When Lieutenant Poole and his assistant Costigan find the body of Stanley Whittaker holding a gun and a typewritten confession of guilt in a $75,000 embezzlement scheme, their first assumption is suicide. After examining the evidence more closely, however, they conclude that Whittaker was murdered and arrest their prime suspect, James Trent, the vice-president of the Whittaker Textile Corporation, whose gun delivered the fatal shot. In court, several witnesses, including Paula Young, Whittaker's secretary, who is in love with James, give testimony concerning James's activities on the day of the murder. Although Paula admits that she knew that Whittaker had bribed the company accountant, Henshaw, to redo the books so that the embezzled funds would show up in James's department, she fails to mention that she was in the office on the night of the murder. She also neglects to say that Connie Trent, James's daughter, had come to her apartment that same night, after nearly running off to ...