A physician, whose license has been revoked, poses as a practicing doctor aboard a train passing through Arizona. His presence there is part of a caper involving a fictitious patient, on whose behalf he gains access to his checked baggage, including his physician’s “black bag,” in the baggage car, whereupon he blows and then robs the safe. Then he arranges for both the fictitious patient, which he claims is infected with a communicable disease which poses an immediate and extremely serious public health risk, and himself to leave the train, presumably departing for the closest hospital, which is also far from any scheduled train stop, the two thereby escaping with $500,000 in an ambulance. The railroad officials do not discover the robbery until the train reaches Phoenix, many hours after their escape has been effected.
In response, the insurance company puts the protagonist, Charlie Norman, on the case, forcing him to postpone his previously scheduled vacation to Mexico. Joe Armstrong, an old friend who is the investigator for the railroad, works with him. Gradually evidence starts to turn up that the thieves ditched the ambulance and escaped in a rented helicopter. The scheme was thus elaborate, showing that the robbery had been carried out according to a strict timetable. But there was one misstep that kept it from being the perfect crime. As the investigators pursue this misstep, the intended timetable starts to unravel and the audience suddenly discovers who the secret mastermind is.
Finally, as the American and Mexican authorities begin to close in, the mastermind pulls his last clean-escape opportunity from his sleeve, only to have his well-intentioned wife pull a practical joke on him, in the process making a duplicate key to his locked attache case and substituting vacation travel magazines for his work papers only to discover that the robbery money is in his case, which she immediately returns, anonymously, to the railroad, thereby completely foiling what had started out to be “the perfect crime.”
Directed by Mark Stevens, produced by Mark Stevens, written by Aben Kandel (screenplay) and Robert Angus (story), starring Mark Stevens as Charlie Norman, King Calder as Joe Armstrong, Felicia Farr as Linda Brucker, Marianne Stewart as Ruth Norman, Wesley Addy as Dr. Paul Brucker, Alan Reed as Al Wolfe, Rodolfo Hoyos Jr. as Lt. Castro, Jack Klugman as Frankie Page and John Marley as Bobik