At the story's conclusion, as Uncle Ben--the owner of the valuable, one-of-a-kind glass dime that his nephew Harry had stolen--arrives at Marilyn's home with the sheriff to demand that Harry either return the dime immediately or otherwise face criminal prosecution. Suspicious that Harry plans to run off with Marilyn instead of her, Edith calls Marilyn's number from a pay phone. Harry tries to reason with Edith in order to convince her to bring the glass dime (that he had given her for safekeeping) to Marilyn's apartment. Edith, however, angrily refuses to do so and when the operator suddenly breaks in to request that Edith deposit more coinage into the payphone in order cover a required extra charge, Edith inserts the glass dime into the slot thereby presumably losing it forever. But this "irreversible ending" could have been entirely prevented if Harry had simply asked the sheriff to explain the situation to Edith, obliging her by law to return the stolen dime on pain of becoming an accomplice to the theft. But even failing that, all the sheriff needed to do was obtain a court order to seal the payphone, retrieve the stolen dime, and return it to Uncle Ben.
