Trama

Teenager Doris Bannister is having a fling with Stefan Riker, a shady East German who is a longtime acquaintance of Doris' step-mother, Lisa Bannister. Riker has been murdered, and Doris has general amnesia; or is she faking it?

Stefan Riker stops at a local bar to ask Gary Marshall if he recognizes a lady in a picture he has. Gary denies knowing her but has to go to pick up his boss' wife - Lisa Bannister - the woman in the picture. After picking her up, he stops before returning home to tell Lisa about the incident but that he did not identify her. She thanks him but he then proceeds to kiss her but she slaps him. Later, Stefan arrives at the Bannister home asking to see Lisa saying he is her cousin. Doris Bannister quickly calls her step-mother to meet Stefan but Lisa does not show great happiness at seeing Stefan. Lisa's crippled husband who uses two canes to walk, is very quiet. When Doris asks why, he states he understood Lisa had no relatives. Later, Doris catches Lisa about to commit suicide. Lisa explains her father is the head of the Communist Party in East Germany and she is in the US illegally. Doris decides to distract Stefan by visiting him in her finest and making a pass at him. Later, she appears in Perry's office saying she has amnesia. Perry asks in the paper if anyone knows her but finds she is charged with murdering Stefan.—Anonymous

At Hennessy's Cocktail Lounge, waitress Helene (Gere Craft) asks Gary Marshall (Don Durant) when they're going out again, but he gives her the brush-off. Gary's the foreman at Bannister Farms, and needs to leave soon to give the bosses wife, Lisa Bannister (Osa Massen), a ride. He's approached by Stefan Riker (Werner Klemperer, famous as ), who shows him the photograph of a woman. Gary claims he doesn't recognize her, but later, in the car, we see that it's Lisa. He tells her how he has protected her and claims his rewarded by forcibly kissing her, which earns him a slap.

At home, Edward Bannister (Robert F. Simon), who needs to use two canes to walk, complains about his wife having another of her headaches, but his daughter (and Lisa's stepdaughter) Doris (Gigi Perreau) is quick to defend her. Riker appears at the door and says he's Lisa's cousin. He tells Edward he recently arrived from East Germany. When Lisa enters, Riker acts like a happily reunited relative, but Lisa is clearly stunned and distressed. Edward says this is because she'd told him she had no living relatives. Later, Doris stops Lisa from taking an overdose of pills. The stepmother reveals that Riker is a friend of her father, who isn't dead but is in fact Hans Gebhardt, the real head of the Communist Party in East Germany. (For the purposes of this story, we need to assume that the notorious was a figurehead.) Riker may know that Lisa entered the U.S. on a forged passport. Doris promises to find a way to deal with the problem. Doris goes to Riker's apartment and throws herself at him. Three months after his arrival, Riker has clearly prospered, with a nice new car and spiffy clothes. Edward tells him he better leave town, but the German doesn't care.

Della returns to the law office to find a disheveled Doris, who says she can't remember her name. She found a torn piece of paper with Perry's name and office address on it, and thought that he might know who she was. Perry arrives and doesn't recognize her. She manages to say that she might have been on Sunset Canyon Road when she awoke from whatever happened to her, then she collapses. Perry takes her to the hospital. The following afternoon, the late-rising Edward sees the morning paper, with a photo of Doris and the headline "Amnesia Victim Found by Prominent Attorney". He calls Perry and asks for his help in getting her home. When Perry asks about Sunset Canyon Road, Edward says he thinks Riker, whom Doris had been seeing, lives around there. Della looks up Riker in the phone book, as Perry wonders why Riker hadn't called to identify Doris.

That question is immediately answered for the viewer, as we see Riker's dead body sprawled on the floor of his apartment. Lt. Tragg and his men are there, and find a stack of letters from Doris, full of declarations of love and jealousy. Outside they find a gun and a stepladder hear the rear window of Riker's apartment. Directly under the window are two indentations in the ground, as if the ladder had been placed there so someone could look in the window, then moved to the side. Perry and Della, observing the homicide detectives going back and forth, don't go to the apartment. Instead, Perry goes to the hospital, where Dr. Forbes (Wendell Holmes) gives a diagnosis of "general amnesia". Perry starts to make arrangements to move Doris to a private sanitarium, when Tragg arrives and posts a police guard.

