Ladies Love Danger

Before the final performance of a musical comedy at a New York theater, the cast and crew gossip about the evening news headline story that the star, ex-chorus girl Adele Michel, is about to marry the backer, Argentine millionaire Jose "Gardenia" Lopez. After stage manager Tom Lennox confronts Adele and threatens to tell Lopez about their romance, Adele gets a threatening letter from Lopez's daughter Helen accusing her of only wanting her father's money. Because his butler James has forgotten his daily gardenia, Lopez angrily sends him to purchase one and tells him that he is fired as of the next day. Lopez then resumes a meeting with a jeweler named Melvin and accuses him of selling an imitation pearl necklace. Lopez telephones police lieutenant Roberts, but in the midst of the call, Roberts hears two gunshots and the line goes dead. As James returns with the gardenia, he sees a woman at the doorway of Lopez's apartment. Seeing James, the woman walks to a room down the hall and feigning that she is dizzy from a hangover, tells the man in the room, playwright Ricardo "Ricky" Alonzo, that she is looking for the triplets whom she met on an ocean liner the day before. After Lopez is found dead, Roberts, an old friend of Ricky's, suggests that they attempt to solve the case together. When Roberts leaves, Ricky questions the mysterious woman. She explains that she came to the wrong building and that after James saw her looking at the dead man, she went to Ricky's door because she did not wish to be involved. Although Ricky does not believe the woman, to whom he is attracted, he decides to keep her with him as he investigates. After attending a party at the theater where Helen slaps Adele, Ricky and the woman, whom he introduces to others as Rita Witherspoon, find James at a small sandwich shop, and he reveals that he heard Helen threatened her father during a quarrel. Back at the apartment, Ricky and Rita go out to the terrace and, while looking through the glass door into Lopez's apartment, see leading man Phil Morton inside. After Ricky learns that Phil and Helen married in secret six months ago, he lets Phil leave with letters Phil came to retrieve. The next day, Ricky finds that Rita has left the room in his apartment in which she slept. After Adele is found stabbed to death, Ricky discovers Rita in a freight elevator at Adele's apartment building. Rita reveals that she is really a London newspaperwoman specializing in mystery stories and that she came to New York for material. When Lennox, in hiding, calls and requests Ricky to meet him right away, Ricky handcuffs Rita to his valet Giffens. Lennox, who says he is afraid of a police third degree, states that he went to tell Lopez about his affair with Adele and that he heard shots as he approached the study. He also states that Melvin was in the apartment. Thinking that Lennox is lying, Ricky phones the police, but Lennox pulls a gun and escapes through a window. At the theater, Ricky finds Phil looking for Helen. After they discover Giffens and Rita snooping, they find Helen bound and gagged in a closet. Phil takes her home, while Ricky finds Lennox asphyxiated in a car parked nearby. Ricky climbs to the roof of the theater and discovers that he can get to the terrace of his apartment building from there. He then finds Rita perusing papers in Lopez's desk, and she shows him a hidden drawer containing a will drawn to disinherit Helen. Phil approaches with a gun and confesses that he killed Lopez when he learned Helen was disinherited, but that Lennox saw him and told Adele. They planned to blackmail him and kidnapped Helen to force him to pay. After he also admits killing both Adele and Lennox and threatens now kill Ricky and Rita, she screams, allowing Ricky to struggle and get the gun. Rita then disappears. Sometime later, Ricky opens his door to find Rita in his room having drinks with the three triplets from the boat.