- A dazed woman found in a park in a raincoat says she has amnesia but her story makes no sense. She supposedly eloped with a man who is ultimately found dead in the same park. When she is charged, Perry has to dig deep to find the truth.
- Eleanor Corbin is arrested in a public park, half-naked and acting somewhat irrationally. After fainting however, she tells the police she has no idea who she is and is suffering from amnesia. Her sister, Olga, approaches Perry Mason for his help worried about the impact on their father's jewelry business. She tells him that Eleanor had gone off with her fiancé Douglas Hepner two weeks before to get married. At the hospital, Eleanor has regained some of her memory but the two weeks she was away is a complete blank. Perry sends Paul and Della to talk to Eleanor. Upon hearing her story, Paul has Eleanor transferred to a private sanitarium as he and Della start tracking down the facts which leads them to other women, some of whom were also engaged to Hepner, plus a stash of hidden jewels. When Hepner is found dead in the park, Eleanor is charged with murder. To win the case however, Perry will first have to get the truth out of his client.—garykmcd
- At a city park, a boy (Jan Stine) and girl (Judee Morton) are making out in a car when they are shocked to see a woman (Mary Murphy) in torn white clothes, beckoning to them. (Despite later comments the she's "nearly nude", there nothing revealing about her dress.) She runs up a stairway, then back down, then collapses when approached by the police. She soon awakens, and says she doesn't know her name.
Perry receives an office visit from Olga Jordan (Coleen Gray), who identifies the mystery woman as her sister, Eleanor Corbin. Olga says Eleanor has faked amnesia before, and that the last they heard of her was two weeks ago, when she called to say she was running off to Yuma to marry Douglas Hepner (Alec Cawthorne). Olga is dubious, describing Doug as a charming heel. She's afraid that a scandal involving Eleanor could harm their father Homer Corbin (Vinton Hayworth), a jeweler for whom it's vitally important that people can rely on his word.
Olga takes Paul and Della to the public hospital where Eleanor was sent. She wakens and recognizes Olga, and explains that there was a car crash on the way back from Yuma. However, she thinks says this was last night, when actually two weeks have past. Paul calls the family doctor to see if Eleanor can be moved to a private sanitarium. Della promises Eleanor that Paul will find her missing husband, Doug.
They later see Homer, who asks Paul to learn the truth of the past two weeks. His opinion of Doug matches Olga's, and he says they all met him three months ago, when returning from a trip to Europe by ship. Paul receives a call from one of his operatives, giving him the phone number of Doug's mother Sadie Hepner (Merry Anders). He calls her, and is told that Doug is single, and the last time she heard from him was three days ago, when he called while on his way to Las Vegas with a woman named Suzanne Granger (Ziva Rodann). As she hangs up, the scene momentarily changes to the other end of the call, and we see that Sadie is much too young to have an adult son. Olga recognizes the name Suzanne Granger as an artist whom they also met on the return cruise.
Paul learns the address of Suzanne's apartment building, so he and Della go there. The desk clerk Walter Richey (Douglas Dick) tells them she lives in apartment 208, but is currently out. While Paul writes a note to give to Suzanne, Della watches Walter through the mirror in her compact and sees him ring apartment 210. She and Paul leave, but return through the service entrance and call on 208, the apartment of Ethel Belan (Jeanne Cooper). Paul says they're there on behalf of Eleanor, whom Ethel (assuming they already knew) reveals to have been living in 208 until recently. Paul plays along as says they're there for Eleanor's things, which Ethel has already packed. He even gives her $25 to cover back rent, and receives a receipt in return. Back in Paul's car, Paul and Della go through Eleanor's belonging. Opening a jar of cosmetics, Della scrapes a finger on the edge of a gem hidden inside. They find several others similarly hidden.Paul tells Della to take Eleanor's luggage to her apartment and mix it in with her own luggage. However, she should take the gems with her, check into a good hotel, then stow the gems in the hotel safe. Meanwhile, Paul goes to 210, where Suzanne has now returned. She explains that she was on her way to Vegas to marry Doug, but got very annoyed when he stopped to call his mother and give her a detailed description of Suzanne, including address, figure, etc. Suzanne thought she was being treated like prize livestock, and this was one of the reasons they didn't get married. Also, while she was away someone broke into her apartment and made a mess, cutting open several expensive tubes of paint. She suspects Eleanor. Her attention is drawn to the window by a commotion at the park across the street. Lieutenants Tragg and Anderson have found Doug, shot in the back of the head.
In Perry's office, Paul reports that there's no record of Eleanor and Doug being married in Yuma or having an accident on the way back. He's also learned that Sadie is a 27-year-old "babe" who disappeared shortly after Paul's call to her. Doug made money befriending wealthy female travelers, learning if they were smuggling anything, and if so turning them in to the Customs Service for the 20% reward. A jeweler and his daughters returning from a buying expedition to Europe would of course attract his interest. Perry notes that a professional informer might also branch out into blackmail. At this point, Tragg and Andy enter, bringing three warrants. Two, already executed, are search warrants for Paul's apartment (found nothing of interest) and Della's (found Eleanor's luggage). The third is an arrest warrant charging Eleanor with murdering Doug, and they insist on being told her whereabouts.
