... as the prominent defense attorney was always wanting a nice vacation away from it all in order to do a little fishing, but instead would vacation where and when a murder occurred and end up being the defendant's attorney, but I digress.
In this case, Dan Matthews (Broderick Crawford) is trying to get away from it all and do some fishing. He's been to this lodge many times before, but he's surprised to find out that the previous owner died of a heart attack and that the widow has sold the place to a new set of owners a few months ago.
This new set of owners happen to be using the lodge as a front for heroin distribution. The drugs are sent to the lodge and then the heroin is hidden in the vehicle of the drug runners - maybe in a fake carburetor, maybe in a fake radio and thus distributed.
Two things alert Matthews to something funny going on. One is the game warden talking about heroin being distributed somewhere in the area, and the other is a man driving to the lodge as though he knows where he's going who has been seriously injured by a gunshot wound. So the cat and mouse game is on between the owners and Matthews, who has brought the rest of the Highway Patrol in on this situation. What Matthews doesn't know is that the lodge owners have already agreed to kill Matthews if he gets too close to the truth of the operation.
I like this old series for several reasons. One is its stoic simplicity. The other reason is a look at a bygone era. For example, in this episode, an officer working this case back at Highway Patrol headquarters literally has an "In" box and an "Out" box on his desk. Now that's done via email. I can remember when this was done, but I'd forgotten about it until I watched this episode.
