Perry Mason is hired to protect Mae Farr from a presumed stalker, wealthy playboy Penn Wentworth. When Mason learns that Wentworth wants Mae for forging his name on a cheque, things get complicated. But fatal gunplay leaves Wentworth dead, Mae a wanted woman and Perry Mason in trouble.

Mason meets Mrs. Milfield, a barely distraught widow, and a slew of suspicious characters all intimately connected to a recently deceased, man murdered on someone else's yacht. It takes a sharp mind like Mason's, the savvy of his secretary Della Street, and the legwork of investigator Paul Drake to pull all the clues out of the water before the case sinks like a deadweight.