Former WWII bomber pilot and recent ex-mercenary flyer Steven Kenet [Robert Taylor] crashes his car into a river, attempting to cover up his wife's murder as a suicide. He survives but is sent to the county psychiatric hospital for evaluation to determine if he is sane enough to stand trial. He has no memory of what happened, the result of a pre-existing wartime brain injury aggravated by a crash in Burma.
At the hospital, Dr. Ann Lorrison [Audrey Totter] takes a genuine interest in his case, and in him. She explains that surgery could relieve Kenet’s brain injury, but he refuses to consent, stalling for time until he can clear himself and be able to take care of his six-year-old son. The medical team resists pressuring him, hoping to protect his rights while exploring every possibility.
Kenet’s fragile situation shifts when Lorrison informs him that his mother has died, ostensibly dooming his son to an orphanage. The news jolts him into reconsidering his stance, nudging him toward any path that might secure his freedom and family life. The tension between medical ethics, legal jeopardy, and a man’s need to protect his child becomes a quiet undercurrent throughout the story.
Henry Cronner [Vince Barnett], the janitor of the apartment building where Kenet’s wife’s boss Willard Whitcombe resides, tries to blackmail him over a possible role in the death. After being rebuffed, Cronner goes to see Kenet, hinting at a way to help—but details are withheld until Kenet can pay. Before Kenet can respond, Whitcombe himself moves to silence the threat, sending Cronner plummeting to his death down the building’s elevator shaft.
To unlock the truth, Kenet undergoes narcosynthesis—a light dose of sodium pentothal—to help him remember what happened. He recalls blacking out just as his hands tighten around his wife’s neck and later regaining consciousness to find her dead body. He hides in Lorrison’s car to escape the hospital, then breaks into Whitcombe’s apartment and recreates a scene resembling the truth under careful scrutiny. He returns to the hospital, unnoticed, waiting for Whitcombe to contact him.
Whitcombe shows up, but not empty-handed. He slyly provokes Kenet into a murderous rage by confessing his own two killings: Cronner’s death and Helen Kenet’s murder. In desperation, Kenet steals Lorrison’s car and breaks out of the hospital, evading a citywide manhunt for a homicidal maniac. With Lorrison at his side, who refuses to abandon him, he reaches Whitcombe’s apartment and engages in a brutal fistfight that leaves Whitcombe dazed. Seizing the moment, Lorrison administers sodium pentothal to Kenet, and Whitcombe recounts his motives in a complete confession.
The confession is read aloud before a waiting crowd of police and the D.A., David Wallace, who tells Kenet he is free to go. Even if everything Whitcombe said under truth serum would be inadmissible in court, Kenet remains confident of building his defense the old-fashioned way. After the dramatic confrontation, Kenet and Lorrison return to her home, where she has had custody of his son all along. The couple finally move toward a future together, secure in their reunion and the possibility of a life beyond the trauma that began in the river and the courthouse.
