- Nadine, a demure young woman, confesses to her psychiatrist on tape under a truth serum that she poisoned her uncle. Evidence has been tampered with and planted, and Perry is in hot water as the police believe he is responsible.
- Young Nadine returns home with a gift for Capt. Hugo and a surprise - she is engaged to John Locke. Hugo tells her she should tell her uncle Martin Wellman. The cantankerous uncle tells her she can't get married and has her look at papers he threatens to show her fiancé. Nadine visits Locke in his lab where she steals some potassium cyanide pills while he is distracted. When she returns home, Martin is asking for his nightly hot chocolate. He has just told his other relative Marian Newburn and her husband Lester that they too have been cut out of his will. Nadine takes Martin his drink and is summoned again later to find him dying saying he was poisoned. Nadine goes under the care of a psychiatrist who recorded her confession under a truth serum. She says she poisoned her uncle and threw the evidence in a lake. The doctor takes the recording to Perry who talks to Nadine but soon finds himself the target of the police for interfering with evidence when he has a boy look for the bottle in the lake but it only has saccharin in it.—Anonymous
- Young Nadine Marshall (Christine White) returns home with a gift of tobacco for sea-captain-turned-handyman Capt. Hugo (Clem Bevans) and an engagement ring. She's to wed John Locke (Sherwood Price), who has a small chemical lab. Hugo tells her she should inform her uncle Martin Wellman (Alexander Campbell). The dictatorial uncle tells her she can't get married and has her look at papers he threatens to show her fiancé. With a nasty laugh he asks her "Do you plan to have a big family? What if the kids take after your side?" Nadine is reduced to tears. Later she visits John in his lab and tells him perhaps having a wife at this early stage in his career would be a burden. He reassures her that he loves her. While he's distracted, she steals some KCN (potassium cyanide) tablets, putting them in a saccharine bottle. After she leaves, John notices that his bottle of KCN has been moved.
When she returns home, Martin is asking for his nightly hot chocolate. He has spent the day with his lawyer and tells his other relative Marian Newburn (Fay Baker) and her husband Lester (Walter Coy) that he's going to leave all his money to the medical foundation that has been helping him. In the kitchen, Marian sees Nadine's "saccharine" bottle and sniffs it suspiciously. Elsewhere, Lester tells Nadine he was worried about her, but couldn't phone because Marian would misunderstand. When the hot chocolate is ready, Nadine takes it to her uncle. Soon she is summoned back to find him in death throes. He manages to say "You poisoned me, you devil!". Nadine screams.
Dr. Robert Denair (Barry Atwater), a psychiatrist, plays a tape recording of Nadine while under a truth serum. She talks about poisoning her uncle and throwing the pill bottle in Westside Lake after weighing it down with short from a shotgun shell. Denair has been treating her since three days after Uncle Martin's death, as she's been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Perry wonders if what she says under the drug is necessarily true. Furthermore, Martin's death certificate listed the cause of death as coronary thrombosis. Perry tells the doctor he's under an obligation to report a crime to the police, but if it turns out there is no crime, he could be sued. To be better able to advise the psychiatrist, Perry sees Nadine at the hospital. He takes the tape and tape recorder from Denair, so no one will stumble on them. As he leaves, Nurse Wilson (Lida Piazza), who knows all about Nadine's case, is on the phone, spilling the beans to Lt. Tragg.
At Westside Lake, Perry has a snack at a hotdog stand while two children are in the lake. One of them, Arthur (Rickie Sorensen), shouts "I found it!" and shows Perry a saccharine bottle. At an analysis lab, Perry instructs Arthur to hand the bottle to Dr. Korbell (Steven Geray), who will check the contents for cyanide. Perry returns to his office to learn that Nadine has disappeared from the hospital. Dr. Korbell calls, reporting that Tragg arrived to take the bottle. Now the police want Perry for evidence tampering, so Perry goes to Tragg's office with Arthur, who says that Perry never had possession of the bottle. When The lieutenant checks with the crime lab, which reports that the bottle only contained saccharine. Tragg lets Perry leave with the tape recorder seized from his office, but keeps the tape of Nadine.
