- Elaine is being threatened and blackmailed by her husband, Harry Pitkin, so she consults Perry. In a complex series of moves, Perry is sent on a wild goose chase to Elaine's apartment, Harry ends up dead, and Elaine is charged with murder.
- Elaine Barton is being blackmailed by her husband Harry Pitkin. He is threatening to tell her boyfriend Ross Hollister who wants to marry her she is married but Hollister is having a private detective agency investigate her. Hollister's partner Sheila Cromwell stops by to pick up financial papers Hollister is supposed to check out but he hasn't finished the task. He agrees to drop them at Elaine's apartment with a key under the mat so Cromwell can pick them up the next morning as Hollister is going on a business trip. Perry receives a note in the mail with a key to Elaine's apartment indicating he would find a witness to a hit and run accident he is handling. He finds Elaine asleep but after waking her he discovers a license number and a small gun. Elaine asks him to help her with the blackmail but Perry doesn't believe her. The license number takes Perry to Stephen Argyle who employs Pitkin as a driver. He denies the charges even though his car shows damage. Perry receives a call from Elaine whose apartment contains Pitkin's body. Hollister is still missing as Perry tries to prove Elaine's innocence.—Anonymous
- Harry Pitkin (Harry Jackson) is blackmailing his estranged wife Elaine Barton (Kipp Hamilton). He gives her a week to pay him off, or he'll reveal their marriage to Elaine's rich boyfriend Ross Hollister (James Seay). Later, Elaine is swimming with Ross at his pool when his business partner Sheila Cromwell (Virginia Gregg) drops by. Ross has been checking the company books, but won't be finished until the next day. Ross is about to leave town, and the easiest way for Sheila to get the books - and Ross's report on them - is for Ross to take Elaine's spare apartment key so he can drop off the books and report there even if Elaine is asleep or away. He'll leave the key under the mat so Sheila can pick them up, also independently of Elaine's presence. Sheila and Elaine leave, and Ross reads his mail - a report from a private investigator that Harry has been visiting Elaine.
At his office, Perry gets a letter, stating that by going to Elaine's apartment he can find the license number of the car involved in the hit-and-run of his client Robert Finchley (Brett Halsey). A key is enclosed so he can let himself in. Perry goes there and cautiously uses the key. Inside, he finds Elaine asleep in her bed, so he goes back out and rings the doorbell. She lets him in and professes to know nothing about the hit-and-run, but while she's making coffee, Perry finds a license number written down. Elaine says she may need Perry's help, but he just calls her a good actress and leaves. Paul Drake traces the license number to Stephen Argyle (Donald Randolph), who claims to have been at his country club from well before to well after the time of the hit-and-run. For corroboration, he calls in his chauffeur, who turns out to be Harry Pitkin! Later, Harry goes to the country club and bribes the doorman to lie, backing up Argyle's alibi. However, insurance adjuster Francis Bates (Chet Stratton) discovers this dodge almost immediately. Argyle's and Harry's handling of the matter have ended up making him look obviously guilty of the hit-and-run. Bates suggests to Argyle that they bypass Perry and settle directly with Finchley.
Perry is grumbling about this shady dealing when he gets a call from Elaine, begging him to come to her apartment. There, she shows him Harry's corpse, with her revolver lying nearby. Charged with murdering Harry, she tells Perry about the arrangement involving her spare key. She doesn't understand how it ended up being sent to Perry. From Sheila, Perry learns that she and Ross were also in business with Argyle. She also says that Ross is doing business at various places in Canada, and she doesn't know where he'll be until he calls her.
At the preliminary hearing, with Sheila on the stand, Perry goes over the complicated scheme for dropping off the company books, then asks Sheila why she did nothing when she couldn't get into Elaine's apartment to pick them up. (The spare key went to Perry, not under the mat.) She tries denying that the books were important, but Perry counters that Ross must have been looking for a major problem with the accounting. Sheila then breaks down, prompting the judge to call a recess until the next day. In the interim, Sheila sends a telegram to Ross in Halsey, California. Paul is tailing her and soon knows about a whole series of telegrams that Sheila has been sending him there. When Sheila is back on the stand, Perry confronts her with this, but she still won't explain. Burger calls an Orange Country deputy sheriff (Ed Hinton), who testifies that Ross's body was found on the beach, shot about a week before Harry's murder.
The next day, Argyle is reading a newspaper with the headline "HOLLISTER MURDERED - Mason's Theory Boomerangs". Sheila enters, wielding a gun. She accuses Argyle of embezzling $187,000 from the business, murdering Ross when he discovered it, framing himself for hit-and-run as an alibi, then murdering Harry to cover that up. Argyle throws his drink in Sheila's face and grabs the gun. He can barely get his threat to her out when Lt. Tragg enters and arrests him. The gun wasn't loaded because people can get hurt that way, he explains. Perry congratulates Sheila on her performance. She was glad to help, since she was only lying because she thought she was protecting Ross, whom she loved.
In his office, Perry explains that once he knew the sequence of events, he concluded that Argyle murdered Ross, took the key from him, and sent it to Perry as part of framing himself for hit and run. He's interrupted by the appearance of Bates, whose insurance company is upset with him for paying off an incorrect claim. (Argyle may be a double murderer, but he didn't commit the hit and run.) Perry points out that the standard release form Bates used when he paid off Finchley admitted no liability, so Finchley gets to keep the money, and Bates should leave now. Perry, Della, and Paul toast Bates as he slouches off, probably to start looking for a new job.
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