- A lovely blonde hops over the wall onto Perry Mason's terrace. When confronted, she says her name is Virginia Colfax claiming to be a secretary next door. Next door, majority stockholder Edward Garvin is in a proxy fight with his ex-wife.
- Perry Mason is taken by surprise while working late one night when a beautiful blond enters his office from the balcony. When Perry turns on the lights, she quickly tosses her revolver into a flower pot next door. She claims to be Virginia Colfax, a secretary who works in the office next door. She says she had to make a quick exit when her boss' wife showed up unexpectedly. The next day, the man from the office next door, Ed Garvin, consults Perry on a proxy battle with his ex-wife. He also assures Perry that he has only recently re-married and is certainly not having an affair with an attractive blond. When Garvin returns to his office he finds the gun which he locks in his desk as he must leave. When Perry determines that his quickie Mexican divorce may not be legal, he tells Garvin and his new bride to go to Mexico and stay there until he can figure out just what is going on. The next thing Perry hears is that the first Mrs. Garvin has been found murdered in San Diego and Ed has been arrested. For his part, Ed says he returned to the States after getting a phone call from Della Street instructing him to do so.—garykmcd
- Perry is working late and hears a noise from outside. He turns off the lights and Helen Byman (Joan Tabor) enters, having climbed onto Perry's terrace from the one in the office next door. Perry turns on the lights and sees that she's carrying a gun. She immediately puts it behind her back, goes back on the terrace, and throws the gun into a planter on the terrace she came from. When Perry asks about the gun, she claims it was just a flashlight, which she dropped to the street below when Perry startled her. Perry starts to call the police, but Helen, calling herself "Virginia Colfax", claims to be secretary to Ed Garvin (Harry Ellerbe) chairman of Ajax Mining and Development, the firm next door. She was waiting in the office to do late dictation, but Ed's wife entered instead, so she ducked out. Perry escorts her out of the building, intending to search for the supposed flashlight. She pretends to faint, and when Perry catches her she pretends to struggle with him, shouting "Help" and running away. Perry tries to follow, but a beat cop (James Nolan) stops him long enough for her to escape in a cab, the recognizes him and lets him go.
The next day, Della teases Perry about a blind item in the paper's gossip column claiming that a prominent lawyer got out of line with a beautiful blonde. Ed arrives, saying he's having trouble from his ex-wife Ethel (K.T. Stevens). Perry describes "Virginia", but Ed says that sounds more like his new wife, Lorrie (Betsy Jones-Moreland, who later played the judge in the Perry Mason TV movies). It certainly isn't his fiftyish actual secretary. Ethel has been sending proxy requests to Ajax stockholders under the name "E.C. Garvin", attempting to trick them into assuming they came from Ed. She's motivated by greed and hatred for Ed. The stockholders meeting is in three days, and Ed wants Perry to handle this so he can concentrate on honeymooning with his bride. Returning to his office, Ed goes onto the terrace and sees the gun Helen discarded. He takes it, shows it to company president Frank Livesey (Neil Hamilton) and secretary-treasurer George Denby (Thomas Browne Henry), then locks it in his desk, saying he'll call the police later. Right now, he's late for a lunch date with Lorrie.
Perry visits Ethel, who says that Ed is good at discovering things but has no business sense, leaving the management of the company to Livesey and Denby. She claims that when she wouldn't sign papers for a Nevada divorce, Ed obtained a quickie Mexican divorce, making his marriage to Lorrie invalid. To prove she means it, she calls the D.A., intending that Ed be arrested for bigamy. Perry next visits the Ajax office, where Ed is away and Livesey and Denby are running out of time to replace the fraudulent proxies. Perry tells them to wire Ed to go to a motel he knows in Mexico. He also asks if either has heard of Virginia, but they both say no.
