What happens
Harry Lime, a swindler, sets up a racetrack betting scam in Paris and enlists two men, Janine and Jack Harris, to help him. Lime plants a billfold in a hotel bar so that his accomplice can return it to a stranger, Harris, and win his trust. The conspirators then lure Harris into a fake betting club, where the rigged races seem to pay out. This episode is part of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, first broadcast on November 23, 1951, and it is based on the character from The Third Man. Orson Welles plays Harry Lime.
Paris, at a hotel bar and a fake racing club
Characters: Harry Lime, Janine, Jack Harris, Arnes
Listen for: The hotel bar encounter where the billfold is returned and the first meeting with Harris
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.