Moving excitedly to the porch, she notices a man approaching - in the center of the frame - who slowly rides in from the desert in a mythic entrance - the man is framed between two distant buttes...Now once and for all David, nothing must interfere with your work.Our marriage must entail no domestic entanglements of any kind.David: You mean, you mean...Alice: I mean of any kind, David.David: Oh well, Alice, I was sort of hoping, well, you mean children and all that sort of thing?Alice: Exactly.She alerted him to the impromptu ""audition"" by promoting her niece""s professional dance experience: "I wouldn""t dream of boring you with the performance of an amateur.I must ask you to forgive their somewhat lackadaisical manners, but I have conditioned them - or brain-washed them, which I understand is the new American word.What is much more important than the basic blackmail-murder plot is the stylish method andprocessof the private detective""s quest, that the viewer identifies with and shares, as he makes his way through the murky world of nasty crime from one oppressive setting o the next, or from one wicked character, fallen woman, orfemme fataleto another, until eventually discovering love with his female protagonist.