Private Detective Philo Vance gets involved with a succession of murders and a mystery concerning the disappearance of an emerald that has been smuggled into the United States.

A crusading district attorney tries to stop a local mob boss who has connections in high places.

Ship engineer Jim Taggert is rescued from a torpedoed tramp steamer by Joe Morgan, an American gangster that found New York too hot for him, and has become a fisherman operating from an out-of-the-way island off of the coast of South America. Morgan makes his headquarters at the Halfway House run by the parents of Maria Styx as a bar and dance resort catering to the planters and traders of the island. Taggert finds himself practically a prisoner along with a group of American girls acting as entertainers at the resort. Taggert shadows Morgan in his activities in a remote cove and finds that Morgan is supplying German U-boat commanders with torpedoes, but does not know that Morgan has rigged the torpedoes with clock devices that explode when at sea and sinks the U-boats.

Saved from a lynching party by a pair of young women, an itinerant cowpuncher signs on as a stagecoach guard to protect a shipment of gold.

An undercover Army captain links missing gold and murder to a gambler's ghost.

Various performers and backstage crew come under suspicion when a dancer is found murdered at a burlesque theatre.

Both Indians and cowboys are after a beautiful stallion, the leader of a pack of wild horses.

A dark night in war time, with several black-outs, it's just a night for murder. Susan Cooper, a fast-talking girl reporter, doubles as amateur sleuth solving yet another mystery among Hollywood's famous.

Pretty girl in need of money for her dying mom's operation poses for a sculpture.

A town is shocked when a high school girl commits suicide. A reporter and a cop team up to investigate and find out exactly what is going on among the youth of the town.