The Enoch Arden Matter

Originally Aired: April 7, 1953
Johnny Dollar #157, "The Enoch Arden Matter,"
Johnny Dollar is called in by Henry Grant when a New York court declares Frank Loring legally dead after seven years, triggering a quarter-million-dollar life insurance payout to his widow, Mrs. Loring. Just as the company prepares to pay the claim, a nurse named Ruth Beloyne contacts them from Boston with an intriguing lead. She believes she recently vaccinated a man calling himself Michael Walsh at the Haywood Clinic, someone who looked strangely familiar despite his altered appearance. When she sees Mrs. Loring's picture in the newspaper, Ruth realizes the patient might have been Frank Loring himself. Her suspicions are strengthened by the fact that Loring was a skilled character actor expert in makeup and dialects, and that Michael Walsh obtained an international vaccination certificate before sailing to Chile.
Johnny traces the lead and discovers that Michael Walsh indeed sailed on the SS Castillo bound for Santiago. He rushes to New York to question Mrs. Loring, crashing a celebration party at her Greenwich Village apartment. There, a bitter poet named Freddy inadvertently reveals that Mrs. Loring is also planning a trip to Chile, raising Johnny's suspicions about a possible conspiracy between the supposedly dead husband and his widow.