Double Alibi

Stephen Wayne becomes the target of a police manhunt when his estranged wife is murdered and his briefcase is found at the scene of the crime. Trying to escape the police web, Stephen poses as Chick Lester, a well-known crime reporter from Kansas City, and gets away with the deception until Sue Carey, the newspaper's health columnist and an aspiring reporter, discovers his true identity. Confronted by Sue, Stephen explains to her that he went to visit his wife in response to her call for help, but when he arrived at the house, he heard gunshots and found his wife dead. When Stephen says that he suspects Lennie Noland, his wife's gangster friend, of the murder, Sue introduces him to Dan Kraley, a bartender who knows Noland. Kraley leads them to Noland's apartment, where they find the just released ex-convict badly beaten and the inquisitive police captain Orr standing over him. Suspecting that Noland killed Mrs. Wayne while trying to recover stolen payroll money that he had hidden at the Wayne house, Sue and Stephen go to the house to investigate but find nothing. With the arrival of the real Chick Lester, things look bleak for Stephen, who decides to pay another visit to Kraley. When Kraley is found murdered, Stephen is accused of that crime too, and he pays a desperate visit to Noland in the hospital. There, he is captured by Captain Orr, who charges him with Noland's death. Stephen escapes and seeks refuge at Sue's apartment, where he realizes that he has fallen in love with her. Accompanied by Sue and newspaper photographer Jeremiah Jenkins, Stephen goes to the police station and turns over the stolen payroll and the murder gun. Using Jenkins' photographs of the bullet, Stephen then proves that that the real murderer was Orr, who killed the victims in order to erase his connections with them and a robbery committed years earlier.