Late at night, Anna Wolff watches from a doorway as three men drive off with a body and secretly bury it, unaware they are being observed. The tension in the Wolff house rises quickly when Kay, her stepdaughter, arrives to share surprising news and the room fills with uneasy questions about loyalty, money, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Shortly after, a gathering of the Wolff clan—Kay’s wealthy father, Dudley Wolff, the enigmatic Dr. Haggard, a researcher who works for Wolff, and Alfred Dunning, Wolff’s secretary—sends a ripple through the evening. Kay declares she has married Roger Blake, a man who may threaten the family’s fortune, and the mood shifts as suspicion and fear pour into the hall. Wolff warns that Kay must not know what happened that night, a demand that only deepens the sense that someone in the house is hiding a dangerous truth.
That night, a gunshot shatters the quiet, creeping into Kay’s room and waking her with a scream. The room is torn by panic as her father and the house’s other residents rush in. Dudley finds a clod of dirt in the bathroom and tries to assure Kay she was dreaming, insisting there is no bullet hole. Yet Kay’s conviction remains clear: something real happened, something sinister. When the grave is revisited the next day, it is found empty, deepening the mystery and pushing the family toward a more perilous game of bluff and counter-bluff.
Desperate for answers, Kay turns to private detective Michael Shayne, a seasoned professional she has relied on before. To protect her father during Senate investigations, Shayne poses as Kay’s husband, stepping into a web of deceit and danger. In short order, he uncovers a tangible clue—a bullet embedded in a bedpost—and notices bullets of the same caliber in Dr. Haggard’s laboratory. The moment is electric as Shayne sits in a chair wired to a test device, the risk of electrocution looming, and Haggard’s intervention saves him just in time. The spark of truth begins to crack the surface, and Kay reveals that a bullet has been recovered, prompting Wolff to admit he once had a visitor—a former partner who had pressed for more money, turning violent when refused. Wolff insists he wants to avoid the police, preferring to handle things quietly, but his guarded tone hints at a far more dangerous reality.
As the plot thickens, Wolff claims a different visitor had appeared the night before—a man who once collaborated with Haggard and Wolff on private ventures. The visitor’s demands for money become a central motive as questions about blackmail and revenge emerge. But the tension explodes when an intruder shoots Dr. Haggard, and Shayne gives chase, only to collide with the caretaker and uncover more secrets than answers. Wolff agrees to bring in the police, yet the night’s electrical alarm misfires and the killer slips away, stealing Chief Jonathan Meek’s car in a tense escape.
Shayne, using a clever shortcut that Meek knows well, corners the killer on the road. The pursuit ends in a crash, and the murderer dies in the subsequent wreck, a dramatic moment that seems to close the case. Yet Michael Shayne’s hunt for truth continues, steering him toward a legendary figure tied to Houdini’s era—the Great Merlini. In Merlini’s scrapbook, photos of Zorah Bey align with the dead man, prompting Shayne to contact Chief Meek under the guise of a reporter to confirm the body’s identity. The body is suddenly missing from the Wolff mansion, shifting the investigation into a new gear of suspense.
Back at the Wolff house, Shayne pieces together a web of deception: Kay’s seemingly innocent husband is present, and a private conversation with Wolff reveals a more personal layer to the crime. Shayne’s suspicions grow as he discovers that Anna is not merely a silent partner in Wolff’s life but is secretly connected to Zorah Bey. The stage is set for a dramatic confrontation that will expose the full scale of the conspiracy: Anna is really Zorah Bey’s wife, and Bey had returned to the United States months earlier only to learn of Anna’s marriage to Wolff and her close, dangerous ties with Haggard. Bey had pressed for money, and Anna and Haggard agreed to play along with a fake “burial” so he could blackmail Wolff. They believed they were deceiving Bey, but in truth they were burying him—until the curious caretaker uncovered the ruse.
The pieces finally collide when Bey appears, only to be knocked unconscious by Shayne. With Bey temporarily out of the way, the detective reveals the intricate scheme: Anna and Haggard’s plan to manipulate Bey, then the real burial they orchestrated, was discovered too late for Bey to escape. Bey’s misunderstanding of Anna’s identity caused him to misread Kay as Anna on the first night, a fatal mistake that ties Kay to a night of confusion and danger. Bey had killed Haggard and was attempting to strike again when Shayne intervened, turning a web of deceit into a courtroom of truth.
In the end, justice—as deftly handled by Shayne—unravels the tangled loyalties and financial temptations that drove the crime. The truth of the buried man, the real motives behind the blackmail, and the identities of those who used others to shield their own secrets come to light. The Great Merlini’s world of illusion and misdirection serves as a quiet, symbolic backdrop to the real-life drama that unfolds in the Wolff estate: a story of trust betrayed, old debts, and a detective’s steady accuracy in pulling the threads apart until the truth stands revealed.
- Michael Shayne orchestrates the investigation with patience and cunning, his steps mirrored by the actions of Jonathan Meek, the diligent Police Chief who questions the family and orders the search for the missing body.
- The intertwined fates of Anna Wolff, Dudley Wolff, Dr. Haggard, and Alfred Dunning form the backbone of the plot, while the shadowy figure Zorah Bey drives the blackmail and the deadly twists that follow.
- Even as the mystery unravels, the presence of Gus / The Great Merlini and his world of stage magic casts a thematic glow on the film’s obsession with illusion and truth, echoing the unveiling of real motives behind the buried body and the carefully constructed alibis that once seemed airtight.
