What happens
Mrs. Bates lives with her son Walter, who has come home from Pittsburgh in trouble and desperate for fifteen hundred dollars by midnight. She borrows against her husband's bonds and offers what little she has, while Walter pressures her for more. Their lodger, the elderly Mr. Chalmers, pays his dollar a week on an insurance policy and is talked into changing the beneficiary. Mrs. Bates is a loving but anxious mother, and Walter's worries grow more menacing as the evening wears on. This episode of Suspense, a radio drama, starring Faye Bainter, Ralph Morgan and Dane Clark, was broadcast on February 17, 1944.
A rented house on the South Side of an American city, in the evening and night.
Characters: Mrs. Bates, Walter Bates, Mr. Chalmers, Officer Flanagan, Joe
Listen for: Listen for Walter's increasingly desperate demands on his mother, Mr. Chalmers' gentle politeness, and the mounting tension as midnight approaches.
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.