What happens
Professor Arthur Rugby, a psychologist, believes a person bent on suicide could be turned toward murder, and he sets out to test the theory. He persuades a despondent young woman, Gladys Tanner, to kill the man who jilted her, Morton Hellman, the editor who had mocked his ideas. Rugby's experiment on The Whistler, first broadcast on June 11, 1944, follows the professor as his plan becomes tangled with a secret of his own and his wife Myra's whereabouts that night. The story is told through the professor's conversations with Gladys and Hellman and through the police inquiry that follows the killing.
A modern American city with an office, a bridge over a deep canyon, apartments, and a bungalow on the outskirts of town.
Characters: Professor Arthur Rugby, Morton Hellman, Gladys Tanner, Myra Rugby, Lieutenant Davis
Listen for: Listen for the professor's calm reasoning as he talks Gladys out of suicide, and for the moment the snapshot from Atlantic City changes his plan.
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.