 Johnny Dollar. Pete Breneman. Johnny, out here in Las Vegas. Breneman. Western Maritime and Life? That's right. How are you, Pete? Busy, Johnny. Checking over a set of plane schedules. How about to have yourself a spring vacation? Where you headed for, Pete? I'm not. Oh, no? You are. I am. Yep. Well, thanks for telling me. Now, the way I figure it, if you pull out a Hartford about 9 p.m., your time, that's a couple of hours from now. Well, now, Pete, uh... I think a jet out of New York at 1115. Well, in spite of another change you left in Macon, Los Angeles. You ought to be here in Vegas and play a time for breakfast. I should, hmm? That's where I figure it. You mind telling me what it's all about? Not a bit, Johnny, not a bit. What? You're a young fellow by the name of Harvey Stakillman. Straight life policy for $62,000. Yeah, what's happened to him, Pete? I'll be there. Exciting adventures of the man with the action-pact expense account. America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator. Yours truly, Johnny Dollar. I heard during my investigation of Los Vegas, Nevada, I got there in time for breakfast. A very early one. He met me at McCarron Field and drove me into the Silver Dollar Cafe just around the corner from his office on Fremont Street. Okay, now, Johnny, let me, uh... I just don't get it, Pete. Don't get what? That sweet little old lady. She looks like somebody from the school teacher. Right there by the front door, and at this time of the morning. Judging by that pile of quarters next to her, I say she hit the jackpot a couple of hours ago and is just busy putting them all back on. Pete, isn't there a single building in this town that hasn't got slot machines in? Oh, I heard the churches don't have any. It would come to think of it, I guess, there, but, oh... Well, all the casinos up and down the street and at the fancy hotels out on the strip going 24 hours a day. Does anybody do anything around here besides gamble? Are you kidding? We're right in the middle of some pretty important ranching and mining country. Oh? What about this Harvey Skillman that you mentioned on the phone? I thought you were in a hurry for me to get on it. Well, I was. I am, but... Johnny, I... Well, I just talked again to Sergeant Carly who was headquartered. He's had to come out here for nothing. Oh? Why? Well, the minute Doc Porter, he's the police medical found out Harvard didn't poison. What sort of poison, Pete? It's called, uh, penorphin. Penorphinaculate. Oh, really? Yeah, a real deadly stuff. Yes, I know. A teaspoon full of that would kill a man in seconds. But, Pete, and Doc found some of it, some residue in the bottom of the coffee cup. Harvard just used. He was a great coffee drinker, Pete. And then, what, a Sergeant Carly fine in the sugar bowl? Loaded with the stuff. Almost as much as those white crystals of it as there was sugar. Oh, naturally, everybody shouted murder. Now, wait a minute, Pete. Yeah? I don't know of penorphinaculate. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what finally hit Doc Porter. Because the way he explained that stuff to me, the taste of it. Now, could this Harvey Skillman have been plastered with the gills when he drank the coffee containing it? No, sir. Harvard never touched the stuff. Are you sure? I'm sure. Johnny, there isn't anybody in this town knew Harvey Skillman as well as I did. He used to work for me, selling insurance. I'll tell you, Johnny... Wait a minute, wait a minute. We're getting away from the point. The penorphinaculate. I'm afraid that if you're thinking what Doc Porter thinks now, you're all wrong. Pete, listen to me. No, sir, Johnny. Don't you see, Pete, enough in a cup of coffee would be so bitter that nobody in his right mind would ever swallow enough to kill him. He'd spit it out, throw the rips away. I know, I know. That's what Doc Porter says. In other words, he must have taken that poison deliberately. Committed suicide. That's what the doc says, too. But he's wrong. You're both wrong, Johnny. Look, Pete... I'll tell you, I knew Harvey Skillman. And I'm sure, Johnny, I'm sure that he wouldn't have committed suicide. He must have. No. What's more, Johnny, you've got to prove he didn't. Pete, from what you've told me... No, I'm telling you, Johnny, Harvey Skillman did not commit suicide. I don't... Well, yes, get over it. Why not? Look, why do you suppose I sent for you? Are you getting the order? Because you're the one person I thought would believe me. Well, try to do something about it. I'd be glad to if I thought there was one single friend. Okay, okay, okay, Johnny. Just let me tell you why I'm so sure of Harvey. Why I'm so absolutely sure the police and Doc Porter must be wrong. I wish you would. When I'm finished, all I ask is that you do something about it. But at least you'll try to prove he didn't kill himself. So at least will you listen to me, Johnny? Go ahead, Pete, go ahead. But it better be good. A picture that includes many persons and personalities. This is Dimension in England. Alexander Kendrick reporting. This is Rose Natsumi. I sing with Ben. I sing with Ben every weekday. This is Peter Callasher in Tokyo for CBS News. This is Art Linklater and our guests and our kids on the House Party each weekday morning, right here. This is Dimension on the lighter side of the news. Larry Lister reporting with another edition of Quotes of the Week. This is CBS Radio's Larry Coleman inviting you to be with me on this station throughout your weekend for Coleman on Sports. Oh, Gary. Gary Moore. Yes, David. David Kirby. This is Dimension in