Originally Aired: January 17, 1956
Suspense #633, "End of the String," tells the story of Mark Hendricks, a young costume jewelry dealer who witnesses a shocking crime. Mark happens to be visiting Sam Hiler, a successful pearl merchant, when Sam opens a registered package supposedly containing a million-dollar pearl necklace sent from his Detroit office. Inside, instead of sixty-one perfect pearls, they find eight cubes of sugar. The elderly Sam collapses from shock as his fortune vanishes before his eyes. The police and postal inspectors descend on the office, questioning everyone including Mark, the secretary Miss Cummings, and the nervous mailman who delivered the package. Despite extensive investigation, no one can determine how the switch occurred, since the package bore Sam's authentic wax seal and was never left unattended.
As weeks pass with no breaks in the case, Sam grows increasingly despondent over his loss, even as the insurance company offers a fifty-thousand-dollar reward. Mark befriends the broken old man, but his real intentions become clear when he approaches Sam's secretary Jeannie with a mysterious proposition involving a hundred thousand dollars, suggesting that Mark may know more about the missing pearls than he's revealed.
