The Coin of the Realm Matter

The Coin of the Realm Matter

SYNOPSIS:

Johnny gets a call from Bert Helfer who is big as life and twice as heathy. Johnny is glad to hear from Bert because now he has an assignment to help pay the rent, but Bert is not so sure. Bert invites Johnny to have lunch with him at the Hearthstone - and Bert is paying! But he only wants to talk - about skates and skies and golf and girls. You know that luscious, lovely little Lucy Harmon? Bert is sure that Johnny, who has an eye for beautiful women, knows her.

Johnny takes a cab ($1.00) to the Hearthstone where Bert is ready with a pair of martinis to help with the conversation. Bert is sure that Johnny knows Lucy Harmon who is 5'3", with blonde hair, mean green eyes and a figure that would make Miss America hang her head in shame. Bert shows Johnny a picture of her and he is impressed. Bert would marry her in second. Johnny wants to meet her, but Bert tells him he has to find her first and bring her back to Bert so he can hand over $191,000 in insurance money on her husband Gerry. Her real name is Lucy Harmon Nichols, and her husband is the late Gerald K. Nichols, a playboy and heir to the Nichols oil fortune that he and Lucy took three and a half years to reduce to absolutely nothing. Johnny remembers that something happened to Gerry. Bert reminds Johnny that Gerry had disappeared from Hartford and then it was reported that his car ran off a cliff in California. The police recovered the car but there was no body. The insurance company tried to prove suicide, but there was not enough evidence. Now Lucy has disappeared. Bert offers Johnny the commission on the insurance, or maybe the hand of the lovely widow.

Johnny takes a cab ($1) to the apartment of Lucy Nichols. The doorman tells Johnny that Lucy Harmon has not been around for several days- which is not unusual. He tells Johnny that no one has been around to see her since she sold off the house she was living in. Johnny tells him that he is an insurance investigator and that he would like the keys to her apartment. The doorman asks about a warrant when a $5 bill falls to the ground, and then another. The doorman asks Johnny to hold his keys while he steps out side to examine the bills - they might be counterfeit. He suggests that Johnny might find another $5 in apartment 4A.

Apartment 4A was disorderly and seemed to be temporary arrangement. In a purse Johnny finds a clue - some clean and shiny coins that looked like they had just come from the mint, and that rang a bell. Johnny takes a cab ($6) to Bradley field and spends $175.70 for plane fare.

After a stopover in Chicago to pick up passengers that Johnny slept through, he wakes up to see a new passenger - Lucy Harmon! On the pretext of getting a magazine and then falling due to an imaginary bump in the air, he stumbles in to an empty seat next to Lucy who seems to recognize Johnny. Finally, she remembers who Johnny is and she is glad to see him. She tells Johnny that she is Edith Harmon and that she is going to San Francisco to look for her twin sister Lucy. So, Lucy has a twin?

Edith tells Johnny that she is worried about her sister since her husband died, and has tried to track her in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The plane starts to land so she tells Johnny that she is staying at the Sheraton Palace and asks Johnny to have dinner with her and to help her find Lucy. Johnny checks in to the Huntington Hotel and calls Bert to ask if the doorman at Lucy's apartment has called him (no he hasn't) and asks if he knows Lucy's twin sister. "A twin? Are you kidding!".

Johnny calls the Sheraton Palace (10 cents) but Edith Harmon has not registered there. Johnny is sure that the coins he had found were an important clue, so he hurries to the Saint Francis Hotel, flashes his ID and shows the desk clerk Lucy's photo. He tells Johnny that she and her husband are staying there under the name Charles Kenworthy. Mrs. Kenworthy is gone a lot, and the clerk never sees Mr. Kenworthy and would not recognize him with the beard he has. Johnny gets their room number and goes up.

Johnny listens at the transom over the door and clearly hears the sounds of suitcases being packed and closed. Johnny hears Lucy tell Gerry that she stayed over in Chicago to make sure no one was following her. He tells Lucy that if Johnny Dollar was on the same plane he wants out! She tells Gerry that Johnny does not suspect a thing, and by the time he finds out they will have the insurance money and will have left the county. She tells Gerry that Johnny is sitting in his hotel room waiting for her. Lucy opens the door to take the suitcases out and sees Johnny standing there. Gerry sighs and tells Johnny that he wins.

Back in Hartford, Johnny meets Bert and tells him that Gerry's accident was a phony - he just pushed the car of the cliff so Lucy would be able to collect on the policy and then dropped out of sight. He tells Bert that their plan was one of the oldest gags of all. Bert tells Johnny that he has saved the company $191,000, but Johnny reminds him of his expense account and his commission. Bert asks how Johnny figured out where Lucy was and he tells Bert that it was the coins. That nice clean money is a trademark of the St. Francis. All the change they give you is carefully cleaned and polished. Once you've been there. You never forget it.

"Yep, one of the oldest rackets in the bunch, but they keep trying it…and getting caught. Expense account total, including that juicy commission, um call it $400 even."

• This program was discovered by Dr. Joe Webb on a reel of old audio tapes in April, 2025
• The dating of this program is based on clues in "The Mad Bomber Matter"
• While this program was written by Jack Johnstone, there are elements of it that are similar to the John Lund program "The Ben Bryson Matter" of 12/29/1953 (written by Les Crutchfield) and the Bob Bailey five-part program "The Confidential Matter" (also written by Les Crutchfield) which ran on 9/10/1956 thru 9/14/1956.
• The Hearthstone was a famous restaurant in Hartford that closed 1995. It opened in 1941.
• In the storyline, Johnny is reminded that the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco would wash and polish its coinage to protect the white gloves worn by women. A Google search confirms that washing the coinage was a practice that originated in 1930 and continues to this day.
• The $191,000 insurance policy is worth about $2,004,400 in 2025 dollars.
• Music direction is by Ethel Huber
• The announcer is Art Hannes
• Teri Keane is Lucy Harmon, William Redfield is Bert Helfer, Larry Haines is Jerry Nichols, Doug Parkhurst is the Doorman, Herb Duncan is the Clerk