****SPOILERS**** Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, gets himself involved in a strange double murder case involving the falsifying of insurance invoices that his client Ruth Prescott, Stacy Graham, was unknowing involved in. The fact that Ruth was almost killed by a runaway truck after having it out with her greedy, for her money, husband Walter, William Kendis, opened up a real can of worms that Perry now got himself involved. That by him defending Ruth in the murder of her husband Walter whom she, after almost being rundown and killed, found shot to death in the family home.
It's only later that Perry finds out together with his in house private eye Paul Drake, William Hopper, that it wasn't Ruth that was the target of the runaway truck, who's brake cables were mysterious tampered with,but insurance investigator Fred Walden who was investigating Walter Prescott! As for the injured Walden after being driven by the truck driver Harry Johnson, James Philbrook, to the nearest hospital to get patched up he was later found dead at the bottom of a gully that his car drove off from.
It's Walter Prescott's murder that puzzles Perry in that not only did he have strange what looked like self inflicted scratches all over his face and body but his and Ruth pet canary was found injured in its cage that was knocked down on the floor! Besides Ruth being found by Prescott's secretary Margaret Swaine, Susan Commings, at the murder scene with the murder weapon she was also found by Miss Swaine trying to burn a stack of love letters from her former lover Jimmy McLain, Biff Elliot. As for McLaine it's discovered that he in fact went to the Prescott residence at the time of Walter's murder only to find the house empty!
****SPOILERS**** Perry somehow connects Walden's fatal car accident to Prescott's murder. It's too much of a coincident for both men having died so close to each other who as Perry soon found out were so closely connected. Prescott a freight manager and Walden an insurance investigator who was secretly investigating him. And as Perry later found out Walden didn't die in a car accident as reported by the state police but was in fact murdered not far from Prescott's home with him being impersonated, while supposedly being taken to a local hospital, by his killer!
P.S Tough Guy Biff Elliot as Ruth's lover Jimmy McLain was the original brutal and no holds barred private eye Mike Hammer in his, Mike Hammer's, movie debut in the 1953 film "I the Jury". During the Perry Mason episode when asked why he wanted to see the late Walter Prescott Biff or Jimmy McLain, kept on saying I didn't want to hurt him I just wanted to talk to him that's all. In knowing Biff's reputation as a tough guy who doesn't take no for an answer I just wonder what kind of civil and friendly conversation he would have had with him if the two ever met!
