Frank Powell, a high rolling executive in an international oil company, is convinced that he's got a lucrative deal and sells the company's oil stock to a group of trusting investors. He gets the shock of his life when he discovers that his business partners swindled everybody and that there will be no payout. One executive even kills himself out of despair and disgrace. To get Powell out of the way and collect on the life insurance, the crooked partners set the suicide up to look like murder and frame Powell. Facing the death penalty, his one hope for salvation rests with an unlikely alliance and a band of thieves. But can they find the one piece of evidence that can set him free - evidence that no one but the dead man knows exists?
Austrian director John H. Auer made his U.S. directorial debut with The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935), a horror film starring Erich Von Stroheim. John Wray appeared in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) as the drill instructor and portrayed the farmer threatening to kill Gary Cooper in Frank Capra's classic Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). He is also fondly remembered for his red-herring role as the mysterious Dr. Haines in the Michael Curtiz classic Dr. X (1932).