Young Andy Stannard, [Bobby Clark], is the son of wealthy executive father Dave Stannard, [Glenn Ford], and his wife Edith, [Donna Reed]. A routine day at school ends in a shock when the family doctor’s nurse collects Andy for an infection, and Dave immediately contacts the doctor to confirm that no one asked for Andy to be retrieved. Realizing his son has been kidnapped, Dave phones the police.
Police Chief Jim Backett, [Robert Keith], organizes a nationwide search and has a second telephone line installed at the Stannards’ house so the main line stays clear for ransom calls. Newspaper reporter Charlie Telfer, [Leslie Nielsen], enters the home and observes the tense scene, facing hostility from Dave but is allowed to stay and report on the unfolding events.
When the school principal arrives and refuses to be held responsible for the abduction, Edith erupts and assaults her with a fire poker. The doctor later sedates Edith, and she sleeps upstairs while the kidnapper finally makes contact. The caller demands a $500,000 ransom and instructs Dave to signal compliance by having a popular television host wear a white jacket on the next evening’s broadcast. The police manage to trace the call to a phone booth and arrive just as the kidnapper’s cigarette burns out.
Dave, aided by his brother Al, collects the ransom money while Backett explains the grim reality: even if Dave pays, there’s no guarantee Andy will be returned alive, since the child is the tangible proof of the crime and his fate will likely be the same regardless of the decision. Backett also voices his belief that families should not pay ransoms because doing so encourages further kidnappings.
The following day, instead of following the kidnapper’s plan, Dave appears on the designated television show with the $500,000 spread on the table before him and declares that he will not pay the ransom; instead, the money will be offered as a bounty to anyone who helps capture the kidnapper if Andy is killed.
Worried whether Backett is striking too close to the truth, Dave’s lawyers are asked for a letter absolving Backett of responsibility for the decision. Edith, furious at her husband’s stance, is restrained as she is removed from the house.
The next day, Backett presents Dave with Andy’s bloody T-shirt found behind a seat in a stolen car, deepening the fear that the boy may be dead. Convinced of the worst, Dave arranges a trust to disperse the ransom money as a bounty to anyone who locates the kidnapper. He retreats to the backyard, where he sits beside the fort Andy had built with his friends and weeps until a rediscovered hope emerges: Andy returns home.
Andy explains that the shirt was bloodied because he had bitten the kidnapper who had posed as a nurse, and the family is finally reunited in a warm embrace as the household staff offers a quiet, grateful thanks to God.
