When news reporter Walter Garrett (Wayne Morris) arrives at the hotel room of bombshell actress Angela Merrova (Lya Lys) to conduct an interview, he finds her dead from multiple stab wounds. He returns with police to find the hotel empty and the body vanished. Garrett writes about the incident, but is fired when Merrova, alive and well, goes to the paper to complain. Now his only chance to get his job back is to find the truth, which involves the grisly scheme of a madman (Humphrey Bogart).