At Perry's apartment, Paul reports that police divers have found another bottle in Westside Lake, and it does contain KCN. Tragg now thinks that Perry planted the bottle of saccharine to confuse things, as the lakeside hot dog vendor swears he saw Perry throw something in the lake. Perry and Della intercept John as he leaves a market with two bags filled with groceries. He denies that Nadine stole any KCN, but Perry warns him that Burger will break down any attempt to lie on the stand. Della says it's a shame he and Nadine aren't married, since a husband can't testify against his wife. As a police officer approaches, John suddenly gets in his car and speeds off.
At the Newburn house, Perry is talking to Lester, who lets slip that he knows two bottles were found in the lake, which hadn't been made public. He claims he planted the saccharine bottle because he felt sorry for Nadine. However, he vows that he won't repeat his admission, even on the witness stand. After Perry leaves, Marian snaps at her husband, showing her jealousy of Nadine. She reminds Lester that Martin left all his money to her. Paul has learned that the police caught Nadine and John at the Mexican border - they're not married. In jail, Nadine tells Perry that the papers with which Martin threatened Nadine's marriage showed that her father had been committed to an institution for the criminally insane. She told John about this when he insisted on trying to get a quicky marriage. He told her, as does Perry, that experts agree there's no such thing as a "bad seed" that she could have inherited. Nadine doesn't know what to believe.
On the witness stand in Nadine's trial, John tries to avoid perjury while not accusing Nadine of stealing KCN, but his prevarications are transparent. Martin's physician Dr. Granby (Maurice Manson) testifies that although he had put coronary thrombosis on the death certificate, mainly because Martin had a history of heart disease, he has changed his mind since the autopsy. He now believes the cause of death was poisoning. On cross, he admits that while the autopsy proved there wasn't a coronary, it couldn't actually confirm cyanide poisoning because the body had previously been embalmed. Other than lack of other explanation, the main reason to cite poisoning as cause of death was Nadine's taped confession. Perry says that means his testimony is hearsay.
The time has arrived to hear arguments on the admissibility of the tape, so the judge (Morris Ankrum) has the jury retire. Burger says a confession, no matter how obtained, is admissible as long as he can corroborate it with other evidence, which he proceeds to do. He introduces (A) a shotgun shell from which shot has been removed,; (B) the bottle containing KCN and shot, and (C) the bottle of saccharine, also with shot. Perry calls Lester to refute prosecution claims that the defense attorney planted Exhibit C. However, Lester denies everything, just as he said he would. Perry requests that he be allowed to take the stand to impeach his own witness. He's holding the two bottles and becomes absorbed in them until the judge calls him out of his reverie. Perry then withdraws his objection to admitting the tape, saying he doesn't want his client to be labelled a murderess who got off on a technicality. The judge says he can't just waive his client's right and asks Nadine if she'd prefer new representation. She says that she trusts Perry.
With the jury back, Perry points out that while the shot in the shotgun shell A and in the saccharine bottle C are the same type, the shot in the poison bottle B is larger. Sgt. Davis (Paul Hahn), a police ballistics expert, confirms this, saying that the shot in Exhibit B was coated with what appeared to be ink. Perry introduces an old-fashioned pen holder, which Paul had taken from Lester's house while Sgt. Davis was being summoned. This type of pen holder contains shot, which helps keep the pen clean. Back on the stand, Lester now admits to throwing the bottle of poison in the lake, to protect his wife, who was the murderer. Marian shouts "That's a lie!" Lester says that Capt. Hugo told him he saw Marian put the cyanide in the chocolate. Over Marian's continued protests, the judge orders her held on suspicion of murder and Lester arrested for perjury.
At the Wellman house, Perry accuses Capt. Hugo of being the murderer. John had called the house right after noticing that some KCN was missing and told Hugo about it. So the Captain knew about the poison Nadine had taken and put it in the chocolate. The old salt admits it. Della wonders why, if he was out to protect Nadine, he didn't come forward when she was arrested. He replies that he had faith in Perry. They need to turn Hugo in, but he figures that he'll still come out ahead.
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