In a secluded alley late one night he fatally shoots a bookmaker in the back and steals his $25,000.

Barney takes his girlfriend, Patty Winters, to see a new house that is for sale, in which he suggests the two of them could have a happy life.

When he returns the two have a romantic moment; it is insinuated he asked Patty to marry him and, through a later conversation with Mark, it is clear that she said yes.

Packy Reed, the dead man's boss, sends private investigators Fat Michaels and Laddie O'Neil to tell Barney he wants to see him.

He repeatedly attempts to reach Patty on the phone and, when he finally does, she reveals that Michaels and O'Neil had approached her menacingly.

Mark, having regained consciousness, takes the notepad with Sturnmuller's account to his boss, Gunnarson, who initiates a manhunt.

Through a shady acquaintance, he arranges to flee to Buenos Aires, but when he goes to pick up the ticket at a crowded swimming pool, he finds he has been set up - a bandaged Michaels is there.

Barney himself had been attempting a swindle, the "money he had handed over as payment for the getaway documents are newspaper clippings.

According to producer Aubrey Schenck the film "grossed a lot of money, you wouldn't believe how much; on television it's made a fortune.

It punctures a lot of the idyllic dreams about living in suburbia, as the cop's middle-class goals are made dirty.

He used this technique in his second to last feature, The Unearthly (1957), the horror film he designed, credited as "Daniel Hall".