Private detective Tim Slade (Don Castle) is hired by an old friend, newspaper editor Hugh Fresney (Lee Tracy), to protect him from a gangster (Anthony Warde), about whom the editor is planning an exposé. When the newspaper's publisher Clint Vaughn (Douglas Walton) is shot, Slade comes under suspicion by Inspector O'Haffey (Regis Toomey) because of his past association with Vaughn's wife (Julie Bishop) and when he is found at the scene of a second murder. Slade gets help from Vaughn's attractive secretary (Anabel Shaw). The entire story is told in flashback after an accident leaves Slade and Fresney pinned under a car at the seashore, with the incoming high tide about to engulf them.