What happens
A condemned man, the spy Louis Caratel, is about to die in the electric chair and uses his final request to speak on the radio. He promises to reveal how a special train vanished in 1925 between Liverpool and Manchester, carrying Caratel, his companion Gomez, and railway crew, and he threatens to name powerful men he says are involved unless his pardon is arranged. The narrator presents the story of the railway officials' bewildered search, the mysterious letter from conductor James McPherson, and the sinister golf meeting in which a planned assassination is discussed. The broadcast is part of the Suspense series, originally aired on September 30, 1943, on The Mercury Theatre on the Air, and is presented as a dramatic tale rather than a documented account.
Liverpool, Manchester, and St. Helens in England in 1925, a golf course, and Central America, as the story is told by a condemned man in a radio studio.
Characters: Louis Caratel, James Bland, Mr. Hood, Mr. Jones, James McPherson, Gomez, Mrs. McPherson, Mr. D'Odernac
Listen for: The narrator's threat to name the powerful men, and the story of the special train disappearing between Kenyan Junction and Barton Moss.
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.