Set in New York City during the 1930s, the film follows Albert 'Al' Douglas, portrayed by Robert Taylor, a bank employee who pockets $200,000 from Seacoast National Bank. He tells Edward Swain, George Irving, the bank's president, that the money was squandered on gambling, but the truth is that the cash lies buried in a suitcase across the river in New Jersey. Convicted of grand larceny, he accepts a five-to-ten-year term, planning to be a model inmate and to serve the minimum so he can one day retrieve the loot and live in luxury.
Inside prison, his resolve begins to waver as his cellmate, Louie, Al Hill, talks about how fortunes shift once the doors swing open and how nothing outside the walls ever stays put. Those conversations sow doubt in Douglas about the permanence of his plans, and he reluctantly agrees to a daring escape with Louie, disguising themselves as a priest and as another regular visitor. The plan works, and the two men slip away.
After the breakout, the two go their separate ways to complicate the pursuit. Louie heads to an undisclosed location in New York, while Douglas heads to Canada to alter his appearance and throw investigators off his trail. In Toronto, Douglas stages a staged accident and burns his face with nitric acid, a decision that leads to extensive surgery and leaves him disfigured—scar tissue, grafts, and stitches shaping his new look. Once released from the hospital, he leaves Canada, retrieves the suitcase full of cash, and heads back toward the shore of his old life, moving toward New York City to catch a ship bound for Europe.
Back in the United States, two of his Canadian friends who helped during the recovery period spot him and coax him into a taxi. He refuses the ride, but they insist, and the taxi drops him off at the Seacoast National Bank. There, in the bank’s president’s office, Douglas is confronted by the same circle of people who have been tracking him all along. The bank president explains that the entire escape was a calculated ruse—an arrangement by the bonding company to recover the stolen funds. Agents included some prison staff, his Canadian friends, and Louie, who have been shadowing Douglas the entire time.
The film closes with Douglas, now horribly scarred, staring straight into the camera as he learns that he must return to prison to serve the maximum sentence with no possibility of parole. It’s a stark, unsettling ending that underscores the futility of his attempts to outrun justice and the chilling precision of the scheme that finally catches up with him. The story blends contemporary crime with a steady, restrained mood, painting a portrait of a man who believes he can rewrite his fate but discovers that some consequences are inescapable.
