Rogues Gallery

Having been assigned to cover a story about a miraculous new device that can register conversations over great distances without the use of a microphone, reporter Patsy Clark and photographer Eddie Jones proceed to the Emerson Foundation to interview Reynolds, the inventor of the machine. Foster, the head of the foundation, has not granted Patsy permission to interview the inventor, however, and consequently, Mike, the night watchman, turns them away. While Reynolds speaks to Mike over his office phone, an intruder sneaks into the room, switches off the lights, strikes the scientist over the head and steals his drawings. Hearing the commotion over the phone line, Mike calls the police, and several squad cars are dispatched to the foundation. Following the phalanx of police cars, Patsy and Eddie return to the foundation and sneak into a back hallway, where Eddie collides with Reynold's assailant. The thief drops the plans, and after he flees through a back door, Patsy and Eddie find the drawings and decide to show them to Joe Seawell, an electronics engineer. While driving to Seawell's, a car forces them off the road and the driver demands the drawings, but Eddie blinds the man with the flash bulb of his camera, allowing Patsy to speed away. After examining the diagrams, Seawell confirms that Reynolds has invented a device that can record and listen to voices from great distances. At the Foster residence, meanwhile, the board of directors of the Emerson Foundation is meeting to discuss the missing documents. Barging into the meeting, Patsy offers to return the drawings in exchange for an exclusive story about the invention and an interview with Reynolds. After Foster and the others consent, Patsy hands over the documents, and just as Eddie is about to shoot a photograph of the participants, someone switches off the lights and a gunshot is fired. Eddie falls on the drawings, thus preventing their theft, and after the lights are turned back on, the butler announces that he has found the dead body of Griffith, one of the board members, on the veranda. Homicide detective Daniel O'Day is then summoned, and arrives at the Foster house with Jimmie Foster, Foster's reporter nephew. By this time, however, Griffith's corpse has disappeared, and without a dead body, O'Day refuses to report that a murder has been committed. Chagrined, Eddie and Patsy drive away and soon after, discover Griffith's body on the backseat of their car. Speeding to police headquarters, the two park the car and then hurry to O'Day's office to escort him to the corpse. By the time they arrive at the car, however, the body is missing once again. Patsy's story of Griffith's death has already been printed, and when the edition hits the streets without a corpus delecti in sight, the paper's editor, Gantry, fires both Patsy and Eddie. Determined to find Griffith's body, Patsy, armed with a pass from Foster, returns to the Emerson Foundation to interview Reynolds. To demonstrate his invention, Reynolds aims it at the Foster house, enabling Patsy and Eddie to overhear Foster voice his suspicions that one of the board members is responsible for Griffith's murder. As Patsy and Eddie speed to Foster's house to question him, Foster prepares to lock the drawings in his safe. At that moment, an assailant steps out from behind the drapes, knocks Foster unconscious and steals the documents. When Patsy and Eddie arrive, they find Foster sprawled on the floor and carry him to his bedroom. Hearing a noise downstairs, they rush to the living room and see a figure sprinting across the lawn. Patsy pursues the man, and in the bushes, she tackles Jimmie, who claims that he was chasing the thief, too. Later, alerted about the theft by Reynolds, the board members file into the house to visit Foster. Upon returning to the foundation to question Reynolds, Patsy and Eddie are met by Mike, who refuses them admittance to the building. Eddie sneaks into Reynolds' office through an open window and discovers that someone has smashed the machine and murdered Reynolds. After grabbing the machine, Patsy and Eddie return to the Foster mansion. Soon after, O'Day arrives to announce that he has found Griffith's body. When Mike phones with the news of Reynolds' murder, Patsy and Eddie admit to visiting the scientist's office, and Patsy claims that she was planning to repair the machine and trap the killer. Patsy removes a record from the machine and plays it on Foster's phonograph. On it, the killer's voice is clearly heard threatening Reynolds. Patsy recognizes the voice as Jimmie's and accuses him of murder. Attempting to escape, Jimmie bounds up the stairway and is shot by O'Day. With the murders solved, Gentry rehires Patsy and Eddie and assigns them a new story to cover.