Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Oscar Homolka, wearing a ridiculous moustache and sweating profusely, is the crooked but penniless antiques dealer who makes the fatal mistake of thinking he can outsmart an unwordly archimandrite in this intriguing story. Sam Jaffe, in the latter role, has just the right hint of steel under an unworldly exterior, but it's Homolka's show all the way, a tour de force of acting by a veteran who loves his job. His character is both despicable, in his relentless attempts to cheat everyone around him, and pathetic - when we see him manipulated by his voluptuous, much younger wife, we might guess that the silent monks, so cut off from the world in their isolated fastness, will not be as easy for him to deceive as he thinks.