- A gorgeous woman's trailer was stolen while she was sunbathing, so she asks for Perry's help in finding it. She claims it contains her diary, which details the truthful account of a notorious bank heist her father was convicted for.
- Perry Mason is approached by a beautiful woman, Arlene Dowling, who wants him to recover a house trailer that was recently stolen. It's an odd case from the beginning and when the trailer is quickly located, she's prepared to buy it off the vendor rather than just take possession. When Perry learns that Arlene's father is in prison having been convicted in the Mercantile Bank theft, he thinks there's far more going on than meets the eye. After Perry receives $1500 in the mail, he's pretty sure he's being set up. A meeting with Arlene's friend George L. Ballard confirms Perry's suspicions. DA Hamilton Burger soon has Perry in the Grand Jury room and when Perry's testimony contradicts that of a police detective, Burger charges him with perjury. Meanwhile, Arlene's dad's work partner Ballard is murdered and she is charged. Perry agrees to defend her but in a strange turn of events, is also called as a witness for the prosecution.—garykmcd
- In a wooded area, a man spies on Arlene Dowling (Susan Morrow) as she sunbathes in a clearing. He finds her trailer a short distance away, just far enough for him to hook it up to his own vehicle and drive off with it, undetected. When Arlene discovers her trailer is gone, she seems to have nothing but her towel to cover herself, but somehow she makes it back to civilization intact, and engages Perry Mason to recover the trailer. Its greatest importance to her is the diary hidden in it, which records everything she has discovered in her efforts to clear her father, currently in prison for having stolen a large amount of cash while employed at a bank. She is being helped in her researches by her father's friend George Ballard (Ralph Moody), a bank examiner at the time of the defalcation, who wishes he could clear Dad, but didn't have his eyes on him the whole time.
Perry finds the trailer by placing an ad in the paper. Arlene is shocked by such a prosaic move, but George tells her that Mason is being clever, because what matters is success. Mason receives a call to go to a used car lot, and in turns calls Arlene to join him there. They find the trailer, and while Mason deals with the lot owner, pointing out that he's trying to sell stolen property, Arlene enters the trailer, only to find the diary missing. She pays off Mason, but later he receives another payment anonymously by mail. Perry decides he better keep looking into the case. The leads him to Dr. Chandler (Carl Betz), who provides medical services for bank employees, and is also romantically involved with Arlene, and thus ready to help however he can. Perry also encounters Chandler's nurse, Helen Rucker (Gertrude Michael), and a former bank employee now reduced to hustling pool for a living, Bill Emory (Peter Leeds).
Finally, Perry decides it's time to talk directly to Arlene's friend George, who is quite cooperative even though Perry's arrival interrupted George as he listened to his favorite radio show, featuring a sports commentator. As their conversation covers what George knows, he mentions in passing that he remembers the serial number of one particular bill, because it corresponded to a bet in a horse race which George made, and won a tidy sum. Perry realizes that this serial number appears on one of the bills with which he was paid through the mail - obviously a trap. As George is in the kitchen, Perry rolls down a window shade, puts the bill inside, and rolls it up again.
Outside, two plainclothesmen are staking out George's house. Detective Myers (Walter Reed) spots the window shade going up and down, shortly followed by Arlene entering. He thinks the man at the window looks familiar, and when his partner Sgt. Neil (Marc Pickard) asks if it could be Perry Mason, Myers says yes. Soon, it turns out that George has been murdered, Arlene is suspected, and Perry is on the hot seat as a possible accessory. D.A. Burger thinks the raising and lowering of the shade was some kind of signal to his client. Perry does manage to track down Arlene (thanks to the rather lame efforts of Dr. Chandler to keep her hidden) and convince her to turn herself in, but he's still in trouble.
At the trial, various secrets are revealed. George, of course, was the real culprit behind the original theft of the bank's money. Detective Myers didn't see Perry raise and lower the shade after all, that was a coincidence: The radio sports show on ended over half an hour before the time reported by the detectives, and Perry was only in George's house for a few minutes. Nurse Rucker was heavily involved in a scheme to get the money, working behind the back of the clueless Dr. Chandler, but she had an alibi for the murder. By process of elimination, the ringleader of the plot, the one who murdered George, was the pool hustler, Bill Emory.
Later, at a restaurant, Burger sees Perry and apologizes about the accusations he made. Perry offers to buy the D.A. a meal to show there are no hard feelings. He asks the waitress to bring Burger a serving of crow.
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