In a tense, noir-tinged setup, Mr. Tucker, Edward Platt, the owner of a Los Angeles coffee house, hatches a daring plan to pull off an armored car robbery during a four-hour stopover in Chicago on a cross-country train trip to New York. He enlists three down-on-their-luck beatniks to participate: John Mapes, Gregg Palmer, an out-of-work actor; Ray Miller, John Lupton, a struggling writer; and George Leland, Don Sullivan, the wayward son of movie star Rita Leland. Tucker’s scheme relies on careful timing and misdirection, with his henchman Sidney Horner, Ned Glass, flying ahead to set things up and ensure everything is in place for the heist.
Mapes’ worried wife, Jeanne Mapes, Kathleen Crowley, joins him aboard the train, anxious about the long stretch without steady work and the danger he’s courting. The planned robbery unfolds with precision: George shoots out a tire on the armored truck, and Sidney drives a second car into the truck to trap the guards. Disguised as policemen in a police car, John and Ray then arrive to transfer nearly a million dollars into a fake police vehicle. The gang moves their clothes, guns, and loot to a secluded site for burial, and the money is tucked into a gift box entrusted to George as they continue toward New York. Tucker promises each man a hefty share—$200,000 apiece—cementing a sense of shared peril.
Yet the plan strains under the weight of greed. Back on the train, Leland’s avarice spirals into treachery, and he murders Miller while leaving behind a suicide note that hints at desperation and guilt. Tucker, meanwhile, has infiltrated the carriage under the guise of a man of the cloth, moving to eliminate the perceived liabilities. He kills Leland first, then Miller, and leaves John Mapes as the final obstacle to exiting with the entire haul.
A confession arrives not long after: John reveals his involvement in the heist to his wife Jeanne, a moment that binds personal risk to moral accountability. When Newark’s police board the train to investigate the murder, John steps forward and admits everything, setting the stage for a dramatic confrontation. Tucker makes a last, reckless dash, leaping from the train with the money as Mapes pursues him through the corridors and into the yard beyond. A tense chase ensues, with shots fired by pursuing officers, culminating in Tucker’s fall onto an electric transformer and his death, while Mapes surrenders to the law.
Back in the car and cabin, Jeanne receives her husband’s goodbye embrace, even as Rita Leland—her son George’s mother and a famous star—awaits his arrival on the train, unaware that George is already dead. The outcome leaves a haunting blend of personal reckoning and unresolved ambition, a study in how greed tests loyalty, love, and the limits of trust aboard a moving, claustrophobic world.
