This is one of my favorite episodes.  I love Ralph Bell--he often plays characters who are arrogant and/or nasty, and the malice he so excellently conveys is never better than in this episode.  I also love the idea: that a seemingly ordinary object that the character comes across by chance exerts a strange and powerful hold over him, and he becomes fascinated by and obsessed with it.  A wonderful episode I can listen to again and again!