Question: Build a movie plot around this: Who used the investigation as a cover for their crime? Halliday
Answer:
Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) begins his tale by walking into a Los Angeles police station and telling a detective "I want to report a murder... mine." Oddly, the police almost seem to have been expecting him and already know who he is since there has been an APB on him since yesterday.A flashback begins with Bigelow in his hometown of Banning, California where he is an accountant and notary public. He decides to take a one-week vacation in San Francisco, but this does not sit well with Paula Gibson (Pamela Britton), his confidential secretary and girlfriend, as he does not want her to accompany him.Bigelow meets and accompanies a group of randy men from a sales convention on a night on the town. At a "jive" nightclub called "The Fisherman", unnoticed by Bigelow, a stranger swaps his drink for another. (The nightclub scene includes one of the earliest depictions of the Beat sub-culture). The next morning, Bigelow feels ill. He visits a doctor at the general hospital, where tests reveal he swallowed a poison called "luminous toxin" for which there is no antidote. A second opinion confirms the grim diagnosis, and the other doctor implies that the poisoning must have been deliberate. Bigelow remembers his drink tasted strange. He flees from the hospital in a panic, wondering who poisoned him and why.With just a day or two to live at most, Bigelow sets out to untangle the events behind his impending death, interrupted occasionally by phone calls from Paula, whom never finds out about the predicament that he is in. Paula provides the first clue: a man named Eugene Philips who had urgently been trying to contact Bigelow by phone for the past two days has died, purportedly a suicide. Bigelow travels to Philips' import-export company in Los Angeles, meeting a variety of suspicious characters. He first meets Miss Foster (Beverly Garland), Philips' secretary; then Mr. Halliday (William Ching), the company's comptroller, who tells him that Eugene Philips committed suicide after jumping out of a window from his...