The Loudmouth

The title is a warning and a description. Billy Mason talks too much, which is why the police know his name, and why PC Snow is put into a casino to get close to him. Undercover work in this series is never comfortable, and Snow's is worse than most: he makes contact, a deal is discussed, and then Mason is murdered before anyone can decide what the deal was worth. But the casino is the right setting; a place where nobody asks questions is a good place to disappear. Snow is the loneliest man in the room, and he knows it.

John Castle plays Mason, and he makes the loudmouth a man you can almost like, which is exactly what the part needs. Once he is gone, the episode turns into the other kind of police work, the kind where everyone involved has a reason to lie. WDC Joan Bray, played by Susan Jameson, is a welcome presence; the office has always been short of women, and the show never pretended otherwise. Jameson, in particular, plays Bray as someone who has heard every story in the book and is still willing to listen to one more.

Vicki Michelle's Wanda Harris, Ken Wynne's Tommy Thompson, Don Henderson's McKay and George Waring's Maddox fill out the casino floor and its edges. The supporting cast gives the episode its texture, and the casino its smoke. Elwyn Jones and Allan Prior wrote it, Kenneth Ives directed, and the rest of the hour is spent finding out who wanted Mason quiet.

The lesson of "The Loudmouth" is an old one: the man who talks too much rarely lives long enough to enjoy it. That is the tragedy of the title, and the show lets it sit there without commentary. The murder is the point the whole hour has been walking towards, and it lands without fuss.