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.

Prof. Andrew Gentling, in Los Angeles to help found a new college, is inveigled by old flame Catherine Sykes into a midnight drive. Next day Catherine is missing, believed killed; friend Martha convinces Andrew that he's a prime suspect and should investigate before he's arrested. But this only puts Andrew in a more deadly kind of danger.