The Opportunity story
Paul Devore is an unhappily married department store manager. When he catches Lois Callen shoplifting he hatches an idea. He tells Lois that he will not turn her in, if she agrees to be part of a plan of his. Paul wants a divorce, but his wife refuses to give him one because she doesn't want him to take half of everything they own. When his wife is out of the house, he invites Lois over. Lois arrives and discovers the house burglarized. The burglary, however, is really Paul's doing. He hopes that his wife Kate will divorce him now that her treasured possessions are all gone. Paul asks Lois to tie him up. She does so and leaves. Later Kate arrives and tells Paul how lucky he is that the burglars didn't kill him. Instead of freeing her husband, however, she takes this opportunity to kill him. Directed by: Robert Florey. Story by: J. W. Aaron, Bryce Walton and Henry Slesar.
9 total · 7 major · 2 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| abuse of authority | major | Paul abused his authority as department store manager by blackmailing a caught-red-handed shoplifter not into sleeping with him, as the viewer is urged to believe, but rather to play a part in his scheme to make his wife consent to a divorce. |
| blackmail | major | Paul blackmailed Lois not, as we were initially lead to believe, into bedding him but into tying him to a bed with ties. |
| burglary | major | Paul faked a burglary of his own home as part of an elaborate plot to secure a divorce from his wife. |
| husband and wife | major | Paul and Kate's unhappy matrimonial union were central to the plot. |
| poetic justice | major | Paul devised an ingenious plot to get out of his miserable marriage along with his wife's riches. She turned the tables on him by coming up with an even more ruthless solution that, coincidentally, saw him dead. |
| spouse murder | major | The story ended with Kate knocking Paul off with a pillow over the head. |
| theft | major | A young woman was accused of grand theft, the threshold for which was a value of $75, as she had purloined a necklace worth $80. |
| divorce | minor | Kate would not give Paul a divorce even though Paul offered not to make off with too much of her jewelry. |
| extramarital affair | minor | It was made clear that Paul had a philandering habit, perhaps even of pressuring various other compromised shoplifters than Lois into lewd liaisons. |