Suspense - Radio’s Outstanding Theater of Thrills

To Find Help

Originally Aired: January 6, 1949
Suspense #322, "To Find Help," stars Ethel Barrymore as Mrs. Gillis, an elderly widow living alone with her maid Sarah and her aging dog. When a mild-mannered young man named Howard Wilton appears at her door seeking odd jobs, Mrs. Gillis hires him to do heavy cleaning work despite warnings from her roomer, Mr. Armstrong. At first, Howard seems harmless enough, but his behavior quickly becomes unsettling. He obsesses over keeping his coat safe from moths, barely makes progress on the floor he's supposed to be cleaning, and grows increasingly agitated when Mrs. Gillis checks on his work.
The situation grows more disturbing when Howard accuses Mrs. Gillis of hating him because he wasn't in military service like her two sons, both of whom served and are memorialized in photographs around her home. His paranoid outbursts escalate, and he finally reveals the chilling reason he was rejected from the army: they found something wrong with his mind. Now Mrs. Gillis finds herself trapped in her isolated home with an unstable stranger, desperately hoping to find help before the situation turns dangerous.

Break-Up

Originally Aired: December 30, 1948
Suspense #321, "Break-Up," follows Marty Connors, a disgraced ex-cop who has crossed over to the wrong side of the law. Suspended from the police force after being set up by a woman who stole his gun during a drunken encounter, Marty angrily rejects the warnings of his former partner, Detective Kivlahan, and takes a job as a bodyguard for criminals Doc Williamson and Max Shale. Despite Kivlahan's pleas to stay clean and wait for reinstatement, Marty bitterly throws away his career, driven by resentment toward Captain Brandt and the department that he feels betrayed him.
Now riding in a car on the Queensborough Bridge, Marty finds himself in a horrifying position: Max Shale has ordered him to prove his loyalty to the organization by murdering Kivlahan, his former partner. As Marty reflects on how his involvement with Williamson and Shale—and his dangerous attraction to Rita, the sultry redhead at Doc's club—has led him to this moment, he must decide whether to pull the trigger and become a cop killer, sealing his fate on the wrong side of the law forever.

Holiday Story

Originally Aired: December 23, 1948
Suspense #320, "Holiday Story," stars Herbert Marshall as Professor Wilfred Carpenter, a mild-mannered botanist long dominated by his overbearing wife, Hermione. When Hermione insists he shave his beard before their trip to America, the transformation proves more significant than either could imagine. At the bookshop, Wilfred encounters the sympathetic Miss Marion Markham, who mistakes him for a widower and offers the understanding companionship he's been denied for twenty years. As Marion reflects on what kind of woman his late wife must have been, Wilfred doesn't correct her assumption about Hermione being dead.
The professor had been digging a peculiar pit in the cellar for exotic orchids called "devil flowers" by Arukanian Indians—plants that bloom underground in damp leaf mold. When Hermione forbids him to continue his project until after the holidays, Wilfred's meek compliance masks something darker. As the couple prepares for their voyage, the stench of foreign soil lingers in the cellar, and the question remains: what exactly does Wilfred Carpenter have planned for the holidays?

No Escape

Originally Aired: December 16, 1948
Suspense #319, "No Escape," stars James Cagney as Harry Graham, a bus driver about to receive his town's safest driver of the year award. While racing through the dark canyon road to pick up his girlfriend Eve before the ceremony, Harry encounters another car. In the chaos of swerving and braking, the other vehicle plunges 500 feet down into the canyon, bursting into flames. Harry scrambles partway down the steep hillside, but stops himself as he realizes whoever was in that car is beyond help. When he sees approaching headlights, panic takes over, and he makes a fateful decision to drive away without reporting the accident.
Harry arrives at Eve's house disheveled and shaken, lying about a flat tire to explain his condition. As Eve helps him clean up, Harry stares at himself in the mirror, wondering how he can still look the same when everything has changed. He faces an impossible choice between protecting his future with Eve and his kid brother Teddy, or confessing the truth about what happened on that canyon road. The episode explores how one terrible moment and a split-second decision can trap an ordinary man in an inescapable web of guilt and consequences.

The Sisters

Originally Aired: December 9, 1948
Suspense #318, "The Sisters," Lydia and Ellie Haskell live together in quiet isolation, two aging sisters bound by secrets and an uneasy dynamic. When Lydia returns from a mysterious shopping trip, she reveals she's purchased an expensive casket—a Duravo—for herself, to be held for three weeks. Ellie, the fragile younger sister who clings to memories of their girlhood and longs for letters from someone named David, grows increasingly anxious about Lydia's strange behavior and her own uncertain recovery from some past mental breakdown. Lydia maintains strict control over their household, forbidding Ellie from answering the door or descending the stairs alone, while Ellie worries that perhaps she isn't getting well after all.
When a police detective arrives to investigate Lydia's unusual purchase, she calmly explains that she knows she's going to die within three weeks—calling it a premonition. The detective suggests it might be suicide, but Lydia insists otherwise. As tensions mount between the two sisters, dark questions emerge about what really binds them together and what tragic fate awaits in their shadowy, secluded home.

