John Leland is arrested for fatally stabbing Iris Jantzen, stepmother of his fiancee, Anne Kimbro, who engages Mason to save her beloved. With Della Street and Paul Drake, the attorney searches for facts to refute the mass of evidence against Leland. But information about an earlier murder in the same house where Iris was killed further incriminates the accused, who repeatedly disappears while shrewd Mason, preparing for the trial, looks elsewhere...

The bait is half of a $10,000 bill, delivered to Perry Mason by a man who promises the second half of the note should his companion, a silent masked woman, ever require the lawyer's services. When a dead body is discovered soon after, Mason feels the hook--but how can one prove the innocence of a person whose identity is unknown?

"Helen Kendal's woes begin when she receives a phone call from her vanished uncle Franklin, long presumed dead, who urges her to make contact with criminal defense attorney Perry Mason; soon after, she finds herself the main suspect in the murder of an unfamiliar man. Her kitten has just survived a poisoning attempt, as has her aunt Matilda, the woman who always maintained that Franklin was alive in spite of his disappearance. Lucky that Helen took...