CAST:
Andrew Keir - Gilbert Kirby
Jean Marsh - Anne Kirby
Mark Burns - Elliott Stratton
Gillian Lind - Mrs. Stratton
John Barron - Neal Lammerton
Geoffrey Chater - Carl Howard
Ronald Leigh-Hunt - John Ramsey
Victor Maddern - Jim Cowdry
John Boxer - Sir John Mulliner
Brian Badcoe - Dr. Downray
Leon Cortez - Mac
John Crocker - The Blind Man
Edward Harvey - The Sheriff
Clifford Parrish - Mr. Roach
Dorothea Phillips - Mrs. Barnes

Directed by Robert Asher; Screenplay by Robert Holmes

STORY:
Five managers of the "Combined Holdings" company have died under mysterious circumstances in the last five months. Sir John Mulliner asks Simon for help - but dies from a heart attack before he can explain his suspicions to Templar. The Saint asks the other members of the management to not appear publicly until the case is cleared up. This isn't as easy as he might have thought because Gilbert Kirby will be made Lord Mayor of London the next day...

NOTES:
* Jean Marsh also appears in Episodes #33 "The Good Medicine", #49 "The Imprudent Politician" and #85 "Escape Route"
* Jean Marsh also appears in the episode "Five Miles to Midnight" of The Persuaders. She later played housemaid Rose in the internationally known series "Upstairs, Downstairs" (1971-75)
* Ronald Leigh Hunt also appears in Episode #7 "The Arrow of God" and #43 "The Scorpion"
* Victor Maddern also appears in Episode #87 "The Fast Women"
* Leon Cortez also appears in Episode #43 "The Scorpion"
*  The building in the background is just a painting. (0:26)
*  The wall decoration here was reused from Episode #106 "The Master Plan" . (0:38)
*   The double doors were frequently used as a set item in the colour episodes. In this episode they can be seen twice, once with some columns on the other side and the Greek doorframe and once just the doorframe and the columns. The Greek version set would exactly re-appear again in Episode #118 "The World Beater (even the curtains and the colour of the main room).

Leslie Charteris, 17th April 1968: <<Only television executives, their ancestral generation of B-picture producers and pulp magazine editors, and the infantile public they are supposedly catering to, could believe in a paranoiac who dedicates himself to murdering an entire board of directors, or some seven or eight people, because his father "died of overwork and a broken heart" and his "inheritance vanished."
My personal incredulity goes still farther, and refuses to accept the assumption that a tiny needle passing through the neighbourhood of the heart would cause all the symptoms of "a plain simple Coronary" with "no sign of ... anything suspicious." [...]
If you are reduced to considering outlines like "The Scales of Justice" by Robert Holmes, you have my sympathy. Today's available writers must be a miserably witless lot.">> (Barer, p.154)

Leslie Charteris, 25th April 1968: <<This supposedly final script ("The Scales of Justice") reached me yesterday. Since my immediate comments on the outline were only mailed to you on April 17th, there is an inescapable assumption that the script must have been authorized without waiting one moment for any observations I might have had to make on the outline - if indeed it was not already in the works when the outline was mailed to me.>> (Barer, p.155)

AIRDATE:
UK: 1st December 1968

GERMAN TITLE:
S.T. und die Nadel

AVAILABLE ON:
* DVD (NTSC): AAE-70469 (2002)