Perry goes to the motel, and Filomena (Rosa Turich), the owner, tells him where to find Ed and Lorrie. Ed tells him the procedure he went through for his Mexican divorce. It sounds valid, not like a "quickie", but Perry wants him to stay in Mexico until he has the evidence to prove its legality. Meanwhile, Ed should get on the phone and convince stockholders to attend the meeting in person. Once Perry leaves, Lorrie says that Ethel will never give up trying to destroy them and they should just let her take the company. Helen arrives at the motel and notes the presence of Ed's car.
The next day, Perry gets a call from Della saying that she only then could get through because phones at the motel had been out of order since 11 PM. She reports that Ethel was shot between 12 and 12:30 AM at her Coronado beach house (near San Diego). Perry brings the news to Ed and Lorrie. The latter tells him she was awake between 11 and 1, so can testify that Ed was there the whole time. She's sure of the time because of the chiming of the motel's big clock. Perry tells them to wait there while he talks to Covington (Patrick McVey), the D.A. for San Diego Country. Covington isn't convinced that Lorrie's alibi for Ed is iron-clad, and he'd like a trial. It seems he'll get his way, for Perry soon hears that Ed has been arrested on returning from Mexico. In jail, he tells Perry that Lorrie took a call from Della, telling them it was safe to return. Perry says that Della couldn't have made such a call - it was an imposter.
In court, Helen, now revealed under her real name, confirms that she owns the murder weapon, and describes how she threw it onto the terrace of the Ajax offices. On cross-examination, she says she's a private detective and is forced to admit some illegal actions, like letting herself in with a skeleton key. She refuses to name her client, so the judge (Robert Lynn) tells her to return in a week for a contempt hearing. Howard Scanlon (Robert Nichols) testifies that on the night of the murder, Ed came to his station on foot, having run out of gas. As Howard helped him, he say that Ed was upset and in a terrible hurry. During a recess, Paul warns Perry that Lorrie lied about the alibi, and the D.A. knows it. He'll call Filomena to testify that she turns off the chimes each night at 10, so they don't disturb the guests. Filomena tells Perry that Ed drove off in his own car, then a shapely woman took Perry's. Lorrie admits she rode with Ed to Ethel's place, then waited until Ed came back, saying he'd found Ethel dead. They hurried back to Mexico and ran out of gas on the way. Howard never saw her because Ed insisted she hide on the floor of the car.
With court back in session, Helen denies having been at the motel or making a call as Della. Perry then produces a phone bill for her office, showing a call from that phone to the Mexican motel. He points out that she could be charged as an accessory to murder. She says Livesey told her to call as Della, but he immediately shouts "She's a liar!" He admits he hired her, but denies telling he to make that call. Perry suggests that Ethel's takeover would leave him out of a job, so he had a motive for murder. Livesey responds that he has had plenty of job offers for more than he made at Ajax. Perry thinks that may be wishful thinking, so Covington calls Denby to testify that Livesey did indeed receive a number of attractive offers after Helen's death, which he personally verified were legitimate as a favor to Livesey. He adds that Livesey isn't skilled at dealing with figures, but is a top-notch salesman and customer man. On cross-examination, Denby says that Livesey first told him about hiring Helen after the murder, and he first saw her when she testified. Perry says that Denby's answering service has records of calls to him from Helen. Therefore, Helen was secretly working for him as well as Livesey. On the night of the murder, she took Perry's car to Tijuana to call him, since the phones at the motel weren't working. She reached him in San Diego to tell him where Ed was. Unlike Ed and Livesey, the greedy Ethel knew about money and would have had the books audited. Since this would have revealed that Denby was an embezzler, he killed her to prevent it.
Later, Perry admits to a bluff - Denby's answering service produced no records of calls from Helen. He suspected Denby because Livesey freely admitted hiring Helen to do illegal snooping but was adamant about not ordering the fake call from Della, which wasn't any more incriminating. This suggested that Livesey was telling the truth, and that Helen was serving two masters. Perry says his chief motivation in clearing up this case was that he heard about "another Della Street" and had to see if it was true. He thought his Della was the only one.
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