New York attorney Mark Latham is more devoted to his law practice than to his wife Erica. When Mark arrives two hours late for a dinner date on Erica's birthday, and then leaves her in the care of his chauffeur and private investigator, Steve, while he tracks down Benny Sarto, a witness he needs for a case, Erica decides to leave her husband. After trying to convince Erica to change her mind, Mark flies off to Washington, D. C. to help the government build a case against Gil Regan's crooked political machine. To neutralize Mark, Regan orders Benny to kill the attorney. When Mark returns home, Steve tells his employer that Erica has moved into her own apartment. Mark then visits Erica to plead his case, and while he is there, she receives a phone call from her date, Tony. After Mark returns home rejected and depressed, Steve suggests they go to a nightclub to forget their troubles. There they see Erica with Tony, and Steve discovers that Tony's last name is Clair and that he is an artist. Soon after, Tony and Erica leave the club and go to his studio. As Tony is about to propose to Erica, Julie Arden storms into the studio, jealous and drunk, and accuses Erica of stealing Tony from her. To avoid a scene, Tony takes Erica home, leaving Julie alone in the studio. In a rage, Julie raids the liquor cabinet and finds Tony's gun there. Meanwhile, Mark leaves the nightclub, finds Tony's address in the phone book and proceeds to the studio. He is followed by Benny, who is intent on carrying out Regan's orders. At Tony's apartment, Julie answers the door, gun in hand, and proclaims to Mark that she plans to shoot Tony. When Mark struggles with her for control of the gun, the weapon fires and Julie falls to the floor, dead. Benny listens from the hallway, and when Mark runs out the door and leaves his gloves behind, Benny picks them up and places them next to the weapon. Connie Mathews, a girl delivering Tony's laundry, passes Mark on the dimly lit stairway and mistakes him for Tony. She then proceeds to Tony's room and finds Julie's dead body. When Tony is arrested for Julie's murder, Erica begs Mark to defend him, and he agrees on the condition that she not implicate herself in the case and that she never see Tony again. At the trial, district attorney Branson, Mark's enemy, calls a haberdasher to the stand to testify that the fit of the gloves can identify them as Tony's. To counter the man's testimony, Mark pulls on the gloves and demonstrates that they fit him, too. Next, Ruby La Rue, a dancer whose dressing room faces Tony's studio, testifies that she heard Tony's voice threaten Julie on the evening of the murder. When Mark asks Tony to repeat the threat, however, Ruby recants her testimony, claiming the voice she heard was more educated, like that of Mark. As the trial proceeds, Benny sits in the courtroom, waiting to accuse Mark of murder. When Connie is called to the stand to swear that she passed Tony in the hallway, Mark discredits her by donning Tony's hat and coat to prove that Connie could have easily made a mistake in the dimly lit hallway. The image of Mark in a hat and coat jars Connie's memory, and she identifies Mark as the man she saw in the hallway. At that moment, Benny passes a note to Branson, who then moves to drop all charges against Tony and calls Benny to the stand. When Benny accuses Mark of murdering Julie and testifies that he stood in the hallway as the two argued, Mark charges Benny with perjury and tricks him into providing a set of fingerprints that will match the unidentified prints found in Tony's studio. Faced with the charge of perjury, Benny admits that he invented the story, and the judge drops all charges against Tony. On the drive home, Erica deduces that her husband was the mystery man, and Mark says that he plans to intimidate Benny into testifying against Regan. Appreciating what a clever man she has married, Erica kisses Mark.