- When Perry Mason finds some fans and shoes that belong to a fan dancer, he places an ad that several people mistake for a missing horse. Not only does another fan dancer show up, but so does her husband...dead, leaving Perry confused.
- After a robbery attempt at the Callender ranch, a shot is fired at the robber leaving on a horse. Later, Perry and Della, returning to Los Angles, witness a car turnover. Perry collects a box of possessions which contains a couple of ostrich feathers and a pair of shoes with the initials LF. He places a blind ad in the paper that brings first John Callender and then Arthur Sheldon followed by Cherie Chi-Chi looking for a seven year old palomino horse. The horse used in the robbery attempt belonged to Lois Fenton who is married to John Callender. Perry learns Cherie is a fan dancer who took over the name and act of Lois Fenton when Fenton married. Lois' brother is thought to have tried to steal some checks Callender is holding over Fenton. Sheldon, trying to help Lois, took a hotel room across from Callender. Perry has him leave and Paul's men take over watching Callender's room. When Perry and Paul try to contact Callender, they find him stabbed with his own sword. Perry's case is looking difficult as Paul's men are identifying Lois as visiting Callender last.—Anonymous
- At night, a man on horseback rides up to the house at the Callender Ranch. He goes through a window and goes to a wall safe. A watchman sees his flashlight and shouts "Who's there?" The would-be burglar flees on his horse, and the watchman shoots at him. The next day, Perry and Della are driving home when they see an old car forced to crash by a reckless driver. They help an old woman out, but have trouble aiding her because she only speaks Spanish. A bilingual driver stops to assist, and takes her off to the hospital before Perry can get more information or give the woman the contents of her car. These prove to be an ostrich-feather fan with the initials "L.F." and a pair of high-heeled shoes. The woman in the car was certainly no fan dancer, so Perry assumes she must have been delivering it to someone else.
To keep this from getting too confusing, it needs to be noted now that two women bear the legal name Lois Fenton and stage name Cherie Chi Chi. The one who was born Lois Fenton (Susan Cummings) is always referred to as Lois in the episode. The one who was born Irene Kilby (Judy Tyler) and later changed her name to Lois Fenton is called Irene in court but otherwise is always called Cherie Chi Chi, so that name will be used here.
The next day, rancher John Callender (Hugh Sanders) arrives at Perry's office in response to an ad in the paper: "If the 'fan dancer' who lost certain property wishes to recover it, write to Box #9052, L.A., Cal." Callender explains how he tricked the paper's ad office into revealing Perry's identify and produces a letter from "Lois Fenton, stage name Cherie Chi Chi" authorizing Callender to pick up her property. He describes the property as a palomino quarter horse, which of course Perry says is completely wrong. Callender accuses him of a shakedown, and gives Perry until the next morning to surrender the horse. He's staying in Room 511 at the Richmel Hotel. Gertie (Connie Cezon) enters with a note from Arthur Sheldon (Scott Elliott), who's also looking for a horse belonging to "the real Lois Fenton". He wants Perry to come to Room 510 at the Richmel.
That evening, Perry and Della are at a club where Cherie Chi Chi is doing her fan dancing act. She comes to their table, and Perry says what he found wasn't a horse. She correctly describes the fan and shoes, so he agrees that the waiter can pick them up for her from Perry's car. She kisses him and leaves. Perry goes to the Richmel to see Arthur. Lois is hiding in the bathroom. Arthur says that Lois is married to Callender, but he mistreated her and she's left him. To force her back, the rancher says he has checks that her brother Jasper (John Brinkley) forged. The burglary at Callender Ranch was a botched attempt to retrieve the checks. Jasper stole Lois' horse for the effort, and the watchman is sure that his shot wounded the animal. Callender wants the horse so he can accuse Jasper of burglary. Perry orders Arthur to check out of the room immediately and bring Lois to his office the following day.
Perry calls Paul and tells him to put a man in Room 510 immediately and have another tail Arthur. Also, he needs Paul to start looking for the missing horse. The next morning, Perry and Paul knock on Callender's door. They get no answer, but the room is unlocked. Callender has been run through with a sword. Returning to 510, Paul calls the police, and Perry gets a report from Paul's man, Frank Faulkner (Robert Bice): He arrived at 2:20, but Arthur hadn't checked out yet, so he bribed Meeker the house detective (James Nolan) to let him hide in a broom closet. As he did so, Arthur ran out of Room 511 back to 510. At 2:23, a woman carrying a violin case went into 511 and came out at 2:32, still with the violin case. Later, a "character" wearing a buttoned-up overcoat in midsummer went into 511 and popped out again ten seconds later. When Lt. Tragg arrives, Paul goes to him and says he happened to have the room under surveillance. Tragg immediately thinks this is a Perry Mason case, and Paul grudgingly confirms Perry's interest, but states he doesn't know where Perry is at the moment. Tragg warns Paul that is Perry is holding back information, he'll throw the book at both of them. Tragg then marches over to 510, but Perry has already left.
