The Riddle

Episode 22, originally broadcast on June 16, 1959

This episode takes place in India. (The film quality on this one is pretty poor, so the screen captures won't be too great.)

Some Indian guy comes into the train compartment of an American couple and the American guy starts yelling at him to get out. He acts totally crazed as he breaks a bottle and goes after the Indian guy.

He doesn't remember breaking the bottle to go after the Indian guy.

The American sees the guy get off the train, goes psycho and starts running after him.

He's collapsed due to the heat, supposedly, and a medical missionary is going to take him to a hospital. He says that when the guy appeared he had the feeling that if he didn't kill the guy, the guy was going to kill him.

The policeman tells them that they will have to get on a train tonight and get out of the town. He offers no explanation of why, though.

He finds a sculpture (or something, it's hard to tell) of a woman and seems to recognize her and knows a word on the neck of the object. His wife leaves him to get some rest but when she returns he's gone, and the bust of the woman is smashed to pieces on the floor.

He breaks into the Indian guy's house and goes after him. The Indian shoots in self-defense.

The policeman starts to explain about what has been happening. The woman of the bust was loved by two different men. He explains how one of the guys kill the other on a certain date, and that's the date her husband was born.

This is a very interesting episode. The only thing missing is some kind of statement early on that neither the American man or his wife had ever been in India before or had ever really studied about India. Otherwise it would be rather hard to explain why the husband went psycho on the man and was able to speak and read (I'm assuming) the Hindu language when he was untrained in it.

Perhaps it's like Shakespeare: "The evil men do live after them..."

Back to main index page

Back to One Step Beyond index page