Handlung

Perry and Della are enjoying a quiet dinner at Morey Allen's restaurant when a waitress suddenly runs out and is hit by a car, shots are fired, and Perry is left holding a moth-eaten mink with a pawn ticket hidden in it.

While Perry and Della have dinner at Morey Allen's restaurant, their waitress Dixie Dayton leaves suddenly and is run over by a car after shots are heard. Morey says he knows little about her as she started working there only 10 days ago. The police are soon there but Perry notices that one tough looking man isn't too interested in what's happening. Morey asks Perry to take charge of Dixie's mink coat, which makes Perry wonder how she could afford one. He finds a pawn ticket in the collar and Paul traces it to a gun, one that was used in the recent murder of a police officer. The man Perry saw in the restaurant is George Fayette, a very shady character with a criminal background. When Fayette is found murdered, Morey and Dixie are jointly charged with his murder and Perry defends them. Perry and Paul must contend with Lt. Tragg and Sgt. Jaffrey who show little restraint in their push to solve the murder of a fellow police officer.—garykmcd

Restaurateur Morey Allen (Robert Osterloh) gives some personal attention to regulars Perry and Della. However, when tough-looking customer George Fayette (Marc Krah) enters, waitress Dixie Dayton (Kay Faylen) is frightened. She flees out the back, but is chased by a car. Someone in the car shoots at her. Dixie runs - right into another car. Inside, Morey learns that she's been sent to the hospital. He immediately goes to her locker, takes out a mink coat, and gives it to Perry and Della. As the police arrive to investigate what happened to Dixie, Morey pleads that they help him. The mink, the worse for a couple moth holes but still a mink, is Dixie's legitimate property. However, if the police see it they might suspect that Morey's is the kind of place where waitresses are encouraged to "get friendly" with customers. If that got into the press, it would ruin him, so Perry takes it. Inside, he finds a ticket from a pawn shop in Portland. Perry noticed that Dixie left right after Fayette entered, so he asks Morey what he knows about the man. Morey claims ignorance, but he asks for Perry's legal help, without specifying for what. Perry, believing that Dixie is in danger, calls Lt. Tragg and asks that he tell the hospital to put her in a private room and allow no visitors. Tragg agrees to this - and also to sending the hospital bill to Perry's office.

By the next morning, Paul's man in Portland has reported about the pawn ticket. It was for a gun - a 38 caliber police special. Paul also warns that the police know Della left the restaurant wearing Dixie's mink. At the hospital, Perry encounters Tragg, who's somewhat miffed that Perry is being uncooperative after Tragg did him a favor. Perry is about to go see Dixie when the lieutenant tells him the she has disappeared from the hospital. Back at the office, Paul has learned that Fayette was once arrested as a bookie, but never brought to trial. Apparently, he had very good connections. Also, the gun Dixie pawned was the service revolver of Detective Claremont, who was shot and killed with it about a year earlier. Ever since, the police have been looking for Tom Sedgewick, another bookie who had been seen talking to Claremont shortly before the murder. Paul warns Perry that the police will pull out all the stops to catch a cop killer, and he'd be better off staying out of their way by dropping Morey as a client. However, Perry refuses to take the easy way out. Perry gets a call from Della. Tragg is at the office and wants the mink. Perry tells her to give him the receipt from the storage company where they left it.

Late that night, Perry is awakened by a call from Morey. He and Dixie are at the Keymont Hotel, room 721 and need Perry to come. Perry calls Paul, saying to join him there. Perry gets there first, but finds no one in the room. He notices a lipstick on the floor, and its texture shows that it was most recently used on a rough surface rather than lips. This soon leads him to look under a table, where he finds the message "262 V3 L15 Mason Help". Paul arrives, and Perry tells him about the message, and that it's a trap. If someone really tried to write that while pretending just to be sitting at the table, it would come out in mirror writing. Next, they decipher the message. In Volume 3 of the phone book in the room, on page 262, line 15, they find the name, number, and address of one Herbert Granton. Paul recognizes this as a name Fayette had used in the past. Since the message is a trap, they don't head there. Instead, Paul uses a hall phone to call the front desk and pretend to have airline reservation information for Fayette, but the room number on his paper is illegible. The night clerk, Frank Hoxie (Than Wyenn), obligingly tells him that Fayette doesn't answer, but the room number is 815.

