Stopped Watch Caper: The Adventures of Sam Spade (April 10, 1949)

“Stopped Watch Caper” is an episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, the old-time radio show, first broadcast April 10, 1949. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Sam Spade is hired by elderly Rowena Raven to investigate threatening letters that reference time running out. When Spade arrives at the gloomy Raven mansion, he discovers a household of suspects including Rowena's sickly nephew Ralph, who tends a conservatory of poisonous plants, and Dr. Schlotz, the family physician. As Spade investigates, both Rowena and Ralph die under mysterious circumstances, each claiming to have been poisoned.

The Raven mansion in San Rafael, California, a dark Gothic house surrounded by fog-shrouded woods, and Sam Spade's detective office in the city.

Characters: Sam Spade, Rowena Raven, Ralph Rayzen, Dr. Schlotz, Lenore Raven, Buffy, Deputy Bill Whittington, Boris the butler

Listen for: The description of Ralph's greenhouse full of exotic carnivorous and poisonous plants; the mystery of the stopped watches and threatening letters about time; the revelation involving a Geiger counter and radioactive isotope.

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.