Perry meets Della at a diner and warns her that Tragg has a man following him. The lieutenant thinks Lois killed Callender and Perry is harboring her. Della reports that Paul has found the horse. Perry tells Della to have Lois meet him at a record shop later. He next visits Cherie at her apartment. She explains that she received the Cherie Chi Chi act when Lois retired to marry Callender. She made herself as much like Lois as possible with clothes, etc., and even changed her legal name. She insists she visited Room 511 at 2 AM, not 2:23, to show him that Perry had returned her fan. However, Callender still thought Perry had the horse. At the record shop, Perry finally meets Lois face-to-face. She admits to hiding from Perry when he visited Arthur, and after he left impulsively going over to 511 to tell her husband she'd "get back" at him if he kept making trouble. When he laughed at this, she got frightened, ran out of the room and down the stairs, and did not return to the hotel that night. She also explains that at the time she left Callender, she intended to go back to fan dancing, as she'd made an agreement with her replacement that she could re-assume the Cherie Chi Chi act whenever she wanted. Unfortunately, the rancher had the only copy of that agreement. Perry, not wanting her to give the appearance of hiding, tells her to check into a motel near where Starlight is now stabled. In the flight from the burglary attempt, the horse only suffered a scratch, because the bullet went into the saddle.
Later, Perry and Lois visit the stables, and Perry has the stable hand (Dennis Moore) put the saddle in his car. Lois says that Arthur rented a room at a cheap boarding house as a place for Jasper, but he never appeared, so Arthur went there when he left the Richmel. He found a bloody fan there. When Lois arrived, she tried to wash it out and then threw it away. Perry thinks she's holding back from him, and decides they should go to the police. While he's dealing with stable paperwork, Lois rushes to his car and drives off.
The next day's newspaper headline reveals that she's been arrested, and things look bad for her. The police have two witnesses, house detective Meeker and Paul's operative Faulkner, who identified Lois as the woman who entered Room 511 at 2:23. Jasper has confessed that he took Starlight and attempted the burglary. The police have the saddle with the bullet. A bellboy says he saw the sword among Callender's possessions when he checked into the Richmel, so Jasper couldn't have seen and grabbed it and used it to stab Callender during his ten-second stay in the room. The police found Cherie, assured themselves that it wasn't her but Lois that the two witnesses identified, and released her.
In court, Dr. Lambert (Herbert Lytton) testifies that he found portions of an ostrich plume in Callender's stab wound. Meeker testifies that he saw Lois in the lobby at 2:20 - he pointed her out at the police shadow box. Faulkner explains the workings of the shadow box (basically an early version of the one-way mirror) and says that he, too, identified Lois - both times. Questioned by Perry, Faulkner says that Lois was very sulky the first time in the shadow box and that Sgt. Holcomb (Rusty Wescoatt) had them repeat the identification 20 minutes later. When court is recessed, Lois confirms that she was taken into the shadow box twice, but firmly denies that she was sulky the first time. Faulkner, feeling guilty for being forced to testify against the people he's working for, gives Perry a tip: Cherie is being voluntarily held in police custody.
When the trial resumes, Perry complains to the judge (Sydney Smith) that Cherie is being held incommunicado. Burger claims he has the right to hold material witnesses and doesn't even have to prove that he'll actually call them. However, he does agree to produce Cherie. Meanwhile, Jasper testifies that he did see the dead Callender when he popped into room 511. He told no one at the time, but the next day he went to the police and gave them a written statement. When Cherie enters the courtroom, the judge has her and Lois stand side-by-side. They clearly aren't identical twins, but look very similar in a general way. As Perry begins to question Cherie about the shadow box, Burger objects, and Perry explains to the judge what happened. The police had arrested Cherie under her new legal name of "Lois Fenton", and it was she whom Faulkner and Meeker identified on the first time in the shadow box. Realizing their mistake, they had the witnesses come back and make the identification again, this time with the original Lois. Finally, they had Lois come back again to the shadow box, with no identifying witnesses, just so she would confirm that she'd gone there twice. Burger catches Sgt. Holcomb before he can leave the court and vows to get to the bottom of this. In any case, Perry can now continue his examination of Cherie. She testifies that she's the one who entered Room 511 at 2:23, but Callender was already dead. Jasper's earlier ten-second visit to the room tends to confirm this. The judge says that unless Burger has some refuting evidence, he'll direct the jury to acquit.
Later, at a club, Perry admits that lawyers can get too cynical about their clients. He would have been better off if he'd believed from the first everything Lois told him. He explained that around 2 AM, Callender was showing Jasper the fan, illustrating that's what Perry had found so the horse (and the threat it represented to Jasper) still remained to be found. As the rancher held the fan in front of him, Jasper took up the sword and stabbed him right through the fan. He came back later to remove the fan, having realized that it could incriminate his sister. Arthur's peculiar movements that night were also just an attempt to deflect the police from Lois. Cherie had spent ten minutes in a room with a murdered man looking for that agreement that she'd relinquish the fan dancing act to Lois. As the night club act comes on - we see it's now Lois - the waiter delivers a memento from her to Perry - an ostrich-feather fan.
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