Perry and Paul go there only to find Fayette shot dead. They are soon followed into the room by Tragg and Sgt. Jaffrey (Douglas Kennedy), a vice detective and Claremont's superior at the time of his murder. They had arrived because the guest in the next room had heard arguing and a shot, and called Hoxie who called the police. Hoxie was also cooperating with them when he gave Paul the room number. The detectives wanted to find out what would be done with the information. Now that they've caught Perry and Paul, they press for more information. Jaffrey wants to get rough, but Tragg restrains him and points out that they can take Paul's private investigator's license from him for failing to cooperate. Paul's uncertain what to do, but Perry ends his dilemma by revealing the call from Morey and Dixie. Tragg demands that Perry hand over the pair by noon. Perry says he's unable, but Tragg insists, saying that Perry's status as an officer of the court requires him to cooperate. If Perry doesn't give him the two suspects, Tragg will ask the D.A. to begin disbarment proceedings against him.

However, this is soon rendered moot, as the police pick up Morey and Dixie on their own. In jail, Morey tells Perry that Tom Sedgewick is his half brother and is engaged to Dixie. Tom's connection to the "Mr. Big" of the bookmaking operation was through Fayette. Det. Claremont wanted to use Tom in a plan to uncover the top man. When the detective was killed, Tom left and ended up in Portland with Dixie. Perry points out that they had the murder gun with them in Portland, and Morey is shocked to think that his half-brother is guilty after all. He needed to return to the dry climate of L.A. because of tuberculosis, even though he'd been warned by Fayette that this would have fatal consequences. That's why Dixie fled when Fayette showed up at the restaurant. She feared she'd be tortured into revealing Tom's hiding place. While she was hospitalized, she got a call from a woman who said she knew who was Claremont's actual killer and that Dixie should come to the Keymont Hotel. Dixie called Morey to come with her, and he brought his gun for protection. They checked into room 721, but noticed they were being observed. That's when Morey called Perry to come there, but shortly after he hung up, two thugs entered the room at gunpoint, took Morey's gun, and left. Of course, his gun had been found by the police and proved to have been used to kill Fayette.

In court, Hoxie testifies about Morey and Dixie checking into the hotel and asking about room 815. On cross-examination, he admits that he's an ex-con, and he got the hotel job through the help of a sympathetic law officer. He had been working their steadily every since, except for one month the previous year when hotel management sent him to Mexico City to collect on a bill. Perry shows him a photo of Claremont, which Hoxie identifies as a man he saw go to Fayette's room just before the Mexico trip. On recess, Perry tells Paul to find out everything about the ownership of the Keymont hotel. Why would a third-rate hotel fly an employee to Mexico City for a month just to collect on an unpaid bill?

Later, Perry is alone in his office when Sgt. Jaffrey enters. He senses that Perry has worked out a solution, and wants to know if Perry can tell him who killed his subordinate, so he can bring the cop killer to justice. Perry says the sergeant can do that easily just by giving himself up! Jaffrey was the higher-up whom Claremont was trying to track down. Hoxie can testify to Jaffrey's presence at the Keymont, and probably would have blown the whistle earlier if Jaffrey hadn't arranged for him to go to Mexico until the murder was out of the papers. Jaffrey killed Claremont and planted the gun on Tom. Later, he killed Fayette, who started to panic when Dixie disappeared. Perry produces a copy of the Keymont's incorporation papers, showing Jaffrey's signature as owner under a fake name, but in his handwriting. Jaffrey pulls his gun. He plans to say that Perry resisted when Jaffrey was arresting him for attempted bribery. As he prepares to shoot, Tragg, looking in from the next room through a slightly open door, shouts "Hold it, Jaffrey." Shots are exchanged and Jaffrey goes down with a bullet to his arm. Tragg is unwounded, but disgusted by the sight of a cop who killed one of his own men. Perry says he should call an ambulance. Tragg agrees but adds, "Don't hurry."

Back at Morey's, Perry relates that Jaffrey gave himself away by his astounding lack of curiosity when Perry was pointing out the message under the table. He didn't bother to cross the room to see the message, because he had written it himself. Also, a policeman is far more likely to shoot it out even in unfavorable circumstances rather than give up his gun. However, he would turn over his weapon to a superior officer. When they all order dessert, Perry says he'll take anything Morey has - except for a moth-eaten mink.