A hired gunman inadvertently targets an undertaker as his next victim, who talks the killer into leaving the undertaker's business card whenever he does his next job.

Don Gallico is an inventor of stage magic effects who aspires to become a star in his own right. Just before his first performance his act is shut down by capricious manager Ross Ormond who wants Gallico's brilliant buzz saw effect for the act of The Great Rinaldi, an established star. With this defeat, and the humiliation of having already lost his wife Claire to Ormond, Gallico decides it is time to take matters into his own hands.

Mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder has rented a country house called "The Oaks", which not long ago was the scene of some murders committed by a strange and violent criminal known as "The Bat". Meanwhile, the house's owner, bank president John Fleming, has recently embezzled one million dollars in securities and has hidden the proceeds in the house, but is killed before he can retrieve it.

Charlie Chan, with son Jimmy on a week's pass from the Army, takes up a request for help at a castle-home, miles from anywhere in the American desert south-west and inhabited by an eccentric, reclusive historian and his wife, a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia. Once there, he finds the request's legitimacy denied by all who are present, but still necessary as one houseguest has already been murdered, the other guests are at each other's throat, and the Borgia-related chatelain is suspected...

When the elderly woman sponsoring a treasure hunt is murdered on board her docked ship, Charlie Chan must deal with a treasure map in four pieces, the ghost of a hanged pirate, a talking parrot, a recalcitrant sea captain and several suspicious passengers - and a second murder.

A wide-eyed working girl wins a $5,000 sweepstakes and plunges into the lush life of New York City, where she meets a bellboy who is more than he seems.

A polo-playing grandmother and her broke brood get back in the money with a Wall Street bet.

A divorced woman finds success as a fashion designer.

A bored couple facing middle-age succumbs to wandering eyes.

A couple can't make ends meet. He is an airplane mechanic and makes extra money testing planes. When the baby arrives things get better.