling. Just the story. We met. And there was all that... Subway crowd.

27:51 You planned to kill her, didn't you? You were carrying a knife, so you must have planned.

27:56 Help me. Help me, Joan.

27:58 All right.

28:02 Mr. Clover.

28:02 Mm-hmm?

28:04 I'm trying to phrase it so it won't seem obvious. My thoughts are how to buy Robert back from you.

28:12 Forget it. If not money, then this. I told you.

28:18 This wheelchair I'm in, I get lonely.

28:22 I'm sorry.

28:25 Robert.

28:26 What? Goodbye, Robert. Broadway's screaming now. It sneers and makes a big fist at the night. And the midway's boiling. It's yokel and clown and jack-in-the-box that leaps from dark doorways. And it's geek with no arms, no legs.

29:02 And no heart.

29:06 It's Broadway. The gaudiest. The most violent. The lonesomest mile in the world. Broadway. Broadway.

29:19 My Beat.

29:35 Broadway's My Beat stars Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. with Charles Calvert as Tartaglia and Jack Crucian as Mugovan. The program is produced and directed by Elliot Lewis, with musical score composed and conducted by Alexander Courage. In tonight's story, Betty Lou Gerson was heard as Joan and Ben Wright as Robert. Featured in the cast were Gene Bates, Tom Tully, and Byron Kane. Bill Anders speaking. Remember, on most of these same stations every Saturday night, listen to Gangbusters as they bring you high-tension thrills. And remember, Eve Arden as our Miss Brooks teaches you how to laugh Sundays on the CBS radio network.

30:17 © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © transcript Emily Beynon.

31:15 Welcome back. Well, an interesting story. Now, of course, you can question the idea of a motive revolving around the technicalities of immigration law, but this was something that would have been on the minds of many listeners in 1952. As that year, Congress had passed the McCarran-Walter Act, which overhauled America's immigration laws over the veto of President Truman. So, immigration and some of the terms in the episode would have been a big news story in 1952. Now, of course, the legal threat there, you know, it's kind of like cut and dried. You crossed over the border, out you go, is a bit overstated. You could, depending on how your visa was structured, have action taken against you, but there

32:18 were a lot of factors that might go into that. The big problem is that if immigration started looking into it, or even if they didn't, if Mary told Joan, Robert would lose Joan, and more importantly to him, Joan's money, as he did at the end of the episode. And I do feel bad for Joan, although I think that While the 1950s certainly were not an easy time if you needed to get around in a wheelchair, she did have a lot more resources than the average person. The type of resources we hear described in this episode are enough that she could have made a space for herself in the larger world, but instead she chose to create a smaller world that she could hope to control us in our comments and feedback now and we go to

33:20 spotify where carissa makes a point uh regarding the ruth nelson murder case i think fine and free can wanted cases that involve the upper crust and that's one reason they have so many uh anachronistic or reputational crimes. It's like Law and Order in the 2000s, when every murder was actually committed by a white-collar guy trying to cover up financial misdeeds. Good point. Mechanic66 writes, Good one. I like the description of the skyscape. And far away, behind a crack in the window that cuts it in half, a kind of yellow moon hung on a drifting, cloudy city.

34:05 and pale white, and dust, and death, to make notes on it. And I agree, and as much as I did rag on that one line a few weeks back, in general, I love the narration on the story. It's very unique in character. It's the type of thing that You usually, even back then, you didn't go quite to that level. And if you did, you were kind of going like completely over the top in sort of the Pat Novak for hire way, where I think it's very much Richard Breen's intention to dial everything up to 12.

34:47 But here it's very character driven. And at its best, it is very reflective of who Danny is and how he sees the world. As this protagonist who is very weary at times and who is often touched, bothered by the sort of feeding frenzy type atmosphere that can be present on Broadway. But is also a part of that scene.

35:16 So it lands very differently and works great. Well, now it's time to thank our Patreon supporter of the day. Thank you to Ron, Patreon supporter since March of 2022, currently supporting the podcast at the Shamus level of $ 4 or more per month. Thanks so much for your support, Ron. That'll do it for today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us using your favorite podcast software and be sure to rate and review the podcast wherever you download it from. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Broadway's My Beat, but join us back here tomorrow for Dragnetware.

35:55 Look, Gordon, if you didn't kill the woman, you haven't anything to worry about, and if you did, we're going to find out anyway. Who was the woman, Gordon? Will you tell me that much? What's her name? You know her very long? Did you know her very long? What was she to you? Do you want to tell me that?

36:29 She's a fairly middle-aged woman in her early 50s, I'd say. Is that about right? Was she your mother, Gordon? Older sister, maybe? Any relation at all? What's the matter, son?

36:43 You feeling sick?

36:49 How about a cigarette?

36:50 All right.

36:52 Bother you if I smoke? I hope you haven't got the idea we're trying to trick you into anything, Gordon. We've got a dead woman on our hands here. We've got to find out why she's dead.

37:06 Now, what do you say?

37:09 No use looking up at the clock, son. We're stuck here till we find out about that woman.

37:13 I hope you'll be with us then. In the meantime, send your comments to box13 at greatdetectives.net. Follow us on Twitter at Radio Detectives and check us out on Instagram, instagram.com slash greatdetectives. From Boise, Idaho, this is your host, Adam Graham, signing off.