Following a long investigation, Police Detective-Lieutenant Anthony "Tony" Roberts becomes convinced that there is some powerful unknown-master-mind leader behind the gangs of crooks who are terrorizing the city, and it has something to do with paroled convicts. He sets up a scheme with his supervisor to have himself shamed by being demoted to a patrolman and then caught in the act of receiving bribe-money from a racketeer. He is convicted and sent to prison, and the manner in which his parole is arranged leads him, dangerously, to the secret-head of the gang.

An ad man gets his model girlfriend to pose as a debutante for a new campaign.

A temperamental singer's murder leaves a nightclub full of suspects.

U. S. Customs Agent Tom Evans is given the assignment of running down a smuggling ring which hijacks Canadian fur-shipper's trucks and sells the loot in the United States.

A radio reporter does a story on the infidelity and divorce of a wealthy and powerful businessman. The man invites the reporter to his mansion for a chat, but when he gets there, he finds that the businessman has been murdered--and that now he himself is on the killer's hit list.

When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.

Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.

A British doctor and his son's Austrian governess have an affair and are accused of killing his wife.

A London artist struggles to complete one last painting before going blind.

Robert Louis Stevenson's hero David Balfour joins rebel Alan Breck Stewart in 18th-century Scotland.