What happens
Ken Thurston, an American agent, searches for the missing nuclear physicist Professor Chorny, who vanished near the Czechoslovak border. A music box sent to Thurston leads him to a toy company in Prague, where he meets a shadowy contact who points him toward a cafe and an informant named Peggone. Thurston learns of an underground network and a secret police chief named Kumloff, and he begins to suspect that Chorny is being held behind the Iron Curtain. This episode of The Man Called X, first broadcast on November 3, 1950, stars Herbert Marshall as Thurston.
Washington, D.C., and Prague, Czechoslovakia, around 1950
Characters: Ken Thurston, Professor Chorny, Papa Batava, Peggone, Ilse, Joseph Atacka, Kumloff
Listen for: The tense confrontation in the alley where Peggone describes how he learned about Professor Chorny, and the escape plan at the Czech secret police detention house.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.