Flee from Evil

In “Flee from Evil,” Uncle Bert Macklin believes he’s finally freed himself from a blackmailer—until a private investigator named Sid Hawker shows up to reveal the “murder” Bert paid his nephew Freddy to commit was actually staged. Now Hawker demands even more money, claiming to represent the real blackmailer who knows Bert killed a former associate. As paranoia spreads through the household, Freddy realizes Bert’s fear threatens his own promised inheritance, and he hatches a ruthless plan: learn the blackmailer’s phone number by counting the clicks on Hawker’s dial, then kill Hawker and force a profitable partnership with the blackmailer himself. But when Bert confronts Freddy at Hawker’s office, convinced his nephew is behind everything, Freddy makes the fatal mistake of dialing the number to prove his innocence. The call reaches the time service—not a person—proving Hawker was the blackmailer all along. Bert mistakes Freddy’s desperation for betrayal, pulls the trigger, and ends the scheme, leaving Freddy destroyed by the very trap he tried to manipulate.