“It’s okay to cut a competitor down a few notches, but never cut him six feet lower than the soles of his feet. That’s no longer fair competition, folks, that’s murder.”
“One way of landing a client is to fish him out of the river. Which is exactly how I commenced my confidential file on a character named Richie Stimson.”
Barry Craig happens to be on hand to rescue Richie Stimson after he drives his car into the river. Richie is current husband and former chauffeur to Natalie Stimson, a Park Avenue millionaire. Richie claims that he wasn’t drinking, but that he has spells where he gets “dopey all of the sudden” and foggy in his head, with the feeling that he wants to shut his eyes. He claims that he drove through the guard rails during one of those spells.
Craig bills Richie $100 for his ruined clothes and shoes, not expecting payment. He is surprised to receive a check for $1000 from Natalie Stimson with a request for a meeting.
In talking to Natalie, Craig learns that the plunge into the river wasn’t Richie’s first accident. For example, several weeks earlier he fell two stories from a window and was saved only by falling on a terrace on the 26th story. According to her, six doctors have examined Richie this year, with the most recent concluding that he is a “normal neurotic” who is just accident-prone. Her own theory is that Richie feels out of his element in the rich Park Avenue environment and needs someone who “talks his language”. She feels Craig can be that someone and hires him to be Richie’s friend for $4000 for one month.
Everything goes well for a while, with Richie attending burlesque shows just like he did before his marriage. But Craig suspects that something else is wrong, especially after a talk with Richie’s brother. He claims that Richie is a snob and has always been a schemer, but that he has never been accident-prone.
After one final accident, Barry Craig is forced to untangle all of the the lies and discover the real cause for Richie’s problems.
Featuring Paul Dubov, Betty Lou Gerson, Jack Carroll, Jack Moyles
This episode was first broadcast on NBC radio on January 5, 1955. You can download it from the Internet Archive here: