Climaxing a long series of mysterious disappearances of young girls, dancer Thalia Arnold is found murdered. Police-detective Captain McVeigh believes that King Peterson, a nightclub operator and owner of the Crescent School of Fine Arts, knows something about the missing girls. Peterson's silent partner is Joseph Thompson, a theatrical agent, whose daughter, Nora, a reporter, is waging a newspaper crusade against the district attorney's office for failing to trace the girls, much to the discomfiture of James Horton, a young assistant district attorney. Pauline Randolph is the next to disappear but Nora had seen her leaving her grandmother's home in a car driven by a blonde woman. Nora interviews the grandmother who tells her that Pauline had theatrical employment, along with one of her friends, Mary Phillips.