Edmund Gwenn and Barbara Everest see their son, Barry MacKay off on the train to London. He's heading for the cap-and-gown ceremony that celebrates his becoming a Bachelor of Science. Then it's back home, partnership in his father's chemist's shop, and marriage to Aileen Marson.
Except that while sleeping in the train on the way back, a man walks into his carriage, lifts his wallet, replaces it -- minus the cash -- deposits his revolver on the seat next and wakes Mackay to chide him for falling asleep alone in a railway carriage. There's a maniac who's tosses corpses out of trains, after all. MacKay demands his money back, is refused. They struggle and the gun goes off. The man falls dead and when MacKay goes to examine him, the stranger tumbles out of the car onto the tracks.
Leslie Hiscott's movie from a script by Michael Barringer is positively Hitchcockian at this point, and seems to grow more so as the movie advances, with McKay and Gwenn wanting to go to the police, while Miss Everest wants them to flee the country. At the finish, alas, it turns into a rather straight mystery that must be unraveled, and is. It's a properly done mystery, but I thought for a moment that Hiscott, who directed some interesting quota quickies in his career, had beat the Master of Suspense to the punch. Alas, no. It's atmospheric and all that, but in retrospect, nothing more.
