- Perry Mason: Why didn't you like Royce, Mr. West?
- Jim West: The theater is something very special to me, Mr. Mason. It's been my family, my home; everything I've ever wanted. When I'm inside a theater, I'm in a church. When I see a great play, I hear angels singing. When I see great performances, I'm walking the streets of Heaven. Those streets are very clean and beautiful, Mr. Mason. They should be kept that way.
- Perry Mason: I repeat - why didn't you like Ernest Royce?
- Jim West: He was a litterbug.
- [last lines]
- Paul Drake: Della.
- Della Street: Hmm?
- Paul Drake: You were kidding about flaming hamburgers on a sword?
- Della Street: No, I wasn't.
- Lt. Tragg: Perry... you take the hamburger. I'll eat the sword.
- John Gifford: Time and again he tortured me with this gun. Put in my hand, defied me to use it. But he knew I couldn't kill. That night I came back to plead with him about the play. He taunted me again. And this time the gun spoke out for me.
- Lt. Tragg: Better give it to me, Mr. Gifford.
- John Gifford: This gun has limited vocabulary, speaks one short word. Everything that is, is suddenly revised. What is becomes what was, and what might have been, can never be.
- Lt. Tragg: Please, Mr. Gifford, the gun.
- John Gifford: It has one more word to speak...
- Perry Mason: It would be the wrong word, Mr. Gifford. A tragic ending to a play based on an old and sad mistake. You know as well as I, it was not you who killed Royce.
- Lt. Tragg: You know it, heh... It's always easier for me if somebody says, uh, "What do you want?"
- Frank Brooks: Well, ten to one, it ain't a hamburger.
- Faith Foster: What do you want?
- Lt. Tragg: Thank you, miss.
- John Gifford: [On the witness stand, full of emotion, choking back tears of relief, speaking without a trace of humor] Thank you, Mr. Mason. You saved me from becoming a cheap, melodramatic anticlimax.
- [first lines]
- Ernest Royce: Steve says, "I know my people. I know the two faces of them. The faces they wear for the public, and the secret faces they show only to each other." Gilbert says, "Perhaps. We'll see. When do I get the last act?" And Steve says, "I'm starting it as soon as you leave. If I live to finish it." Steve opens the door for them, and they exit. Steve grins, sits at his desk, switches on the Dictaphone and begins to dictate. Third act. It's a few minutes after midnight as the curtain rises, but Steve gets no further. There's the sound of a shot, and Steve slumps over his typewriter, dead." Curtain falls on the second act. Any comments?