- Enid Griffin overdoses on sleeping pills when her boss, Stewart Brent, unexpectedly got married. Arthur Binney blackmails Brent and his wife Anne to suppress the fact that she has a prison record. Brent is framed for the murder of Binney.
- Shelia Bowers returns home to find her roommate Enid Griffin passed out due to an overdose of sleeping pills. She calls for the police and a doctor who help Enid recover. Enid had seen the news that Stewart Brent who she and Shelia work for had suddenly married Anne Brent while in Las Vegas. Enid is in love with Brent herself as she is his private secretary. When Stewart returns to work, he receives a visit from Arthur Binney who wants $30,000 in a week to not reveal Anne Brent was in prison for a year. Stewart hires Paul Drake to verify Binney's charges which Paul does. Binney has Stewart check into a motel room where Binney knocks Stewart out as he enters the door. A little later Stewart awakens to find the money gone and Binney shot with his gun in the connected room. As he sees the body the motel night manager Harry Mitchell enters and calls the police. Stewart had found a single earring that he hides in a towel with lipstick in the back seat of Lt. Tragg's car. The only clue is a blonde visitor but every woman involved is a blonde. Stewart has confessed to protect his wife but Perry believes he is innocent.—Anonymous
- Sheila Bowers (Peggy Knudsen) returns to her apartment, opens a newspaper, and is surprised to see the headline "C. Stewart Brent marries Miss Anne Rowan in Las Vegas". She goes to tell her roommate and fellow blonde Enid Griffin (Barbara Baxley), but finds her unconscious. She's taken an overdose of sleeping pills, but Sheila found her in time and Enid will be O.K. She tells Sheila she was upset over the marriage, as she's now in love with Stewart, for whom she works as private secretary. She regrets the suicide attempt and vows to fight for Stewart.
Stewart (Grant Withers) arrives at the Brent Building, which he owns, and runs into Perry, whose offices are there. He invites Perry and Della to a reception in honor of his bride. After Stewart gets to his office, where Sheila also works as a secretary-receptionist, Arthur Binney (Richard Erdman) enters and asks to see Stewart. Sheila hands him over to Enid, who soon after enters Stewart's office and says that Binney wants to see him on a private matter concerning his wife. While there, she surreptitiously turns on the intercom, then leaves as Binney enters. He claims to represent a scandal magazine, but it's just a cover for a blackmail scheme. He gives Stewart a copy of a mugshot indicating that Anne spent a year in jail on insurance fraud. He wants $30,000 in one week. Enid hears all this, but Stewart notices that the intercom is already on when he uses it to have Enid contact the Paul Drake Detective Agency. Paul comes to see him, and Stewart admits he'd met Anne in Vegas and had only known her for two weeks when they got married. Paul will need Anne's fingerprints to check the validity of the mugshot, so Stewart invites him to the reception.
At the reception, Anne (Mari Aldon), another blonde, tells the bartender to make new martinis with less vermouth, despite Enid's mention that the first Mrs. Brent liked them that way. Anne is clearly trying to win over the reluctant Enid. She candidly admits to habitually misplacing earrings, and lights Enid's cigarette. Much to their surprise, Della and Perry see Paul swipe the lighter that Anne just put down. After the party, Paul meets Stewart at the latter's office and says Anne's prints match the mugshot. She really did spend a year in jail in Tacoma, WA. After Paul leaves, Stewart grabs several packets of bills and a gun from the desk and puts them in his briefcase. He gets a call from Binney, who tells him the week is up and directs him to the Valley Motel, telling him to register as Thomas Walsh.
At the motel, Binney tells his female partner (whom we never see clearly) that she needs to leave because Stewart is on his way. She drops a towel she was using and goes. Binney apparently knows that Stewart will be given the unit adjoining his own, since he comes through the connecting door and hides behind the outer door to Stewart's unit. Once Stewart enters, Binney knocks him on the head with a blunt instrument and grabs the briefcase from the unconscious body. He dumps the contents on the bed and takes the money, but avoids touching the gun. When Stewart wakes up, he goes to the bathroom shared by the two units to deal with his head wound. He picks up the towel and his gun falls out. There's a small hole encircled with a black substance on the towel. The phone in Binney's room starts ringing, and when Stewart looks in, he sees a dead Binney. The money is gone, but Stewart finds an earring next to the body. He wraps it in the towel and puts it in his coat pocket. Motel manager Harry Mitchell (Wally Brown), who has been calling for Binney, enters and catches Stewart with the gun in his hand. Later, Lt. Tragg has arrived and Stewart freely confesses to the murder. He's put in Tragg's police car, but the lieutenant is delayed by a call from Burger, so there's no one in the back seat with Stewart. He takes opportunity to cram the towel down into the seat.
