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Margaret O'Dell, a blackmailing musical comedy star, is found strangled in her apartment, and four men come under suspicion:  Lindquist, a half-mad doctor in love with Margaret; Cleaver, a politician whose career she threatened; Mannix, a fat broker with a jealous wife; and Jimmy Spotswoode, a young society boy Margaret was attempting to blackmail into marriage.

Jimmy is arrested, and Philo Vance, a whimsical society man and amateur detective who is a close friend of Jimmy's father, is called in on the case.  Vance proves the murderer to have been the elder Spotswoode.