In court, Andy testifies that they found the murder gun on the scene. It's registered to Eleanor. He also mentions that Doug rented an apartment but there was no evidence of him actually living there. On a recess, Paul remembers there was a man's shirt in Eleanor's luggage. Having seen the shirt to check its laundry mark and keys found on the body to make copies, they go to a different apartment, rented to "Frank Newburg", and open it with one of the keys. The place has been ransacked. Back in court, Ethel looks at a diagram of apartments 208 and 210, and agrees that the 208 part looks like hers, but has never been in 210. She says that when Eleanor moved in, she insisted on having the bedroom that shared a wall with Suzanne's in 210, although this made Ethel move. She also says that she got a call from Eleanor, asking Ethel to back her up, because she was faking amnesia.
In a recess, Eleanor says that she and Doug regularly met at the park, until the night she went there and found him dead and with her own gun there. At first, she intended to pretend that the two of them had been attacked, and she tore her own clothes to make it look like an assault from which she broke free and wandered half-dazed. She beckoned to the young couple, hoping to get someone to follow her to Doug's body. However, when the police arrived she panicked and fell back on the amnesia story. Perry says that if she tells a story like that to a jury she'll be convicted. Eleanor replies that it's true, but she agrees it would convict her.
When court resumes, Walter testifies to the accuracy of Burger's apartment diagram. It's easy, since all the apartments are identical, except that one of Ethel's closets is slightly smaller. On cross, he claims no memory of having called Ethel after Paul spoke to him, so Perry recalls Ethel, who remembers the call. On re-direct, she says she one saw Eleanor in her bedroom through the slightly open door. She was counting gems. On cross, she insists the gems she saw were real, even though she was ten feet away and no expert. Perry recalls Dr. Oberon (Jon Lormer), the autopsy surgeon, who identifies a photo of Doug's arm taken at the autopsy. There are two puncture wounds, which could be from drug injections. Oberon says the body wasn't tested for drugs because the cause of death was already known. Perry tells the judge (Kenneth MacDonald) that Doug was found with no matches, lighter, or knife on him, suggesting that he had been divested of anything that could help him escape. This suggests he was drugged and restrained, and Perry requests exhumation.
Outside Doug's real apartment (as "Frank") during a recess, Perry says the judge denied his motion, pending evidence of relevancy. They carefully try one of the other copies of keys found on Doug's body on the facing apartment, rented by a "Sadie Payson". It works. Perry knocks on the door, and Sadie Hepner answers. Perry addresses her as Mrs. Hepner, and Sadie responds to the name, then catches herself, too late.
Suzanne testifies that once right after she spoke to Doug as he was leaving her apartment, she caught the door to 208 open a crack. She pushed the door open and confronted Eleanor, who said that if she couldn't have Doug, no one could, and showed Suzanne her gun to prove she meant it. Walter testifies that he overheard the conversation and confirms what Suzanne said, but didn't actually see the gun. On cross, he admits that he did his eavesdropping from Suzanne's apartment. He'd been inspecting it earlier as he often did due to the earlier break-in, and hid in the closet when Suzanne and Doug arrived. With this, Burger rests, claiming he's presented a prima facie case sufficient to have Eleanor bound over for jury trial.
Perry says he's presenting a defense at this time, and called Sadie. She testifies that she and Doug were partners in the customs informant work. He'd identify suspects, romance them, then whisk them away on a fake elopement. His calls to "mother" gave Sadie the information she needed to break into the suspect's home and find evidence of smuggling. She'd also determine whether it looked a better prospect for informing or for blackmail. If so, she'd pose as a customs inspector, visiting the suspect while Doug was there, so he could suggest the possibility of buying her off. During the period Doug was seeing Eleanor, Sadie got a call from him, saying he was on the trail of a professional smuggling ring, which could lead to a fortune for them. They knew that paint tubes had been used for smuggling, but weren't sure if Suzanne was in the ring or a dupe. Doug talked Eleanor into moving into 208 to spy, and started romancing Suzanne himself. After Sadie got Doug's call that so offended Suzanne, she broke into 210 but found nothing to incriminate the artist. On the day he was murdered, Dough called Sadie and said that he'd found the gems. He had Eleanor's gun and they'd both be sitting pretty if he could get out alive. He was calling from the apartment of his other smuggling suspect, Ethel.
Ethel shouts a denial from her seat. Perry mentions her perfect hiding place, behind the closet that was smaller than all the others. She says that space was empty, but Perry says this was simply because Doug found and then hid them. Ethel's story about Eleanor counting them was a lie, and Eleanor never touched them. Doug's hiding place was Eleanor's cosmetic jars, which were in the luggage that Ethel had let Paul and Della take away. Ethel won't believe it, so Perry reaches down and grabs a big handful of precious jewels. He goes on to say that when the smugglers found the gems missing, they tracked down Doug at his real apartment, drugged him, searched the place unsuccessfully, then shot him with the gun he was carrying and dumped the body and gun in the park. Ethel screams that she didn't commit murder, but Perry replies that her partner did - Walter. The clerk tries to flee the courtroom, but the bailiff grabs him. He yells to Sadie, still on the stand, why didn't she keep her mouth shut? Now, instead of getting a generous cut, she's talked herself into a jail sentence. She answers, "Douglas Hepner was my husband."
Afterward, Perry gives Paul a big check from the Corbins for his critical work in exonerating Eleanor. He's impressed by the amount. Then Perry gives Della the 20% reward from Customs, as she first uncovered one of the gems. She calls Paul's check small change, and says that she'll buy dinner for them. Paul can leave the tip.
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