When Perry visits Anne, she refuses to believe Stewart's confession that Binney was blackmailing him for involvement in a hit-and-run, so Stewart killed him. Perry says that a false confession means Stewart is shielding someone, and Anne is the most likely. It follows that Binney would try blackmailing her too. She admits to her year in Tacoma jail and that she'd given Binney a $2500 pair of earrings to buy him off, but swears that she's never been to the Valley Motel. In jail, Stewart admits to Perry that his confession was a like and gives him a summary of the events at the motel. He says Enid can prove he had her withdraw $30,000 from his bank account.
In Perry's office, Paul reports that Binney was an experienced blackmailer, having recently arrived from Tacoma. In the past, he had always worked solo. Enid arrives with the bank book that shows the $30,000 withdrawal. She mentions that when she saw Stewart in jail, he told her about the towel and earring he hid in Tragg's car. She says they have to find it before the police do, but this is one of the days when Perry is against evidence tampering. Later, at the police garage, the attendant (Cy Malis) wishes Tragg a happy birthday. Asked what makes him think that, he says a woman came by asking to leave a surprise birthday present in the lieutenant's car. She was quite upset when she wasn't allowed to do this. This gives Tragg an idea, so he and Sgt. Brice (Lee Miller) search the car and find the towel.
At the motel, Harry has let Perry and Della access to the crime scene. Perry examines a hole in the wall, from which the police have already extracted a bullet. Harry mentions that Binney was periodically visited by a blonde, and there was also a woman who called him nearly every day. She was calling when Harry came into the room, wondering why Binney didn't answer, and encountered Stewart. Later, Perry gets a call from an unidentified woman. She tips him off about Enid's suicide attempt.
In court, Enid identifies Stewart's briefcase. Burger mentions a statement Stewart made about finding his intercom open, which forces Enid to testify to the blackmail threat she overheard. She also discusses withdrawing the $30,000 and giving it to Stewart, but has to admit that she can't know whether he actually took it with him. Tragg testifies that the police tracked the path of the bullet, and concluded that the shot was fired from the doorway between Binney's unit and the one Stewart rented as Thomas Walsh. He also identifies the towel and earring he found in his car, and reports that it was one of a pair Stewart had purchased. Dr. Cortley (Alan Dexter), a consultant to the LAPD crime lab, testifies that tests prove that the towel was used normally, as indicated by traces of lipstick, etc., However, it was also used as a silencer, thus explaining why no one heard a gunshot at the time of the murder. On cross-examination, he says that traces of hair on the towel were from a peroxide blonde who was originally a light brunette. He says it's possible that the bullet tracking was off by as much as a few feet, making it possible that the gun was fired from near the bathroom.
During a recess, Paul confirms Enid's suicide attempt. Perry has him take photos of the three blonde women involve in the case to Harry, in the hope that some time to study them will make it easier for him to identify Binney's visitor in court. The next day, Harry testifies that no woman was with Binney near the time of the murder, but there was a blonde visitor to his room 2 or 3 times a week. He identifies Sheila as the visitor. She admits to being Binney's partner, but vehemently insists that he was alive when she left.
Later, Anne goes to the Valley Motel and asks to register in Binney's old unit, saying she's going to play "Button, button, who's got the button?" She tells Harry that she was the real mastermind of the blackmail scheme, Sheila just being a go-between. She decided to get $30,000 from Stewart because the marriage couldn't last long. She asks him where the money is, pointing out that she'd given Binney two earrings "to make the plot look good", so Harry must have taken them both but dropped one while moving the money. She says that Harry is entitled to $1,000 for his part in the plot, but he disagrees and pulls a gun. Tragg and his men enter and arrest Harry. Perry and Stewart follow, and the latter runs to Anne, clearly delighted with the success of her charade. Perry tells Tragg that Harry was the person best positioned to enter Binney's unit while Stewart was unconscious. Stewart and Anne are apparently busy congratulating each other on the outcome, so Tragg suggests he and Perry wait in the car.
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