The Hanging Paperhanger: Nick Carter, Master Detective (August 5, 1945)

“The Hanging Paperhanger” is an episode of Nick Carter, Master Detective, the old-time radio show, first broadcast August 5, 1945. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

When Mrs. Nelson, an old friend of Nick Carter's, comes to him upset about her landlord papering over her wall decorations without permission, Nick investigates and discovers the landlord dead in her closet, staged as a suicide. Nick must solve the murder, track down the stolen perfume bottles taken by the killer, and rescue the kidnapped Mrs. Nelson before it's too late.

New York City, including a boarding house, Nick Carter's brownstone mansion on Fifth and Fourth, the Paris Incorporated cosmetics office, and the Maxwell Manufacturing Plant.

Characters: Nick Carter, Patsy Bower, Mrs. Nelson, Mr. Harrow, Sergeant Matheson, Speiler Wilson, Madam Paris, Mr. Maxwell

Listen for: The clever deduction about the perfume bottles and broken glass; Nick's exposure of Maxwell's counterfeiting racket; the explanation of how fresh perfume labels on Mrs. Nelson's walls threatened to expose the scheme.

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.