- Marian Fargo is being blackmailed and hires Perry Mason to find a solution to her problem. When Marian is suddenly charged with two murders and the evidence is solidly against her, Perry must use all his wits to save his client.
- Marian Fargo has been blackmailed by Samuel D. Carlin for the last 10 months and has already paid him $10,000. He tells her that for a lump sum of another $10,000 he will give her what she wants: a file he has on Charles Gallagher, her brother. She finally breaks down and tells her husband Arthur Fargo what has been happening. She's supposed to meet Carlin in a restaurant for the exchange but when he leaves a message with the Maitre d' for her to come to his house, she gets Perry Mason to deliver it for her. When both Carlin and Arthur Fargo are found dead, Marian is charged with murder and Perry defends her.—garykmcd
- Blackmailer Samuel Carlin (Luis Van Rooten) intercepts Marian Fargo (Angie Dickinson) at an L.A. bus terminal as she is about to leave for Harristown. He reminds her that her next monthly $1000 payment is due tomorrow, and offers to leave her alone and turn over the Gallagher files to her for a lump-sum payment of $10,000. They arrange to meet at Ferrold's, a French restaurant, the next evening, and Marian abandons her trip. As they leave, we see that they have been observed by another man. Marian goes home and confesses to her husband Arthur (Peter Adams) that she's being blackmailed over Gallagher. Meanwhile, the mystery man at the terminal turns out to be a P.I. hired by Charles Gallagher (Paul Picerni). He tells his client about Carlin, but he didn't overhear his conversation with Marion.
At Ferrold's, headwaiter Pierre (Jan Arvan) gets a call from Carlin, cancelling the reservation and requesting him to tell Marian to come to his home instead. Marian arrives, and as she is getting this message, she happens to hear Perry and Della arrive and claim their reservations. Perry and Della are seated, and Perry is shocked to discover that coffee costs $1. Pierre comes over with a phone with a call from a woman unknown to Perry, but we see is Marian, calling from inside the restaurant. She retains him to take the pay-off to Carlin, which she has a waiter deliver to him. Perry and Della go to the Carlin house, but Carlin claims complete ignorance of what they're talking about. After they leave, Arthur Fargo emerges from another room, and we learn that he and Carlin are partners in the blackmail scheme. However, Arthur has learned from Marian that she's been paying twice what he and Carlin had agreed. He demands his share of the extra money and leaves, saying he'll be back for it in a couple hours. Perry has remained across the street, and observes a woman walk up to Carlin's house and enter. Later, Paul arrives to help, but as Perry is filling him in, there's a big explosion and fire at the Carlin place.
Later, the fire department takes a corpse out of the house. It's burned beyond recognition but Paul describes the build of the body and Perry says "That's Carlin." Paul mentions that there was a bullet in his head. The next day, Paul talks to a waiter (Jean Del Val) at Ferrold's and learns that Pierre quit his job the previous night. He also gets a look at the reservation book, and learns enough to identify Perry's mystery client as Marian. Perry and Paul go to the Fargo home, where they first notice a dry spot on the drive, indicating that the car had only been driven away within the past hour, when it finally stopped raining. Next, they look in a window and see a man's body. Going inside, they see he was murdered, and find a note from Marian to Arthur saying she's taking the bus to Harristown. Perry works out that the bus left L.A. too early for Marian to have committed the murder - if she was on it.
Paul flies to Harristown, intending to confirm Marian's alibi. He arrives at the station just before the bus and has Marian paged. However, the police are there too, and they arrest her for the murder of her husband. Another arriving passenger, Diana Maynard (Dorothy Green), offers to help, once she has put a patch on her mildly infected eye that's bothering her. She agrees to dictate a statement that she and Marian rode together on the bus all the way from L.A. Perry is glad to have this, but is troubled that there are other witnesses who claimed she got on later, at Wayne City. Gallagher arrives at Perry's office, but Della tells him he's left. Gallagher, Marian's brother, was an escaped convict in his youth. Since then he became prosperous, but Carlin knew his background. He wants to help by turning himself in, but Della says coming clean would give the D.A. a motive for Marion, so he decides to keep out of sight.
In court, Perry easily demolishes the testimony of an airport parking attendant who claims to identify Marian as the woman he briefly saw while she was wearing dark glasses and a floppy hat. However, he's unable to shake the story of a charter pilot who testifies that he took Marian to Wayne City in time for her to catch the Harristown bus from there. Later, D.A. Burger receives an anonymous call, tipping him off to the significance and whereabouts of Diana Maynard. From the French-sounding accent, Burger guesses that it's Pierre, whom he like to have picked up. Lt. Tragg tells him that the police have been looking and Pierre is nowhere to be found, but he has no trouble following the tip and arresting Diana at the hotel where Perry has been hiding her. Burger interviews her, points out inconsistencies in her account, and advises her not to commit perjury.
At the next court session, Perry calls Diana to the stand, but only asks her about arriving in Harristown. He then objects to Burger's attempt to cross-examine her about when Marian got on the bus. The judge agrees that cross-examination must relate to matters brought up in direct examination. So Burger calls Diana as a prosecution witness and gets Diana to tell her new story, that Marian got on at Wayne City. Now it's Perry's turn to cross-examine, and since she testified about what she saw and is still using her eye patch, Perry challenges her ability to identify people. While being tested, she correctly identifies Lt. Tragg, the P.I. who baby-sat her for Perry, and the parking lot attendant. However, she wasn't in court when the attendant testified and had been kept away from news of the trial. The only way she could recognize him was because she was the one who drove Marian's car to the airport, where she took the charter plane to Wayne City and boarded the bus there. Caught in a lie, Diana admits her role, but points to another man in court as the murderer. That man tries to leave to court, but he's caught and his disguise is removed. It's the supposedly dead Samuel Carlin!
Later, we learn that Gallagher has been pardoned for his earlier crimes. The body identified as Carlin was actually Pierre, who was making money as Carlin's errand boy. The phone call to Burger was made by Carlin, adopting a fake French accent. Perry and Della then head back to Ferrold's to solve the remaining mystery: What could make a cup of coffee be worth a dollar?
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