A doctor's wife hires a private eye named Larry Morgan to find out what is distracting her husband. Morgan gives up on his first night surveillance of Doctor Swann shortly before the doctor gets murdered in an artist's studio. Morgan is alerted to the fact that a certain type of key has important bearing on the case. His attempt at tracking down the key coincides with other murders starting with that of Mrs Swann herself.
Kent Taylor is good as the private eye who manages not to fall for the many traps laid for him in most instances. He finds himself continually playing cat-and-mouse with all the suspects in his search for the key. My favorite sequence on that score is when he's revealing his fake dreams about the key to a fake psychiatrist who calls himself Dr Harlow. Milton Parsons playing 'Harlow' tells Morgan that the key in his 'dream' is actually the symbolic one to unlock his hidden desires. All the time they are trying to find out from each other how much the key is worth and where it can be found.
Apart from those two no other characters really roused my interest that much. But the range of suspects should keep you guessing. Morgan has to work out the sort of relationships that are going on between the suspects. Jealousy and avarice and blackmail rear their ugly heads in this mystery. I didn't detect the murderer myself so I have to recommend this as a whodunit generally.
