What I thought was going on here was an interesting psychological game that Jan Vander Klaue (Oskar Homolka) was perpetrating on his former business partner, Richard Musgrave (Eric Portman). Even though the story tries to keep Vander Klaue's identity somewhat ambiguous, the giveaway was the newspaper clipping slipped under Musgrave's stateroom door, as who else on the entire ship would have any knowledge of the past the two men shared? Vander Klaue's story to Musgrave about the seventy five pounds stolen from an 'anonymous' individual was most definitely intended to cause a measure of guilt over Musgrave's past in dealing with his former partner. The unintended consequence of the story had Musgrave getting inebriated and throwing himself off the cruise ship, since there's no way Vander Klaue could have known he would do something like that. Vander Klaue actually did a pretty foolish thing by jumping into the ocean after him; the guy didn't look fit or healthy enough to survive a dip in the ocean himself. But it was necessary for the series' expected ironic ending to this story, in which a murderer is honored as a hero.
Review of The Hero
