Roadblock

Insurance investigator Joe Peters (Charles McGraw) and his partner Harry Miller (Louis Jean Heydt) solve a lucrative recovery case and prepare to fly home. Joe meets and gets played by Diane (Joan Dixon) at the airport. Lacking enough money to fly on her own, she pretends to be his wife without his knowledge in order to get half fare on her ticket. They wind up assigned to the same hotel room after a storm forces an unscheduled stop due to stormy weather. An uneasy détente develops. Joe is attracted to the comely but diffident Diane, despite his dislike for "chiselers." She makes it quite clear she loves the finer things in life, which "Honest Joe" (as Diane calls him) cannot possibly afford on his small salary of $350 per month. They part uneasily when they reach Los Angeles. He tries to keep in touch but she is evasive, though she kisses him before they part. When Joe and Harry are assigned to check out the prime suspect in a string of fur robberies, racketeer Kendall Webb (Lowell Gilmore), Joe runs into Diane, who has become Webb's mistress. Their mutual attraction flares up; she kisses him again. In a fever, Joe gives in to temptation. He visits her apartment where she makes it plain she isn't attracted to him unless he is richer. So, in order to finance a hoped-for dream life and a mink coat for Diane, he decides to use inside information on a cash shipment of $1.25 million to set up a robbery for Webb in return for one-third of the take. Unaware of the deal and disillusioned at being a kept woman, Diane decides that her love for Joe is greater than her avarice. When she tells Joe she wants to get married, he tries to back out with Webb. However, Webb convinces him that Diane might not feel the same after a few months living on his paltry pay. The railway mail car robbery is successful, but a railroad employee is injured and later dies, turning charges to include murder. The robbery coincides with Joe and Diane's honeymoon in a mountain cabin, giving him an alibi. One of the robbers is identified and arrested. With the investigation encroaching, Joe confesses to Diane what he has done. And she begins to worry. He returns to work when requested by his boss. Back in Los Angeles, he gets involved in his company's investigation of the train robbery as they get closer to solving it. Desperate, Joe arranges to meet Webb on a desolate stretch of highway by telling him he has a plan to get them out of their mess. Instead, he knocks Webb out and stages a car accident in which Webb is killed and his share of the money partially burned, hoping to take suspicion from himself. He then mails some of Webb's share of the stolen money to Webb's widow. His insurance company then estimates money recovered to be two-thirds. Harry figures out that his partner is involved and confronts him, pleading with him to turn himself into the police. Though Joe tries to deny it, his partner arrests him. Cornered, Joe runs and tries to flee to Mexico with Diane, but is tracked down in his vehicle by the Los Angeles police. The finale occurs at the paved Los Angeles riverbed. As Joe drives furiously away, the police give chase. He forces Diane from the car, telling her to go to Texas, where an ex-boyfriend lives, and drives away. He then stops, trying to escape, but is confronted by his investigator partner Harry. But Joe refuses to surrender. He points his gun at a policeman, forcing him to kill him. Diane is there to cradle him as he dies from his gunshot wound. Before he dies, he chides her to leave for Texas from where she had received an offer of marriage.