When the corpse of Windy Bennett, the womanizing publicist of the popular Broadway musical Forty Naughty Girls , is found in a dressing room during intermission, audience members Inspector Oscar Piper and his schoolteacher girl friend, Hildegarde Withers, abandon their seats and begin to investigate. After Oscar discovers that the show's author, Tommy Washburn, was paying blackmail money to Windy, who was aware of the fact that Tommy had stolen the musical from a dead writer, he concludes that Washburn is the murderer. However, before Oscar can arrest Washburn, he, too, is killed, and Jeff "Pop" Plummer, the propmaster whose stage gun fired the fatal shot, becomes the prime suspect. As Oscar and his bumbling assistant are about to take Jeff to jail, clumsy but clever Hildegarde stumbles across a letter from a private detective to "Ricky" Rickman, the show's producer, which reveals that Rickman knew about an affair that his fiancée and Windy were conducting. Deducing that a jealous Rickman murdered first Windy and then Tommy, who saw Rickman leaving the original crime scene, Oscar frees Jeff and arrests the producer.