Mike Hammer Letter Edged in Blackmail (1958–1959) Online

***SPOILERS*** Private eye Mike Hammer, Darren McGavin, sensing that something isn't quite kosher in the hotel restaurant, and it isn't the food, when he spots Steve Lewis, Stacy Harris, swiping a diamond necklace off the table that Margaret Green,Fay Baker, was dining at. Hammer then goes to work working over Lewis until the hotel manager Mr.Ryan,John Gallaudet, arrives to stop Hammer from putting Lewis into a coma. As it turned out Lewis explained that he was only taking Mrs. Green's necklace to the jewelers to repair it. With Mr. Green collaborating Lewis story Hammer and the hotel now faces a major lawsuit for roughing up Lewis and almost putting him into the hospital.

Hammer feeling that all this was some kind of payoff on Mrs. Green's part refuses to let it go and starts to hound Lewis as well as the man he found out that he works for big time gambler Carl Reuter, Herbert Rudley. As Hammer soon found out that Mrs. Green was deep in the hole playing the horses with Rudley and was using her jewelry to both pay him back as well as get the insurance money is claiming that it were stolen. That's like killing two birds with one stone on Mrs. Green's part. That's until she was pushed down a flight of stairs by Lewis breaking her neck.

****MAJOR SPOILERS**** It's Mrs. Green's good friend and fellow gambler Lucille Heart, Angie Dickerson,who volunteers to help Mike Hammer crack the case instead of cracking any more skulls that up until then got him nowhere. Falling at first for the sexy Lucille Heart in thinking she's on the up and up things soon go downhill when she shows her true colors! Hammer was soon on to her and the hoods that she worked for Reuter & Lewis when she tired to set him up. Knowing what she was planning to do Mike Hammer just played along with Lucille until he got all three together in the same hotel room before he lowered the boom on them.