In the slums, teenager Frankie Warren hangs out with a rowdy gang who one day knock him out in a fight. In court, the boys refuse to reveal who struck the knockout blow, and all are subsequently sentenced to a reformatory, cruelly run by two corrupt guards. New deputy commissioner Mark Braden arrives determined to change things, but despite the help of Frankie's sister, Mark's reform plans -- and Frankie's future -- may be sabotaged from within.

Larry Nelson, paroled from prison after serving nearly half of his thirty-year sentence, is determined to not fall into the clutches of the law again, and takes a quiet job at a country sanitarium. Thete, he meets and falls for a nurse, Charlotte Maynard, and he knows the only way to enter her web is to have a lot of money, for Miss Maynard is somewhat of a gold-digger. There is a $1,000,000 robbery of an armored car, and one of the robbery gang turns up at the sanitarium. So Nelson works a money-making, shady deal with an inmate, but soon finds himself a clay pigeon for other members of the gang. Meanwhile,sweet-and-wholesome nurse, Ann Taylor, is doing her best to make Larry see he needs to take another direction.

A fact-based story about a man who posed as an American Communist for years as part of a secret plan to infiltrate their organization.