The Final Edition

Sam Bradshaw, the hot-tempered, high-energy city editor of The Daily Bulletin , quarrels with reporter Anne Woodman after he fires her for incompetence. Anne maintains that he fired her because she refuses to marry him. Their argument is interrupted by the news that Jim Conroy, the new police commissioner, has been murdered. Conroy had been conducting a zealous campaign to clean up the city's vice rackets, and Anne decides to get the story behind his death to prove that she is not incompetent. She goes alone to police headquarters and there finds the widowed Mrs. Conroy being harshly questioned. Anne rescues Mrs. Conroy from the intrusive reporters and takes her home, where she overhears the distraught widow tell a detective that a mysterious radio repairman came to the house and stole a file of Conroy's private papers from the library. The detective suspects racketeer Sid Malvern, especially after learning that the night before his murder, Conroy told Malvern, Neil Selby, his lawyer, and Patsy King, his moll, that he had proof of Selby and Malvern's control over the city's underworld. Conroy warned them to leave town, but instead Malvern returned to the house, killed him and stole the papers. Sam rehires Anne to get her scoop, while the police search for Malvern so that Mrs. Conroy can identify him. He has disappeared, however, due to a raid on his gambling joint. Anne sees Malvern at a train station and follows him after he buys a ticket to nearby Lakeside. Using her sleuthing abilities and feminine wiles, Anne charms Malvern into revealing that he has been double-crossing Selby. She cleverly steals the papers he had taken and which he was supposed to have given to Selby. After Sam prints a secretly snapped photo of Malvern with Anne, the jealous Patsy informs Selby of Malvern's treachery. Selby orders Malvern to return, after which Malvern and his gunmen take Anne captive at the train station when she also returns. She manages to get a message about her predicament to Freddie, the newspaper's slow-witted photographer, and Freddie passes it on to Sam. Sam realizes that Anne is being "taken for a ride," and arrives at Malvern's apartment just as she is about to be killed. Freddie takes an incriminating photograph of Malvern, then escapes to the newspaper office, after which Sam persuades the racketeer to give up because the photo will soon be printed. The police arrive and round up the gang, after which Anne resigns from the newspaper and applies for the job of Mrs. Bradshaw.