A child has been kidnapped. His father, Evan Kiley, a newspaper reporter, telephones the home of the Wintons, a well-to-do family whose daughter had been abducted a year or so earlier. The Wintons paid and their child was restored to them; they did not call the police. Now Kiley blames this decision for his son`s abduction, and George Winton feels guilty. Perhaps if Winton had notified the authorities, the criminals would have been caught. So he agrees to help Kiley, and gradually the two are drawn together in a plot to thwart the kidnappers and get the boy back. But something goes wrong and a murder is committed.