Paul has little to report. The police obviously think that Riker was two-timing Doris, so she killed him out of jealousy. Perry goes to Hennessy's and talks to Gary, who's sympathetic but unhelpful. After he leaves, Helene mentions that Gary, who denied knowing Riker, had actually met him frequently at the lounge. Paul summons Perry to a gully off Sunset Canyon Road, where he's found Doris' wrecked car. It's in neutral gear, so could have been pushed. In the car is the paper from which the scrap with Perry's address was torn, so she presumably wrote it herself. Perry and Paul don't need to worry about what to do with all these indications that Doris faked her accident, as Tragg immediately arrives, having spotted Perry's car parked along the road above.

In court, Dr. Forbes testifies that he now believes Doris was faking amnesia, because her physical condition and behavioral symptoms don't match general amnesia. On cross-examination, Perry gets him to admit she could have had partial amnesia, and it was the doctor, not the patient, who claimed it was general amnesia. Tragg takes the stand and identifies the ladder, which has Doris' fingerprints, and a plaster cast of the ground beneath Riker's window. Burger demonstrates that the spacing between the indentations in the cast matches that of the rear legs of the ladder, although the shape of the indentations is just a good fit, not an exact one. The lieutenant explains that when there was weight on the ladder, the legs would have wiggled around, thus changing the shape of the imprints. Burger next calls Lisa as a hostile witness and forces her to identify Doris' handwriting on a note from Riker's apartment. It says, "I saw you with her again. It's times like this I get so mad I could kill you." On cross, she testifies that she hated Riker, but Perry accuses her of being the "her" in the note and of lying.

During a recess, Perry tells Doris that, despite his attempts, no one in court is going to believe her amnesia story. She finally drops that lie, telling him that she did use the ladder to spy on Riker, saw him with that woman again (no one she knew), waited for her to leave, then went in and shot him. Perry accuses her of trying to protect Lisa. She admits that she found Riker dead, and in his hand was a medallion she often wore suspended from a gold string necklace, a gift from Edward. Doris took it from the dead hand and threw it away, assuming that Lisa was the killer. They both hated Riker, Doris' protestations of love and jealousy just being an act, attempting to frighten Riker away from Lisa. She won't tell Perry what Riker had on Lisa, and if Perry tries to use the admissions she just made to him in court, she'll deny everything.

Perry calls Edward and asks him to bring Lisa's medallion or a copy to Paul in a lot near the court the next day. However, on that day he arrives and tells Paul that he couldn't get a copy that fast. When the trial resumes, Burger has Edward on the stand and uses registration data to show that the murder gun was his. It was kept in Gary's desk in the tack room, and Edward admits that Doris knew this. On cross, Perry has Edward describe the medallion, then claims that it had been in the hand of his corpse. This starts a row among Perry, Burger, and Doris, which requires some sternness from the judge (Pierre Watkin) to put down. Perry then asks Edward if he had any idea where the medallion went after it left his home. Burger objects to this as calling for hearsay, but Perry counters that it's best evidence, since Edward himself put the medallion in Riker's dead hand. Wrongly thinking the German was having an affair with Lisa, Edward murdered him and tried to frame her. Edward tries to deny it, but Perry shows that the ground impressions from below Riker's window perfectly match his two canes, down to the irregularity caused by a tack in one of the canes.

Later, Perry explains to Della what started him to suspect Edward. If Riker had actually ripped Lisa's medallion off her, it would be impossible for her to fail to notice that, and therefore wouldn't have left it. The most logical other person to have access to the medallion, when Lisa wasn't wearing it, was Edward. Della, curious about what hold Riker had on Lisa, starts to speculate about when Lisa entered the country. Perry stops her, saying that since Doris was willing to go to the gas chamber to protect Lisa's secret, they shouldn't pry. Della agrees, saying that every woman is entitled to at least one secret. "What's yours?" he asks, getting the reply "You'll never know."