A Dangerous Game

Nurse Anne Bennett is fired by the medical staff of the Fleming Sanitarium for insubordination when she complains that she saw a strange man in patient Olaf Anderson's room. The seemingly paranoid Olaf then tries to stab one of the doctors, but he is stopped by male nurse Andy McAllister. A brief time later, insurance heir Silas Biggsby returns to the sanitarium and demands that Anne stay on as his personal nurse. Biggsby goes into the communal living room, where he becomes outraged when he discovers that his tiddleywinks game is missing. Gangsters Joe and Bugs then arrive, demanding to see Biggsby, but the mental patient has already hidden a satchel full of money inside the fireplace. Joe is about to shoot Biggsby when Dick Williams, another gangster, enters and demands that they split Biggsby's $250,000 three ways. Just then, three more gangsters, Clem, Ephriam and "Aunt Agatha," who is better known as "Moose-Face" Hogan, arrive and claim to be Biggsby's relatives, hoping to swindle the mental patient out of his money. While holding everyone captive, the gangsters search the living room but find nothing. Olaf then enters the room, and his condition forces the gangsters to allow the physicians to attend to him. After taking Olaf to his room, Dr. Robin collapses and falls down the staircase, dead from an apparent heart attack. When the "relatives" are discovered with guns, a scramble ensues, with Joe and Bugs getting the advantage. They discover that Dick is actually a private detective, but before they can kill him, Andy comes to the rescue with a pop gun. Dick gathers everyone in the living room, where Dr. Fleming coerces a false confession out of Olaf. Anne then confesses to the murder, saying she did so to avenge her father, whom Fleming and Robin had "cheated out of the hospital." Andy then accuses Fleming of the murder, having found a bottle of poison in the doctor's laboratory. Joe suggests that they recreate the crime scene, but they discover nothing new in doing so. Later, Dick searches the institute's medical records and discovers that Biggsby and Olaf were admitted within one day of each other, and were suffering from the same symptoms. He questions Anne about Olaf, but she can tell him little, as the patient was separated from the staff by the two doctors. Andy knocks out Fleming when he catches the doctor breaking into a medicine cabinet, but the physician is himself poisoned before he can name the real murderer. Clem is accused of the poisoning, and while he is being strapped into Andy's home-made lie detector, Biggsby removes his satchel from the fireplace, under the watchful eyes of Ephriam and Agatha. When Clem tells a lie, the detector short-circuits, causing a black-out, which leads to a mad chase through the sanitarium. When the bag is finally opened, a vile of poison is revealed, but no money. While the gangsters try to force a confession from Andy, Dick questions Biggsby. The detective tells Biggsby that he has ordered Anne to change Olaf's medication and that he knows Biggsby poisoned the physicians' drinks with his tiddleywinks chips. Biggsby attempts to escape, but is caught by the now drug-free Olaf, and in the struggle between the two men, Biggsby falls down the staircase to his death. Dick tells all that Olaf is actually the real Silas Biggsby, and that the dead "Biggsby" was the murderous partner of the two deceased doctors. Andy is then revealed to be Dick's assistant, and he mistakenly states that he has hidden Biggsby's money in the living room. When a fan sets the money flying throughout the room, Andy attempts to use a vacuum cleaner to recover it, with nominal success.