What happens
Harry Lime, a smuggler and opportunist, recounts how a dying man in Marseille gave him the name of Maurice Givrel and asked him to pass it on to someone in Paris. Harry tries the name on his newspaperman friend Julian Morrow, who explains that blackmail is the nasty word for what the name is worth. Orson Welles plays Harry Lime in this episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, first broadcast on 13 June 1952, and the story is told from Harry's point of view. Harry then turns to a politician, Givrel, and a passport request, and the transcript ends before the story is resolved.
Marseille, Paris and the French capital's nightclubs and hotels, late 1940s
Characters: Harry Lime, Marcel Brocco, Julian Morrow, Maurice Givrel, Mama Reginski, Heidi
Listen for: Harry's attempts to use the name Maurice Givrel and the word blackmail, and the appeals to a politician for a passport
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.