In Edinburgh, Janek/Johnny John Gilbert is a young Polish boy who lives with his aunt and cousins, and he often feels like an outsider in their bustling, crowded home. The household belongs to the MacGregor clan, with Mrs MacGregor portrayed by Mona Washbourne, alongside cousins including Kenneth MacGregor and Janet MacGregor. Janek’s quiet life is punctured one day when a group of local boys taunts him about his Polish background, sparking a scuffle that sends a pram rolling away. As the crowd closes in, Janek darts after the pram, chased by the growing mob up through the maze of Edinburgh’s alleys. His aunt arrives and denounces him as a wicked boy, and the frightened child flees, slipping through the urban labyrinth.
On Princes Street, a travel agency window advertisement lures him with visions of his homeland. He learns about a cheap way home: a ship from Dundee to Danzig for £17. Desperation pushes him to take a bold risk, and he sneaks aboard the back of a removal lorry marked Dundee. By night, he reaches a northern location, where two thieves are trying to break into a nearby house. They coerce him into climbing through a fanlight to unlock a door, then keep him waiting in the hall while they steal a brooch from a safe. A phone rings and unsettles the thieves, who scatter and flee just as a policeman arrives. The crooks split up, and one of them ends up taking Janek with them. A tense ride north in the back of a lorry follows, but a fight between the men leaves Janek to fend for himself in the shadows.
Their journey brings them to a remote cottage guarded by an old man, who lets the boy sleep on the floor. Janek wakes to slip away, heading toward the north and a new, uncertain future. He finds sanctuary in a ruined castle, and the next day a group of local children discovers him and brings him to a special school in Perthshire, where they nickname him Johnny. The headmaster photographs him, and the image soon appears in a newspaper with the bold caption that asks:
> do you know this boy?
Back in Edinburgh, the police see the photo and question his aunt about why she never reported him missing. The crooks, who have learned of the photo, push further north to find Janek, having hidden the brooch in his jacket. The school becomes a focal point of their pursuit as they locate the school and search its safe for the item.
Meanwhile, Janek participates in a cross-country paper chase across the countryside. The police interview the headmaster, and the girls who aren’t part of the race begin exploring the lockers, where they uncover the hidden brooch. Among them is a little girl, Susie [Cleo Sylvestre], who chooses to wear the brooch because Janek has taken a shine to her. The criminals join the cross-country event and close in on Janek inside a church, where one of the girls who carries the brooch is with him. He rings the church bell as the crowd gathers—the police arrive, and his aunt reaches the scene too.
In the end, the tense moment of rescue and pursuit resolves with Janek choosing to stay at the school. Surrounded by his new friends and the steadying influence of the MacGregor community, he finds a sense of belonging he hadn’t felt before. The MacIntyre family dynamics—Mrs MacIntyre and Mr MacIntyre—linger in the background as part of the larger tapestry of Edinburgh’s interconnected lives, illustrating how outsider and home can collide and then reconcile in unexpected places. The story closes on a note of quiet resilience, with Janek’s future now tied to the inclusive spirit of a small school in the countryside and the friends who stood by him.
