***SPOILERS**** Some 20 years before Watergate and-60 years- before the latest Donald Trump foul mouth exposure on his views about women this "Man Against Crime" episode has these two corporate crooks Rex & Willie using a hidden or hot wire in order of trying to steal the blueprint, as well as the item itself, for a new electronic glass vacuum tube that can revolutionize the world of electronics and make them multi millionaires. And all they get to pay it's inventor John Dodge is a measly $10,000.00 for it! Using the most sophisticated audio equipment both Rex & Willie bug room 711 at the hotel that Dodge and his girlfriend Shelia Colby are staying at and find out that their on to something big. It's soon that Dodge gets a bit suspicious when the glass tube was taken from right under his nose at the hotel front desk by someone ,Rex, impersonating him!
It's then that he hires Mike Barnett to find out-Like Trump likes to say-what the heck is going on here in having his prized invention stolen from him by someone other then himself?! Barnett an electronic expert, he has a model train collection, as well as private detective has no trouble tracking down the leak or wire tap to Dodge's phone and then tries to catch Rex and Willie in the act making believe that he himself is John Dodge. With Barnett about to catch Rex red handed everything goes south with hotel bellboy Eddie-without him knowing it-spilling the beans and exposing Barnett for who he is: Not the inventor of the glass tube but undercover private investigator Mike Barnett!
***SPOILERS*** One of the few if only times in the entire series where someone -Willie-ends up getting killed in trying to escape justice. This was not because of Mike Barnett's actions-O heavens' no!-but in Willie taking off and trying to escape from the police ending up slipping and falling down a 50 story building to his death! When if he ware caught and tried in a court of law the most he could have gotten-like his fellow crook Rex-was 5 to 10 years behind bars! As for Mike Barnett he was so impressed with this new age electronics that he bought himself a bran new state of the art 30 pound cumbersome looking reel to reel tape recorder to record himself singing the latest Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra top 40 hits!