Central Europe. Daniel Shaw reporting. This is Isaac Godfrey. We're really good this year. Hello, everybody. This is Laurel Thomas. There's a sound difference when you're dialed with CBS Radio Network station in news and entertainment and Dimension. Not too healthy a guy, but okay. Like I said, he worked for me in the office selling insurance until he hit it lucky one night. Lucky how do you mean, Pete? Hey, one of the crap tables at one of the casinos here in town harv through those dice for 21 straight passes and he ran a sawbuck up to $44,000. Oh, wow. I hope he had something up to quit, then. Sure he did. He also quit his job. You know why? Why? Because of his kid sister, Mary. And Johnny, he's about the nicest, finest, prettiest, most pathetic gal you ever saw. Pathetic people? Yeah, and the most unselfish girl I ever knew. A nurse. A good one. Spend all her time, every bit of it, helping other folks who couldn't help themselves. But then, Johnny, about a year and a half ago, she came down with some kind of a crippling bone disease that nobody thought she'd ever recover from. But the minute Harv got ahold of that money, with that and all his savings, he took her straight to the Mayo Clinic back in Rochester, Minnesota. Can't think of a better place. And when they'd done all they could, she took her east to some high-priced man in New York. Good for him. And now she's going to recover, Johnny. She's going to be as good as new. Wonderful. It's going to take another year, maybe, in that expensive hospital and all, but she's going to be all right. Thanks to Harv. I can see why you liked him, Pete. Sure. The old trouble was that, well, Harv began to run low on money, so he came on back here. Oh, no. He thought he could run up another big killing. But all for her, mind you. Well, wouldn't the people that she'd been so good to help her financially? No, Johnny. Harv felt he had to do it all himself. But he probably lost everything he had left, except his insurance. So if anything happened to him, he could be sure that she'd be taken care of. Couldn't he have borrowed against insurance? Yeah, we would have refused the principal too much in case something did happen to him. Oh, that's true. Okay, so he came on back to work for me, and I helped him all I could. I kept giving him all my best prospects. And by living cheaply and all that, Harv managed to save a lot of money again. But that's when Lifty Lorenzo lowered the boom. Lifty Lorenzo? Yeah. Used to be one of Capone's hoods out in Chicago. That's the one. He came out here and retired on a little ranch out north of town. Plenty of time growing flowers in the cactus garden. Isn't he one of the people reputed to have muscled in on some of the big casinos around here? Let's say rumored. These casinos are pretty clean, Johnny. They have to be. Yeah, I guess so. Anyhow, Harv confided to me that Lifty had something on him. Enough to blackmail him for everything he had. Did he tell you what it was? Nope. Well, Pete, if he was ever mixed up with Lifty Lorenzo, I'm afraid my sympathy for him has chilled slightly. Johnny Harv swore to me that he'd paid his debt to society and then some. And I believed him. I still do. What's more, it was his sister Mary that he was living and working for. And I mean working. But he knew he had to settle things once and for all with Lorenzo. Settle with him how? With a deck of cards? How do you mean, Pete? Lifty knew. Don't ask me how. Lifty knew that Harv had something over 10,000, so that's what he was demanding. But Harv knew what a gambler Lifty is, and if he could get Lifty into a double or nothing, trust the deck for high cards. He must have been crazy, Pete. I know, I know. I tried to talk him out of it. I told him that if he won, Lifty would probably pay him off all right. But his life wouldn't be worth a neck, of course. But he went out to Lifty's place, went through with it. Johnny, Harv did win the cut, and Lifty paid off. And then? Well, Harv stopped by the office to tell me about it, to say that he was going to pack up and take that money to New York for marriage. But you think Lifty got to him before he could? Police thought so, too, Johnny. And I called him over there, and they found he'd been poisoned. But then, when Doug Porter came along and found it was from that, uh, from Norfolk accolade in his coffee, nothing he couldn't have helped but noticed. Anyhow, Doug said he must have taken it deliberately. And the police agreed with him. But why would he do that? You know what they said? To make it look as though Lifty had done it to him. So his insurance would have to be paid, and there'd be all that money for his sister. Much more than he'd want from Lifty. He was living his whole life from Mary, so they claimed he was willing to die for her. But harm and insurance, man? What? Pete, if he was half as smart as you seem to think, he knew darned well that even a suspicion of suicide might keep his sister from getting a penny. Right. Right, Johnny. And thank goodness you're coming around in my way of thinking now. Just the same, Pete. I want her to have that money. She needs it. She deserves it. And she'll get it, too, Johnny, but I'd rather put that one word. Suicide on Harv's death certificate. But unless he was drunk or dope before he started drinking that poison cup of coffee. Did anybody see it just before it happened? I did, Johnny. There it is apart. You did. I drove him over from the office. They helped him pack up for the trip east. And then I was going to drive him out to the airport. Was there any sign that anybody else had been there