The Quick Return

Synopsis

Shady millionaire investor Victor Shaw arrives in Honolulu to bid for a public works project. Reporters at the airport note that commission member Charles Germane is on hand to greet him. While explaining to columnist Roy Hondine his operating methods, Shaw is distracted by a typewritten death threat. Showing it to his public relations manager, Jerry Jackson, Shaw orders him to get police protection. Instead, Jackson hires old buddy Tracey Steele to guard his boss, and more importantly, a notebook on his dirty deals that Jackson uses as insurance to safeguard his own life.

Tracey Steele surprises Victor Shaw's secretary Celia Lewin in a passionate embrace with his right-hand man, George Nolen. Shaw wants Steele to find the notebook for him, but an intruder apparently has stolen it from the suite occupied by Jackson and his wife Alma. Steele suspects Nolen has stolen the notebook, and enlists Cricket and cabbie Kim to keep tabs on him. Kim drives Nolen to a rendezvous at a local church where he secretly weds Celia Lewin. Back at the Hawaiian Village Hotel, Shaw demands the notebook from Jackson, or else.

At a luau that evening Shaw fires his three employees. Jackson disappears on a bender, but Shaw also leaves the party. He is later found murdered, with Jackson as a prime suspect. Commissioner Germane tells Tracey Steele that he wrote the phony death threat to scare Shaw away from Honolulu, but it backfired. Meanwhile, Nolen and his new wife take over the Shaw empire by telephone. Steele locates Jackson in a flophouse, and with his help lures the real killer into the open.

Series regulars

Recurring characters

Guest stars

Musical interlude

All the Warner Brothers detective shows of the late 1950s and early 1960s had one or more musical interludes written into the teleplay. For this episode, Connie Stevens sang "Softly, As in an Evening Sunset" with the Shell Bar band accompanying her.