In The Man Behind the Frame, George Valentine receives an urgent call from Vic Burnett, who is desperate for help. A young clerk named Lawrence Ferguson, who had just arrived in the city for a convention, is arrested for the murder of a woman named Sally Pfeiffer. Lawrence is a shy, inexperienced office worker from Emmitsville, and the circumstances surrounding the murder are murky at best. George learns that Lawrence was found trying to escape from the scene, and with a dead woman in the picture, the evidence seems stacked against him.