at his place? No. Front door was unlocked, though. It was. The office forgot to lock it. Hmm. But somebody could have got in without any trouble. Anybody. Including Lippi Lorenzo, the one man who wanted him out of the way. And the one man, Johnny, who'd be smart enough not to go after the money Harv took from him. Just Harv. So what happened? So while he packed, he poured us both some coffee. Like I said, he was a bean fort, kept a pot of it going all the time. And you drank yours without any ill effect? Because thanks to good Lord, I never used sugar in mine. The point is, though, Johnny, Harv wasn't drunk. He wasn't doped. He was perfectly okay until he put in the sugar with that poison in it and drank that cup of coffee. But the fact still remains, Pete. And there's all the more reason for it if he liked this coffee sweet. I know, Johnny. I know. The bitter taste would have given that poison away. Right. He'd have had to notice it. Like the doc says, it would have had to be suicide. But, Johnny, believe me, Johnny. Wait one minute. Yeah. Come on. Let's go over to your office where I can put in a long-distance call. Yeah, Johnny. I could be wrong. It's a chance. A long one. But maybe, Pete. Maybe we can find the answer to this. Our flavor is a respected friend of mine, Dr. Les Crutcher in Sarasota, Florida. Not only because of Doc's deep interest in forensic medicine, but the fact that he'd spent many years in the study of strings and exotic plants found a witch doctor that's often used on their half-savage patients in the jungle, the kind that educated people sneered at, until medical men came along and found that some of them had curative vases, things like digitalis, the heart stimulants in the fox-glove flower, and quinine from St. Johnabark, stritnia from the st. Ignatius being, velodana from the root of the deadly nightshade. And Crutcher knows as much about them as any man alive. Come here, Ken. You here in Sarasota? No, sir. Good, Doc, but I'm out here in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's a great open gambling town. Well, it isn't quite as bad as that, Doc. I've seen you since the day here in my office when you acted like a sport was slightly bitter. But I did take it, Doc. And I didn't taste it. Don't you remember? The first swallow of it made me feel worse than I had before, so instead of forcing the rest of it on me... I forced it on you. A cup of... Well, a kind of a cup of tea, Doc. It didn't taste very good, but then it wasn't too bad either. Oh, yes, I remember. Then, a few minutes later, you gave me the glass full of the medicine again and I drank it down without a whimper. Because you couldn't taste it, then. I couldn't taste very well for hours. That's a great secret of mine. What was it, Doc? Well, I'll tell you, Johnny. And is it something that could be mixed into something else like strong coffee without being noticed? Oh, yes, indeed. So what? The specific plant is called Jimnema Sylvestra. Jimnema? Sylvestra? I found the South African... How can I get a complete description of it? Maybe even see a picture of it. Well, no colleague of mine, Dr. Raymond Atherton-Coverly, out there on the coast at UCLA, might even be able to show you a living plant. Okay, Doc. For the Chicago police some years ago. He's an Al Capone's gang. Definite steps. It temporarily took both very better... Doc, was his name Lippi Lorenzo? He would have known about it. I think you've just helped me solve a murder. There, crutches friend Dr. Coverly proudly presented me with a specimen of the Jimnema Sylvestra plant. Yes, it's one of the most successful in my exotic collection, Mr. Dollar. I'm glad you had it, sir. But whether it can be grown out in the dry air of the desert, Mr. Dollar, well, wouldn't the dried up leaves of it be just as potent as fresh ones, Dr. Coverly? In which form do you, a plant like crutches would know about it? A killer. A $50 deposit on a rental car. Then after a brief stop at police headquarters, I drove north to the little ranch I'd heard about. But I wasn't exactly alone. Dollar, what did you say? I'm Johnny Dollar. Yeah, the big shot insurance detective, eh? Well, I sure don't get it what you're doing around here. Oh, you don't, hm? Everybody else ain't got a thing on me, Dollar. So you don't bother me one bit. So come on in, let's have a drink, and you can tell me what's on your mind, eh? Why not? Just don't try to make no trouble at all. Cactus garden, I get out of friendship. Oh, I saw that all right. What I didn't see, though, is an idea for covering a murder. Came out here to settle up with you. Now, what's that to you? You gave him a drink. A good, strong cup of coffee, maybe. So what? He practically lives on coffee. So what's the matter if I did? When you made it, you put in the leaves of this Jim Neymar Sylvester plant in order to numb his sense of taste. Now, listen, Dollar, that was the one way you could be sure he'd never taste the poison, the penorphin alkylate that you later put into the sugar bowl at his apartment. You're pretty smart, eh? And the result? The police would think he committed suicide. That's right, they would. And they do. And they're never going to think otherwise, Dollar, because you ain't going to be around to tell them otherwise. You see this? Complete with an old-fashioned silence, eh? Man, take a look at this, sir. Ah, look, and you'll have a chance to jump me. You're doing you right now. You take care of Lippie. I'll call your Dr. Porter about how to fill out the debt certificate on Harvey Skillman. That's truly Johnny Dollar. As the police are.