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***SPOILERS*** Ask to join a .50 limit poker game while taking the New York to Chicago Express on a business trip Mason "Honest" Bridges, Robert Horton, want's nothing at all to do with the card game. In fact Mason has quit gambling for good years ago after an incident he experienced that could have well put him behind bars for five years and had him lose his incense as a real estate agent.

Recounting this tale of woe to his good and former collage friend Tom Ackley,Dayton Lummis, Mason brings up this incident some 10 years ago that brought him back down to earth in a gamble he took while playing high stakes poker with Sam Klinker, Robert Middleton. Always wanting to bust Klinker in a game of poker Mason jumped at the chance to play him. With Klinker taking Mason apart and having him drop $1,000.00 in the game Mason now desperate to get even raids his office safe of the $10,000.00 that Klinker gave him for safe keeping. Thinking that he had enough cash in his joint saving account with his wife Jesse, Gail Kobe, to cover Klinkers money Mason later found out , after he resumed his card game with Klinker,to his total shock and surprise that Jesse squandered it on an investment in the stock market that went,like Mason want's to do to Kilnker, bust!

***SPOILERS*** Scared to death and losing it Mason after taking a beating from Klinker finally gets the hand that he's been looking for all evening but is so hyped up with emotion not to realize that the hand he got isn't what he thinks it is. Literally going for broke with Klinker's money Mason now faces the invertible whenever the down card he has is turned over and his hand is revealed! As it turned out Mason did in fact get the brake of his life in not only misreading the card that he had but in Klinker, who was on the verge of winning the jackpot, getting cold feet and folding his hand! It was pure luck on Mason's part that forced a sweaty and freaked out Klinker out of the game. Where he ended up not only winning back the $10,000.00 that he stole from Klinker but taking all the cash he had on him!

P.S After him going through something as nerve shattering and heart thumping like that could anyone blame Mason for quitting gambling altogether like he did? Even for a friendly game of .50 cents a hand poker!

In Alfred Hitchcock's epilogue to this episode, he states "It's impossible for us to stage a murder every might". Well, this was one of those non-murder stories told mostly in flashback by Robert Horton's character, Mason Bridges. We come to learn of his aversion to playing poker by way of an excruciating experience twenty years earlier when he was faced with the potential loss of his job, his career, and potentially his marriage. His tale is framed by the idea that he considered himself a thief for 'borrowing' ten thousand dollars entrusted to his safekeeping by a card sharp (Robert Middleton) who knew he would have bankrupted Mason in a poker game if the desire to break even overpowered him. The tension does mount in the last few minutes, and you only realize that it all worked out by virtue of the fact that Mason is telling his story to a fellow traveler. This one could have gone either way, but it's turn into a morality tale demonstrated just how strong a life threatening experience could have on a person.

I think a much better ending to the poker game and a much bigger surprise would have been if Horton never knew he only had a jack until the loser of the hand turned the card over!