'When Did You Start to Stop Seeing Things?' by Tony Williamson

Marty visits Jeff, but to his horror, Jeff refuses to acknowledge his presence - in fact he seems to have forgotten all about his former partner, and seems more interested in his new case involving the leaking of stock market information at the Towler Corporation, and Jean's figure. Suspecting that Jeff has snapped due to overwork, Marty searches for a way to get help for his partner. By accident he discovers that the patients of psychiatrist Sir Oliver Norenton can hear his voice while they are under hypnosis, and so gets a hypnotised patient to ask Sir Oliver to visit Jeff. Meanwhile, Inspector Large is watching Jeff closely after one of the directors, Tully, was murdered after setting up an appointment with the detective. Marty is even more concerned when, after witnessing Jeff phone Holly, the personnel manager, to arrange an appointment in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Holly is later found dead, and Jeff swears to Inspector Large that he never called Holly. Using another of Sir Oliver's patients, Mrs. Trotter, Marty tries a second time to jog Jeff's memory, but Jeff practically throws her out of the door. Jeff’s behaviour gets even more bizarre: he grabs and kisses Jean, talks to a shady character named Jarvis, and then visits and shoots another manager, Hepple. But then ‘Jeff’ takes off a face-mask to reveal someone else’s face - now Marty realises why Jeff has forgotten all about him: he is not Jeff at all, but a man named Hinch! Jean's suspicions have also been raised by the false Jeff’s strange behaviour, and both she and Marty independently head for the house of James Laker, the General Manage of Towler. Marty discovers Jeff locked in the cellar, where he has been since the weekend, when he was kidnapped and replaced with Hinch. Jeff hides while his dinner is brought to him, and Marty blows a door shut and knocks a vase over, convincing his captor that Jeff has escaped. Jeff overpowers the guard, but Jean, who has watched the fight from behind a study door, knocks him out with a mace - and then looks on as Laker and Jeff’s double walk in holding a gun. The truth is revealed: Laker is the man behind the murders; he hired actor Hinch to play Jeff, in order to implicate him in the murders, leaving Laker free to use the information he has been gathering from the Towler Corporation to make a killing on the stock market. Laker plans to kill Jean, and then shoot Jeff in ‘self-defence’; he phones Inspector Large and tells him that Jeff is on the way to see him at his home. Marty tries to talk to another one of Sir Oliver's patients, but the doctor is sick of hearing his patients wake up from hypnosis talking about ‘Randall’, and has cancelled all his evening appointments. Sitting on his couch, Sir Oliver tries to convince himself that Randall is a figment of his imagination, but Marty uses the doctor’s own hypnosis wheel to hypnotise him. While under hypnosis, Marty instructs Sir Oliver to go to Laker's house to save Jeff and Jean, firstly telling him that he is a Grand Prix driver, then a panther, and finally a secret agent "licensed to kill". Bursting through the patio doors, Sir Oliver creates enough confusion for Jeff to get free; Jarvis mistakes the fake Jeff for the real one and shoots Hinch, just as Inspector Large finally arrives.

Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt), Marty Hopkirk (Kenneth Cope), Jean Hopkirk (Annette Andre), Ivor Dean (Inspector Large), Clifford Evans (Sir Oliver Norenton), Reginald Marsh (James Laker), Basil Dignam (Hepple), David Downer (Hinch), Philip James (Holly), John Garvin (Tully), Bessie Love (Mrs. Trotter)

Directed by Jeremy Summers

TX:
UK: 25th November, 1969 @ 7.25pm

Notes:
*Featuring Jeff Randall, the late Marty Hopkirk, and Jean Hopkirk