The Hands of Mr Ottermole

Originally Aired: December 2, 1948
Suspense #317, "The Hands of Mr Ottermole,"
In the fog-shrouded streets of London's Casper Street district, a mysterious strangler stalks victims with terrifying efficiency, killing without motive or mercy. A veteran police sergeant with fifteen years on the force recounts the chilling crimes to a persistent newspaper man who has been lurking in the district's shadows, perhaps too interested in the murders for his own good. As bodies accumulate—including the tragic deaths of Mr. Wybrow and his wife, killed just steps from safety in their own home—the sergeant finds himself haunted by questions with no answers. Who is this killer whose strong, white hands reach out of the darkness? What force drives him to strike in this impoverished neighborhood where there's nothing to steal but lives?
The investigation intensifies as the sergeant walks his beat, always arriving moments too late, while the strangler seems to move like a phantom through the foggy streets. With suspicion falling on anyone who walks these lanes at night—including the newspaper man himself—the hunt for the murderer becomes increasingly desperate in this atmospheric tale of urban terror.

The Screaming Woman

Originally Aired: November 25, 1948
Suspense #316, "The Screaming Woman," young Margaret Leary takes a shortcut through Mr. Kelly's vacant lot on Thanksgiving Day when she hears something terrifying: a woman's voice screaming from beneath tons of freshly dumped dirt and debris. The voice comes from the area where she and the neighborhood children used to play in a large concrete pipe they called "the fort," now completely buried. Panicked, Margaret races home to alert her parents, but neither her mother nor father takes her seriously. They dismiss her pleas as childish imagination and insist she wait through an agonizingly slow Thanksgiving dinner before her father will even consider investigating.
After dinner, Mr. Leary finally accompanies Margaret to the lot, but when they arrive, the screaming has stopped. He hears nothing but wind and the distant trolley. Margaret desperately insists the woman was there, trapped beneath the fort where Kelly's dump trucks have piled massive loads of dirt. Her father remains skeptical, suggesting the "screaming woman" doesn't perform for grown-ups. As the sun sets on Thanksgiving Day, the question remains: was someone truly buried alive in that lot, and if so, is there still time to save her?

Sorry, Wrong Number

Originally Aired: November 18, 1948
Suspense #315, "Sorry, Wrong Number," presents Agnes Moorhead as Mrs. Stevenson, an invalid woman alone in her home who becomes inadvertently entangled in a terrifying situation. While attempting to reach her husband's office at Murray Hill 4-0098, where he's supposedly working late, the operator accidentally connects her to a crossed line. Mrs. Stevenson overhears two men coldly discussing plans for a murder: a woman will be killed at 11:15 PM when a train crosses a nearby bridge to mask any screams. The killers mention specific details—a private patrolman's routine, lights in a house, jewelry to be stolen to make it look like a robbery.
Desperate and increasingly frantic, Mrs. Stevenson attempts to trace the call and alert authorities, but she encounters frustrating bureaucratic obstacles at every turn. The operators insist they cannot trace a disconnected call without official authorization, and she's shuffled between the chief operator and various departments. As precious minutes tick away and Mrs. Stevenson's anxiety mounts, she realizes the authorities may not act in time to prevent the murder she's accidentally discovered.

Muddy Track

Originally Aired: November 11, 1948
Suspense #314, "Muddy Track," Harry Clark is flat broke and nursing a Coke in a bar when he meets Brandy, a woman with connections to the local bookie, Augie Persian. Before the night is over, Persian offers Harry an easy job answering phones in an apartment, paying five percent of the take from his illegal betting operation. The setup seems almost too good to be true, and Harry's instincts tell him to walk away, but desperation wins out. Working from apartment 3B, supposedly rented by a woman named Eleanor Grayson, Harry spends his first morning taking bets and admiring a photo of a smiling woman by the telephone.
When Harry finally takes a break to search the kitchen for coffee, he discovers why Persian was so eager to hire him. Brandy lies dead on the kitchen floor, her blonde hair matted with blood. Harry realizes he's been set up as the perfect fall guy, positioned at a murder scene with his fingerprints all over the apartment. Now he must figure out who killed Brandy and why Persian wanted him to take the fall.

Death Sentence

Originally Aired: November 4, 1948
Suspense #313, "Death Sentence," stars John Garfield as Tommy, a private investigator who returns from a Brazilian vacation only to find himself in deadly trouble. Six months earlier, Tommy had captured Maxie Dunn, a killer working for crime boss Lou Cromwell, collecting a fifteen thousand dollar reward in the process. Tommy thought the killing was a private matter and Lou wouldn't care, but he was wrong. Within minutes of arriving back in town, Tommy is summoned to Lou's office, where the powerful gangster delivers a chilling ultimatum: Tommy has exactly seven days to live, the same amount of time until Maxie goes to the gas chamber.
Lou explains that letting Tommy grab one of his boys makes him look weak, and in his business, appearing weak is fatal. Tommy can either handle his own death sentence himself or Lou's men will take care of it when the week is up. Though Tommy protests and considers going to the district attorney, Lou dismisses the threat, insisting their conversation was merely friendly with no witnesses to any threats. As Tommy leaves to rejoin columnist Brad Cummings at Lou's cocktail party, he's determined to find a way to beat the house at its own deadly game.