The relationships and plot were a little hard to follow, so I watched the episode a second time. But the effort was worth it. The payoff is low-key but shattering in implication, unusually cynical even for Hitchcock.
Nielsen plays Rudy Cox, a handsome, up-and-coming young DA of a large city. We know he's a clean-cut, regular guy since he gardens in his spare time—a nice, effective touch. The trouble is that he's got a star witness stashed in a hotel room who can put big-shot Harold J. Stone and his gunsel Harry Landers away for a long prison stretch. However, Stone and Landers know where the witness is stashed, and the hot-headed Landers wants to kill him. But Stone has a better idea. After all, he and Nielsen may be on opposite sides of the law now, but they remain old army buddies from the war.
It's an unusually well acted half-hour, especially by Bernard Kates as the cringing dipso witness. Watch his array of expressions as he reacts in panic to the threats on his life. You can almost smell the fear. Then too, with his bulging eyes, snub nose, and over-sized mouth, he's perfectly cast, and I kept seeing nothing so much as a frightened guppy. Note too, the drop-dead sexy Ann Robinson as Nielsen's wife. She's supposed to be going to a birthday party, but her gown suggests something more intimate. And when Nielsen tells her to wake him when she returns, we know what's on his mind.
Anyway, it's a strong half-hour with a highly effective cast, but it may also make you think twice about popular stereotypes.