(1946, b/w) "The double cross to end all double crosses." Following the movie's prelude in Henry's Diner (where William Conrad has the role of Max), which closely follows Ernest Hemingway's original short story, director Robert Siodmak's film noir (screenplay by Anthony Veiller) dramatically answers Nick Adam's (Phil Brown) question to George as to why anyone would have wanted to kill the Swede, whose last words to Nick were, "Once I did something wrong."

An intrepid insurance agent for Atlantic State Casualty, James Riordan (Edmond O'Brien), investigating the claim on a $2500 life-insurance policy for Pete Lunn, murdered in a boarding house in Brentwood, NJ, beginning with the beneficiary, Mary Ellen "Queenie" Daugherty in Atlantic City, who only knew the man (though he'd called himself Nelson) a few days while he was a hotel guest staying in room 1212 where she'd been a chambermaid in 1940, six years back, traces the scent (he has a green silk handkerchief with golden harps from the victim's belongings) back to Philadelphia.

There he discovers Lunn's real name, Ole Andreson (Burt Lancaster), formerly a boxer (last fight in 1935 when his career ended after a defeat in the ring when he couldn't throw a right punch because his knuckles were broken) gone into the numbers racket, who'd spent three years in stir for taking the rap on hot jewelry for a gorgeous dame, Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner), formerly Big Jim Colfax's girl.

Ole had been arrested by police Lt Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene) - after first asking for a favor for old-time's sake from his childhood chum, "Get me? Try and get me," he slugged the detective - who'd married Ole's girlfriend Lilly (Virginia Christine) before the arrest - no hard feelings, Ole had been best man at the wedding.

Riordan gets his next clue from an old hoodlum, Charleston (Vince Barnett), who'd spent two years in the same cell with Ole but later declined an offer from Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) to take part in a quarter-of-a-million-dollar heist of the Prentiss Hat Company's payroll in which Ole was one of the four participants, along with Dum-dum Clarke (Jack Lambert) and Blinky Franklin (Jeff Corey).

After the successful robbery, Ole double-crossed the others, sticking them up and hightailing with the loot. Riordan lures Dum-dum to the boarding house in Brentwood and hears Blinky's delirious story of the stickup. He's found nothing more than circumstantial evidence involving Kitty with Ole at the Atlantic City hotel where she took a powder, leaving Ole, who nearly piled out of a window had not Queenie dissuaded him.

In Pittsburgh Riordan and Lubinsky find Colfax: "Don't ask a dying man to lie his soul to hell."

One of the best of the genre, though it's curious how a film made just after World War II makes no mention of the war.

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