- Perry Mason finds himself defending his private investigator Paul Drake against a charge of murder. It all began when Frank Thatcher hit a pedestrian walking on the side of the road and kills him. He hires Paul to payoff the widow.
- Donna Kress and Frank Thatcher have a spat. He will not divorce his wife. Driving home that night, Frank runs over and kills a pedestrian, Alexander Collins, in the road. Under direction of old Henry Dameron, Frank's father-in-law, Tad Dameron, Frank's brother-in-law, takes care of the body. Frank, as "Danko" hires Paul Drake to deliver $25,000 to Collins' widow, but Paul finds out the gift is a payoff after learning her husband was killed in an accident due to typo on his drivers license causing "Danko" to give Paul erroneous information. Paul contacts "Danko" and meets him at "Danko's" girlfriend's apartment. Paul fights with "Danko" and is knocked out. When Paul revives after the clerk and police enter the apartment, he finds Thatcher/Danko is dead, shot with Paul's gun. Paul is charged with murder and calls Perry Mason. He is further accused of blackmailing Thatcher with the hit-and-run incident. Perry fights Dameron money and influence in defending Drake.—richardann
- Frank Thatcher (Bruce Gordon) brings his girlfriend, singer Donna Kress (Vanessa Brown) to an apartment he has rented for them. Donna is upset because this arrangement is instead of Frank divorcing his wife Judith (Jennifer Howard) to be with her. Frank is too fond of his connection to his wife's powerful family, the Damerons, to consider leaving her. As he drives home, Frank runs down a man on the side of the road. Later, old Henry Dameron (Basil Ruysdael) holds a meeting with his son-in-law Frank and his sons Charles (Simon Scott) and Tad (Dean Harens). Tad reports that he has cleaned up the evidence, which indicated that Frank was drunk and speeding, making it manslaughter. He's retrieved the dead man's driver's wallet, indicating that he was Alexander Colin, a steamfitter. Henry only trusts Frank, not his sons, to handle business matters, so he insists they go ahead with the cover-up. He tells Frank to handle making an anonymous donation of $25,000 to Colin's widow.
Frank, using the last name "Danko" and pretending to act for a Canadian law firm, hires Paul Drake to find the widow, confirm her identity, and give her the money. When Paul visits Mrs. Colin (Sheila Bromley), he repeats the story he was given, about an old friend of Colin's who borrowed money from him with which he made a fortune, and now wants to pay it back with interest. He mentions a detail that Colin and the old friend used to kid each other about their shared need to lose weight. Mrs. Colin says her husband only weighed 165 pounds, and whoever cooked up this story must have seen his driver's license, which misprinted his weight as 195 lbs. Paul uses the phone number Frank had given him to find the apartment building, where he gets into a minor shoving match with the building manager, Anders (Robert Cornthwaite). Frank shows up and takes Paul to his apartment. Donna isn't around, but Frank puts on a record of her singing "I Need a Man". Paul reveals he knows about the accident and refuses to be part of a cover-up. This leads to a fight, which unsurprisingly ends with Paul being knocked out. Later, Donna's record is still playing as Paul is awakened by noise from the door. It's Anders, letting in the police he fetched because no one answered a phone call to the apartment, even though he knew Frank and Paul had gone there. The police quickly find Frank's dead body nearby, and arrest Paul.
Perry quickly goes to bat for Paul, without the slightest doubt of his innocence. However, Burger tells him that the evidence of guilt is so strong that he must go ahead with an indictment. Even Paul confirms that Frank was shot twice by Paul's gun. Perry visits the Dameron mansion, where Henry suggests that he can provide evidence of provocation, so if Paul pleads guilty to manslaughter, he'll only get a year or two. Perry refuses, so Henry calls Tad on the intercom, and Tad says that the police now know all about Frank running down Colin, and speculates that Paul was trying to blackmail Frank.
Perry and Della next go to a recording studio, where Donna and engineer Joe Marsden (Robert P. Lieb) are listening to the latest version of Donna's demo record. If it's good enough, Star Recordings will be interested in signing her. She tells Perry that she knew Frank for nine years, and they were intending to get married when Frank met Judith, with her impressive family connections. Joe explains that he's the one who made the call that led to discovering Paul with the body. He had assumed that Donna would be there, but she'd been unexpectedly called away for a rehearsal for her night club singing gig. Donna also admits that Frank had mentioned Paul to her, and indicated Paul was just someone doing work for him, with no hint of anything like blackmail. She also complains about the manipulations of the Damerons, mentioning that Tad had found out about her apartment with Frank and tried to interfere. Perry wants Donna to make a formal statement. She says she needs to keep working on the demo with Joe, but promises to come by Perry's office when they're done. After Perry and Della leave, Charles Dameron enters, and announces that the Damerons now own Star Recordings. Donna calls Perry and reneges on her promise to make a statement.
In court, several witnesses testify to facts already laid out. However, Tad commits blatant perjury, claiming that Frank had said that he'd hit a dog, and that they didn't find out about Colin until after Frank's death. He also testifies that he knew nothing about Frank's love nest until after the murder. Anders testifies that no one could have entered of left the apartment building from when he found Paul there until he brought in the police. After the trial adjourns for the day, Perry has Della sneak into the building while Anders is buying a newspaper. She goes up to the floor of Frank and Donna's apartment, enters a nearby service room, and uses a payphone there to call the front desk. As Anders deals with this call, Perry enters and heads upstairs, but Anders spots him - smugly pointing out a mirror he has for such situations. Della comes down, proving that it is possible to get past Anders when he's not there.
Back in court, Perry had Lt. Tragg identify the demo record found in the apartment the night of the murder. He plays it and calls Donna to the stand. She states that this version was one that became ready on the day of the murder. Perry asks how it got to the apartment, as Donna had testified that she hadn't been there since early morning. He suggests that she did have time to go back, which she tearfully denies. Perry then agrees that it wasn't her. It was an old friend to whom Donna would have entrusted her key: Joe. As already established, he was the one who made the call that led Anders to suspect something was wrong. Joe could have done this from the service room, then left while Anders was fetching police. Despite Donna's pleading, Joe confesses. He hated Frank for the way he treated Donna.
In the epilog, Henry is writing a check for Perry, and promises one for Paul as well. He wants to make amends for his interference, which Perry points out nearly led to the conviction of an innocent man. Joe could have confessed earlier, except for the smokescreen created by the Damerons' maneuverings. Perry tears up the check, telling him that his only fee for the case will be Paul buying him dinner. He tells Henry that he has "never before met a person so far removed from humanity that he believed every one of his own children capable of murder."
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content